okay so this is part two of the American Revolution the king and the Parliament clamped down on the colony 1774-1775. the story is about to pick up uh or the pace of the story will now pick up greatly so just to review from the last lecture we finished talking about the resistance to the Tea Act and the destruction of property and just the just the the the fact that it had been now been three times that the British had tried to impose uh taxes on the colonists and they had resisted and just so just based upon that level of resistance to the Tea Act we finished last lecture talking about how this was kind of the final straw for uh the king of England King George III and the British Parliament and so beginning from here on out they're going to have to clamp down on the colonists and they're going to do it pretty swiftly and pretty harshly uh now there's King George III that's she's ridiculous and there's of course uh the British Parliament at least the House of Commons you see after all of this resistance going all the way back to the Stamp Act it was now clear to not only King George III but also the British Parliament that uh the colonies were becoming a bit unruly they needed to be taught a lesson they needed to be brought back into the fold and any resistance there needed to be crushed and dealt with and boy were they going to do it so how did the king in Parliament respond to the resistance of the colonists they responded with what were known as the coercive Acts they were also referred to as the Intolerable Acts although that's what the colonists referred to them as now the coercive Acts were very different than anything that had come before everything we've talked about so far were parliamentary laws are designed to generate revenue for the Empire right relatively benevolent they weren't designed to be mean or anything like that but the coercive Acts were the coercive Acts were designed to punish the colonists that the coercive Acts were designed to remind the colonists what the British had warned them about in the declaratory act that the British bind them in all cases so this political cartoon depicts kind of what the coercive Acts were designed to do and the uh female Native American there is represented represented is a representation of the American colonies and there's of course uh the British prime minister pouring tea which represents the coercive acts and the Intolerable Acts pouring it down her throat uh so these things were again very different right than anything that had come before they were designed to punish they were designed to remind the colonists who binds them and I want to talk just briefly about how they were designed to punish because these coercive Acts were going to fall squarely on the shoulders of the colony of Massachusetts they were however the problem child so let me give you a few examples of these coercive acts one example was one known as the Boston Port act and what this did is this employed the British Navy to essentially place the city of Boston under an embargo uh the harbor was shut down nothing was coming in nothing would go out until according to this Boston Port act until the citizens of Boston paid for all of the property they destroyed this would have included the millions of dollars worth of tea that was destroyed there in the Boston Tea Party In addition to paying for the tea they would have to pay the tax and until that happens the port of Boston is embargoed very very strict okay very mean-spirited another coercive Act was known as the Justice act and what this did is anytime there was a British official right a soldier um or a an official of the government that was ever charged with any capital offense in the suppression of resistance to British Authority uh those trials would not be held in the colonies instead those trials would be moved to England and they would almost always result in an acquittal so what it looked like to the colonists is that Justice was being undone in the colonies and this was giving a green light to British officials to be very mean to be very violent towards the colonists whether they were peaceful or not okay another example of the chorus of Acts was known as the Government Act and what this did is this essentially dissolved uh the power and authority of the Massachusetts Colonial legislature which was the house of the people in Massachusetts it was a representative government another the Government Act uh which was part of the coercive acts all that power would be stripped away from the people Stripped Away from the colonial legislature and all the power and authority in the colony was placed in the hands of the royal governor who at the time was a general by the name of Thomas Gage so what happened here in the Government Act is that Democratic representative government is undone in favor of arbitrary rule by these Royal Governors again designed to punish and the last one that I'll mention uh was known as the quartering act now the Quartering Act is a very Infamous moment in American history you're actually protected as a U.S citizen by the U.S Constitution against something like this so what was the quartering act the Quartering Act required colonists in Massachusetts to board put up right to you know board in their house British soldiers essentially British soldiers would be assigned to be living with various families and colonists in Massachusetts why to keep an eye on them right to kind of make them understand that the British presence is here now the colonists saw this as an incredible violation of their rights to privacy uh and this was left such a had such an effect on