After the Boston Tea Party (December 16, 1773), the British government under Frederick, Lord North decided that the colonists needed to be forced to recognize parliamentary sovereignty. To compel colonial compliance with imperial regulation, Parliament passed a series of laws called the Coercive Acts—sometimes referred to as the Intolerable Acts—in the spring of 1774. The first measure passed was the Boston Port Bill (March 31, 1774), which closed the port of Boston until its inhabitants had paid the British East India Company for the tea that had been destroyed. This regulation effectively ended most business in Boston and, without jobs or the ability to import food by sea, threatened the inhabitants with starvation. It also elicited the sympathy of many other colonists for the people of Boston. If the king could close down the port of Boston to compel submission, he could do the same to any other community that might oppose him.
Believing that “the democratic part of government” had gotten out of hand in the colonies, Lord North also passed the Massachusetts Government Act (May 20, 1774). This law altered the charter of Massachusetts and provided for greater royal control and less popular participation. Previously, the Massachusetts General Court (the lower house of assembly) had appointed members of the council. Now they were to be appointed by the king. The royal governor was given the power to appoint many of the colony’s judges and most civil officials. The long arm of the Crown was to reach into every community, as the law provided that there could be no town meetings without royal permission. Juries also were to be chosen by a royal official, the sheriff, rather than the freeholders. The alteration of the colony’s charter concerned many colonists because it meant that no written charter was inviolate and that Parliament could alter the makeup of a government at will. The provision limiting town meetings brought the conflict into the countryside as well. Many farmers who had seen the debate over the Tea Act (1773) or the Townshend Duties (1767) as far from their daily world, now came to see how their lives would be changed by an inability to sustain local control in politics.
The two remaining Coercive Acts were also viewed as steps toward tyranny. The Administration of Justice Act (May 20, 1774) was passed by Parliament to solve a real problem—the inability of colonial courts to convict violators of imperial regulations. This law therefore allowed the Crown to move the location of a trial to a different colony or to England if officials believed that it was impossible to prosecute a person in his own community with a local jury. While appearing as a logical solution to an ongoing problem for the British government, it struck colonial Americans as unfair and unjust to have the trial moved. It also would cost the defendant much more money. The fourth measure was a Quartering Act (June 2, 1774) that would have the colonies pay for the support of troops assigned to enforce these laws.
A fifth law was lumped together with the four coercive acts as also being intolerable. The Quebec Act (June 22, 1774) was passed to deal with a complex situation in Canada, which had been conquered by the British in the French and Indian War (1754-63). Most Canadians spoke French and were Roman Catholics. The British sought to incorporate these people into their empire in as fair a manner as possible. Thus the Quebec Act tolerated the Roman Catholic faith, accepted provisions of the French legal code, and allowed the land-tenure system that had been in place to continue. It also created a huge boundary for Canada, including all of the territory between the Mississippi River and the Appalachians. Many colonial Americans found this law distressing because it seemed to favor the French in Canada at the expense of the English in the colonies. Most Anglo-Americans at this time viewed Catholics as agents of the devil. Toleration of Catholics was therefore unacceptable. Similarly, the colonial Americans had eagerly participated in the French and Indian War and had expected to be rewarded with western lands. The Proclamation of 1763 had been a temporary measure to prevent settlers from crossing the Appalachians. Now the Quebec Act made that measure permanent, which seemed an infringement of colonial American rights. Native Americans living in the area, on the other hand, would favor this provision, which would serve to protect their homelands from a European-American invasion.
In reaction to the Coercive Acts, colonists formed committees of correspondence up and down the coast to pass resolutions against these measures. The committees also organized relief efforts to aid Boston and joined in a nonimportation movement to compel the British to rescind the laws. The colonies went on to organize the First Continental Congress (1774) to discuss further action. Minutemen in Massachusetts and elsewhere began to collect arms and drill. The stage was set for more direct conflict which would come on April 19, 1775, at the Battles of Lexington and Concord.
See also resistance movement.
Further reading: Robert Middlekauff, The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982); Ray Raphael, The First American Revolution: Before Lexington and Concord (New York: Norton, 2002).
Common Sense 101
World History
