Tea Party and the Coercive Acts

On 16 December 1773, Boston men boarded three ships and dumped 342 chests of East India Company tea into the harbor. They destroyed the tea so it could not be landed and the duty paid. They did not seize the ships for themselves. London treated the destruction as a crime the town would have to pay for before the port could live again.

The Boston Port Act is dated 31 March 1774. It closed the port of Boston to loading and unloading until the town paid for the tea. The Massachusetts Government Act and the Administration of Justice Act are both dated 20 May 1774. The first cut the town meeting and put the council under royal appointment. The second let the governor send a royal officer's trial to another colony, or to Britain, if a local jury could not be fair. The Quartering Act is dated 2 June 1774. It widened where soldiers could be housed. The Quebec Act received royal assent on 22 June 1774. It extended Quebec's boundary and kept French civil law and Catholic worship there. Colonists grouped these statutes together and called them the Coercive Acts, or the Intolerable Acts. The Quebec Act was written as a government for Canada. In the colonies it was read as one more blow, in the same season.