the colonists that later on when the United States wrote its Constitution they made Danger to uh protect uh you from things like this so that's just some of the examples of the coercive acts which were the way the king of England King George III and the British Parliament clamped down on the colonists because of their resistance to the Tea Act so let's talk about why those things were important what is so important about these coercive acts well one reason they're important is that they were a game changer in the sense that they weren't designed to generate Revenue anymore they're designed to punish the colonists they're designed to be oppressive okay that that changes the whole ball game you know the other reason the chorus of X were significant is that because they were such a game changer because they were so unprecedented it required an unprecedented response by the colonists and that unprecedented response came in the fir in the form of the was the Continental Congress so here's what's going to happen you're going to see an unprecedented response by the colonists because the situation required an unprecedented response and then unprecedented response is going to be every single colony sending representatives to Philadelphia Pennsylvania colony they're going to meet there in Carpenters Hall to discuss what to do you're seeing the colonies come together really for the first time with a clear recognition that things have spiraled out of control and that they better band together in the coming storm now the course of X they really just apply to Massachusetts but everyone understood here in Philadelphia that they could just as easily be applied to all the colonies and so the situation had become dire and everyone in the Congress realized it so what do they do well it turns out they do exactly what they've always done before they just did it at together this time and what they're going to do is they're going to write a petition uh urging Great Britain to back down urging Great Britain to repeal the course of x uh and they're gonna agree to boycotts that's it now recognize here that it's 1774. right the British are now imposing heavy and oppressive parliamentary laws on some of the colonies and yet they do not declare independence speaks volumes about what's Happening Here in 1774 it's not a revolution yet nobody's talking about independence instead what it is and what it has always been since 1763 is a struggle for the colonists and their rights as Englishmen but you they do now recognize that the situation is getting out of hand so they need to start banding together to have a louder voice now before the members of the First Continental Congress all went home they made an agreement to let the petitions and let the boycotts take their effect and see if Great Britain would back down if it became clear however that Great Britain was not going to back down the last thing they agreed to before leaving Philadelphia was they agreed to meet again in 1775 to discuss what to do next if B if Great Britain backs down they don't need the meat but we know in hindsight they did meet and we know that because the second time they got together we call it the second continental congress so it begs the question if they agreed to meet again because it became clear England wasn't going to back down what convinced them it was that England wasn't going to back down that's the question uh and what convinced them that England meant business and wasn't going to back down were events in the Massachusetts colony in Boston as a result of the Boston Port act things are getting nasty uh you have protest on a daily basis sometimes protests turn in the riots sometime the riots get very nasty and bloody and violent you got British soldiers everywhere Boston for all intents and purposes in 1774 and in 1775 is an occupied City okay that pisses a lot of people off that greatly angers a lot of bostonians and so resentment is high the city is a powder keg and everybody knew it the Sons of Liberty they're preparing for something really big in terms of resistance to British oppression the flag you see on the screen there is the original flag flown by the Sons of Liberty I want to tell you a quick story about it because it might send a a light bulb off this flag ended up being banned by the British so what the Sons of Liberty did is they simply turned the flag and they began flying a flag that had Stripes running uh horizontal and originally there were only nine of them but as more and more colonies began to join the resistance movement here they eventually expanded their flag to be 13 horizontal stripes okay enough of that it's clear that a lot of bostonians are very angry it's clear something big is coming the Sons of Liberty are preparing for the British know something's coming everybody feels it and of course something was coming because in Concord Massachusetts which is a small town just outside of Boston the Sons of Liberty and the Massachusetts militia we're stockpiling weapons why are they stockpiling weapons it's clear they're going to militarily resist the occupation and the oppression of the British now the thing about these weapons being stockpiled in Concord is that it was a horribly kept secret in spite of the Sons of Liberty and the Massachusetts militia's best attempts the British were able to find out through spies in Boston what was happening in Concord and once that information reached the royal governor of Massachusetts Thomas Gage Gage made it clear that he wasn't going to let this happen Okay he wasn't going to let this Powder Keg explode so what Gage decided to do was dispatch 