British response to Boston Tea Party: March—April, 1774: Parliament passed series of laws collectively known as Coercive and Restraining Acts (“Intolerable.

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.