Conflicts
Name for the North American theater of the Seven Years’ War. Featured Britain and France, and their colonial and native allies, fighting for control of North America east of the Mississippi. While the British won, they incurred massive debts in the process.
French and Indian War
Founding Father. Invented bifocals, the lightning rod, and the swivel chair. An early campaigner for American unity, he served as the first U.S. Ambassador to France
A landmark incident on March 5, 1770 that helped alienate the American people from Parliament and King George III. Angered by the Quartering Act, a crowd of Bostonians harassed the British troops guarding a local customs house. The guards fired upon the crowd, killing five and wounding six protesters.
A 1764 law which raised the previous amount demanded on sweeteners. Part of British attempts to pay off debt from the French and Indian War.
Sugar Act
Bostonians dressed as American Indians boarded British merchant ship and dumped their tea into Boston Harbor. Resulted in closure of the Harbor, the colonial charter of Massachusetts being revoked, and the Quartering Act.
Boston Tea Party
Treaty that ended the French and Indian War; effectively removed Frances colonies from North America
Treaty of Paris (1763)
Founding Father. Led the Sons and Daughters of Liberty. Also penned Massachusetts Circular Letter in 1768, which demanded that the Townshend Act be repealed.
Samuel Adams
A meeting of representatives of nine of the Thirteen Colonies. They sent word to England that only colonial legislatures had the authority to tax the colonists.
Stamp Act Congress
A law passed by Parliament in 1764. It limited the use of colonial paper money, in order to protect British merchants from depreciation. While not a major contributing factor to the American Revolution, it did signify growing British interest in regulating the colonies.
Currency Act
A pivotal 1765 law. It required that all paper in the colonies, from death and marriage certificates to newspapers, have a label affixed signifying that the required tax had been paid.
Stamp Act
A colonial term for a number of punitive laws passed by the British Parliament in response to the Boston Tea Party
Intolerable Acts
Founding Father. Young Virginian lawyer and Patriot. In reaction to the Stamp Act, he accused the British government of usurping the rights guaranteed to colonists as Englishmen. He encouraged his fellow leaders to insist that Virginians be taxed only by Virginians, not by some distant royal authority. Later an Anti-Federalist.
Patrick Henry
Organized in 1774 as a response to the Intolerable Acts, colonial leaders managed to urge their colonies to expand military reserves and organize boycotts of British goods in the meantime.
First Continental Congress
King George III barred American colonists from settling west of the Appalachian Mountains. The colonists often ignored it. An important contributing factor to the American Revolution.
Proclamation of 1763
A revenue plan passed by Parliament in 1767. It imposed harsher taxes on the purveyors of imported goods such as glass, paper, and tea.
Townshend Acts
Replaced the Stamp Act. A 1766 law that maintained the right of the crown to tax the colonies, as Parliament’s authority was identical in both Britain and North America.
Declaratory Act
British Prime Minister who passed the Currency, Sugar, Quartering, and Stamp Acts. He felt the colonists were being asked to pay only their fair share of the debt from the French and Indian War.
George Grenville
A proposal by a small "Congress" under the guidance of Benjamin Franklin, during the French and Indian War. It called for a confederation of colonies to defend against attack by European and native foes. Rejected by the colonial assemblies due to concern over the central consolidation of power, and by the British government because they felt it allowed for too much colonial independence.
Albany Plan
A 1765 act of Parliament that required colonial citizens to provide room and board for British soldiers stationed in America.
Quartering Act
What is the name of the book that inspired many colonists to declare independence? Who was it's author?
Common Sense by Thomas Paine
An 18-month conflict with the American Indians of the Ohio Valley. Named after the leader of the Ottawa people; natives attacked British colonial settlements from the Great Lakes to Virginia. Resulted in the Proclamation of 1763.
Pontiac's Rebellion
Founding Father from Pennsylvania. He wrote a series of essays called “Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania,” which rekindled interest in the issue of taxation without representation during the Townshend Acts. He oversaw the drafting of the Articles of Confederation.
John Dickinson
A Patriot from Massachusetts. Coined the phrase “Taxation without representation is tyranny,” which is popularly abbreviated as “no taxation without representation.”
James Otis
A group of Patriot activists who intimidated tax collectors by attacking their homes, burning them in effigy, and even tarring and feathering them. They also ransacked warehouses that held stamps and burned them to the ground.
Sons and Daughters of Liberty
A 1774 act of Parliament that which allowed the former French region to expand its borders, taking away potential lands from colonists in the Ohio River Valley. Even more offensive to the largely Protestant colonists, it also allowed this Canadian cities' citizens to practice Catholicism freely.
Quebec Act