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Boston Massacre
Most Bostonians resented the British troops who had been quartered in their city to protect customs officials from being attacked by the Sons of Liberty. On a snowy day in March 1770, a crowd of colonists harassed the guards near the customs house. The guards fired into the crowd, killing five people including an African American, Crispus Attucks. Samuel Adams, angrily denounced the shooting incident as a "massacre" and used it to inflame anti-British feeling. -
Boston Tea Party
The colonists continued their refusal to buy British tea because the British insisted on their right to collect the tax. Hoping to help the British East India Company out of its financial problems, Parliament passed the Tea Act in 1773, which made the price of the company's tea-even with the tax included-cheaper than that of smuggled Dutch tea.a group of Bostonians disguised themselves as American Indians, boarded the British ships, and dumped 342 chests of tea into the harbor. -
The First Continental Congress
The punitive Intolerable Acts drove all the colonies except Georgia to send delegates to a convention in Philadelphia in September 1774. The purpose of the convention was to respond to what the delegates viewed as Britain's alarming threats to their liberties. However, most Americans had no desire for independence. -
The Second Continental Congress
Met in Philadelphia in May 1775. The congress was divided. One group of delegates, mainly from New England, thought the colonies should declare their independence. Another group, mainly from the middle colonies, hoped the conflict could be resolved by negotiating a new relationship with Great Britain. -
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The American Revolutionary War
The Revolutionary War (1775-83), also known as the American Revolution, arose from growing tensions between residents of Great Britain’s 13 North American colonies and the colonial government, which represented the British crown, waging a full-scale war for their independence. France entered the American Revolution on the side of the colonists in 1778, turning what had essentially been a civil war into an international conflict. -
The Declaration of Independence
Richard Henry Lee of Virginia introduced a resolution declaring the colonies to be independent. The declaration drafted by Jefferson listed specific grievances against King George's government. The congress adopted Lee's resolution calling for independence on July 2. Jefferson's work, the Declaration of Independence, was adopted on July 4, 1776.