WEBVTT NOTE 58. The Coercive Acts 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.360 Volume 3, Chapter 58, The Coercive Acts 2 00:00:05.360 --> 00:00:11.760 News of the Boston Tea Party and the other resistance to East India Tea hit the British 3 00:00:11.760 --> 00:00:17.720 like a thunder clap. Since the repeal of the Townsend duties over three years earlier, 4 00:00:17.720 --> 00:00:23.720 news of the American colonies had dropped out of the British press, and while Massachusetts 5 00:00:23.720 --> 00:00:28.700 had continued to be a slight irritant, it was generally assumed that everything was 6 00:00:28.700 --> 00:00:35.580 was tranquil in the colonies, hence no one in Britain had an inkling of the furor that 7 00:00:35.580 --> 00:00:42.060 the Tea Act would cause. Suddenly America erupted again and now the British saw that 8 00:00:42.060 --> 00:00:48.140 the colonial problems had never been really quieted. They also began to see something 9 00:00:48.140 --> 00:00:55.620 more, that generally only the extreme polls are logical or viable and that in between 10 00:00:55.620 --> 00:01:03.140 The American states are logically self-contradictory and unstable mixtures that impel persistently 11 00:01:03.140 --> 00:01:06.140 toward one pole or the other. 12 00:01:06.140 --> 00:01:13.820 And so the British began to realize that continued drift and repeated near-conflicts with Americans 13 00:01:13.820 --> 00:01:20.940 were unworkable, and that Great Britain must finally choose either to pursue appeasement 14 00:01:20.940 --> 00:01:28.380 and go back to the salutary neglect and colonial quasi-independence of the pre-Seven Years 15 00:01:28.380 --> 00:01:38.380 War era or to take the hard line and crush the colonist and impose absolute British rule. 16 00:01:38.380 --> 00:01:45.540 The choice was appeasement and peaceful coexistence on the one hand or maximum force for total 17 00:01:45.540 --> 00:01:48.020 victory on the other. 18 00:01:48.020 --> 00:01:55.020 In keeping with its nature, of course, the Tory imperialist ruling clique opted unhesitatingly 19 00:01:55.300 --> 00:02:02.300 for coercion and the mailed fist. When the news of the crisis came to London, Benjamin 20 00:02:02.460 --> 00:02:09.460 Franklin was amid an unhappy imbroglio. While trying as agent for Massachusetts to present 21 00:02:09.820 --> 00:02:16.820 a Massachusetts petition for removal of Hutchinson and Oliver, the news of Franklin's responsibility 22 00:02:16.820 --> 00:02:24.820 The possibility for unearthing the Hutchinson-Oliver letters and sending them to Boston came to light. 23 00:02:24.820 --> 00:02:32.820 Reaction to Franklin's underhanded methods was widespread and understandably bitter, 24 00:02:32.820 --> 00:02:36.820 especially because of Franklin's presumed Tory leanings. 25 00:02:36.820 --> 00:02:40.820 When news of the Tea Party arrived shortly thereafter, 26 00:02:40.820 --> 00:02:46.520 It was not difficult for the British to leap to the absurd conclusion that the whole affair 27 00:02:46.520 --> 00:02:55.120 was a diabolical plot conceived by the sinister subversive devil Dr. Franklin. 28 00:02:55.120 --> 00:03:00.140 Franklin became the General's scapegoat and whipping boy, was quickly dismissed from his 29 00:03:00.140 --> 00:03:06.820 lucrative royal post as Deputy Postmaster General of America, and was roundly denounced 30 00:03:06.820 --> 00:03:25.440 As John Adams later wrote, in reaction to the continuing hold of this myth on the minds 31 00:03:25.440 --> 00:03:32.380 of the British, the history of our revolution will be one continued lie from one end to 32 00:03:32.380 --> 00:03:33.720 the other. 33 00:03:33.720 --> 00:03:40.420 The essence of the whole will be that Dr. Franklin's electrical rod smote the earth 34 00:03:40.420 --> 00:03:43.200 and out sprang General Washington. 35 00:03:43.200 --> 00:03:49.280 To compound the irony, Franklin at the same time was sending his stern Tory disapproval 36 00:03:49.280 --> 00:03:54.880 of the Tea Party to the Massachusetts Committee of Correspondence. 37 00:03:54.880 --> 00:04:01.280 Franklin denounced the extremism of destroying what he chose to call private property, a 38 00:04:01.280 --> 00:04:07.460 A designation that surely stretched the concept of private to the breaking point. Franklin 39 00:04:07.460 --> 00:04:15.200 also vainly demanded that Massachusetts repair the damages and pay compensation to the company. 40 00:04:15.200 --> 00:04:21.600 Within the cabinet, the ministry prepared to crush the rebellious Americans. The Bedfordites, 41 00:04:21.600 --> 00:04:27.840 the Grenvillites, the King's friends, and King George himself howled for revenge and 42 00:04:27.840 --> 00:04:35.000 Suppression. Only Lord North himself and the wiggish Lord Dartmouth, half-brother of North 43 00:04:35.000 --> 00:04:39.920 and Secretary of State for the Colonies, who had replaced Hillsborough a year and a half 44 00:04:39.920 --> 00:04:47.920 earlier, pleaded for confining the mailed fist to rebellious Boston. They largely won 45 00:04:47.920 --> 00:04:55.520 the day. But this old policy of isolating and smashing the leading center of resistance 46 00:04:55.520 --> 00:05:02.640 could no longer work. The American colonists were too united from years of struggle and 47 00:05:02.640 --> 00:05:09.640 from the growth of such revolutionary institutions as a network of local committees of correspondence. 48 00:05:10.740 --> 00:05:17.740 The Crown called Parliament into session in early March 1774 and presented a series of 49 00:05:17.740 --> 00:05:27.220 The series of four coercive acts designed to bring Britain's might to bear upon Boston. 50 00:05:27.220 --> 00:05:34.460 First came the Boston Port Act, which brutally closed the port of Boston to all commerce 51 00:05:34.460 --> 00:05:40.580 until the town granted compensation for the lost tea to the East India Company and paid 52 00:05:40.580 --> 00:05:43.540 the foregone duties to the Crown. 53 00:05:43.540 --> 00:05:48.740 The Act also transferred the Royal Custom House from Boston to Salem for the duration 54 00:05:48.740 --> 00:05:50.100 of the Act. 55 00:05:50.100 --> 00:05:57.020 No ships were to load or unload at Boston, except for military stores and whatever food 56 00:05:57.020 --> 00:06:01.980 or fuel might be cleared by the Customs authorities. 57 00:06:01.980 --> 00:06:04.860 Opposition in Great Britain was revitalized. 58 00:06:04.860 --> 00:06:09.980 The Chathamites and the bulk of the Whigs had condemned the Tea Party, but they could 59 00:06:09.980 --> 00:06:16.340 would not sanction coercion of the colonies. One of the few British supporters of the Tea 60 00:06:16.340 --> 00:06:24.060 Party had been the Wilkite radical MP Alderman Bull, who urged clearing Boston of British 61 00:06:24.060 --> 00:06:31.820 soldiers, brutes that have too long been suffered to live there. The plan supposedly to isolate 62 00:06:31.820 --> 00:06:38.820 and then coerce Boston into submission had stemmed from Lord Dartmouth and his undersecretary, 63 00:06:38.820 --> 00:06:40.820 John Pownall 64 00:06:40.820 --> 00:06:47.260 Chatham, in opposition, urged a demand for reparation before coercion, but the most effective 65 00:06:47.260 --> 00:06:54.980 opposition came from the Whigs. Edmund Burke, William Doudswell, the West Indian merchant 66 00:06:54.980 --> 00:07:03.020 Rose Fuller and young Charles James Fox. But the opposition was in vain. With even Colonel 67 00:07:03.020 --> 00:07:08.220 General Barré and General Conway speaking in favor of the bill, the Boston Port Bill 68 00:07:08.220 --> 00:07:14.600 was quickly passed on March 30, was approved by the King the following day, and became 69 00:07:14.600 --> 00:07:22.300 effective on June 1. Charles Vann, MP from Wales, was the most extreme proponent, calling 70 00:07:22.300 --> 00:07:29.440 for the destruction of Boston, that nest of locusts. Great Britain added to the injury 71 00:07:29.440 --> 00:07:36.040 of the People of Massachusetts by seeming kindness of removing Hutchinson, but replaced 72 00:07:36.040 --> 00:07:42.680 him as governor and captain general by General Thomas Gage, who was sent to Boston to announce 73 00:07:42.680 --> 00:07:48.720 the stormy tidings and to put the bill into effect. Gage was also to transfer the seat 74 00:07:48.720 --> 00:07:55.160 of Massachusetts government from Boston to Salem. The Boston Port Act was soon followed 75 00:07:55.160 --> 00:08:01.600 in early April by the Massachusetts Government Act. North and Dartmouth had hoped to end 76 00:08:01.600 --> 00:08:06.840 their coercive measures with the presumably temporary wrap on the knuckles of the Port 77 00:08:06.840 --> 00:08:13.080 Act. They now allowed themselves to be pressured into approving the second and drastically 78 00:08:13.080 --> 00:08:19.640 permanent act of suppression, a task made easy by the growing mental instability of 79 00:08:19.640 --> 00:08:21.640 of Lord North 80 00:08:21.640 --> 00:08:27.940 Following the Council and guidance of former Massachusetts Governor Francis Bernard, the 81 00:08:27.940 --> 00:08:33.840 Tories were about to see their old dream of destroying the preciously guarded Massachusetts 82 00:08:33.840 --> 00:08:41.080 Charter come true. The Massachusetts Government Act changed the Massachusetts Council to 83 00:08:41.080 --> 00:08:48.080 a body appointed by the King, each counselor continuing in office at the King's pleasure. 