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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. -
Proclamation Line
The Proclamation Line was Great Britain's acquisition of French territory in North America after the end of the French and Indian War. It forbade all settlement past a line drawn along the Appalachian Mountains. -
Quartering Act
Quartering Act is a name given to a minimum of two Acts of British Parliament in the local governments of the American colonies to provide the British soldiers with any needed accommodations or housing. -
Declaratory Act
Declaratory Act, commonly known as the Declaratory Act, was an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain, which accompanied the repeal of the Stamp Act 1765 and the changing and lessening of the Sugar Act. Parliament repealed the Stamp Act because boycotts were hurting British trade and used the declaration to justify the repeal and save face -
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
The Boston Massacre, known as the Incident on King Street by the British, was an incident on March 5, 1770. British Army soldiers killed five male civilians and injured six others. -
Committee of Correspondence
The Committees of Correspondence rallied colonial opposition against British policy and established a political union among the Thirteen Colonies. Letter from Samuel Adams to James Warren, 4 November 1772. Massachusetts Historical Society. -
Tea Act
Tea Act was an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain. The principal objective was to reduce the massive amount of tea held by the financially troubled British East India Company in its London warehouses and to help the struggling company survive. -
Boston Tea Party
American colonial defiance served as a protest against taxation. The troubled East India Company, British Parliament adjusted import duties with the passage of the Tea Act -
Intolerable or Coercive 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. -
Shots Heard Around The World
On the night of April 18, 1775, hundreds of British troops set off from Boston toward Concord, Massachusetts, in order to seize weapons and ammunition stockpiled there by American colonists. When the brief clash ended, eight Americans lay dead and at least an equal amount were injured, while one redcoat was wounded. -
Common Sense
Challenged the authority of the British government and the royal monarchy. The plain language that Paine used spoke to the common people of America and was the first work to openly ask for independence from Great Britain. -
Declaration of Independence
the statement adopted by the Continental Congress meeting at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on July 4, 1776, which announced that the thirteen American colonies, then at war with Great Britain, regarded themselves as thirteen newly independent sovereign states, and no longer a part of the British Empire.
