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250 Years Ago…The Shot Heard ’Round the World as a Revolution Begins: Fourth in a Series

Published in Blog on April 18, 2025 by Virginia Morgan

Fourth in a Series: Britain Acts and Acts! Parliament’s Initiatives to Bring the Colonies back into the "Indulgence of the Mother Country"

Parliament’s longstanding unwritten policy of “salutary neglect" existed through the first half of the 18th century. The main requirements were that the colonies remain loyal to the Crown and contribute to a profitable economy in England.  

It was in this environment of neglect by the mother country that several generations of Americans matured through infancy and youth into independent adult colonies. Each of them were sovereign in their legal and government institutions and each, as we have said, honoring the king from afar.

Historians blame the period of British neglect that led to the American Revolution on a number of things:

  • Parliament’s willingness to turn a blind eye to smuggling as long as it yielded greater profits for the Crown;
  • its unwillingness to spend money enforcing the Navigation Acts;
  • patronage appointments of incompetent colonial officials;
  • and simple lack of interest by up-and-coming young Englishmen for an undesirable appointment in America.

With the atmosphere of pomp at the court of King George, what young aristocrat or military professional wanted to be posted in a military garrison on the Pennsylvania frontier or on a colonial court in Charleston, South Carolina?   

Parliament Acts 

In the eight years between the repeal of the Stamp Act in 1767 to 1775 when war finally broke out on Lexington Green, the King, his ministers, and Parliament inflicted a series of laws and punitive acts on the colonies.

In June 1767, Parliament passed what came to be called the Townshend Acts, the brainchild of Charles Townshend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer (head of His Majesty’s Treasury). Townshend proposed new taxes on all colonial imports of glass, paper, dye, paint, lead, and tea. Like the hated Stamp Act, these new acts were direct taxes on items used widely across all the colonies every day.   

The impact of the Townshend Acts was immediate and widespread! Massachusetts and most colonials loved their tea. To be legal and avoid arrest by British ships patrolling the coast for smugglers, colonial importers were forced by English law to buy all tea from the British East India Company at whatever price was mandated. In fact, the tea was cheaper but not as cheap as smuggled tea from the Dutch East India company. Now there were additional taxes on tea as well.  

Bostonians React 

By 1769, the Townshend Acts had been in force for three years. Throughout the period, the New England Sons of Liberty, led by Samuel Adams, John Hancock, and other radical Whigs were vocal in repudiating the taxes. They circulated fliers and organized local meetings in homes and churches urging Massachusetts citizens to resist British encroachments.   

The Massachusetts Assembly had already refused to assist in any way in collecting the new taxes and had been dissolved by officials of the Crown.  

Parliament had begun receiving word from America on multiple fronts about the unexpected and growing defiance of the Townshend duties in America. Influential Tories in Boston and the other major towns in America were writing to friends and Parliament members in England. They related instances of customs officers being harassed and threatened, and public mobs forming to create a public show of defiance to the Townshend Acts. Even formerly peaceful town meetings were known to escalate into arguments.  

Parliament Repeals the Townshend Acts - Almost 

In addition to the news of unrest in America, British merchants who were also House of Commons constituents began lobbying Parliament to rescind the Townshend Acts. These merchants counted on profits not only from their export businesses in the British East India Company. Many of them held stock in shipping and in the various processes involved in harvesting raw materials such as the tea plants grown on Indian plantations.

Now they were experiencing lower demand and loss of income after colonials tightened their purse strings rather than pay the Townshend duties on tea and other products exported to America. Altogether Parliament was feeling political and market forces at work!  

To quell the unrest in America and to satisfy its influential British merchant constituency, Parliament met to debate the efficacy of the Townshend Acts. The king’s Privy Council weighed in that if Parliament must repeal the acts, so be it, but in no way may Parliament repeal the provision that imposed the tax on tea!

Accordingly in early 1770, Parliament voted to repeal all taxes except one – the tax on tea!

Boston Patriots React

In March 1770, a group of boys and otherwise unemployed men, a Boston mob actually, brawled in the snow as tensions were steadily rising between Bostonians and British troops stationed in the town.  

British soldiers were provoked by an unruly crowd who hurled snowballs at the soldiers and taunted them with catcalls of "lobsterback" and repeated shouts to "fire!" The nervous soldiers did fire leaving three colonials dead and two more dying of their wounds.

Bostonian Samuel Adams, a "friend of the people" as well as a skilled propagandist, formed a group of men he called the Committees of Correspondence to inform people throughout Massachusetts what was going on in Boston.  

