Massachusetts Institute Of Technology History

Massachusetts Institute Of Technology History

Massachusetts Institute Of Technology History

Most accounts of the American Revolution consider the beginning of open rebellion to be the skirmishes at Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts, on April 19, 1775. But during the previous summer, ordinary citizens gathered by the thousands in the county seats and elsewhere, and, without the loss of a single life, put an end to British rule in most of the colony outside Boston.

The British Government’s Response to the Boston Tea Party

When a mob dressed as Indians threw chests of British tea into Boston Harbor in December of 1773, they were responding to British taxes that had recently (and unfairly, they believed) been imposed upon them. There had been colonial protests before, but this was the most blatant act of resistance to authority that had yet taken place. The British Parliament, headed by Lord North, decided that a drastic response was called for. In the spring of 1774, Parliament passed the Coercive Acts (later called the Intolerable Acts by the Americans) to punish the Massachusetts radicals. Among many other things, the Acts placed Massachusetts under the direct rule of Great Britain: