Colonial America Timeline

The most commonly accepted account of the battle, pieced together from reports from Lee and Captain Joseph Graham, indicates that Lee's deception was purely chance, and that he had origin...

The political push for the colonies to increase cooperation began in the French and Indian Wars in the mid 1750s. The American Revolution in response to lack of elected representation in ...

The advance guard met near the Quaker New Garden Meeting House. Banastre Tarleton's Light Dragoons were briefly engaged by Light Horse Harry Lee's Dragoons about 4 miles (6 km) from the G...

Lord Cornwallis, while on his Peninsula campaign, sent Captain Brown on a foraging mission. This mission brought Brown, and his group of 40 soldiers, up the James River where they landed ...

On the morning of April 25, 1781, Rawdon was still under the impression that the Continental army was without its artillery. At approximately 9am he left the security of the Camden fortif...

Anthony Wayne, leading the Marquis de Lafayette's van, received word of Simcoe and the Queen's Rangers foraging near Spencer's Ordinary (about six miles north of Williamsburg). On the nig...

Lord Cornwallis having failed to defeat the Marquis de Lafayette in the campaign in Virginia, was marching from Williamsburg to position his army at a secure port, Yorktown. Lafayette was...

On the night of August 18, 1781, Clark and his men floated past the mouth of the Great Miami River, near the present-day border between Ohio and Indiana. Brant's party was hidden on the n...

When the British fleet of 19 ships, now under Graves's command, arrived back at the Chesapeake on the morning of September 5, they found 25 French ships at anchor behind Cape Henry. The r...

One of the last battles fought during the American Revolutionary War was fought near New London, Connecticut at a small fort called Fort Griswold which was an outpost held by around 164 C...

The Battle of Eutaw Springs was a battle of the American Revolutionary War, the last engagement of the war in the Carolinas. On May 22, 1781, General Nathanael Greene of the Continenta...

By October 14, the trenches were within 150 yards (140 m) of redoubts #9 and #10. Washington ordered that all guns within range begin blasting the redoubts in order to weaken them for the...

On October 19, 1781, British General Charles Cornwallis surrendered his army of some 8,000 men to General George Washington at Yorktown, giving up any chance of winning the Revolutionary ...

On this day in 1782, British Royal Governor Sir James Wright, along with several civil officials and military officers, flee the city of Savannah, Georgia, and head to Charleston, South C...

The Kentuckians reached the Licking River on the morning of August 19, near a spring and salt lick known as the Lower Blue Licks. On the other side of the river, a few Indian scouts could...

"His Britannic Majesty acknowledges the said United States, Viz New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, ..." —Preliminary Articles of Peace

On this day in 1783, the Continental Congress of the United States officially ratifies the preliminary peace treaty with Great Britain that was signed in November 1782. The congressional ...

The treaty document was signed at the Hôtel de York – which is now 56 Rue Jacob – by John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and John Jay (representing the United States) and David Hartley (a memb...

In mid-August 1783, Sir Guy Carleton received orders from London for the evacuation of New York City. He told the President of the Continental Congress that he was proceeding with the wit...

On this day in 1783, following the signing of the Treaty of Paris, General George Washington resigns as commander in chief of the Continental Army and retires to his home at Mount Vernon,...

The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. The first three Articles of the Constitution establish the rules and separate powers of the three...