unit 6

The Coercive Acts (1774)

Following the Boston Tea Party, Parliament passed the Coercive Acts (referred to as the "Intolerable Acts" in the colonies). The first Coercive Act closed the Boston Harbor. The Second Act, the Massachusetts Government Act, altered Massachusetts's charter, substituted an appointed council for the elected one, increased the governor's powers, and banned town meetings in Boston. The Third Act, the Justice Act, provided that a person accused of committing a capital crime in the course of suppressing a riot or enforcing the laws would be sent to England for trial. Finally, a Quartering Act allowed British troops to be quartered in privately owned houses (Faragher).

The Royal Proclamation of 1763

In 1763, the British government was confronted with economic problems. Due to the "mercantilist wars" of the eighteenth century, it had accrued an immense war debt. Its financial problems were underscored by Chief Pontiac's war. Although this Native American uprising was defeated, it revealed the British government would have difficulty defending the frontiers of the lands that it had won from France in the wake of the Seven Years War. The "Proclamation of 1763" was issued during Pontiac's Rebellion. It designated the headwaters of rivers flowing into the Atlantic from the Appalachians as the temporary western boundary of British colonial settlement in North America. The British government was hoping that, by limiting settlement in its western lands, it could avoid clashes between its colonists and the Indians that drained its treasury and cost British lives.

The Boston Massacre (1770)

In 1768, the British occupied Boston with infantry and artillery regiments. Conflicts between British soldiers and Bostonians escalated until, on March 5, 1770, a violent confrontation occurred. The incident began when a crowd started throwing snowballs at British soldiers. The soldiers panicked, fired into the crowd, and killed five colonists. Two more colonists died later from wounds they had received when the soldiers fired upon the crowd. This event is referred to as "the Boston Massacre."

The Boston Tea Party (1773)

In 1773, Parliament enacted legislation intended to save the East India Company from bankruptcy. The Tea Act granted the East India Company a monopoly on shipping and distributing tea in the colonies. Since only the Company's designated agents would be selling the tea, it was believed that they would be able to sell it to the colonists for less than they had to pay before passage of the Tea Act. The tea was still to be taxed, however, under the Townshend Duties. If colonists purchased the tea, they would be accepting, in effect, Parliament's right to tax them. In Boston, patriots prevented the tea on East India Company vessels from being unloaded. When the Massachusetts governor, Thomas Hutchinson, refused to let these vessels leave the Boston harbor, a stalemate between the governor and the Bostonians ensued. This stalemate was broken when "Mohawks" (colonists disguised as Native Americans) boarded the tea-bearing vessels and threw the tea into Boston Harbor.

Rituals of Resistance

Rituals of resistance are symbolic performances members of a society's lower orders stage, signaling their opposition to the practices, policies, and attitudes of that society's dominant groups. In Britain's American colonies on the eve of the American Revolution, the "common people" (artisans, small shopkeepers, and small farmers) frequently staged rituals of resistance, protesting and critiquing the policies of the British government. These rituals mocked or otherwise satirically challenged the British government and its magistrates. Laughter—directed toward British officials and the British Parliament--was a key component of these rituals.

The Declaratory Act (1766)

When Parliament repealed the Stamp Act, it passed the Declaratory Act stating "Parliament had the authority to legislate for the colonies 'in all cases whatsoever'" (Faragher).

Absolutism

a "political theory which holds that all power should be vested in one ruler or other authority" in a country. It is also a "form of government in which all power is vested in a single ruler or other authority" (American Heritage Dictionary online). As a political doctrine, it was used in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe to justify the centralization of state power in the person of the monarch. James I of England (who was also James VI of Scotland) embraced this theory and attempted to justify it by appealing to the "Divine Right of Kings."

James Otis (1725-1783)

a Massachusetts lawyer. During the 1760s, he challenged Britain's colonial policies on the grounds that these policies violated the colonists' traditional liberties as Englishmen and their natural rights as human beings. He stated "Taxation without representation is tyranny" (Faragher).

Patrick Henry (1736-1799)

a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses and the first post-colonial Governor of Virginia. He was critical of the Stamp Act in 1765, and he was also an outspoken advocate of the Independence Movement during the mid-1770s. His most famous speech was made before the Virginia Convention in 1775. In it he urged his fellow Virginians to prepare to fight the British. In this speech Henry is reputed to have said: "Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"

Common Sense (1776)

a pamphlet that was written by Thomas Paine. In it he argued that reconciliation between the colonists and Britain was not possible because the entire system of English governance was corrupt. After all, only a corrupt government "could inflict such brutality on its own people." "The island kingdom of England was no more fit to rule the American continent, he claimed, than a satellite was fit to rule the sun." It made "common sense," then, for Americans to break completely with the English government (Brinkley).

The Common Law

a system of laws that emerged in England during the Middle Ages. It still prevails in England today, and it is also honored in the United States of America. The Common Law is based on decisions English judges have made about court cases through the centuries, on the ideas and doctrines that supported those decisions and were implicit within them, and on the laws, customs, and usages of the English people. It is based on precedent. It is sometimes referred to as "judge-made law." Common-law judges are expected to adhere to decisions that earlier judges have made in specific cases (precedents), when the facts in the case that they are deciding are substantially the same as the facts of an earlier case.

