In response to the British Parliament’s enactment of the Coercive Acts in the American colonies, the first session of the Continental Congress convenes at Carpenter’s Hall in Philadelphia. Fifty-six delegates from all the colonies except Georgia drafted a declaration of rights and grievances and elected Virginian Peyton Randolph as the first president of Congress. Patrick Henry, George Washington, John Adams and John Jay were among the delegates.
The first major American opposition to British policy came in 1765 after Parliament passed the Stamp Act, a taxation measure designed to raise revenues for a standing British army in America. Under the argument of “no taxation without representation,” colonists convened the Stamp Act Congress in October 1765 to vocalize their opposition to the tax. With its enactment in November, most colonists called for a boycott of British goods, and some organized attacks on the customhouses and homes of tax collectors. After months of protest in the colonies, Parliament voted to repeal the Stamp Act in March 1766.
Most colonists continued to quietly accept British rule until Parliament’s enactment of the Tea Act in 1773, a bill designed to save the faltering East India Company by greatly lowering its tea tax and granting it a monopoly on the American tea trade. The low tax allowed the East India Company to undercut even tea smuggled into America by Dutch traders, and many colonists viewed the act as another example of taxation tyranny. In response, militant Patriots in Massachusetts organized the “Boston Tea Party,” which saw British tea valued at some Ý18,000 dumped into Boston harbor.
Parliament, outraged by the Boston Tea Party and other blatant acts of destruction of British property, enacted the Coercive Acts, also known as the Intolerable Acts, in 1774. The Coercive Acts closed Boston to merchant shipping, established formal British military rule in Massachusetts, made British officials immune to criminal prosecution in America, and required colonists to quarter British troops. The colonists subsequently called the first Continental Congress to consider a united American resistance to the British.
With the other colonies watching intently, Massachusetts led the resistance to the British, forming a shadow revolutionary government and establishing militias to resist the increasing British military presence across the colony. In April 1775, Thomas Gage, the British governor of Massachusetts, ordered British troops to march to Concord, Massachusetts, where a Patriot arsenal was known to be located. On April 19, 1775, the British regulars encountered a group of American militiamen at Lexington, and the first shots of the American Revolution were fired.
More than a year later, on July 4, 1776, the Second Continental Congress officially adopted the Declaration of Independence. Five years later, in October 1781, British General Charles Lord Cornwallis surrendered to American and French forces at Yorktown, Virginia, bringing to an end the last major battle of the Revolution. With the signing of the Treaty of Paris with Britain in 1783, the United States formally became a free and independent nation.
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July 3, 1775: George Washington Takes Command Of The Continental Army
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July 17, 1918: The Romanov Family Is Executed By Communists
July 19, 1799: The Rosetta Stone Is Discovered
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July 25, 1898 - U.S. forces invade Puerto Rico
July 26, 1847 - Liberia proclaimed its independence: Wakanda Realized.
July 29, 1588: The Spanish Armada Is Defeated
August 3, 1492: Christopher Columbus Sets Sail For The New World
August 4, 1790: Alexander Hamilton creates Coast Guard to intercept smugglers that avoided Tariffs
August 5, 1620: The Mayflower Makes Its Failed First Attempt To Depart England
August 12, 1898: Armistice ends the Spanish-American War
August 13, 1521: The Aztec Capital Falls To Hernán Cortés
August 14, 1945: Japan’s surrender made public on Victory over Japan Day, (V-J Day).
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August 21, 1992 - The Ruby Ridge Standoff
August 22, 1791: Haitian Revolution Murders all the whites
August 24, 1814: British Forces Burn The White House
August 27, 410 A.D.: King Alaric's Visigoths Sack Rome
September 1, 1939: Nazi Germany Invades Poland starting World War II
September 1, 2004: Radical Islamist separatists attack the Beslan school in Russia in a holy war between Muslims and infidels.
September 2, 1945: World War II officially ended when Japan signed the formal Instrument of Surrender
September 3, 1783: The Treaty of Paris was signed ending the American Revolutionary War
September 4, 476 AD: The Roman Empire Falls
