The end of the French and Indian War in 1763 was a
cause for great celebration in the colonies, for it
removed several ominous barriers and opened up a
host of new opportunities for the colonists. The French
had effectively hemmed in the British settlers and had,
from the perspective of the settlers, played the
"Indians" against them. The first thing on the minds of
colonists was the great western frontier that had
opened to them when the French ceded that contested
territory to the British. The royal proclamation of 1763
did much to dampen that celebration. The proclamation,
in effect, closed off the frontier to colonial expansion.
The King and his council presented the proclamation
as a measure to calm the fears of the Indians, who felt
that the colonists would drive them from their lands as
they expanded westward. Many in the colonies felt that
the object was to pen them in along the Atlantic
seaboard where they would be easier to regulate. No
doubt there was a large measure of truth in both of
these positions. However the colonists could not help
but feel a strong resentment when what they perceived
to be their prize was snatched away from them. The
proclamation provided that all lands west of the heads
of all rivers which flowed into the Atlantic Ocean from
the west or northwest were off-limits to the colonists.
This excluded the rich Ohio Valley and all territory from
the Ohio to the Mississippi rivers from settlement.
This first Quartering Act was given Royal Assent on
May 3, 1765, and provided that Great Britain would
house its soldiers in American barracks and public
houses, as by the Mutiny Act of 1765, but if its soldiers
outnumbered the housing available, would quarter
them "in inns, livery stables, ale houses, victualing
houses, and the houses of sellers of wine and houses
of persons selling of rum, brandy, strong water, cider or
metheglin", and if numbers required in "uninhabited
houses, outhouses, barns, or other buildings." Colonial
authorities were required to pay the cost of housing
and feeding these troops.
When 1,500 British troops arrived at New York City in
1766 the New York Provincial Assembly refused to
comply with the Quartering Act and did not supply
billeting for the troops. The troops had to remain on
their ships. With its great impact on the city, a skirmish
occurred in which one colonist was wounded following
the Assembly's refusal to provide quartering.
The Stamp Act 1765 (short title Duties in American
Colonies Act 1765; 5 George III, c. 12) imposed a
direct tax by the British Parliament specifically on the
colonies of British America, and it required that many
printed materials in the colonies be produced on
stamped paper produced in London, carrying an
embossed revenue stamp. These printed materials
were legal documents, magazines, newspapers and
many other types of paper used throughout the
colonies. Like previous taxes, the stamp tax had to be
paid in valid British currency, not in colonial paper
money. The purpose of the tax was to help pay for
troops stationed in North America after the British
victory in the Seven Years' War. The British
government felt that the colonies were the primary
beneficiaries of this military presence, and should pay
at least a portion of the expense.
The Townshend Acts were a series of acts passed
beginning in 1767 by the Parliament of Great Britain
relating to the British colonies in North America. The
acts are named after Charles Townshend, the
Chancellor of the Exchequer, who proposed the
program. Historians vary slightly in which acts they
include under the heading "Townshend Acts", but five
laws are often mentioned: the Revenue Act of 1767,
the Indemnity Act, the Commissioners of Customs Act,
the Vice Admiralty Court Act, and the New York
Restraining Act. The purpose of the Townshend Acts
was to raise revenue in the colonies to pay the salaries
of governors and judges so that they would be
independent of colonial rule, to create a more effective
means of enforcing compliance with trade regulations,
to punish the province of New York for failing to comply
with the 1765 Quartering Act, and to establish the
precedent that the British Parliament had the right to
tax the colonies. The Townshend Acts were met with
resistance in the colonies, prompting the occupation of
Boston by British troops in 1768.
Charles Townshend
The Boston Massacre, known as the Incident on
King Street by the British, was an incident on March 5,
1770, in which British Army soldiers killed five civilian
men and injured six others. British troops had been
stationed in Boston, capital of the Province of
Massachusetts Bay, since 1768 in order to protect and
support crown-appointed colonial officials attempting to
enforce unpopular Parliamentary legislation. Amid
ongoing tense relations between the population and
the soldiers, a mob formed around a British sentry, who
was subjected to verbal abuse and harassment. He
was eventually supported by eight additional soldiers,
who were subjected to verbal threats and thrown
objects. They fired into the crowd, without orders,
instantly killing three people and wounding others. Two
more people died later of wounds sustained in the
incident.
Boston Massacre grave marker.
It reads:
The Remains of
SAMUEL GRAY
SAMUEL MAVERICK
JAMES
CALDWELL
CRISPUS ATTUCKS
and
PATRICK
CARR
Victims of the Boston Massacre
March 5th 1770
were
here interred by order of the
Town of Boston.
The Boston Tea Party of December 16, 1773, took place when a
group of Massachusetts Patriots, protesting the monopoly on
American tea importation recently granted by Parliament to the
East India Company, seized 342 chests of tea in a midnight raid on
three tea ships and threw them into the harbor.
This action, part of a wave of resistance throughout the colonies,
had its origin in Parliament's effort to rescue the financially
weakened East India Company so as to continue benefiting from
the company's valuable position in India. The Tea Act (May 10,
1773) adjusted import duties in such a way that the company could
undersell even smugglers in the colonies. The company selected
consignees in Boston, New York, Charleston, and Philadelphia, and
500,000 pounds of tea were shipped across the Atlantic in
September.
Under pressure from Patriot groups, the consignees in Charleston,
New York, and Philadelphia refused to accept the tea shipments,
but in Boston, the chosen merchants (including two of Governor
Thomas Hutchinson's sons as well as his nephew) refused to
concede. The first tea ship, Dartmouth, reached Boston November
27, and two more arrived shortly thereafter. Meanwhile, several
mass meetings were held to demand that the tea be sent back to
England with the duty unpaid. Tension mounted as Patriot groups
led by Samuel Adams tried to persuade the consignees and then
the governor to accept this approach. On December 16, a large
meeting at the Old South Church was told of Hutchinson's final
refusal. About midnight, watched by a large crowd, Adams and a
small group of Sons of Liberty disguised as Mohawk Indians
boarded the ships and jettisoned the tea. To Parliament, the Boston
Tea Party confirmed Massachusetts's role as the core of resistance
to legitimate British rule.
British Parliament, outraged by the Boston Tea Party and other
blatant acts of destruction of British property, enacted the Coercive
Acts, also known as the Intolerable Acts, in 1774. The Coercive
Acts closed Boston to merchant shipping, established formal British
military rule in Massachusetts, made British officials immune to
criminal prosecution in America, and required colonists to quarter
British troops. The colonists subsequently called the first
Continental Congress to consider a united American resistance to
the British.
In response to the British Parliament's enactment of the Coercive
Acts in the American colonies, the first session of the Continental
Congress convenes at Carpenter's Hall in Philadelphia. Fifty-six
delegates from all the colonies except Georgia drafted a declaration
of rights and grievances and elected Virginian Peyton Randolph as
the first president of Congress. Patrick Henry, George Washington,
John Adams, and John Jay were among the delegates.
With the other colonies watching intently, Massachusetts led the
resistance to the British, forming a shadow revolutionary
government and establishing militias to resist the increasing British
military presence across the colony. In April 1775, Thomas Gage,
the British governor of Massachusetts, ordered British troops to
march to Concord, Massachusetts, where a Patriot arsenal was
known to be located. On April 19, 1775, the British regulars
encountered a group of American militiamen at Lexington, and the
first shots of the American Revolution were fired