Door24 History

The American colonies rebelled against the Stamp Act and the Townshend Acts. Colonial patriots opposed taxes passed by members of Parliament who lived an ocean away. In 1770, friction between colonists and British soldiers culminated in the deaths of five people in the Boston Massacre. Then Parliament passed the Tea Act designed to give special tax-exempt status to the British East India Company to sell tea in the colonies that threatened to put many colonial merchants out of business. On December 16, 1773, members of the political action group Sons of Liberty boarded British ships in Boston Harbor and dumped British tea into the water. Parliament reacted swiftly by passing four acts or laws called the Coercive Acts designed to bring the colonies under control. The colonists referred to these acts as the Intolerable Acts. The Boston Port Act closed Boston Harbor permanently until Boston paid for the dumped tea. The Massachusetts Government Act increased the power of the new royal governor General Thomas Gag