The name given to the 1773 action of colonial patriots who, angered by British tea taxes, dressed as Mohawk indians, boarded ships in Boston Harbor, and dumped hundreds of crates of tea into the water was the Boston Tea Party. The British Parliament responded to the Boston Tea Party with the Intolerable Acts, which led to the Revolutionary War.

In 1664, the British seized New Amsterdam from the Dutch and renamed it New York.

Meeting in Virginia in 1619, the House of Burgesses was the first representative assembly in America. It was dissolved in 1774, by Royal Governor Lord Dunmore.

The exiled Pilgrim, Roger Williams, founded the community of Providence, in 1636, during the Antinomian Schism. Williams was a firm believer in the separation of church and state, as well as the rights of an individual to determine morality and sin for him or herself. His opinions were considered dangerous to the established church order, and he was banished in 1635. Williams was also one of the earliest supporters of Native American rights and equality, and he famously condemned King James I of England for establishing colonies in Native lands without providing monetary contribution. 

In 1765, the British Parliament was forced to repeal the Stamp Act, after widespread chaos and protest in the colonies; however, Parliament viewed this precedent as a dangerous trendsetter and sought to eradicate the problem before it could spread. To this end they affixed the Declaratory Act of 1766 to the repeal of the Stamp Act. The Act stated that British Parliament had as much power to fix laws in the colonies as it had back in Britain and throughout the rest of the Empire: parliament was the ultimate legal authority throughout the colonies. 

King Phillip’s war was fought between Native Americans and Puritan colonists in the 1670s. The war was the culmination of several decades of growing hostility between the Native people and the colonists. For their part, the Native Americans had seen their populations ravaged by European diseases, their lands settled by foreign settlers, and their sovereignty undermined by the imposition of English law. The tensions came to head when King Phillip’s (Native name: Metacomet) father died under suspicious circumstances, shortly after visiting with a colonial assembly. 

The colony of Maryland was established, in part, as a safe place for Catholics to settle. It was an attempt to protect this tradition, against the dominant Anglicanism. The Act allowed for any Trinitarian Christians to settle in Maryland and be afforded equal social and political rights. It did state, however, that denying the divinity of Christ was punishable by death. Although it was frequently repealed and reinstated and then repealed permanently following the Glorious Revolution, many historians consider it to be a framework for later acts of religious toleration in the United States.

It was the Quartering Act of 1765. Needless to say, it was a contributing factor in the American colonists' rebellion.

The Battles of Lexington and Concord, fought on April 19th, 1775, were the first battles of the American Revolutionary War.

The Third Amendment to the Constitution guarantees that American citizens are forever protected from having to quarter soldiers in their house. The Amendment was likely added in response to the Quartering Act, which the British instituted during colonial rule: it was designed to ensure a similar imposition on the rights of Americans would not happen again. The freedoms of religion, the press, and speech are all guaranteed in the First Amendment. The right to bear arms is protected by the Second Amendment.