The committees distributed his printed fliers sensationalizing what he termed the "Boston Massacre." Silversmith Paul Revere tooled a gruesome engraving of the same to make the rounds through the Boston countryside.  

Soon the Boston Massacre fliers were received in other colonies. Virginia patriots suggested every colony form such Committees of Correspondence. Carrying these letters, riders traveled the post roads to rapidly share what was happening in major towns across all the colonies. For the first time, the colonies began to be united in common concerns.

The hated duty on tea was still in force; it was inevitable that frustrations would come to the surface. On December 16, 1773, they did!

Late on this cold winter day in Boston Harbor, American colonists who considered themselves Massachusetts citizen patriots exercised their rights. Disguised as Mohawk warriors, they boarded several merchant ships anchored in Boston Harbor.  

In protest of the tax on tea, they threw overboard 342 chests of tea belonging to the British East India Company. This included 240 chests of Bohea (pronounced Boo-Hee), the favorite tea of Boston. Colonists loved their Bohea so much that more of it was imported than all other teas combined. "Having Bohea" was synonymous with "having tea."    

One of the "Mohawk Indians" at the Boston Tea Party was Nathaniel Willis, an eighteen-year-old Boston native who, after the ship’s party, continued to exercise his patriotism by serving as editor of a leading patriotic Boston newspaper The Independent Chronicle.  

He printed his last edition on January 1,1784. In time he moved his family westward to live peacefully and work his farm in Ross County, Ohio within the large land tract called the Virginia Military Survey. He died in 1831 and is buried at Chillicothe in Ross County as one of two Tea Party participants buried in Ohio.

Parliament Acts – Again – the Coercive Acts

This time the Boston insurgents had gone too far destroying the tea of the British East India Company! In 1774, Parliament passed a new set of four laws, this time as punitive measures to ensure that Massachusetts felt the full power of the Crown.  

The Boston Port Act authorized His Majesty’s Navy to blockade the Port of Boston, including all exports because, “the commerce of his Majesty’s subjects cannot be safely carried on there."  

Trade in Boston came to a halt. The port closure would continue until Massachusetts paid the East India Company for the destroyed tea and proved to the king’s satisfaction they could be loyal subjects.

The Massachusetts Government Act passed by Parliament assumed Massachusetts had been taken over by mob rule and that the act was needed to “preserve the peace and good order” in the colony. Colonial Council members who previously were elected were now appointed by the Crown. The royal governor would select all judges and sheriffs; citizen town meetings were limited to one annually unless the governor approved additional requests.

The Impartial Administration of Justice Act was passed by Parliament to punish Massachusetts for the Boston Tea Party. The act gave the colonial governor power to move a trial to another colony or to England if he determined, “that an indifferent trial cannot be had within the said province." This defied a longstanding tenet of English law that protected right of trial by a jury of ones’ peers.

Finally, the Quartering Act was the only one of the four acts that applied to all colonies. High-ranking British military officials could demand good buildings in a good location to billet British troops near where the soldiers were posted. Although the colonists were not legally required to quarter troops in their homes, the troops were to be quartered with food and basic supplies at colonial expense.

The final four acts in a series of acts declared over eight years without colonial representation made it clear to the colonials that their king and Parliament no longer allowed them the long-held basic rights of Englishmen. In fact, the colonists referred to the Coercive Acts as the Intolerable Acts or Insufferable Acts. It is not difficult to correlate these eight years of punitive British behavior directly to the cause of the 1775 Declaration of Independence and the later Bill of Rights in the 1787 U.S. Constitution.

Her Sister Colonies Hear Massachusetts’ Cry 

All colonies feared punishment like the blockade inflicted on Boston. On September 5, 1774, the first Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia with representatives from twelve colonies (Georgia not attending) at the request of the Virginia House of Burgesses in order to "...consult on the present state of the colonies…and determine upon wise and proper measures…for the recovery of their just rights and liberties, civil and religious, and the restoration of union and harmony between Great Britain and the Colonies…"       

They met for 6 weeks and passed an agreement for non-importation of British goods. Upon returning to their colonial assemblies, they began boycotting British colonial imports.

The situation is about to pop!    

The upcoming article in this series, The Shot Heard 'Round The World on Lexington Green: Fifth in a Series, begins the colonial War for Independence from Great Britain.   

Like the colonies before us pushing back against the Crown, the collective power of the states can hold the federal government accountable to its misuse of power and our money. To learn more about Convention of States and to become involved, click on www.conventionofstates.com.   

 

 

 

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