Road to the Revolution: British
Acts On the Colonies 1765-1773
1. MARCH 24, 1765 : PARLIAMENT PASSES THE
QUARTERING ACT
On March 24th in 1765, Parliament passes the Quartering
Act, outlining the locations and conditions in which British
soldiers are to find room and board in the American colonies.
The Quartering
Act of 1765 required the colonies to house British soldiers
in barracks provided by the colonies. If the barracks were too small to house
all the soldiers, then localities were to accommodate the soldiers in local
inns, livery stables, ale houses, victualling houses, and the houses of sellers
of wine. Should there still be soldiers without accommodation after all such
public houses were filled, the colonies were then required to take, hire and
make fit for the reception of his Majesty’s forces, such and so many
uninhabited houses, outhouses, barns, or other buildings as shall be necessary.
In Massachusetts, British officers followed the Quartering
Act’s injunction to quarter their soldiers in public places, not in private
homes. Within these constraints, their only option was to pitch tents on Boston
Common. The soldiers, living cheek by jowl with riled Patriots, were soon
involved in street brawls and then the Boston Massacre of 1770, during which
not only five rock-throwing colonial rioters were killed but any residual trust
between Bostonians and the resident Redcoats. That breach would never be healed
in the New England port city, and the British soldiers stayed in Boston until
George Washington drove them out with the Continental Army in 1776.
2. “No Taxation Without Representation”! /
Townshend Acts 1767
In 1763, the British Empire emerged as the victor of the Seven
Years’ War (1756-63). Although the victory greatly expanded the empire’s
imperial holdings, it also left it with a massive national debt, and the
British government looked to its North American colonies as an untapped source
of revenue.
In 1765, the British Parliament passed the Stamp Act, the
first direct, internal tax that it had ever levied on the colonists. The colonists resisted the new tax, arguing
that only their own elective colonial assemblies could tax them, and that
“taxation without representation” was unjust and unconstitutional. After
the British government rejected their arguments, the colonists resorted to
physical intimidation and mob violence to prevent the collection of the stamp
tax. (Sons of Liberty) Recognizing that the Stamp Act was a lost cause,
Parliament repealed it in 1766.
Parliament did not, however, renounce its right to tax the
colonies or otherwise enact legislation over them. In 1767, Charles Townshend (1725-67), Britain’s
new chancellor (an office that placed him in charge of collecting the
government’s revenue), proposed a law known as the Townshend Revenue Act. This act placed duties on a number
of goods imported into the colonies, including tea, glass, paper and paint. The
revenue raised by these duties would be used to pay the salaries of royal
colonial governors. Since Parliament had a long history of using duties to
regulate imperial trade, Townshend expected that the colonists would accept the
obligation of the new taxes.
Unfortunately for Townshend, the Stamp Act had
aroused colonial resentment to all new taxes, whether levied on imports or on
the colonists directly. To express their displeasure, the colonists organized
popular and effective boycotts of the taxed goods. Once
again, colonial resistance had undermined the new system of taxation, and once
again, the British government bowed to reality without abandoning the principle
that it had rightful authority to tax the colonies. In 1770, Parliament repealed
all of the Townshend Act duties except for the one on tea, which was retained
as a symbol of Parliament’s power over the colonies.
3. TEA ACT of 1773
The Tea Act of 1773 was one of several measures
imposed on the American colonists by the heavily indebted British government in
the decade leading up to the American Revolutionary War (1775-83). The act’s
main purpose was not to raise revenue from the colonies but to bail out the
floundering East India Company, a key factor in the British economy. The
British government granted the company a monopoly on the importation and sale
of tea in the colonies. The colonists had never accepted the constitutionality
of the duty on tea, and the Tea Act rekindled their opposition to it. Their
resistance culminated in the Boston Tea Party on December 16, 1773, in which
colonists boarded East India Company ships and dumped their loads of tea
overboard. Parliament responded with a series of harsh measures intended to
stifle colonial resistance to British rule; two years later the war began.
Road to the Revolution: British
Acts On the Colonies 1765-1773
1. What did the Quartering Act of 1765 require
the colonists to do?
2. What would happen if there are still soldiers
without accommodations after all public houses are filled?
3. Infer: Why do you suppose King George III
sent more and more soldiers to places like Boston and New York City in the
1760s and 1770s?
4. What made the Stamp Act of 1765 so unique to
the colonists?
5. Why did the colonists resist the Stamp Act
and claim “No Taxation Without Representation”?
6. What happened when the British government
rejected the colonists’ argument about taxation without representation?
7. What was the Townshend Revenue Act of 1767?
8. How did the colonists react to the Townshend
Acts?
9. What was the main purpose of the Tea Act of
1773?
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