In 1774, the British Parliament passed the Coercive Acts, a set of measures aimed primarily at punishing Boston for rebellion against the British government, namely the Boston Tea Party. However, the impact of these acts extended far beyond Massachusetts.
The four acts, along with the Quebec Act, became known as the Intolerable Acts among the 13 colonies. The punitive measures marked a major turning point in the conflict between the British government and the colonies and helped set both sides on the path to the War of Independence.
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Coercive acts target Boston
Boston was the focal point of colonial rebellion when Britain passed the Coercive Laws in 1774. In December 1773, colonists dumped British tea into Boston Harbor to protest the Tea Act, which made tea British taxed as cheap or cheaper than the untaxed tea and illegally imported Dutch tea that many colonists bought and preferred.
The coercive act that most directly responded to the Boston Tea Party was the Boston Port Bill. With this, the British Parliament announced that it was closing Boston Harbor until the city pays for the wasted tea. In addition to this, the Massachusetts Government Act drastically reduced the number of town hall meetings communities could hold each year. Although Britain passed the law to punish Boston, it affected all of Massachusetts, and many landowning white men throughout the colony saw it as a major threat to their local governments and autonomy.
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Next come the law on the administration of justice and the cantonment law. Although these two laws could potentially apply to any of the 13 colonies, the British Parliament was specifically targeting Boston when it passed them.
The Administration of Justice Act provided that British officials charged with capital crimes in the 13 colonies could be tried in Britain. Colonial residents saw it as a way to protect soldiers like those who killed settlers in the Boston Massacre of 1770, leading some to call it the “Murder Act.”
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The Quartering Act stipulated that Britain could use empty buildings to house its soldiers in port cities. Again, although this could apply to any of the 13 colonies, the law referred to the fact that Boston had attempted to house British troops on an island a few miles off the coast. The act ensured that British troops could remain in present-day Boston, thus maintaining an increased military presence there.
Coercive acts lead to boycott against Britain
A 1774 cartoon by Paul Revere depicts Lord North, with the Boston Port Bill extending from a pocket, forcing tea (the intolerable acts) down the throat of a female figure representing America.
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In the 13 colonies, coercive acts and the Quebec Act of 1774 are known as intolerable acts. The Quebec Act was a separate measure that claimed all territory between the Ohio and Mississippi rivers for Quebec, one of Britain’s many other North American colonies. Although not a punitive measure, the act angered land speculators in the 13 colonies who wanted to claim more territory in the west.
Even though most of these acts were aimed at punishing Boston, settlers outside of Massachusetts feared that if the British Parliament could close one colony’s port and restrict its local governments, Parliament could potentially do the same for the other 12 colonies. also.
“The coercive acts of Parliament caused all the colonies except Georgia to unite behind Massachusetts and boycott trade,” says Woody Holton, professor of history at the University of South Carolina. and author of Liberty Is Sweet: The Hidden History of the American Revolution.
Many Founding Fathers, including George Washington, opposed coercive acts but still wanted to be part of the British Empire. What they were challenging was not the empire itself, but Parliament’s treatment of the colonies, sometimes drawing blatant comparisons between this and their own treatment of slaves.
“For my part, I will not undertake to say where the line between Great Britain and the colonies should be drawn, but I am clearly of the opinion that one should be drawn,” Washington wrote in a little letter. before the First Continental Congress. . If not, he wrote that Britain “will make us as tame and abject slaves as the blacks over whom we rule with such arbitrary sway”.
Rather than rallying the settlers to declare independence, the coercive acts caused prominent settlers to ask, “What are the conditions under which settlers can remain in the empire?” says Alan Taylor, a history professor at the University of Virginia and author of American Revolutions: A Continental History, 1750-1804.
“What coercive acts do is they make it much more unlikely that there will be a compromise,” Taylor says. “Coercive acts raise the stakes of this confrontation in a new and dramatic way, and they make it much more likely that there will be a war.”
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