Otis History - The American Revolution: The Colonies React

By Peter Cameron

April 2026

In 1768, amid protest and riots that were the colonist’s response to increased taxation by Great Britain, Britain brought 10,000 troops from Nova Scotia to Boston to “police” the city. The colonists taxed at every turn, now were forced to coexist with the troops in the city. Lawyers, artisans, and merchants formed a secret society known as the “Sons of Liberty” to harass and protest the British presence. 

This daily friction wore on the colonists, and they would often harass the British troops. On the night of March 5, 1770, a group of colonists were throwing snowballs and rocks at a lone British sentry. As the situation escalated, seven more British soldiers came to the sentry’s aid. Church Bells rang, a citywide signal there was a fire, bringing many other Bostonians with buckets to the scene. In the commotion someone yelled “fire.” The British soldiers fired into the crowd killing three, a fourth died the next day. Blood had been shed.

The colonial printing shops that had been turning out anti-British literature now went into high gear. They slammed Britain for bringing troops into the city, for their taxation without representation, for wresting away the colonial legislature’s control, and for British tyranny. 

In the spring of 1772, the colonies established Committees of Correspondence. These bodies coordinated a unified American response to the British colonial policy. It was an important move toward colonial cooperation and mutual action. It helped develop a national identity across the colonies.

Then on May 10, 1773, a new Tea Act tax was passed by Parliament to prop up the failing East India Tea Company. It was a step too far. On December 16, 1773, chanting “no taxation without representation” the Sons of Liberty, dressed as Mohawk Indians, boarded recently arrived British ships. Dubbed “The Boston Tea Party,” colonists threw 342 chests of tea, worth over 1.7 million dollars in today’s money, into Boston Harbor.

The dumping of tea into the harbor, increasing acts of violence and damage to British property infuriated King George III. To punish Massachusetts, he had the Coercive Acts passed by Parliament. These were known in the Colonies as the “Intolerable Acts.” This series of acts seriously impacted life in Boston. The Boston Port Act (March 31, 1774) closed Boston Harbor to all trade. The British navy proceeded to block the harbor on June 1, 1774. It was to remain in effect until the colony repaid the East India Company for losses from the Boston Tea Party. The Massachusetts Government Act replaced the local colonial legislature with a royal appointed body that acted in the King's best interest. The Act for Impartial Administration of Justice allowed the Royal Governor to move trials to Great Britain or another colony if he felt they could not receive a fair trial. This Act protected British soldiers from colonial charges. It eliminated, in the colonist’s view, the right to a fair trial by one’s peers guaranteed in the Magna Carta. The Quartering Act applied to all the colonies. It allowed higher ranked military to demand quarters that were commensurate with their rank and to demand troops be quartered near where their duties took them.

Finally, the Quebec Act of 1774, a separate piece of legislation, allowed the Catholics in Quebec to continue to worship their religion. This infuriated the Protestant American colonists who viewed Catholicism and the papacy as evil.

These actions by the colonists and the reactive legislative acts by Britain further fractured the bonds between the two.

Next month, “Indecision then War.”