Paul Revere took his first ride (Months before his famous horseback ride into American history on April 18, 1775) on the icy Boston Post Road to warn the citizens of New Hampshire of a potential British troop landing with the express purpose that they were going to be seizing firearms, cannons and gunpowder at Fort William and Mary. Had the British been more aggressive and the weather less ...
On October 20, 1774, the First Continental Congress creates the Continental Association, which calls for a complete ban on all trade between America and Great Britain of all goods, wares or merchandise. The creation of the association was in response to the Coercive Acts—or “Intolerable Acts” as they were known to the colonists–which were established by the British government to restore order in Massachusetts following the Boston Tea Party ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbGDKitNf04 On September 5, 1774, every colony but Georgia sent representatives to what is now called the First Continental Congress. They met in secret because they did not want the British to know that the colonies were uniting. At first there were 44 delegates who met in Carpenter's Hall in Philadelphia. Twelve other delegates reported late. Some of those who came were George Washington, Patrick Henry, ...
The First United American Republic is founded: United Colonies of North America: 13 British Colonies United in Congress was founded by 12 colonies on September 5th, 1774 (Georgia joined in 1775) and governed through a British Colonial Continental Congress. Peyton Randolph and George Washington served, respectively, as the Republic's first President and Commander-in-Chief. The United Colonies Continental Congress provided for the security of its member Colonies with the formation of a Continental Army, ...
Governor Thomas Gage, British general over Massachusetts, directed the Redcoats to begin warrant-less searches for arms and ammunition. According to the Boston Gazette, of all General Gage’s offenses, “what most irritated the People” was “seizing their Arms and Ammunition". (Source) ...
A South Carolina newspaper essay, reprinted in Virginia, urged that any law that had to be enforced by the military was necessarily illegitimate: When an Army is sent to enforce Laws, it is always an Evidence that either the Law makers are conscious that they had no clear and indisputable right to make those Laws, or that they are bad [and] oppressive. Wherever the People themselves ...
On this day in 1774, dissenting British minister Joseph Priestley, author of Observations on Civil Liberty and the Nature and Justice of the War with America, discovers oxygen while serving as a tutor to the sons of American sympathizer William Petty, 2nd Earl of Shelburne, at Bowood House in Wiltshire, England. When he discovered oxygen, he answered age-old questions of why and how things burn. An ...
The purpose of the Quartering Act of 1774 of the Intolerable Acts was to extend the provisions of the previous 1765 Quartering Act giving the governor, rather than the assembly, the authority to enforce arrangements to ensure that the colonists supplied billeting for the troops. The 1765 Quartering Act had required colonial governments to absorb the costs associated with quartering British troops which included food, shelter, ...
The Massachusetts Government Act was passed by the Parliament of Great Britain on May 20, 1774. The Massachusetts Government Act revoked the colony's 1691 charter effectively ended the constitution of Massachusetts and and restricted the number of town meetings that a community might hold and prohibited the election of town officials. The Massachusetts Government Act: Put an end to the constitution of Massachusetts Only one town meeting ...
When news of the first measures that came to be known as the Coercive Acts reached New York City, the Sons of Liberty sprang to action, calling a large public meeting in Fraunces Tavern. Moderates within the city, fearing that this radical group would take things too far by imposing an embargo that would cripple the finances of local merchants, schemed to coopt the proceedings. Radicals ...
