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Siege of Boston
The Siege of Boston (19 April 1775 to 17 March 1776) was the first major military operation of the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783). After the first shots were fired at the Battles of Lexington and Concord, American colonial militias...
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Winthrop & Williams: Religious Persecution & Freedom in New England
The Puritans who settled New England claimed they came to the New World for religious freedom but, once settled, made it clear that this freedom was for themselves only and dissent would not be tolerated. Although the most famous example...
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Puritans
The Puritans were English Protestant Christians, primarily active in the 16th-18th centuries CE, who claimed the Anglican Church had not distanced itself sufficiently from Catholicism and sought to 'purify' it of Catholic practices. The term...
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The Trial of Anne Hutchinson - Silencing Dissent in Colonial America
Anne Hutchinson (1591-1643) was a religious dissident who was brought to trial by John Winthrop (1588-1649) and the other magistrates of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1637 for spreading "erroneous opinions" regarding religious belief and...
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Boston Tea Party
The Boston Tea Party was an act of political protest carried out by American colonists on 16 December 1773, in Boston, Massachusetts. Disguised as Mohawk Native Americans, the colonists dumped 342 crates of tea into Boston Harbor to protest...
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Plymouth Colony
The Plymouth Colony (1620-1691) was the first English settlement in the region of modern-day New England in the United States, settled by the religious Separatists known as the “pilgrims” who crossed the Atlantic Ocean on the Mayflower in...
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Townshend Acts
The Townshend Acts were a series of acts passed by the Parliament of Great Britain between 1767 and 1768 to tax and regulate the Thirteen Colonies of North America. When the colonists considered the acts an abuse of power and protested them...
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Thomas Morton
Thomas Morton (l. c. 1579-1647 CE) was an English lawyer, poet, writer, and an early colonist of North America who established the utopian community of Merrymount, sparking conflict with his separatist neighbors at Plymouth Colony and the...
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Henry Knox
Henry Knox (1750-1806) was a Boston-born bookseller who became a general of the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783) and served as the army's Chief Artillery Officer. After the conflict, he was appointed the...
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Thirteen Colonies
The Thirteen Colonies were a cluster of British colonies located along the Atlantic seaboard of North America. Founded for a variety of reasons – economic, political, and religious – the colonies emerged with their own distinct governments...