Years later, a retired Thomas Jefferson later reflected that at least for Virginia the series of British laws in 1774 that came to be known as the Intolerable Acts, or Coercive Acts in Britain, played a crucial role to the path to independence and the American Revolution. But what were the Intolerable Acts? What made them so charged for Jefferson and his fellow Virginians? And how did the acts shape British colonists’ opinions on Great Britain, their relationship to the British Empire, and their ideas about government and rights?
Chris Barry: In late May 1774, disturbing news concerning the Massachusetts colony arrived on the shores of Virginia. The British Parliament had declared that Boston's port was closed to all trade and commerce! In December, a group of Boston colonists destroyed a large and valuable amount of tea in Boston's port. Responding to what later would become known as the Boston Tea Party, the port would remain closed until the people of Boston paid for the "destruction of the tea."
Virginians and other colonists were outraged by the move. The British Parliament punished a whole colony for the acts of a few, which, as they saw it, interfered with the rights guaranteed by a colony's charter. When the Virginia House of Burgesses announced a day of fasting and prayer in solidarity with Massachusetts, according to Thomas Jefferson, "the people met generally, with anxiety and alarm in their countenances, and the effect of the day thro' the whole colony was like a shock of electricity, arousing every man and placing him erect and solidly on his center."
This is Mountaintop History, a podcast produced by the Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello. Mountaintop History brings forward meaningful stories from this historic home and plantation - from the past and from the present. Thank you for joining us. We hope you learn something new. At least for Virginia, a retired Thomas Jefferson later reflected the series of British laws in 1774 that came to be known as the Intolerable, or in Britain, Coercive, Acts, played a crucial role to the path of independence and the American Revolution. But what were the Intolerable Acts? What role did they have in shaping people's opinions on Great Britain, the relationship to the British Empire, and ideas about government and rights? Let's search for these answers on this episode of Mountaintop History.
Since the end of the French and Indian War in 1763, the British Parliament had attempted to exert more control over the lives of its North American colonists. Britain introduced taxes on colonial British America to pay the massive debts from the French and Indian War. The King restricted colonists movement west to ease hostilities between the colonists and indigenous Americans. And custom duties and other restrictions on American trade were enforced more vigorously, limiting the colonists access to markets for buying and selling their goods. Over the next decade, British colonists in America used demonstration, boycotts, petitions, domestic manufacturing, and broadsides to argue how and whether Parliament could tax them, and Parliament's broader control over the lives of colonists.
By 1774, the American colonists had seen a number of these efforts come and go. After the repeal of the Stamp Act of 1765, and all of the Townshend duties, except for the duty on tea, in 1770, Parliament still maintained that it had the authority over its North American colonists "in all cases whatsoever."
In 1773, it then passed an updated Tea Act to save the British East India Company from bankruptcy and to help it compete against the legally smuggled tea in the colonies. By reducing the tax the company had to pay the Crown, the new act made the tea cheaper for the colonists than the smuggled tea. But it also meant they had to pay the hated original Townshend tea duty. Colonial merchants especially viewed the law to control their markets and extend its authority over them.
As East India Company ships sailed to the North American colonies, many British colonists rejected the tax and British controls over their affairs and debated how to properly respond to the Tea Act. In the fall of 1773, when ships arrived in Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, and Charleston, opponents of the Tea Act responded in different ways from refusing the tea's unloading to outright destroying the tea in Boston.
Over the coming months into 1774, colonists divided and debated over the "destruction of the tea" and whether Bostonians properly responded. Parliament, however, saw the destruction as criminal and believed it needed to severely punish Boston and crush this potentially treasonous resistance. It swiftly passed the Boston Port Act, the first of the Intolerable Acts.
After closing the Port, Parliament then reorganized Massachusetts' government with the Massachusetts Government Act, interfering with and greatly restricting Massachusetts' long history and practice of town meetings and local governance. Parliament also passed the Impartial Administration of Justice Act and the Quartering Act, which allowed the trials of British officials and soldiers to be moved to Britain or other colonies and empowered military commanders to house their soldiers, respectively.
Take note here! Two years later, when Thomas Jefferson drafted the American Declaration of Independence, he revisited these acts and alluded to them throughout the Declaration as reasons why the colonies were breaking from Great Britain and King George III.
By late March and early April, letters from Britain arrived with rumors of these acts, but by the beginning of May, copies of the Boston Port Act arrived confirming its passage by Parliament. Quickly, members of Boston's Committee of Correspondence convened town meetings, called for a colonial wide boycott, and sent word to other colonies.
By the middle of May, newspapers and letters containing information on the Boston Port Act started arriving in Virginia. In Williamsburg, as a member of the House of Burgesses, Thomas Jefferson, with Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee, Francis Lightfoot Lee (and "3. or 4. other members, whom I do not recollect" as Thomas Jefferson attempted to recall in 1821), met in the Capitol to develop a resolution of support for Massachusetts. According to Thomas Jefferson, "we were under conviction of the necessity of arousing our people from the lethargy into which they had fallen as to passing events."
On May 24th, 1774, the House of Burgesses voted on a "Resolution of the House of Burgesses Designating a Day of Fasting and Prayer" on June 1st in support of Boston and Massachusetts. Like colonists elsewhere, the Virginia burgesses connected themselves to Bostonians. If it could happen to Massachusetts, Parliament could do it to them too, and Virginians needed to be alerted out of their "lethargy" and respond.
John Murray, Earl of Dunmore and Royal Governor of Virginia, believing the burgesses disrespected the King with the Resolution's language and their support for Boston, dissolved the House of Burgesses.
The burgesses, however, did not see business as finished, and walked from the Capitol to the Raleigh Tavern down the road. At the tavern, they called for the non-consumption of East India Company tea, and joined the calls for an intercolonial congress, a congress that would meet in Philadelphia in September of 1774, and later be termed as the First Continental Congress.
This has been another episode of Mountaintop History, a production of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello. Join us for new episodes every two weeks on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, and the Virginia Audio Collective. To learn more about Monticello, and to plan your next trip, visit us online at monticello.org.
View a transcript of A Summary View of the Rights of British America, which Jefferson wrote in July 1774 in wake of the dissolution of the Virginia House of Delegates by the British royal governor.
