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The end of the French and Indian War in 1763 was a cause for great celebration
in the colonies, for it removed several ominous barriers and opened up a host of new
opportunities for the colonists. The French had effectively hemmed in the British settlers
and had, from the perspective of the settlers, played the "Indians" against them. The
first thing on the minds of colonists was the great western frontier that had opened to
them when the French ceded that contested territory to the British. The royal
proclamation of 1763 did much to dampen that celebration. The proclamation, in effect,
closed off the frontier to colonial expansion. The King and his council presented the
proclamation as a measure to calm the fears of the Indians, who felt that the colonists
would drive them from their lands as they expanded westward. Many in the colonies felt
that the object was to pen them in along the Atlantic seaboard where they would be
easier to regulate. No doubt there was a large measure of truth in both of these
positions. However the colonists could not help but feel a strong resentment when what
they perceived to be their prize was snatched away from them. The proclamation
provided that all lands west of the heads of all rivers which flowed into the Atlantic
Ocean from the west or northwest were off-limits to the colonists. This excluded the rich
Ohio Valley and all territory from the Ohio to the Mississippi rivers from settlement.
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Titled The American Revenue Act of 1764
On April 5, 1764, Parliament passed a modified version of the Sugar and Molasses Act (1733),
which was about to expire. Under the Molasses Act colonial merchants had been required to pay
a tax of six pence per gallon on the importation of foreign molasses. But because of corruption,
they mostly evaded the taxes and undercut the intention of the tax — that the English product
would be cheaper than that from the French West Indies. This hurt the British West Indies
market in molasses and sugar and the market for rum, which the colonies had been producing in
quantity with the cheaper French molasses. The First Lord of the Treasury, and Chancellor of the
Exchequer Lord Grenville was trying to bring the colonies in line with regard to payment of
taxes. He had beefed up the Navy presence and instructed them to become more active in
customs enforcement. Parliament decided it would be wise to make a few adjustments to the
trade regulations. The Sugar Act reduced the rate of tax on molasses from six pence to three
pence per gallon, while Grenville took measures that the duty be strictly enforced. The act also
listed more foreign goods to be taxed including sugar, certain wines, coffee, pimiento, cambric
and printed calico, and further, regulated the export of lumber and iron. The enforced tax on
molasses caused the almost immediate decline in the rum industry in the colonies. The combined
effect of the new duties was to sharply reduce the trade with Madeira, the Azores, the Canary
Islands, and the French West Indies (Guadelupe, Martinique and Santo Domingo (now Haiti)),
all important destination ports for lumber, flour, cheese, and assorted farm products. The
situation disrupted the colonial economy by reducing the markets to which the colonies could
sell, and the amount of currency available to them for the purchase of British manufactured
goods. This act, and the Currency Act, set the stage for the revolt at the imposition of the Stamp
Act.
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Act introduced by George Grenville (1712-70), Chancellor of
the English Exchequer (treasury), to raise revenue in the
American colonies.
Passed by the British Parliament in March 1765, the Act, which was to take effect in
November, set stamp duties on such legal documents as licenses, bonds, leases, deeds, and
ship clearance papers, and also on pamphlets, newspapers, cards, advertisements, and dice.
Proceeds of the tax were to be used to contribute to the cost of colonial defense. To
Parliament’s surprise, the colonies vehemently resented the measure, and on May 29, 1765,
the Virginia legislature, under the leadership of Patrick Henry, adopted resolutions stating
that only the Virginia legislature itself could tax Virginians. These Virginia Resolutions,
published in many colonial newspapers, inspired widespread colonial resistance to the tax.
In August the Massachusetts stamp distributor was forced to resign; other forced
resignations followed, until by November all had resigned. Rioting broke out in all the
colonies in protest to the Act, and some colonial merchants stopped importing goods from
Great Britain. The Stamp Act Congress, which met in New York in October, reiterated the
policies of the Virginia legislature; new political organizations, such as the Sons of Liberty,
helped prevent usage of the stamps. These protest measures of the colonials gained
considerable support in England, especially among the merchants of the city of London, and
in 1767, when the Grenville Ministry had fallen, to be replaced by a Cabinet headed by the
Marquis of Rockingham, the Stamp Act was repealed, and a Declaratory Act, asserting the
right of Parliament to tax the colonies if it so chose, was passed in its stead.
