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Townshend Acts
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. -
Declaratory Act
Declaratory Act, 1766, declaration by the British Parliament that accompanied the repeal of the Stamp Act. It stated that the British parliament's taxing authority was the same in america as in great Britain. Parliament had directly taxed the colonies for revenue in the Sugar Act 1764 and the Stamp Act 1765. -
Declaration of Independence
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. -
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. -
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. It also required colonists to provide food for any British soldiers in the area. -
"Shot Heard Around the World"
Hand drawn depiction of the Battles of Lexington and Concord and the Siege of Boston, by J. DeCosta July 29, 1775. The first shots were fired just after dawn in Lexington, Massachusetts the morning of the 19th, the "Shot Heard Round the World." -
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. -
Common Sense
good sense and sound judgment in practical matters. -
Boston Massacre
The Boston Massacre was the killing of five colonists by British regulars on March 5, 1770. It was the culmination of tensions in the American colonies that had been growing since Royal troops first appeared in Massachusetts in October 1768 to enforce the heavy tax burden imposed by the Townshend Acts. -
Proclamation Line
The Royal Proclamation of 1763 was issued October 7, 1763, by King George III following Great Britain's acquisition of French territory in North America after the end of the French and Indian War/Seven Years' War, which forbade all settlement past a line drawn along the Appalachian Mountains. -
Tea Act
Tea Act of 1773 (13 Geo 3 c 44) 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. -
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. -
Boston Tea Party
The Boston Tea Party (initially referred to by John Adams as "the Destruction of the Tea in Boston") was a political protest by the Sons of Liberty in Boston, on December 16, 1773.
