we turn now to the second part of the Road to Revolution which takes us from the Townsend acts through the coercive Acts but before we consider this section let's remember that in 1765 British officials faced an enormously complex situation their empire stood eye deep in debt fresh off a world war with a giant expensive military that had to be stored somewhere Britain could not afford to alienate its colonies however at the same time the British government worried that the repeal of the Stamp Act might have sent the wrong message Britain was the mother country after all and supposed to be in charge it wouldn't help the Empire if colonies started dictating to the Homeland what they would and would not do navigating this situation required immense skill consider the tightrope upon which the British government had to walk Britain couldn't alienate the colonists without generating expensive protests and resistance it couldn't back down too often either backing down risk the anger of those in Britain who believed the country had the full right to tax its colonies backing down also reduced the amount of income realized by the empire getting through this required tremendous skill on the part of British politicians they needed to stay calm and patient listen compromise and develop a fair amount of trust with their colonies unfortunately however responsibility for shaping the British response in 1766 fell to Charles Townsend who is Townsend well in 1767 he served as the chancellor of the ex-chequer meaning he had control of British taxing and spending policies and he wielded a significant amount of power Townsend also had a long track record of gaining powerful posts in the British government a career politician he'd served on the Board of Trade as Secretary of War and on the privy Council Townsend sounds great on paper but he really provides us with a warning to be careful when we select a politician Townsend speaks to the damage a poor or ineffective politician can inflict 1766 he proved the worst possible choice to manage the colonial situation Townsend had several problems erratic and Scattered he changed his mind frequently made promises and failed to follow through he also didn't consider consequences didn't take things seriously people found Townsend impetuous unstable and superficial furthermore he often made trouble in the aftermath of the Seven Years War the British government went through a lot of different officials as it worked through the subsequent economic crisis and Townsend stirred the pot in this period criticizing those he didn't like and contributing to the instability how did he get into power through his excellent speaking ability and because he could charm Townsend laughed a lot and he made other people laugh people got sucked in by his words and personality and failed to see his serious flaws until it was too late and this happens on occasion public office tends to attract outgoing energetic people not everyone with this type of Personality actually excels at governing however a guy like Townsend never should have taken charge of colonial taxation at such a tricky and touchy time and he really messed up where Grenville moved slowly vetting his ideas through lawyers and the British legislature Townsend just acted mad at the colonists he intended to crack down he wanted to remind the colonists of their place so he issued a series of proposals in 1767 that became known as the Townsend acts and these proposals exploded Colonial anger and resulted in deaths and for what so Townsend could assert British dominance and realize a tiny little amount of tax money his taxes generated less than forty thousand pounds even British people questioned this one Townsend's laws made no money and they caused permanent damage between Britain and its colonies and people died because of them so here are the Townsend Acts the Townsend acts called for First new taxes on imported paper lead tea Paint and Glass they also created a whole new set of Customs officials and regulations to force payment of those taxes these new officials received some disturbing new powers including more authority to use writs of assistance without warrants the penalty for smuggling increased as well Townsend reduced the powers of colonial legislatures when his laws arranged for Britain to pay Colonial Governors salaries out of the tax money and the towns and laws created more vice admiralty courts to punish Smugglers Townsend's taxes involved a certain amount of sneakiness he didn't select items for taxation at random Townsend chose an Eclectic selection of products to distance his taxes from the stamp and sugar Acts both of those laws impose Revenue taxes that is they impose taxes that took money directly from the colonies to help out Britain by putting new taxes on Imports Townsend tried to suggest that he imposed a different type of tax he wanted colonists to think his law imposed trade regulations and nothing more trade regulation taxes didn't try to take money they simply taxed to adjust trade imbalances within the empire but when Britain imposed new taxes right in the aftermath of the Stamp Act and when the laws that impose those taxes also took away control of colonial Governors salaries and added a ton of nasty new Customs officials the colonists got suspicious issue with Colonial Governor's salaries really upset Americans colonists had controlled Governor's salaries since the 1600s and everybody knew that control of those salaries helped the colonists resist the Stamp Act Governors couldn't stop colonists from protesting writing letters writing editorials organizing a Congress passing resolves or making speeches because they wouldn't get paid if they got tough colonists knew this so did the British and so did colonial governors so when Townsend indicated that he intended to change the relationship between the colonies and their Governors colonists knew what he intended he intended to change the power dynamic in the colonies and Americans reacted with Fury however the Townsend acts didn't produce the vicious level of response we witnessed with the Stamp Act and why not well because the Townsend acts also moved the British army into American cities making it harder to Riot occasional outbursts did erupt especially when British officials found colonists guilty of violating a Townsend regulation Townsend Act officials strictly enforced the regulations so they occasionally touched off localized riots When They seized a ship or searched someone's cargo means is Britain may have received the wrong message from the Townsend response British officials saw that the Townsend acts did not generate Stamp Act mobs big enough to tear down houses the colonists responded by writing letters editorializing and sending circular letters from town to town all that writing didn't indicate to Britain that Townsend actually inflicted