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Declaratory Act, (1766), declaration by the British Parliament that accompanied the repeal of
the Stamp Act. It stated that the British Parliament’s taxing authority was the same in America as
in Great Britain. Parliament had directly taxed the colonies for revenue in the Sugar Act (1764)
and the Stamp Act (1765). Parliament mollified the recalcitrant colonists by repealing the
distasteful Stamp Act, but it actually hardened its principle in the Declaratory Act by asserting its
complete authority to make binding laws on the American colonies “in all cases whatsoever.”
This crisis focused attention on the unresolved question of Parliament’s relationship to a growing
empire. The act particularly illustrated British insensitivity to the political maturity that had
developed in the American provinces during the 18th century. Parliamentary suspension of the
New York Assembly (1767) increased colonial alarm, and each new regulatory act added to the
colonists’ fear of the parliamentary threat to well-established colonial institutions of selfgovernment.
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Shooting incident that took place on March 5, 1770 in which a squad of British regulars fired
upon a hostile crowd of Bostonians.
Chronic defiance of the Crown in Boston had led to the stationing of two regiments of
British regulars in the town. Refused housing by the citizens, they were camped on the
Common. Since their arrival, there had been much friction between the "redcoats" and the
townspeople. Early one Monday evening, a group of 50 or 60 persons led by Crispus
Attucks (thought to be of mixed-race descent with some Indian blood) began harrying a
sentinel stationed in front of the customhouse opposite the main guard, on King (now State)
Street. At about nine o’clock, after the soldier had hit a boy with his rifle butt, the crowd
began to threaten him, and a squad of soldiers came to his support. In the confusion,
someone—it is not known who—gave an order to fire; the shots left three Bostonians,
including Attucks, dead and eight wounded, of which two died later. Captain Thomas
Preston and six of the soldiers were arrested and later tried for murder. They were defended
by John Adams and Josiah Quincy, the only lawyers who would accept the case. Adams and
Quincy obtained acquittals for all of the soldiers but two, who were branded on the hand as
punishment. Word of the "massacre" spread rapidly throughout the colonies, uniting the
people in a common hatred of the British "lobsterbacks."
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Act of defiance by the citizens of Boston in response to a tea
monopoly arranged by Lord North's ministry in Great Britain,
which took place on December 16, 1773.
Three vessels laden with the East India Company’s tea had been moored at Griffin’s wharf
for several days, despite the efforts of Boston’s Committee of Correspondence to persuade
Gov. Thomas Hutchinson to order the ships back to England. Mass meetings, organized by
Samuel Adams, were similarly denied. On the evening of December 16, 1773, about 8,000
persons attended a town meeting at Old South Church; Adams ended the meeting by saying,
"This meeting can do nothing more to save the country." At this signal, between 40 and 50
indignant citizens, disguised as Indians, went to the wharf, boarded the almost unguarded
vessels, and emptied the contents of 342 chests of tea, valued at about $70,000, into the
water This well-executed raid delivered to England an unmistakable challenge; coercive
countermeasures by the Crown (the Intolerable Acts), led to the outbreak of the American
Revolution.
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The government spent immense sums of money on troops and equipment in an attempt to
subjugate Massachusetts. British merchants had lost huge sums of money on looted, spoiled, and
destroyed goods shipped to the colonies. The revenue generated by the Townshend duties, in
1770, amounted to less than £21,000. On March 5, 1770, Parliament repealed the duties, except
for the one on tea. That same day, the Boston massacre set a course that would lead the Royal
Governor to evacuate the occupying army from Boston, and would soon bring the revolution to
armed rebellion throughout the colonies. See also the Tea Act.
1774
After the French and Indian War the British Government decided to reap greater benefits from
the colonies. The colonies were pressed with greater taxes without any representation in Britain.
This eventually lead to the Boston Tea Party. In retaliation the British passed several punative
acts aimed at bringing the colonies back into submission of the King.
