The
Intolerable Acts or the
Coercive
Acts are names used to describe a series of five laws
passed by the
British
Parliament in 1774 relating to Britain's colonies in North
America. The acts sparked outrage and resistance in the
Thirteen Colonies and were important
developments in the growth of the
American Revolution.
Four of
the acts were issued in direct response to the Boston Tea
Party
of December 1773; the British Parliament hoped
these punitive measures would, by making an example of Massachusetts, reverse the
trend of colonial resistance to parliamentary authority that had
begun with the 1765 Stamp
Act.
Many colonists viewed the acts as an arbitrary violation of their
rights, and in 1774 they organized the
First Continental Congress to
coordinate a protest.
As tensions escalated, the American Revolutionary War broke
out the following year, eventually leading to the creation of an
independent America
.
Background
Relations
between the Thirteen Colonies and
the Kingdom of Great
Britain
slowly but steadily worsened after the end of the
Seven Years' War in 1763.
The war had plunged the British government deep into debt, and so
the
British Parliament
enacted a series of measures to increase tax revenue from the
colonies. Parliament believed that these acts, such as the
Stamp Act of 1765 and the
Townshend Acts of 1767, were a legitimate
means of having the colonies pay their fair share of the costs of
maintaining the
British Empire.
Although protests led to the repeal of the Stamp and Townshend
Acts, Parliament adhered to the position that it had the right to
legislate for the colonies "in all cases whatsoever" in the
Declaratory Act of 1766.
Many colonists, however, had developed a different conception of
the British Empire. Under the
British Constitution, they argued, a
British subject's property (in the form of taxes) could not be
taken from him without his consent (in the form of representation
in government). Therefore, because the colonies were not directly
represented in Parliament, some colonists insisted that Parliament
had no right to levy taxes upon them, a view expressed by the
slogan "
No taxation
without representation". After the Townshend Acts, some
colonial essayists took this line of thinking even further, and
began to question whether Parliament had any legitimate
jurisdiction in the colonies at all. This question of the extent of
Parliament's sovereignty
in the colonies was the issue underlying what became the
American Revolution.
Passage of the Acts
In
Boston,
Massachusetts
, the Sons of Liberty
protested against Parliament's passage of the Tea Act in 1773 by throwing tons of taxed tea into
Boston Harbor, an act that came to be
known as the Boston Tea
Party
. News of the event reached England in
January 1774. Parliament responded with a series of acts that were
intended to punish Boston for this illegal destruction of private
property, restore British authority in Massachusetts, and otherwise
reform colonial government in America.
On April 22, 1774, Prime Minister
Lord North defended the program
in the House of Commons, saying:
The Americans have tarred and feathered your subjects,
plundered your merchants, burnt your ships, denied all obedience to
your laws and authority; yet so clement and so long forbearing has
our conduct been that it is incumbent on us now to take a different
course.
Whatever may be the consequences, we must risk
something; if we do not, all is over.
The
Boston Port
Act, the first of the acts passed in response to the
Boston Tea Party, closed the port of Boston until the
East India Company had been
repaid for the destroyed tea and until the king was satisfied that
order had been restored. Colonists objected to the Port Act on the
grounds that it amounted to
collective punishment; that is, it
punished all of Boston rather than just the individuals who had
destroyed the tea.
The
Massachusetts
Government Act provoked even more outrage among the
colonists than the Port Act had because it unilaterally altered the
government of Massachusetts to bring it under control of the
British government. Under the terms of the Government Act, almost
all positions in the colonial government were to be appointed by
the governor or the king. The act also severely limited the
activities of
town meetings in
Massachusetts. Colonists outside Massachusetts feared that their
governments could now also be changed by the legislative fiat of
Parliament.
The
Administration of Justice
Act allowed the governor to move trials of accused
royal officials to another colony or even to Great Britain if he
believed the official could not get a fair trial in Massachusetts.
Although the act stipulated that witnesses would be paid for their
travel expenses, in practice few colonists could afford to leave
their work and cross the ocean to testify in a trial.
George Washington called this the "Murder
Act" because he believed that it allowed British officials to
harass Americans and then escape justice. Some colonists believed
the act was unnecessary because British soldiers had been given a
fair trial following the
Boston
Massacre in 1770.
The
Quartering Act
applied to all of the colonies, and sought to create a more
effective method of housing British troops in America. In a
previous act, the colonies had been required to provide housing for
soldiers, but colonial legislatures had been uncooperative in doing
so. The new Quartering Act allowed a governor to house soldiers in
other buildings if suitable quarters were not provided. While many
sources claim that the Quartering Act allowed troops to be billeted
in occupied private homes, historian David Ammerman's 1974 study
claimed that this is a myth, and that the act only permitted troops
to be quartered in unoccupied buildings. Although many colonists
found the Quartering Act objectionable, it generated the least
protest of the Coercive Acts.
The
Quebec Act was a
piece of legislation unrelated to the events in Boston, but the
timing of its passage led colonists to believe that it was part of
the program to punish them. The act enlarged the boundaries of the
Province of Quebec
and instituted reforms generally favorable to the French Catholic
inhabitants of the region, although denying them an elected
legislative assembly. The Quebec Act offended a variety of interest
groups in the British colonies. Land speculators and settlers
objected to the transfer of western lands previously claimed by the
colonies to a non-representative government. Many feared the
establishment of Catholicism in Quebec, and that the French
Canadians were being courted to help oppress British
Americans.
Effects
Many colonists saw the Coercive Acts as a violation of their
constitutional rights, their
natural rights, and their colonial
charters. They therefore viewed the acts as a threat to the
liberties of all of British America, not just Massachusetts.
Richard Henry Lee of Virginia, for
example, described the acts as "a most wicked System for destroying
the liberty of America".
Great Britain hoped that the Coercive Acts would isolate radicals
in Massachusetts and cause American colonists to concede the
authority of Parliament over their elected assemblies. It was a
calculated risk that backfired, however, because the harshness of
some of the acts made it difficult for moderates in the colonies to
speak in favor of Parliament. The acts unintentionally promoted
sympathy for Massachusetts and encouraged colonists from the
otherwise diverse colonies to form the
First Continental Congress. The
Continental Congress created the
Continental Association, an
agreement to boycott British goods and, if that did not get the
Coercive Acts reversed after a year, to stop exporting goods to
Great Britain as well.
The Congress also pledged to support
Massachusetts in case of attack, which meant that all of the
colonies would become involved when the American Revolutionary War began
at Lexington and Concord
.
Notes
- "The able Doctor, or America Swallowing the Bitter
Draught." Etching from the London Magazine, May 1, 1774.
British Cartoon Collection. Prints and Photographs Division.
Library of Congress, LC-USZC4-5289.
- Middlekauff, Glorious Cause, 241.
- Reid, Constitutional History, 13. For the complete
quote in context, see William Cobbett et al., eds., The Parliamentary History of England: From the
Earliest Period to the Year 1803 (London, 1813)
17:1280–1281.
- Ammerman, In the Common Cause, 9.
- Ammerman, In the Common Cause, 10.
- Ammerman, In the Common Cause, 11-12.
- Ammerman, In the Common Cause, 15.
References
- Ammerman, David. In the Common Cause: American Response to
the Coercive Acts of 1774. New York: Norton, 1974.
- Middlekauff, Robert. The
Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763–1789. Revised
and expanded edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
- Reid, John Phillip. Constitutional History of the American
Revolution: The Authority of Law. University of Wisconsin
Press, 2003.
Further reading
- Donoughue, Bernard. British Politics and the American
Revolution: The Path to War, 1773–1775. New York: St. Martin's
Press, 1964.
External links