something far more dangerous and subtle than they realized the Townsend acts destroyed Colonial Trust Townsend lied to the colonists about the nature of his taxes Townsend tried to trick which is something a politician should never do so the letters and editorials and such might have sounded like a tame reaction that had British officials read what colonists were saying they would have realized the rhetoric against Townsend sounded angrier and more disturbing than it did against the Stamp Act this time colonists talked about being enslaved by Britain and when slave owners think about being enslaved themselves they start referencing the apocalypse to a slave owner that's the end of the world so all of these words on this slide come from the Townsend acts these are all things colonists wrote in response if you read them you'll see this kind of apocalyptic tone starting and also that colonists are starting to link British taxes with slavery the quotes reflected outrage and anger and fear for the future genuine anger leads to action the colonists couldn't Riot with the British army hanging around but in 1867 they found a way to respond that kind of shocked the British they did something worse than a riot that year Sons of Liberty organizations and various Merchants organized non-importation agreements in colonial cities in response to the Townsend Act they got colonists to agree not to purchase any Goods imported from Britain and that meant colonists could not buy those nice British shoes or the clothing hats and dishes that they loved and Merchants learned not to be caught importing or displaying those items for sale because doing so earned a visit from the Sons of Liberty Sons of Liberty might vandalize the store or chase off its customers in worst case scenarios a shopkeeper might face physical violence no colonists could Escape non-importation either because newspapers letters and posters promoted it daily in non-importation proved viciously effective against the British economy with this the colonists pretty much declared economic Warfare on Britain non-importation shows us that a fair amount of tension Rose in the colonies during the Townsend Act period the tension can only exist in a culture for so long before violence breaks out and that's what finished the Townsend Acts on March 5th 1770 British soldiers in Boston opened fire on colonists in an event called the Boston Massacre the massacre erupted after Britain's stationed soldiers in Boston it also stemmed from a bad riot in 1768 involving Local Hero John Hancock accused of smuggling Hancock lost a ship to British officials and bostonians rioted on his behalf Boston residents hated the presence of British soldiers in their City they didn't like the occupation and they believed soldiers took jobs away from colonists off-duty soldiers sometimes moonlighted with part-time work so the colonists had a history of taunting and harassing British soldiers who were stationed in Boston and on March 5th 1770 a group of colonists started throwing snowballs at soldiers on a downtown Street Corner which led their officer to call for backup the arrival of more soldiers attracted more colonists as well until the two sides were facing each other yelling and bristling with anger someone fired a shot and the British soldiers fired Point Blank into the colonists inflicting fatal and gaping head wounds on several blood then ran like Rivers down the street now there's a disturbing picture in the next slide it's there for a reason but be aware it's bloody and unsettling the Boston Massacre site has become a tourist location in Boston today and people walk around and they look at the site and talk about the Boston Massacre and it's kind of tempting to think of it as some kind of old-timey Colonial thing but it wasn't this was a horrific event and people at the time spoke in horror of the blood so we can see what they saw by looking here at the aftermath of the Kent State massacre of 1970. in this case the Ohio National Guard fired on a group of protesting students and they shot one poor student in the head as he protested the pictures here both in regards to the victim and the witnesses they're kind of eerie similarities to what bostonians said they experienced in 1770 especially when it comes to the river of blood and you want to think about the gore and the horror of the Boston Massacre because people of the time did the Boston Massacre shocked people in Britain and America and it ended the first half of the colonial crisis in the aftermath of the massacre Britain repealed the Townson acts and things got quiet for a few years but still the circular letters continued the energy remained the colonists kept their suspicions about Britain alive thanks to Townsend and the massacre those suspicions never faded which meant that in 1773 the protest movement exploded again triggered This Time by the unexpected failure of the British East India Company and the supply of tea in 1773 the British East India Company controlled a huge piece of land in Asia including all of Modern India Burma and Bhutan the company earned tremendous amounts of money selling spices saltpeter which was used in gunpowder silk and tea however the Eastern the East India company started to lose money in the 1770s and several factors played a role in this state of affairs including over extension the company had gotten to where it had more land than it could manage money making operations like the East India Company tend to focus on profit however if enough land and Indigenous people are involved making money sometimes has to take a back door to management and operations and that's where the East India Company failed as the company acquired more and more land in the 1700s it failed to change its orientation from making money so to maintain profitability it imposed high taxes on natives or sometimes it ordered whole regions to stop growing food and start growing cash crops like india indigo or opium the company also failed to develop a system for shifting food from one region to another in the event of a bad Harvest and as a result in 1770 a huge famine occurred in Burma which lowered the company's income significantly the famine also generated riots and warfare the East India Company also found its profits fell because of the post-war recession in Europe the recession that came after the Seven Years War India company started having financial trouble but it had no intention of failing quietly when company profits began to decrease its powerful leaders appealed to the British government for help and together the government and businessmen figured out a way to shore up the company the East India Company they decided would sell tea in America and the T Act of 1773 resulted which inadvertently set off the final wave of colonial protest now to understand the Tea Act One must understand the role