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8th Grade American Revolution: Home

Events leading up to the Revolutionary War as well as important battles of the Revolutionary War.

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American Revolution

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Sugar Act

Sugar Act

The American Revenue Act of 1764, so called Sugar Act, was a law that attempted to curb the smuggling of sugar and molasses in the colonies by reducing the previous tax rate and enforcing the collection of duties.

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Stamp Act

Stamp Act

The Stamp Act was a tax put on the American colonies by the British in 1765. It said they had to pay a tax on all sorts of printed materials such as newspapers, magazines and legal documents. It was called the Stamp Act because the colonies were supposed to buy paper from Britain that had an official stamp on it that showed they had paid the tax.

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Townshend Act

Townshend Act

The Townshend Acts were a series of laws passed by the British government on the American colonies in 1767. They placed new taxes and took away some freedoms from the colonists including the following: New taxes on imports of paper, paint, lead, glass, and tea.

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Boston Massacre

Boston Massacre

The Boston Massacre occurred on March 5, 1770 when British soldiers in Boston opened fire on a group of American colonists killing five men.

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Tea Act

Tea Act

In an effort to save the troubled enterprise, the British Parliament passed the Tea Act in 1773. The act granted the company the right to ship its tea directly to the colonies without first landing it in England, and to commission agents who would have the sole right to sell tea in the colonies

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Boston Tea Party

Excretory System

The Boston Tea Party was a political protest that occurred on December 16, 1773, at Griffin's Wharf in Boston, Massachusetts. American colonists, frustrated and angry at Britain for imposing “taxation without representation,” dumped 342 chests of tea, imported by the British East India Company into the harbor.

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Intolerable Acts

Intolerable Acts

The Intolerable Acts were punitive laws passed by the British Parliament in 1774 after the Boston Tea Party. The laws were meant to punish the Massachusetts colonists for their defiance in the Tea Party protest in reaction to changes in taxation by the British to the detriment of colonial goods.

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First Continental Congress

First Continental Congress

On September 5, 1774, delegates from each of the 13 colonies except for Georgia met in Philadelphia as the First Continental Congress to organize colonial resistance to Parliament’s Coercive Acts.  The Congress was structured with emphasis on the equality of participants, and to promote free debate. After much discussion, the Congress issued a Declaration of Rights, affirming its loyalty to the British Crown but disputing the British Parliament’s right to tax it. 

Vidoes

Lexington and Concord

Lexington and Concord

The Battles of Lexington and Concord were the first military engagements of the American Revolutionary War. The battles were fought on April 19, 1775 in Middlesex County, Province of Massachusetts Bay, within the towns of Lexington, Concord, Lincoln, Menotomy, and Cambridge.

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Maps and Primary Sources

 

Lexington and Concord, Battles of: location

Second Continental Congress

Second Continental Congress

The Second Continental Congress was a meeting of delegates from the Thirteen Colonies in America which united in the American Revolutionary War.

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Bunker Hill

Battle of Bunker Hill

The Battle of Bunker Hill was fought on June 17, 1775, during the Siege of Boston in the early stages of the American Revolutionary War. The battle is named after Bunker Hill in Charlestown, Massachusetts, which was peripherally involved in the battle.

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Bunker Hill, Battle of

Declaration of Independence

Declaration of Independence

The United States Declaration of Independence is the pronouncement adopted by the Second Continental Congress meeting at the Pennsylvania State House in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on July 4, 1776.

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