Second Continental Congress convenes in Philadelphia.
Continental Congress creates Continental Army.
Congress offers the Olive Branch Petition in attempt at reconciliation with king.
American armies march on Montreal and Quebec.
1776.
January1. Americans lose assault on Quebec.
January. Thomas Paine's Common Sense published.
March. British evacuate Boston.
July 4. Declaration of independence adopted.
The British defeated the French and their Indian allies in the French and Indian War (1754-1763). The result was British control over much of North America. But the war had cost England a great deal of money and Parliament decided it was time for the Colonies to pay a share for their own defense.
The American Revolution became inevitable as far back as 1643 when the New England Confederation of Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay, Connecticut, and New Haven were formed for defense against Indians and the Dutch. In 1754 representatives of seven northern colonies met at Albany, N.Y. to consider plans for a permanent union of all colonies for defense against the French and Indians and for other purposes, however, the time was not right for a union. .
After England won the French and Indian war in 1763, England turned its attention to ways of increasing government revenues to pay the war debt. England believed that the best way to increase funds was to further tax the colonies. It imposed Navigation Acts of 1651, 1660, 1672, 1696, the Molasses Act of 1733 and the Sugar Act of 1764. It required that most of the trade of the British colonies be carried on in British or colonial ships so that all tax collection could be controlled. The frontiersmen found that a Royal Proclamation of 1763 halted their expansion westward stopping them at a line created at the Appalachians. .
Open opposition to all of these acts became serious when the Stamp Act of 1765 was passed. Parliament passed it with no thought that any colony would object.
