Statistical Gateway
Image Gateway: Boston Massacre (1770)
Paul Revere’s print depicting the Boston Massacre (1770)
The Colonial Crisis: A Timeline of Documents
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- 1763 Royal Proclamation
- 1764 Sugar Act // Currency Act
- 1765 Stamp Act // Sons of Liberty
- 1765 Thomas Whately’s defense of Stamp Act // Daniel Dulany’s response
- 1766 Benjamin Franklin’s testimony before the House of Commons
- 1766 Repeal of Stamp Act // Declaratory Act
- 1767 Townshend Duties // John Dickinson’s Letters
- 1768 Mass Circular Letter // Seizure of Hancock’s ship // “Liberty” song
- 1769 William Knox’s defense of Parliamentary sovereignty
- 1770 Boston Massacre // Repeal of Townshend Duties (except tea)
- 1773 Relief for East India Company // Boston Tea Party
- 1774 Coercive or Intolerable Acts // First Continental Congress (Association)
- 1774 Thomas Jefferson’s “Summary View” pamphlet
- 1775 Lexington & Concord // Second Continental Congress
- 1776 Thomas Paine’s Common Sense // State constitutions
- 1776 Abigail Adams: Remember the Ladies
- 1776 Declaration of Independence
Lincoln on the Declaration as “Standard Maxim,” “Electric Cord,” and “Stumbling Block”
“They meant to set up a standard maxim for free society, which should be familiar to all, and revered by all; constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated” (June 26, 1857)
“That is the electric cord in that Declaration that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together, that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world.” (July 10, 1858)
“All honor to Jefferson –to the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so to embalm it there, that to-day, and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of re-appearing tyranny and oppression.” (April 6, 1859)
1826 (50th anniversary): Adams –“Jefferson Still Survives”
“How long ago is it — eighty odd years — since on the Fourth of July for the first time in the history of the world a nation by its representatives, assembled and declared as a self-evident truth that ‘all men are created equal.’ That was the birthday of the United States of America. Since then the Fourth of July has had several peculiar recognitions. The two most distinguished men in the framing and support of the Declaration were Thomas Jefferson and John Adams — the one having penned it and the other sustained it the most forcibly in debate — the only two of the fifty-five who sustained it being elected President of the United States. Precisely fifty years after they put their hands to the paper it pleased Almighty God to take both from the stage of action. This was indeed an extraordinary and remarkable event in our history.” –-Abraham Lincoln, July 7, 1863
1876 (Centennial): World’s Fair / Hamburg Massacre (Prince Rivers)
1976 (Bicentennial): Tall Ships // Soiling Old Glory
2026 (250th anniversary): Celebrations / Confrontations
“Declaration” a poem by Tracy K. Smith (2018)
He has
sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people
He has plundered our—
ravaged our—
destroyed the lives of our—
taking away our—
abolishing our most valuable—
and altering fundamentally the Forms of our—
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for
Redress in the most humble terms:
Our repeated
Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury.
We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration
and settlement here.
—taken Captive
on the high Seas
to bear—