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| 1769 |
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| By spring, colonial merchants in the port cities had agreed to an economic boycott of British goods. The Daughters of Liberty joined the Sons of Liberty and helped ensure the success of the consumer boycott. | 1 |
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| 1770, March 5 |
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| The Boston Massacre. Popular hatred of the British troops in the city led to a brawl in which several citizens were killed or wounded. Preston, the commanding officer, was acquitted, being defended by John Adams and Josiah Quincy. | 2 |
| An act repealing duties on paper, glass, and painters' colors but retaining duties on teas. This gesture produced a conservative reaction in the colonies, in which the merchants worked for conciliation. The truce was broken by the arbitrary acts of crown officials; by the announcement that salaries of governors and judges in Massachusetts were to be paid by the crown, thus rendering them independent of the assembly's control of the purse; and by the Gaspée Affair (June 10), in which a revenue boat, whose commander's conduct had enraged public opinion in Rhode Island, was burned by a mob in Narragansett Bay. | 3 |
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| 1772, Nov. 2–1773, Jan |
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| Formation of 80 town committees of correspondence in Massachusetts under the leadership of Samuel Adams. | 4 |
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| 1773, March 12 |
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| The Virginia House of Burgesses appointed a Provincial Committee of Correspondence to keep in touch with sister colonies. By February 1774 all the colonies except Pennsylvania had appointed such committees. | 5 |
| To provide relief for the East India Company, the government allowed it a drawback of the tea duty in England, but the full duty was to be paid in the colonies. There was a protest to the landing of the tea in Charleston, Philadelphia, and New York. | 6 |
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| Dec. 16 |
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| In Boston, protest took the form of the Boston Tea Party, in which citizens, disguised as Indians, boarded the ships and dumped the tea into the harbor. | 7 |
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