U.S. History Practice Test: The American Revolution

The French and Indian War (1754-1763) left Britain deeply in debt, and Parliament believed the colonists should help pay for their own defense. The Boston Tea Party came later, in 1773.

The Stamp Act required a tax stamp on printed materials such as newspapers, licenses and playing cards. Sugar and molasses were taxed by the Sugar Act of 1764, and glass, lead and paint by the Townshend Acts.

The colonists had no members in Parliament, so they argued that only their own elected assemblies had the right to tax them. The slogan objected to who was taxing, not to taxes in general.

Parliament punished Massachusetts with the Coercive Acts, which colonists called the Intolerable Acts: the port of Boston was closed until the tea was paid for. These harsh laws pushed the colonies closer together, not further apart.

British troops marched from Boston to seize colonial weapons at Concord and met militia at Lexington on April 19, 1775. Saratoga (1777) and Yorktown (1781) came later in the war.

Paine's pamphlet attacked the idea of rule by a king and made the case for independence in words ordinary readers understood, and it sold widely. Asking the king for peace describes the Olive Branch Petition of 1775.

Jefferson wrote the draft, and the committee and Congress then edited it. Franklin and Adams were on the committee but did not write the main draft, and Madison was not a member.

Saratoga showed that the Americans could defeat a large British army, and France signed a treaty of alliance in 1778. The war did not end there: the final major battle was at Yorktown in 1781.

Soldiers lacked food, clothing and shelter, but Baron von Steuben drilled them during the winter, and they left as a stronger army. The Christmas surprise attack was at Trenton in December 1776.

In the treaty, Britain accepted American independence and set the new nation's western boundary at the Mississippi River. Florida went back to Spain, and Canada remained British.