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The Tea Act, passed by Parliament on May 10, 1773, would launch the final spark to
the revolutionary movement in Boston. The act was not intended to raise revenue in the
American colonies, and in fact imposed no new taxes. It was designed to prop up the
East India Company which was floundering financially and burdened with eighteen
million pounds of unsold tea. This tea was to be shipped directly to the colonies, and
sold at a bargain price. The Townshend Duties were still in place, however, and the
radical leaders in America found reason to believe that this act was a maneuver to buy
popular support for the taxes already in force. The direct sale of tea, via British agents,
would also have undercut the business of local merchants.
Colonists in Philadelphia and New York turned the tea ships back to Britain. In
Charleston the cargo was left to rot on the docks. In Boston the Royal Governor was
stubborn & held the ships in port, where the colonists would not allow them to unload.
Cargoes of tea filled the harbor, and the British ship's crews were stalled in Boston
looking for work and often finding trouble. This situation led to the Boston Tea Party.
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Series of trade acts (1650-96) passed in Great Britain to protect British mercantile and industrial
interests.
In keeping with the mercantile philosophy of the period, the Acts sought to create a British
monopoly on all colonial imports and exports and thereby establish Great Britain as the hub
of all trade with its empire. The Navigation Act of 1651 provided that all colonial exports be
sent to England in either British or colonial vessels, and that all goods imported to the
colonies be carried on British ships The first Act was limited to the carrying of goods; the
Navigation Act of 1660, however, stipulated that certain goods (including tobacco, sugar,
cotton, and indigo) could be exported only to English ports. (This legislated the mercantilist
belief that colonies were to serve as suppliers of raw materials to the mother country.)
The succeeding Acts of 1662, 1663, 1670, and 1673 further restricted colonial trade to the
extent that virtually all goods legally imported to the colonies had to come from English
ports on British ships. While, in effect, preventing the colonies from attaining any degree of
commercial independence, the Acts did give preferential treatment to colonial raw goods in
Great Britain. High tariffs were instituted in Great Britain against the import of European
and other non-British raw materials. With the increased commercial importance of the
colonies, Americans began to scratch against the restrictions of the Acts and smuggling
became widespread. With passage of the Molasses Act of 1733 (which attempted to force
the colonists to purchase sugar from the British West Indies in favor of the cheaper French
West Indian sugar), smuggling in sugar became nearly as common as legal importation.
English countermeasures to enforce the Act merely increased colonial animosity and
eventually became, through a cumulative effect, perhaps the greatest cause of the American
Revolution.
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Definition: Series of laws sponsored by British Prime Minister Lord North and enacted in
1774 in response to the Boston Tea Party. The laws were these:
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Impartial Administration of Justice Act, which allowed the royal governor of a
colony to move trials to other colonies or even to England if he feared that juries in
those colonies wouldn't judge a case fairly
Massachusetts Bay Regulating Act made all law officers subject to appointment
by the royal governor and banned all town meetings that didn't have approval of the
royal governor
Boston Port Act, which closed the port of Boston until the price of the dumped tea
was recovered, moved the capital of Massachusetts to Salem, and made Marblehead
the official port of entry for the Massachusetts colony.
Quartering Act, which allowed royal troops to stay in houses or empty buildings if
barracks were not available
Quebec Act, which granted civil government and religious freedom to Catholics
living in Quebec.
These Acts were the harshest so far of all the Acts passed by Parliament. The closing of
Boston's port alone would cost the colony (and the American colonies as a whole) a ton of
money. The Regulating Act was aimed at curtailing revolutionary activities. The Quartering
Act angered colonists who didn't want soldiers (especially Redcoats) in their houses. And the
Quebec Act was a direct insult to Americans, who had been denied the same sorts of rights
that the Quebec residents now got.
Rather than keep the colonists down, the Intolerable Acts stirred the revolutionary spirit to a
fever pitch.
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The British further angered American colonists with the Quartering Act, which required the
colonies to provide barracks and supplies to British troops. The Quartering Act was passed in
June 2, 1765, against the wishes of the colonist.
The Quartering Act was an indirect tax for the colonist. Under the law, the colonist had to give
quarters, food, and transportation to the British soldiers. The British forced the colonist to accept
it because they were protecting the colonists from the French. The colonists did not consider the
French a threat and did not like the idea of paying for the British protection.
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