Long Wharf - Parliamentary Acts

This is the site of the 1768 arrival of British warships in Boston Harbor and the troops who first took those fateful steps into Boston for the purposes of occupying the city. These ships and troops had arrived in the port of Boston as a response to colonial opposition to the Townshend Acts which were enacted by Parliament in 1767 in an effort to enforce their sovereignty over the colonies and raise revenue after the failures of the Stamp Act, Sugar Act, and Townsend Acts which are summarized below.

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Navigation Acts 1763 Parliament sought to control colonial maritime trade. Navigation Acts prevented the colonies from shipping any goods anywhere without first stopping in an English port to have their cargoes loaded and unloaded; resulting in providing work for English dockworkers, stevedores, and longshoremen; and also an opportunity to regulate and tax, what was being shipped. First, goods could only be shipped on British ships. Then, they could only be traded with England. And finally, in 1775, all American trade was barred with the outbreak of war. https://www.britannica.com/event/Navigation-Acts

Sugar Act 1764 Britain had long regulated colonial trade through a system of restrictions and duties on imports and exports. In the first half of the 18th century, however, British enforcement of this system had been lax. This act was a revision of the Molasses act of 1733 due to expire in Dec 1763. The Sugar act cut import taxes in half on molasses (which was used to make rum) but also contained strict measures to collect taxes of foreign refined sugar and prohibited the importation of all foreign rum. In New England the distilling of sugar and molasses into rum was a major industry. The act also included foreign products such as wine, coffee, textiles, and banned the direct shipment of important commodities such as lumber to Europe without going through British ports first. It also regulated enforcement as colonists were accustomed to working around the taxes. The Currency Act 1764 followed banning colonial paper currency and required the Sugar Act to be paid in gold and silver. https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/sugar-and-stamp-acts.htm

Stamp Act March 1765 This was the first internal tax levied directly on American colonists instead of on trade goods by the British Parliament. The act imposed a tax on all paper documents and printed materials to bear a tax stamp. The law applied to wills, deeds, newspapers, pamphlets, and even playing cards and dice. https://www.history.com/topics/american-revolution/stamp-act

Quartering Act May 1765 Stated that Great Britain would house its soldiers in American barracks and public houses. And if the soldiers outnumbered colonial housing, they would be quartered in inns, alehouses, barns, other buildings, etc. "Should there still be soldiers without accommodation after all such publick houses were filled," the act read, "the colonies were then required to take, hire and make fit for the reception of his Majesty’s forces, such and so many uninhabited houses, outhouses, barns, or other buildings as shall be necessary." Everyone except Philadelphia ignored this Act forcing soldiers to remain on the ships. In Massachusetts barracks existed on an island from which soldiers had no hope of keeping the peace in a city riled by the following Townshend Acts so British officers placed soldiers in public places not in private homes. They pitched tents on Boston Common and being right in the center of the riled Patriots were soon involved in street brawls and ultimately the Boston Massacre. https://www.bostonteapartyship.com/the-quartering-act

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/parliament-passes-the-quartering-act

Townshend Acts June-July 1767 posed an immediate threat to established traditions of colonial self-government, especially the practice of taxation through representative provincial assemblies. It was a series of four acts in place to collect taxes using British men where colonial representatives had refused to comply. The Suspending Act prohibited the New York Assembly from conducting business until it complied with the Quartering Act to pay for the expenses of British troops stationed there. The Revenue Act regulated trade and put money directly into the British treasury and fell on lead, glass, paper, paint, and tea. The third act managed additional officers, searchers, spies, coast guard vessels, search warrants, writs of assistance, and a Board of Customs Commissioners at Boston all to be financed out of customs revenues. The Indemnity Act was to enable the East India company to compete with smuggled Dutch tea. These acts were met with heavy resistance especially in Boston and coupled with the instability of frequently changing British ministries resulted in repeal. Americans often observe that national independence was born of a tax revolt. But taxes, or the lack thereof, played a key role in the colonies long before Samuel Adams and his Sons of Liberty.

The 1629 Charter of Massachusetts Bay granted settlers a seven-year exemption from customs taxes on all trade to and from Britain and a 21-year exemption from all other taxes. In 1621, the Dutch government granted the Dutch West India Company an eight-year exemption from all trade duties between New Amsterdam/New York and the mother country. Swedish settlers in Delaware were offered a 10-year tax exemption. America, in other words, was in part created as a tax haven populated with immigrants moving from high-tax nations to low-tax colonies. By 1714, British citizens in Great Britain were paying on a per capita basis 10 times as much in taxes as the average "American" in the 13 colonies, though some colonies had higher taxes than others. Britons, for example, paid 5.4 times as much in taxes as taxpayers in Massachusetts, 18 times as much as Connecticut Yankees, 6.3 times as much as New Yorkers, 15.5 times as much as Virginians; and 35.8 times as much as Pennsylvanians.

By 1775, the British government was consuming one-fifth of its citizens’ GDP, while New Englanders were only paying between 1 and 2 percent of their income in taxes. British citizens were also weighed down with a national debt piled up by years of worldwide warfare that amounted to £15 for each of the crown’s eight million subjects, while American local and colonial governments were almost debt-free. Against this backdrop, Americans watched as the British monarchy attempted to raise taxes on the colonists to pay down its war debt and pay for the 10,000 British soldiers barracked in the colonies. The bottom line: American colonists were both paid more and taxed less than the British. American taxes, in fact, were low and going lower, but the very idea that they had been raised and could be raised again by a distant power was enough to send Americans into the streets to engage in civil disobedience. Regime change followed the tax revolt.

https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/townshend-revenue-act

(Box 2 Folder 1) Landing of the Troops by Paul Revere https://www.americanantiquarian.org/Inventories/Revere/b2.htm

https://emergingrevolutionarywar.org/2016/12/07/stepping-onto-long-wharf-and-into-history-the-day-the-british-came-to-boston/

Coercive Acts and Quartering Act March-June 1774 Unlike the previous Quartering Act, this one allowed British troops to be housed in private homes and facilities. The Coercive Acts included the Boston Port Act, the Massachusetts Government Act, the Administration of Justice Act, and another Quartering Act and were known as the Intolerable or Insufferable Acts and passed in the wake of the Boston Tea Party. These were punitive laws to force the rebellious colonies back into place. Only the opposite happened, and it only further fueled the flames of rebellion. https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/quartering-act

https://www.history.com/news/intolerable-coercive-acts-american-revolution