84 00:08:48.080 --> 00:08:55.080 The Massachusetts governor was now given exclusive power to appoint and dismiss all executive 85 00:08:55.680 --> 00:09:02.680 and inferior judicial officers, including justices of the peace and sheriffs. Superior 86 00:09:02.760 --> 00:09:09.760 court judges were to be nominated by the governor for appointment by the king. Juries would 87 00:09:09.800 --> 00:09:16.800 now be chosen by the sheriff instead of democratically elected by the people of the towns. 88 00:09:16.800 --> 00:09:23.520 Finally, to crush the local radical centers of colonial resistance, the act barred town 89 00:09:23.520 --> 00:09:31.560 meetings from being held, or an agenda acted upon except by express permission of the governor. 90 00:09:31.560 --> 00:09:38.600 The only minor victory for moderation was Dartmouth's deletion of an original proposal 91 00:09:38.600 --> 00:09:43.120 to bring the tea rioters to trial in Great Britain. 92 00:09:43.120 --> 00:09:49.320 This savage act had been staunchly opposed by some of the leading Whigs and Liberals, 93 00:09:49.320 --> 00:09:55.600 Sir George Seville, Colonel Barré, who had reluctantly supported the Port Act, Charles 94 00:09:55.600 --> 00:10:01.160 James Fox, General Conway, and Edmund Burke. 95 00:10:01.160 --> 00:10:07.320 Notwithstanding, it passed by a large majority, was approved on May 20, and became effective 96 00:10:07.320 --> 00:10:14.600 on July 1 and August 1, different provisions taking effect on the two days. This was as 97 00:10:14.600 --> 00:10:21.580 far as North and Dartmouth wanted to go. But meanwhile, severe pressure for still further 98 00:10:21.580 --> 00:10:27.800 measures descended upon them from the rest of the cabinet, led by the Grenvillite Lord 99 00:10:27.800 --> 00:10:35.840 Privy Seal, the Earl of Suffolk, and the Earl of Sandwich, a Bedfordite. Sandwich and Suffolk 100 00:10:35.840 --> 00:10:43.160 pushed through the Administration of Justice Act introduced in mid-April. This act provided 101 00:10:43.160 --> 00:10:49.960 exemption from any high crimes committed in Massachusetts by royal officials in the course 102 00:10:49.960 --> 00:10:55.880 of their duties. Any royal official committing a capital crime in the course of collecting 103 00:10:55.880 --> 00:11:02.840 revenue or suppressing a riot would now have his trial transferred from the local courts 104 00:11:02.840 --> 00:11:07.920 to Great Britain, provided that the Governor and Council decided that the official could 105 00:11:07.920 --> 00:11:15.000 not receive a fair trial in Massachusetts. This exemption act passed overwhelmingly despite 106 00:11:15.000 --> 00:11:21.560 the opposition of Colonel Barré and others, and the King signed it on May 20. No other 107 00:11:21.560 --> 00:11:27.760 act could have been more calculated to arouse the fears and hostilities of the colonist 108 00:11:27.760 --> 00:11:35.080 Then the fourth coercive act, the Quartering Act, which revived the troubles over quartering 109 00:11:35.080 --> 00:11:42.700 British troops on the colonist. This act applied to all the colonies and forced the provinces 110 00:11:42.700 --> 00:11:48.720 to supply unoccupied houses and dwellings to quarter British troops at the location 111 00:11:48.720 --> 00:11:56.640 desired by the latter. For example, to put up the troops in Boston proper rather than 112 00:11:56.640 --> 00:12:26.640 Government Barracks at Castle William. The Quartering Act, introduced at the same time as the Third Coercive Act, whipped through Commons without debate and was opposed in the House of Lords only by Chatham. The measure received royal approval on June 7. The beleaguered Whigs heroically tried to counterattack during the passage of the Coercive Acts. In mid-April, Rose Fuller moved at repeal of the Tea Act 113 00:12:26.640 --> 00:12:34.580 and was backed by Fox, Barre, and an eloquent and widely circulated speech by Edmund Burke. 114 00:12:34.580 --> 00:12:39.680 However, the motion was voted down by an overwhelming majority.