In a dramatic address that shook the walls of the Massachusetts General Court and reverberated across the Atlantic, James Otis Jr. on Tuesday, June 21, 1768, launched a sweeping denunciation of British authority—accusing Parliament of violating the Constitution and likening taxation without representation to…
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In the sweltering heat of June 1776, the Second Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia and decided to change the course of human events. The delegates, representing the thirteen colonies, faced the monumental task of justifying a rebellion that had already sparked skirmishes and ignited…
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On May 10, 1775, delegates from across the American colonies gathered in Philadelphia for the opening of the Second Continental Congress, a meeting that began as an emergency response to war and soon became the central political body of the American Revolution. The Congress…
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The passage of the Tea Act by the British Parliament on May 9, 1773, served as a pivotal moment in American history, providing a catalyst for the American Revolution. The Tea Act was essentially designed to bail out the struggling British East India Company by granting it a monopoly…
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On April 19, 1775, the opening shots of the American Revolutionary War at Lexington and Concord—later immortalized as “the shot heard around the world”—gave way, almost immediately, to something more consequential than a single day’s fighting. As British regulars retreated into Boston under constant…
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“Listen, my children, and you shall hear Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere, On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five: Hardly a man is now alive Who remembers that famous day and year.” So begins Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s famous poem, immortalizing one of…
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On April 14, 1775—just days before the first shots of the American Revolution were fired at Lexington and Concord—a quieter but no less consequential development took shape in Philadelphia. In a city already at the center of colonial resistance, a group of reform-minded citizens…
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On March 22, 1765, the British Parliament passed a law that helped launch the American Revolution. Known as “Stamp Act,” The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History writes that it was enacted “to help pay for British troops stationed in the colonies during the Seven Years’…
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On the morning of March 17, 1776, the people of Boston watched a sight that would have seemed impossible only months earlier: the most powerful army in the world quietly abandoning the city it had occupied since the opening shots of rebellion. Red-coated soldiers…
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On March 15, 1783, in a small meeting hall in Newburgh, New York, General George Washington delivered one of the most consequential speeches in American history. With the Revolutionary War effectively won but the new nation still fragile, Washington confronted a crisis that threatened…
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