The Intolerable Acts
1774
Summary of the Act
- set of disciplinary laws passed by Britain's Parliament
- made after the Boston Tea party, when colonists threw a large tea shipment into the Boston harbor in order to show defiance
- meant as a punishment to Massachusetts colonists
- laws were also called the Coercive Acts
- took away Massachusetts self- government and historic rights
Colonists Reaction
- triggered resistance and outrage
- viewed the Act as a violation of their constitutional rights, natural rights, and colonial charters
- saw them as a threat to the freedoms of all the colonies
- "a most wicked system for destroying the liberty of America"
- triggered the American Revolutionary War
- led to the creation of an Independent American