700 British soldiers to leave Boston secretly March out to Concord and seize all the weapons now this is a pretty good plan in fact this is what the U.S military does nowadays in military operation take away the guns you're good well the Sons of Liberty know about this plan the only thing the Sons of Liberty and the militia of Massachusetts don't know about this plan is when the plan was going to happen and by what route the British soldiers would leave Boston would they March over land or would they travel across uh sea and land near Cambridge and then March towards Concord now for anyone's ever taken an American history course how did the Massachusetts militia and the Sons of Liberty find out when the British were coming that's right the midnight ride of Paul Revere now to be fair there were three Midnight riders if you uh if you will Paul Revere was simply one of them there was also Samuel Prescott and William Dawes now who are the Midnight riders these were three members of the Sons of Liberty that were keeping a watch on the British soldiers in Boston and it was their job that once they saw the British soldiers March leaving Boston once they knew that the British were on their way to Concord it was their job to go riding off into the countryside and waking everybody up telling them that the British are coming to get your guns to resist okay so this is the famous midnight ride of Paul Revere but it was also Samuel Prescott William Dawes the point is this as the British began their March in the early morning hours on April 19 1775 what they don't know is that they're going to be marching into some towns along the way in which there will be armed resistance to their actions and the first town they came to was Lexington as the 700 British soldiers marched into the middle of the town of Lexington really small town guys marched into the small town of Lexington they were confronted by about 300 Massachusetts militia as well as members of the Sons of Liberty armed to the teeth they were ordered to throw their guns down uh the the Colonials refused until this day nobody knows what happened but somebody here in Lexington fired a shot and when that shot rang out both sides exchanged gunfire now when the smoke cleared there were a couple dozen Americans dead uh zero dead for the British and that speaks to the professional nature of the British army but this battle as I call it it's more of a skirmish uh this would be very important I'll come back to this uh the colonial army of course scatters they're not prepared for a major military engagement like this but they've taken their pound to flesh they did wound a few of the British and they let the British know they're not going to just take this lying down the British military then moved on to Concord where the weapons had already been removed and what they faced at Concord was even stiffer resistance this became known as the Battle of Concord again quotations it's not much of a battle it's more of a skirmish but a Concord the level of resistance here had grown and it convinced the British that they were far away from their home base of Boston they had stirred up a hornet's nest and they better get the heck home and that's when the fun began for the Colonials the British began this very Hasty Retreat back to the security of Boston and along that Retreat uh by now every Colonial in the countryside had been awoken to the British presence and to what the British were out here intending to do which is disarmed them uh and everybody and their dog was out here with their musket and as the British began this Retreat it it started organized but behind every Rock behind every tree behind every Bend in the road there would be a pocket full of Colonials taking shots at them and of course the first to die would beat officers which would create disorganization confusion among the ranks of the British Army and of the 700 soldiers that left Boston that morning uh a lot of them were wounded or were killed along the way back and those that did make it back were limping on the way back in this was a pretty good little skirmish pretty good little fight for the British something they weren't expecting now these two events what happened at Lexington and what happened at Concord are referred to today as the battles of Lexington and Concord and these battles are significant for two reasons the first is that this is the event or events that convinced the colonists they needed to meet again in 1775. so think of the battles of Lexington and Concord as the reason you got the second continental congress okay the other reason the battles of Lexington and Concord are important is that this is where the shooting begins in the American war of independence and it's ironic because the shooting in this war has already started yet we won't declare independence for another year it's one of the main aspects of our Revolution that makes it strange most times you get a declaration of independence and then the shooting begins but ours was a little backwards but the battles of Lexington and Concord this is what began the shooting in the American war of independence these were the first shots famously called so by Ralph Waldo Emerson the shot heard around the world um the other reason that the Lexington of Concord were significant is that this is what's going to lead to the Second Continental Congress and that's where we'll pick up in the next lecture where we look at what the Second Continental Congress is going to do in terms of leading the nation leading I'm sorry not the nation but leading the colonies to their ultimate decision of declaring independence