Founding America (Barnes & Noble Classics) - Jack N. Rakove [2]
1766 In response to colonial protests and petitions from British merchants, Parliament repeals the Stamp Act on March 18, but concurrently adopts a Declaratory Act stating that it retains the right to enact laws binding the colonists “in all cases whatsoever.”
1767 In June and July, Charles Townshend, Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, introduces a new bill to tax the importation into America of such goods as lead, paper, glass, and tea. American opposition to the Townshend duties is led by John Dickinson’s Letters from a Pennsylvania Farmer.
1769 In continued protests against the Townshend duties, colonists organize another boycott of British imports.
1770 Parliament repeals all the Townshend duties except the tax on tea.
1772 Samuel Adams organizes the Boston Committee of Correspondence, which mounts a campaign protesting a British plan to give Massachusetts Governor Thomas Hutchinson and other officials a royal salary.
1773 In January, Hutchinson opens the Massachusetts legislature with a speech explaining why Americans should recognize the supremacy of Parliament. On September 11, Benjamin Franklin publishes Rules Whereby a Great Empire May Be Reduced to a Small One. Parliament adopts the Tea Act, giving the near-bankrupt East India Company a monopoly on the
sale of tea in America. On December 16, a group of sixty radicals stage the Boston Tea Party in Boston Harbor; dressed as Mohawk Indians, they board three ships—the Dartmouth, the Eleanor, and the Beaver —and destroy 342 crates of East India Company British tea.
1774 In response to the Boston Tea Party, Parliament passes a set of laws known as the Intolerable (or Coercive) Acts. In July, Thomas Jefferson writes A Summary View of the Rights of British America. With the Declaration and Resolves, adopted on October 14, the First Continental Congress unanimously agrees that the British Parliament has no right to impose taxes or other laws on unrepresented colonists. The Association, adopted on October 20, provides for the election of popular committees of inspection to enforce the proposed commercial boycott of British goods.
1775 On April 19, military conflict begins with skirmishes at Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts. On July 3, George Washington takes command of the newly formed Continental Army outside Boston. In July, Benjamin Franklin proposes a Plan of Confederation to the Second Continental Congress.
1776 On January 10, Thomas Paine publishes Common Sense as an anonymous fifty-page pamphlet denouncing the British monarch and monarchy in general. Adam Smith publishes The Wealth of Nations. In April, John Adams publishes Thoughts on Government. George Mason drafts Virginia’s Declaration of Rights; it is published on June 12. On July 4, members of the Second Continental Congress approve the Declaration of Independence. On December 26, troops led by General George Washington are victorious at the Battle of Trenton, a turning point for American military enlistment and morale after earlier defeats in Long Island and Manhattan had made the American cause seem doomed. Emanuel Leutze’s iconic painting Washington Crossing the Delaware (1851) was inspired by the advance of the American forces over the Delaware River from Pennsylvania to New Jersey.
1777 While one British army under General William Howe occupies Philadelphia, another under General John Burgoyne surrenders to American troops at Saratoga, New York. On
November 15, the Continental Congress formally endorses the Articles of Confederation, which provide a system of national governance for the thirteen American states.
1778 In February, the French monarchy of Louis XVI signs a treaty of alliance with the United States.
1780 New York cedes its western land claims to Congress, initiating a process that will lead by 1784 to the creation of a national domain above the Ohio River.
1781 On March 1, the Articles of Confederation take effect after