Intolerable Acts

8 Key excerpts on "Intolerable Acts"

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  Jeffersonian America

  Loyalists in New York City during the Revolution

  • Ruma Chopra(Author)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • University of Virginia Press

    (Publisher)

  Although reluctant to offer submission to British policies, many New Yorkers were hesitant to move toward aggressive resistance. Some with mercantile interests who would reject rebellion had closer connections to empire, and better informed of British policies, they felt more confident about an American future within its protective realm. Their attraction to the ideal of empire permitted them to see British efforts at taxation as disturbing infringements, not as enslavement.

  The Boston Tea Party in 1773 led to British retaliation in the form of the Coercive Acts in 1774. The battles of Lexington and Concord followed in 1775. The latter created a sense of urgency and forced a crise de conscience for New Yorkers. Between 1774 and 1776, many gradually realized that they faced a growing and irreconcilable conflict between imperial sovereignty and colonial aspirations for greater autonomy.

  The passage of the Coercive Acts, or Intolerable Acts, as they came to be know in America, temporarily united most New Yorkers. Passed in retaliation for Boston residents’ dumping the East India Company’s tea into Boston Harbor in December 1773, the acts closed the port of Boston and provided for the billeting of troops within Boston. These measures alienated an overwhelming majority of colonists and thus provided the broadest possible base on which an opposition could be erected. Designed to punish and humble the city of Boston, they aroused fears that a similar fate awaited New York City. In May 1774, New York Councillor William Smith Jr. worried that these policies would cause colonists to “lose all the Attachmt. we once had to so great a Degree for the Parent Country.”1

  Moderate leaders in the colonies worried about the escalation of the conflict caused by Britain’s hard stance against Boston. Like the radicals, they considered the British government’s reaction to the Boston Tea Party excessive and unjustified. They were also concerned about the brittle and uncompromising tone that had crept into the imperial debate. In February 1774, Pennsylvania assemblyman Joseph Galloway, a longtime protégé of Benjamin Franklin, expressed his anxiety about the future of the colonies if cast outside the unifying influence of the empire. Galloway worried that the various colonies acted as independent communities that shared nothing in common. They had “different forms of government, productions of soil, and views of commerce; different religions, tempers, and private interests.” Their only hope of mutual harmony and stability lay within the empire.2

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  Liberty and Union

  A Constitutional History of the United States, concise edition

  • Edgar McManus, Tara Helfman(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Conservatives and radicals joined forces to keep the company tea out of the colonies. This was essential both to prevent the duty from being paid and to protect consumers from the temptation to buy cheap tea. A mass meeting in Philadelphia forced the company’s consignee to resign, and mob threats produced the same results in Charleston and New York City. Mobs also forced the tea ships to leave Philadelphia and New York City and return to England without unloading. The radicals prevailed everywhere except Boston, where the company’s consignees fled to Castle William in the harbor and refused to resign. Moreover, Governor Thomas Hutchinson took a hard line and refused to allow the tea to be sent back to England until the duty had been paid. The Sons of Liberty also took a hard line. Between fifty and sixty of them forcibly boarded the tea ships and dumped their cargoes into Boston harbor. The incident put an end to conciliation and polarized relations between Britain and the colonies.

  Figure II.4 Mezzotint titled A New Method of Macarony Making, as Practised at Boston (1774). This print depicts two men, one identifiable as a Son of Liberty by the bow in his hat, tarring and feathering a British customs officer. The eighteenth-century epithet “macaroni” referred to a man who dressed in an ostentatious or flamboyant manner.

  Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-45386

  The Intolerable Acts

  The Boston Tea Party brought harsh reprisals from Britain. Parliament was shocked by how far British authority had eroded in the colonies. Mobs controlled the major cities, and orderly processes of government had broken down. Unless the lawless elements were suppressed and order restored, the colonies might spin out of control completely. So during the spring and summer of 1774 parliament passed the Coercive Acts, a series of repressive measures that Americans dubbed the Intolerable Acts. One, the Boston Port Act, punished the entire city for the destruction of the tea. Boston was closed to commerce until the East India Company was compensated for its loss. Another, the Administration of Justice Act, provided that British officials charged with capital crimes in the course of suppressing riots or enforcing the trade laws should be sent to England for trial if the governor thought a fair trial could not be held in Massachusetts. A third measure, the Massachusetts Government Act, completely reorganized the provincial government. The governor was granted additional powers, and the authority of the assembly was sharply reduced. No public meetings could be held without the governor’s consent, and even then they had to stay within the approved agenda.

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  Published by the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and the University of North Carolina Press

  An Imperial History

  • Katherine Carté, Katherine Cart?(Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Omohundro Institute and UNC Press

    (Publisher)

  15

  Th ese legislative moves were controversial in England, but, from the perspective of imperial protestantism, the most important issue came from a different quarter. In June 1774, just after the coercive measures, the Quebec Act passed. Th is last piece of legislation organized the government for the Quebec territory, which the British had taken in the 1763 Treaty of Paris that ended the Seven Years’ War. Th ough it was grouped with the coercive measures in the popular imagination, it was more properly the final step in a lengthy process designed to incorporate large swaths of ceded territory from the decade-past war that were home to predominantly Catholic populations. In addition to most of what had been New France on the North American mainland, the British Empire now included the Caribbean islands of Grenada, Dominica, Saint Vincent, and Tobago, as well as Florida. When Quebec had surrendered in 1759, the British guaranteed the “free exercise of the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman religion,” and Grenada received the same privileges. In the years that followed, imperial administrators experimented with a variety of pragmatic solutions for managing their Catholic subjects, including extending civil rights to Catholic Grenadans as well as permitting Catholics to serve in the island’s assembly and as judges. Th e extensions of civic rights were not without controversy, including in Britain, but the government had moved pragmatically nonetheless, eschewing philosophical or ideological arguments. Th e desire to limit political conflict and ensure the empire’s integrity— the same motives that had led to the creation of the mixed establishment— proved dominant.16

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  The Handy Boston Answer Book

  • Samuel Willard Crompton(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Visible Ink Press

    (Publisher)

  They did. Bostonians were appalled in the spring of 1774, to learn that King George III and Parliament had slapped a series of new acts upon them. These laws were not about taxes; they were much more important than that. The Massachusetts Government Act formally closed Boston as the seat of royal government, removing it to Salem. The Boston Port Act closed the port until the tea was paid for. And the Quartering Act asserted that Bostonians would have to house troops in their homes until further notice. King George III and his ministers called these the Coercive Acts, but Bostonians soon labeled them the Intolerable Acts. The latter title is the one that stuck.

  King George III’s resolution was admirable, but he chose the wrong man for the job. Lieutenant General Thomas Gage was a seasoned military officer who knew the colonies well, but he was a fainthearted man, not the right person to enforce a tough series of acts. Gage’s wife was an American, a beauty from Philadelphia, and she may have persuaded her husband to go even more gently on her countrymen.

  Was anyone ever tried, or even remotely punished, for actions at the Boston Tea Party?

  N o one was punished for their actions at the Boston Tea Party. Like the destruction of HMS Gaspee the year before, the Destruction of the Tea was a flagrant violation of British law, but no one could be found to testify. Too, the actors were cleverly disguised in their Indian clothing. The last surviving member of the Tea Party died around the year 1845.

  AN AFRICAN AMERICAN VOICE

  How did Phillis Wheatley become so well-known in pre-Revolutionary Boston?

