Intolerable Acts (1774)

INTOLERABLE ACTS (1774)

The Boston Tea Party of December 16, 1773, helped unite American resistance to the British government. It also launched, however, a campaign in Parliament that was led by King George III's Prime Minister Lord Frederick North to punish the rebellious Bostonians. Between March and June of 1774 the government passed four bills aimed at ending dissent in the colony of Massachusetts. They are known collectively as the Intolerable Acts.

The Boston Port Act, passed in March of 1774, stopped all shipping into or out of the port of Boston until payment was received for the tea ruined in the Boston Tea Party and the tax that was due on it. Another measure, the Massachusetts Government Act, was passed in May 1774. The act altered the charter presented to the colony in 1691, changed the representative assembly to an appointed body, and gave much greater powers to the colony's governor Thomas Hutchinson, who was appointed by the king. When Hutchinson requested a leave of absence the government replaced him with a soldier who would unquestioningly obey orders: General Thomas Gage, commander of all British forces in North America.

The Administration of Justice Act, also passed in May, moved trials for capital offenses that involved British officials or soldiers out of Massachusetts. The British Parliament believed local juries would never render a fair verdict. Finally, the Quartering Act, passed in June, gave General Gage the power to house British soldiers in private homes, something forbidden in the previous Quartering Act of 1764. Although Gage had to pay fair rental prices for his soldiers' lodgings, the act's intent was to punish the people of Boston for the Tea Party. Gage received four regiments of soldiers to keep order in the town.

These four acts, all directed primarily against the people of Massachusetts and Boston in particular, constituted the Intolerable or Coercive Acts. The acts aroused little direct opposition because they were limited in scope to New England and did not affect the interests of the majority of colonists. Taken together, however, the statutes posed a threat to American interests and institutions throughout the colonies. They denied the power of local political organizations, supported military law over civil law, and changed customary judicial practices. The end result was that most colonists felt sympathy for the Bostonians. The colony of Virginia, for instance, observed a day of fasting and prayer to protest the closing of Boston Harbor.

Parliament's passage of another bill, however, sparked feelings of alarm throughout British North America. The Quebec Act, passed in June, 1774, created a government for the former province of French Canada. Part of the act established the rights of French-speaking residents to worship as Roman Catholics and created a royal governorship and advisory council for the area. The act also expanded the territory of Quebec south from the Great Lakes to the Ohio River. Although Parliament did not intend the Quebec Act to be part of the Intolerable Acts, colonial radicals grouped it with the others as a way of uniting opposition to the king's government.

If there was a single act of Parliament that was almost guaranteed to offend all the colonies, it was the Quebec Act. The measure took away all the claims that colonial governments had to western lands through their original charters. It also created a reserve area for Native Americans bordered by the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers in the west and by the Appalachian Mountains in the east. By stopping colonial expansion at the mountains, the act alienated both rich and poor Americans. Impoverished settlers had been making homesteads west of the Appalachians since the end of the French and Indian War (1754–63). Richer colonists, including Benjamin Franklin and George Washington, had already laid claim to thousands of acres of these western lands and risked losing their private fortunes. George III's Solicitor General Alexander Wedderburn publicly acknowledged the anti-American bias of the Quebec Act. He declared in Parliament that the Quebec Act was meant to keep the colonies tied economically and politically to the sea, so that they would be easier to control.

In order to resolve the differences brought about by the Intolerable Acts, the colonists called the First Continental Congress (1774). Representatives from 12 of the 13 colonies (Georgia declined to participate) met in Philadelphia in September of that year. The delegates represented a complete spectrum of political beliefs, ranging from conservative loyalists to radical patriots. They joined together to petition the Crown for repeal of the acts. They split, however, over the question of what measures should be taken if the acts remained in effect. In a document known as the Suffolk Resolves, the Massachusetts delegation—including Samuel Adams and his cousin John Adams—called for a complete boycott of British goods and the training of local militia to resist British troops. The stage was set for the beginning of the American Revolution (1775–83).

See also: American Revolution, Appalachian Mountains, Boston Tea Party, Benjamin Franklin, French and Indian War, Quebec Act, George Washington

FURTHER READING

Ammerman, David. In the Common Cause: American Response to the Coercive Acts of 1774. Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 1974.

Brown, Richard D. Revolutionary Politics in Massachusetts: The Boston Committee of Correspondence, 1773–1774. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970.

Donoughue, Bernard. British Politics and the American Revolution: The Path to War, 1733–1775. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1964.

Thomas, Peter D. G. Tea Party to Independence: The Third Phase of the Revolution, 1773–1776. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.

Wells, William V. The Life and Public Services of Samuel Adams. Boston: Little, Brown, 1865.

there is no animal, however weak and contemptible, which cannot defend its own liberty, if it will only fight for it.

samuel adams, june 27, 1774