John Locke (1632-1704)

an English philosopher, is widely regarded as one of the founders of the Enlightenment. His ideas on the empirical foundations of human knowledge are important to the development of the modern social sciences. He is also important because his political ideas contributed to the development of "republicanism," a political ideology that was embraced by many Americans during the eighteenth century. Within the context of his own times, however, Locke, however, was not a republican, he was a Whig. As a Whig, he opposed absolute monarchs, championed representative government, and was concerned with defending the liberties of the individual. The ideas he developed in his political writings also profoundly influenced the supporters of the Independence Movement (and most especially Thomas Jefferson in 1776). From this point of view, Locke championed the belief that governments rested upon the consent of the governed (the "social contract theory"); the belief that the purpose of government was to protect the natural rights (life, liberty, and property) of the individual; and the belief that when governments could not guarantee their people these fundamental rights, but, in fact, became abusive of these rights, the people had a right to replace them with other governments. That is, he believed in extreme circumstances, people had a right to rebel against oppressive governments.

Charles de Montesquieu (Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu, 1689-1755)

an Enlightenment philosopher. His thoughts on politics were influenced by the writings of John Locke. Montesquieu believed a separation and balance of powers should occur between the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government. The purpose of this separation was to guarantee the liberties of the individual. His ideas profoundly influenced the framers of the U.S. Constitution, who separated the powers of the presidency, the powers of Congress, and the powers of the judiciary.

The Enlightenment

an intellectual movement that swept "the West" during the eighteenth century (or, more specifically, between England's 1688 "Glorious Revolution" and the French Revolution of 1789). It was spawned by the achievements of the seventeenth-century's "Scientific Revolution." Emboldened by the Scientific Revolution, Enlightenment scholars argued that the human reason, unassisted by revelation, could ascertain the laws that governed both the physical and the human world. From their point of view, the key to discovering these laws was application of the scientific method to the study of human societies. They also believed that once the laws that governed human societies had been ascertained, people would be able to improve their societies by managing them in accordance with nature's laws. Thus, the Enlightenment embraced a conception of progress, which maintained human societies could develop and improve through time.

The Magna Carta (1215)

granted by King John at Runnymede to the people of England (due to pressure placed upon him by his feudal nobility and the English Church) on June 15, 1215. In this charter John agreed to sixty-three provisions that contained the germs of some of our most important liberties. The Great Charter is important because it constitutes an early expression of that complex of ideas that some have called "the Rights of Englishmen."

The Sugar Act (1764)

lowered the duties imposed by the Molasses Act of 1733. The American colonists were unhappy with it, nonetheless, because it stipulated that violators of the Act would be tried in the British Empire's vice-admiralty courts, thus signaling the end of the Empire's policy of "salutary neglect" toward its American colonies. The colonists were also unhappy with the act because judicial decisions emanating from the vice-admiralty courts were issued only by court judges and not by juries composed of the colonists' peers.

The Bill of Rights (1689)

one of the documents the English Parliament imposed on the English monarchy during the seventeenth century. After the "Glorious Revolution," James's daughter, Mary, and her husband, William of Orange, had to agree to the Bill of Rights before Parliament would ratify their monarchy. These rights included such principles as: the right of no taxation without the consent of Parliament; the right to petition the government if one had a grievance; the right of freedom of speech in Parliament; the right to bear arms (granted specifically here to Protestants); the right to be free of cruel and unusual punishments; the right of be free of excessive bail; and guarantees of due process of law.

The Quebec Act (1774)

reformed the government of Quebec, granted extensive land to the colony, and granted greater religious freedom to the province's Catholics. It was interpreted by the colonists as another punitive measure that was directed toward them.

The Petition of Right (1628)

struggled with England's Stuart monarchs for sovereignty in England. In the course of that struggle, Parliament forced the Stuarts and their heirs to agree to several documents that curtailed the power of the English kings. The Petition of Right is one such document. Charles I (1600-1649) "consented" to this petition in 1628. Parliament could force him to agree to it at this time because he needed Parliament to tax the English people so that he could conduct a war on the European continent. The Petition of Right stated that Charles could not tax the English people without the consent of the English Parliament. The Petition also stated that freemen could not be arbitrarily arrested or imprisoned. In addition, it asserted that England's monarchs could not declare martial law in times of peace, and that England's army could not be quartered with the English people.

The English Parliament

was the supreme legislature of the English state. It evolved in the course of the Middle Ages. By the seventeenth century, it was composed of a House of Lords and a House of Commons. The English sovereign was also a part of the English Parliament.

The Townshend Acts (1767)

were revenue acts Parliament passed, which imposed import duties on such commodities as glass, lead, paint, paper, and tea. They sparked widespread resistance to "British tyranny." Colonial resistance to the Townshend Acts included boycotts of British goods, rituals of resistance, and political tracts defending the liberties of the colonists. In 1770, the Townshend Duties were repealed, all save the tax on tea. The tea tax was retained to underscore the fact to the colonists that Parliament had a right to tax them if it so chose.