Intolerable Acts

As a direct response to the Boston Tea Party, the British ministry during the early months of 1774 brought before Parliament a string of bills that became known in the American colonies as the Intolerable Acts, or the Coercive Acts. Within a year, the British government's attempt to enforce the Intolerable Acts had developed into the conflict that became the Revolutionary War.

The Intolerable Acts closed the port of Boston, altered the government of the Massachusetts Bay Colony to centralize British authority, allowed for British officials accused of crimes to be tried in another colony or in England, and sanctioned the billeting of British troops in unused buildings. The British ministry considered the acts as crucial to restoring Parliament's authority in the colonies. Americans perceived them as arbitrary and unreasonable attacks on fundamental British rights. Among the Intolerable Acts, Americans included another bill, the Quebec Act, because it protected the Roman Catholic Church in Canada, established a royally appointed rather than an elected legislative assembly, and placed in Canada's jurisdiction much of the western territory that Americans hoped to exploit.

Word of the Intolerable Acts led to an outbreak of public anger throughout British America, including the Caribbean, and ultimately resulted in the creation of the First Continental Congress by delegates from the thirteen colonies. The Congress insisted on the immediate and unconditional repeal of the offending legislation. Its members' primary achievement was the adoption of the Continental Association, an agreement to ban immediately the importation of British goods and, if the Americans' demands were not met within a year, to halt the exportation of goods to Britain. To enforce the Continental Association, the Congress directed the election of local committees of inspection throughout the colonies.

Faced with the demands of the Congress and confronted by the practical impossibility of enforcing the Intolerable Acts in Massachusetts Bay, the British ministry settled on a military response. Lord Dartmouth, the cabinet minister responsible for the American colonies, ordered Lieutenant General Thomas Gage, the royal governor of Massachusetts Bay, to confiscate a store of arms kept at Concord. The resulting engagements at Lexington and Concord proved to be the opening shots of the American Revolution.