  Born in Senegal, Phillis Wheatley (1753–1784) was captured, enslaved, and brought to Boston around the year 1762. The name of the ship that brought her was Phillis,

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  The Men Who Lost America

  British Leadership, the American Revolution and the Fate of the Empire

  • Andrew Jackson O'Shaughnessy(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Yale University Press

    (Publisher)

  16

  Outraged by the Boston Tea Party, North introduced the Coercive Acts (known in America as the Intolerable Acts), which were passed in stages over the spring of 1774 and which triggered the Revolutionary War in America. He intended these acts to make an example of Massachusetts, because it was the colony “where opposition to the authority of Parliament had always originated,” as well as being the home of “the irregular and seditious proceedings of Boston.” North acted in the belief that previous concessions had only encouraged greater demands and that anything short of forceful measures would give the impression of a lack of resolution. It was essential to show America “that we are in earnest, and that we will proceed with firmness and vigour. This conviction would be lost, if they found us hesitating and doubting.” Like many of his colleagues, North believed that the opposition in the colonies was not a popular movement, but rather a conspiracy of a minority who were intent on independence. The quarrel was not with all the colonies, but those that denied the authority of Parliament. North thought colonial grievances not only empty of substance, but an excuse to plunder ships, avoid the trade and navigation acts, and escape paying debts. He defended his measures as necessary for protecting colonial officials and those who had remained loyal. The issue was “whether we have or have not any authority in that country.”17

  North claimed that he had the support of the nation for the Coercive Acts, which did indeed pass with overwhelming majorities in Parliament. In London, Benjamin Franklin expressed dismay that “we never had since we were a people so few friends in Britain. The violent destruction of the tea seems to have united all parties here against our province.” Even the opposition parties in Parliament condemned the Boston Tea Party. The traditional supporters of colonial grievances, like the merchant community in London, critically failed to intervene in support of America.18

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  Tea

  Consumption, Politics, and Revolution, 1773–1776

  • James R. Fichter(Author)
  • 2023(Publication Date)
  • Cornell University Press

    (Publisher)

  9 Colonists often added to this a fifth intolerable act, the Quebec Act, which expanded Quebec’s territory and its French Catholic colonists’ privileges as far as the Ohio region. The prime minister also sent General Thomas Gage to take over as civilian governor and military commander in Massachusetts. By linking repayment for the Company’s tea in Boston to laws affecting all of the colonies, the Coercive Acts made tea a symbol of resistance to Parliament across the continent.

  The Coercive Acts had myriad consequences. One overlooked consequence was the inflammation of tea politics in Boston and Charleston. The acts made the unsold Company tea even more hated. Worse, by not providing a way for the tea to be reshipped to England, the acts left the Company’s tea trapped in these ports, providing an existential motivation for Boston and Charleston Patriots. These Patriots had to maintain a level of radicalization sufficient to keep the tea from being sold, lest sales undermine a now-much-higher-stakes cause.

  Boston port closed on June 1, 1774, putting thousands out of work and threatening them with starvation. Whiggish colonists across the continent united against ministerial policy. They fasted and prayed. They sent food. They advocated for a boycott of Britain. And, as George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, they overcame doubts about the Boston Tea Party. Patriots in many colonies responded to the Coercive Acts with more tea parties. Because the Port Act was seen as a way to compel tea duties to be paid in the future, the protest of tea became a way to object to taxation without representation and to the Coercive Acts. As the symbolic value of tea protests grew, colonists became less picky about what tea they burned. Patriots tried to forbid all tea importation and burn whatever tea they had as a sign of opposition to Parliament and solidarity with Boston.10

  Patriots proposed banning imports and exports with Britain and the consumption of British goods. Stopping tea imports symbolically supported broader non-importation, and destroying tea supported broader non-consumption. Such symbolism grew in value as provincial Patriots struggled to unite around non-importation. They needed to unite, since there was no sense in one colony boycotting unless neighboring colonies joined; otherwise the boycott would merely divert business elsewhere. Thus the need for a Continental Congress to form a common response to the Coercive Acts.

