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BRITAIN'S ACTIONS
BRITAIN'S ACTIONS
Parliament did not give up the idea of raising money in the colonies. In 1767, Parliament passed the Townshend Acts. Named after Charles Townshend, British chancellor of the Exchequer, the Townshend Acts imposed duties on British china, glass, lead, paint, paper and tea imported to the colonies. These acts also allowed customs agents to search ships, warehouses and stores for smuggled goods with blank warrants and created courts where smugglers had trials without juries.
Watch the video below to learn how they affected the colonies:
COLONISTS' REACTIONS
COLONISTS' REACTIONS
The Townshend duties went into effect on November 20, 1767. By December, two widely circulated documents had united colonists in favor of a boycott of British goods.
These influential pamphlets included “Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania,” a series of essays written by Pennsylvania legislator John Dickinson and the “Massachusetts Circular Letter,” a statement written by Samuel Adams and James Otis Jr. and passed by the Massachusetts House of Representatives to other colonial legislatures.
THE BOSTON MASSACRE
THE BOSTON MASSACRE
This time, the British government did not back down. Instead, it tightened its grip on the colonies, sending over 2,000 British troops to Boston to restore order.
Skirmishes (fights) between patriot colonists and British soldiers became increasingly common. To protest taxes, patriots often vandalized stores selling British goods and intimidated store merchants and their customers.
Tensions between the colonists and British troops finally boiled over on March 5, 1770, when a large crowd of angry citizens began throwing rocks, snowballs, and sticks at a small group of soldiers. The frightened soldiers opened fire and eleven citizens fell dead or wounded. One of the dead was Crispus Attucks, an African American who had been leading protests in Boston.
Boston’s newspapers reported the violence in headlines that screamed “BOSTON MASSACRE!”
Little did the colonists or British soldiers know, on the same day as the Boston Massacre, the Prime Minister of Great Britain, Lord North, had asked Parliament to repeal the Townshend Acts.
All of the Townshend Acts—except for the tax on tea—were repealed in April 1770.
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