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Stamp Act
an act of the British Parliament in 1756 that exacted revenue from the American colonies by imposing a stamp duty on newspapers and legal and commercial documents. Colonial opposition led to the act's repeal in 1766 and helped encourage the revolutionary movement against the British Crown. -
Townshend Act
The Townshend Acts were a series of acts passed — beginning in 1767 — by the Parliament of Great Britain relating to the British colonies in North America. The acts are named after Charles Townshend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who proposed the program. -
Boston Massacre
a riot in Boston arising from the resentment of Boston colonists toward British troops quartered in the city, in which the troops fired on the mob and killed several persons. -
Boston Tea Party
a raid on three British ships in Boston Harbor (December 16, 1773) in which Boston colonists, disguised as Indians, threw the contents of several hundred chests of tea into the harbor as a protest against British taxes on tea and against the monopoly granted the East India Company. -
Intolerable Acts
The Intolerable Acts were the American Patriots' term for a series of punitive laws passed by the British Parliament in 1774 after the Boston Tea party. They were meant to punish the Massachusetts colonists for their defiance in throwing a large tea shipment into Boston harbor. -
Second Continental Congress
The Second Continental Congress was a convention of delegates from the Thirteen Colonies that started meeting in the summer of 1775, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, that, soon after warfare, declared the American Revolutionary War had begun. -
Battle of Bunker Hill
The first great battle of the Revolutionary War; it was fought near Boston in June 1775. The British drove the Americans from their fort at Breed's Hill to Bunker Hill, but only after the Americans had run out of gunpowder. -
Olive Branch Petition
The Olive Branch Petition was adopted by the Second Continental Congress on July 5, 1775, in a final attempt to avoid a full-on war between the Thirteen Colonies, that the Congress represented, and Great Britain. The petition affirmed American loyalty to Great Britain and entreated the king to prevent further conflict. -
Common Sense
Common Sense is a pamphlet written by Thomas Paine in 1775–76 that inspired people in the Thirteen Colonies to declare and fight for independence from Great Britain in the summer of 1776. -
Declaration of Independence
The Declaration of Independence is defined as the formal statement written by Thomas Jefferson declaring the freedom of the thirteen American colonies from Great Britain. -
Trenton
The Battle of Trenton was a small but pivotal battle during the American Revolutionary War which took place on the morning of December 26, 1776, in Trenton, New Jersey -
Battle at Saratoga
A major battle of the Revolutionary War, fought in 1777 in northern New York state. Benedict Arnold, who had not yet turned traitor, was a leader of the American offensive, which forced the surrender of British troops under General John Burgoyne. -
Yorktown
The last battle of the Revolutionary War, fought in 1781 near the seacoast of Virginia. There the British general Lord Cornwallis surrendered his army to General George Washington. -
Treaty of Paris
The Treaty of Paris, signed in Paris by representatives of King George III of Great Britain and representatives of the United States of America on September 3, 1783, ended the American Revolutionary War.