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  The Road to Independence

  Virginia 1763-1783

  • Virginia. History, Government, and Geography Service(Authors)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • Perlego

    (Publisher)

  Reaction to the Tea Act was nearly unanimous. The tax should not be paid and a boycott on tea imposed. A boycott developed in Virginia. Merchants exhausted their stocks and refused to replenish them. Most Virginians ceased drinking tea. No one, however, was prepared to resort to violence, so there was little sympathy among Virginians for the destruction of tea in Boston harbor by a "tribe of Indians" on December 16, 1774. Old colonial friends in England including Burke, Chatham, Rose Fuller, and even Isaac Barré were also shocked.

  Parliament saw the issue as order, government by law, protection of private property, and even treason. The long history of riotous actions by Bostonians was recalled. The commons decided that the time had come to stand firm. Repeal of the Stamp Act and Townshend Duties had not brought respect for and acceptance of authority. Mason's "dutiful child" now was to be "whipped". Boston must be brought into line for her obstreperousness. The response of parliament was slow, measured, and calculated. The Coercive Acts (the English name, not the colonial) took two months to pass. By these acts: 1) the port of Boston was closed until the destroyed tea was paid for; 2) the Massachusetts government was radically restructured, the governor's powers enhanced, and the town meetings abolished; 3) trials of English officials accused of felonies could be moved to England; and 4) a new Quartering Act applicable to all colonies went into effect.

  At the same time, and unconnected with the Coercive Act, parliament rendered its final solution to the western land problems by passing the Quebec Act of 1774. Most of the provisions of the Proclamation of 1763 respecting government were made permanent. All the land north of the Ohio was to be in a province governed from Quebec. Lost was the hope of many Virginia land company speculators and those in other colonies as well. Not only was the land now in the hands of their former French enemies in Quebec, but the land would be distributed from London and fall into the hands of Englishmen, not colonials. Coming as it did just after Governor Dunmore and Colonel Andrew Lewis and his land-hungry valley frontiersmen had driven the Shawnees north of the Ohio in the bloody battle of Point Pleasant (1774) (also called Dunmore's War), the Quebec Act was seen in Virginia as one more act of an oppressive government, one more act in which the Americans had suffered at the expense of another part of the empire. That the act was a reasonable solution to a knotty problem was overlooked.

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  The American Revolution

  Documents Decoded

  • Neil Gould(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • ABC-CLIO

    (Publisher)

  10 and this suggestion was received with great applause . . . A committee was sent from the meeting, to request Gov Hutchinson to order the ships to depart . . . The committee returned about sunset with his answer, that he could not interfere. At this moment the Indian yell was heard from the street . . . the people rushed out, and accompanied the “Indians” to the ships. The number of persons disguised as Indians is variously stated . . . none put it lower than 60, none higher than 80. It is said by persons who were present, that nothing was destroyed but tea . . . the destruction was effected by disguised persons, and some young men who volunteered . . . The contrivers of this measure, and those who carried it into effect, will never be known as some few persons have been mentioned as being among the disguised; but there are many and obvious reasons why secrecy then, and concealment since, were necessary . . . Mr Samuel Adams is thought to have been in the counseling of this exploit, and many other men who were leaders in the political affairs of the times . . .

  Source: Hezekiah Niles, Principles and Acts of the American Revolution. (Baltimore: Printed by W.O. Niles, 1822), 485–486.

  Maryland's Reaction to the Intolerable Acts (1773–1774)

  Introduction

  Lord North, prime minister of Great Britain, reacted to the Boston Tea Party by causing Parliament to pass a series of so-called Intolerable Acts to punish the colonies, especially Massachusetts, for their disloyalties. The first of them, the Boston Port Act, closed the port of Boston until the colonists paid for the damages caused to the East India Company by the loss of their property. The Boston Port Act soon became a cause célèbre for the colonies, uniting them in support of Boston, and saw the beginnings of a formal movement of resistance, including the call for meetings and the formation of Committees of Correspondence to coordinate that resistance.

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