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Lee, Charles

(Encyclopedia)Lee, Charles, 1731–82, American Revolutionary army officer, b. Cheshire, England. He first came to America to serve in the French and Indian War and took part in General Braddock's disastrous campai...

Heathcote, Caleb

(Encyclopedia)Heathcote, Caleb hēthˈkōt [key], 1666–1721, merchant and public official in colonial New York, b. England. He arrived in New York in 1692. He became a member of the governor's council and, in Wes...

Continental Congress

(Encyclopedia)Continental Congress, 1774–89, federal legislature of the Thirteen Colonies and later of the United States in the American Revolution and under the Articles of Confederation (see Confederation, Arti...

Intolerable Acts

(Encyclopedia)Intolerable Acts, name given by American patriots to five laws (including the Quebec Act) adopted by Parliament in 1774, which limited the political and geographical freedom of the colonists. Four of ...

Grafton, Richard

(Encyclopedia)Grafton, Richard, d. c.1572, London publisher and printer. In 1539 with Edward Whitchurch he printed the Great Bible in black letter (see type). He printed the first edition of the Book of Common Pray...

Warren, Joseph

(Encyclopedia)Warren, Joseph, 1741–75, political leader in the American Revolution, b. Roxbury, Mass. A Boston physician, he participated in the agitation against the Stamp Act (1765). He became a member of the B...

Russell, John Russell, 1st Earl

(Encyclopedia)Russell, John Russell, 1st Earl, 1792–1878, British statesman; younger son of the 6th duke of Bedford, known most of his life as Lord John Russell. He became a Whig member of Parliament in 1813 and ...

Johnson, Guy

(Encyclopedia)Johnson, Guy, c.1740–1788, Loyalist leader in colonial New York, b. Ireland. He emigrated to America as a boy and married (1763) a daughter of Sir William Johnson, whom he succeeded as superintenden...

Alabama claims

(Encyclopedia)Alabama claims, claims made by the U.S. government against Great Britain for the damage inflicted on Northern merchant ships during the American Civil War by the Alabama and other Confederate cruisers...

Burke, Edmund

(Encyclopedia)Burke, Edmund, 1729–97, British political writer and statesman, b. Dublin, Ireland. Burke left, in his many and diverse writings, a monumental construction of British political thought that had fa...