British response to Boston Tea Party:
• March—April, 1774: Parliament passed
series of laws collectively known as
Coercive and Restraining Acts
(“Intolerable Acts” to colonists).
Massachusetts Government Act
• Changed constitutional structure of Massachusetts
government
– No more town meetings (violated natural right of assembly)
• Town meetings suspended except those called specifically by governor or
those calling for election of town officials
– Elected council which had been advising the governor replaced
by council now appointed by king
– Stripped from the people of Massachusetts the protection of the
British constitution by giving over all the “democratic”
elements of the province’s government—even popularly
elected juries and town meetings—into the hands of the
executive power.
Quartering Act
• Permitted the seizure of unoccupied
buildings for the use of troops on orders
of the governors alone even in situations
where barracks were available in the
vicinity.
• Violation of colonists natural rights in
Boston because the colony wasn’t in a
state of war and it violated property
rights.
Boston Port Act
• Closed port of Boston to all commerce
until tea was paid for.
• Believed to have been intended to snuff
out the economic life of Boston.
Administration of Justice Act
• Any magistrate, customs officer, soldier
indicted for a capital offense in the colony
could be brought to England/Nova Scotia for
trial to avoid hostile local juries.
• Believed to have been aimed at crippling judicial
processes once and for all by permitting trials to
be held in England for offenses committed in
Massachusetts.
To carry these acts
into effect General
Thomas Gage
(Commander in Chief
of all British forces in
North America) was
commissioned as
the governor of the
Massachusetts Bay
Colony.
New England Restraining Act:
• Passed by Parliament on
March 30, 1775
• Under this act, the New
England Colonies could
not trade with anyone
except England for a
period of 100 years (took
away access to
Newfoundland Banks for
fishing).
Quebec Act:
•
•
Passed by Parliament on June 22, 1774
British statute establishing Quebec's government and
extending its borders. It provided for a governor and
appointed council, religious freedom for Roman
Catholics, and use of the French civil code. The act
attempted to resolve the problem of making the colony a
province of British North America and tried to build
French-Canadian loyalty to the British. It also extended
the borders of Quebec to include the land between the
Ohio and Mississippi rivers, a region claimed by
American colonists.
Permitted French to settle along Mississippi/Ohio River
Valleys ,Western PA, and Great Lakes region (northwest
territory) by extending boundaries of Quebec south to
Ohio River
– Amounted to French could live in English territory
but English could not (perceived as violation of
right to soil)
– Furthermore, a civil government with no
representative assembly and with special
privileges for Catholic Church established in
Quebec (formerly under British military rule since
1763).
– Extended the boundaries of a “papist” province,
and one governed wholly by prerogative, south
into territory claimed by VA,CT, and Mass.
Overall purpose of the Coercive
and Restraining Acts:
• Britain was trying to deter other colonies
from defiance by isolating and making an
example of Massachusetts.
Major result(s) of the Coercive
and Restraining Acts:
The other colonies concluded
Boston was martyred because it
stood foremost in defense of
colonial rights.
Consensus among historians:
• The Coercive and Restraining Acts would
have caused the shooting stage of
revolution even if there hadn’t been a
Lexington and Concord (April, 1775).
• Boston Committee of Correspondence
condemned the Coercive Acts as “glaring
evidence of a fixed plan of the British
administration to bring the whole
continent into the most humiliating
bondage….”
• Many colonists became convinced that the
powers at work in England, when faced with
colonial defiance/resistance to intimidation and a
strict defense of colonial rights, decided to take
off the mask, as Adams claimed—and
proceeded to complete the design (that is, to
subject the colonists to tyranny and despotism).
First Continental Congress meets
in Philadelphia in 1774
The Treaty of Paris
• According to the
Treaty of Paris, the
new United States
would control all
the land from New
England to the
Mississippi River
and north to the
Great Lakes.