In Massachusetts and other New England colonies, militias like the minutemen prepared for war by stockpiling weapons and ammunition. Until Parliament passed the Coercive Acts in 1774, most colonists still thought of themselves as proud subjects of the strong British Empire.

However, the Coercive (or Intolerable) Acts, which Parliament enacted to punish Massachusetts for failing to pay for the destruction of the tea, convinced many colonists that Great Britain was indeed threatening to… After the first loss of life at the battles of Lexington and Concord in April 1775, skirmishes continued throughout the colonies.

minutemen — colonial militias prepared to mobilize and fight the British with a minute’s notice. Dunmore’s Proclamation — the decree signed by Lord Dunmore, the royal governor of Virginia, which proclaimed that any enslaved or indentured servants who fought on the side of the British would be…. republicanism — a political philosophy that holds that states should be governed by representatives, not a monarch; as a social philosophy, republicanism required civic virtue of its citizens. thirteen colonies — the British colonies in North America that declared independence from Great Britain in 1776, which included Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Maryland, the province of….