T played in the colonies American colonists had a t fad going on in the late 1700s they held tea parties and collected teacups Americans stock different types of tea in their homes and tried to outdo each other by acquiring the most exotic flavors so if something happened that affected tea it affected everyone and something happened to T under the Tea Act the East India Company got a monopoly to sell tea in the American colonies this would help the company make up lost profits the way the British saw things the East India Company had a lot of tea to sell the colonists drank tea by the gallon so the new Arrangement would make everyone happy however the Tea Act caused concerns and then protests in the colonies because of what it did to Americans first it restricted T sales in the colonies to East India Company Merchants so it forced American t-sellers to shut down but the biggest problem was the Tea Act hit the colonists with attacks you see back when Britain repealed the Townsend acts the tax on T remained in place that's probably just because the British government didn't want to appear like it had completely given up its authority to tax the colonies in 1770 American Tea Merchants didn't care about the tax because they smuggled tea into the colonies but now with the Tea Act smuggling ended Colonial Tea Merchants had to shut down because only East India Company Merchants could sell tea in the colonies and colonists quickly realized that because the tax on T remained in place if they bought tea from the East India Company they would have to pay the T tax now Britain didn't think this tax amounted to anything the Empire intended to use the tax to pay for the cost of putting the Tea Act in place shipping tea to America required new routes which had to be supplied and stocked really Britain was focused on the East India Company with the Tea Act it had bigger problems than America at this time so this law really didn't focus on getting money from the colonies but the American colonists had a full conspiracy theory frame of mind now because their faith and trust was ruined by the Townsend Acts so they figured the Tea Act just represented another lie colonists saw the Tea Act as another sneaky plot to force the colonists to pay taxes that originated in Britain and this time they thought Britain really overplayed its hand by awarding the East India Company Merchants a monopoly the British government left the colonists with no choice but to pay a British tax if they wanted to drink tea and the colonists really wanted to drink tea so the colonists saw it like this if they agreed to pay this one tax to get the T well more taxes would follow and since the colonies agreed to pay the T tax how could they argue against the other taxes there are no taxation without representation argument wouldn't hold up if they violated their principles just to get some tea and the colonists now got really worried because this delicious tea would soon arrive in America and somebody was certain to break down and buy some which would prompt others to follow and then the British would have them colonists had equated British taxes with slavery since Townsend so they really feared that the Tea Act might end up enslaving them to Britain forcing them to pay all kinds of different taxes so Americans figured they had no choice but to refuse to allow the tea into their colonies so when the East India company t-ship started to arrive in December of 1773 some colonies absolutely refused to offload the tea or workers took it off the ships and left it on the docks to rot or they burned it in Boston some residents dressed up in Native American clothing climbed onto a tee ship and dumped about ten thousand dollars worth of tea into Boston Harbor this event took place in December 13 1773 and we call it the Boston Tea Party but the thing is the East India Company really did need the money as did the British Empire T represented the one resource the company had to recover its fortunes and the Empire could not afford to let this company die so from the British perspective the colonists had become extremely selfish and irresponsible the colonists destroyed valuable property the sale of which Britain desperately needed to stabilize a big chunk of the empire did the colonists just not care did they not understand that they lived within the British Empire and benefited from that situation we now enter the anger period Britain responded to the Tea Party and to various other acts of Disobedience regarding the T with a Crackdown in the spring of 1774. the British government passed a series of punishment laws called The Intolerable or coercive acts by the colonists several measures made up the coercive acts and they included things like this one of them closed down Boston Port until Massachusetts paid for all the tea that the colonists destroyed one of them ended Town meetings in Massachusetts another one said that the colonists had to find suitable places for British soldiers to stay or risk having their homes appropriated for quarters and one of them said that British officials including army officers would not be tried for Crime for crimes they committed in the colonies in the colonies meaning that British officials including army officers would be tried for any crimes they committed back in Britain Britain hoped punishing Massachusetts would isolate this colony and scare the others into obedience but exactly the opposite happened the colonists responded to the coercive acts by joining together they supported Massachusetts and in September of 1774 the First Continental Congress met in Philadelphia and sent a response to Britain representatives from all 13 colonies attended and unbelievably the Continental Congress threatened the mother country the colonists sent a statement that warned Britain to get rid of the coercive Acts or face two new threats the colonists would put non-importation back into effect immediately and within a year if Britain hadn't repealed the coercive acts the colonists would install non-exportation and they wouldn't sell Britain any of the products Britain got from the colonies no Lumber no tobacco no cotton no nothing that was kind of a yikes moment for Britain it showed the British how intense things had really become in the colonies and in the colonies circular letters started up in force and as Sinister kind of dangerous mood began to develop loyalists who favored Britain started becoming targets of mob activity some got tarred and feathered run out of town or intimidated Americans started bitterly dividing into loyalist and Patriot sides and colonists began stockpiling weapons and a lot of activity took place here at this spot in Boston if you see that circled spot that spot or that Circle shows us where the Liberty Tree once stood in downtown Boston this was a big elm tree that served as a rallying place for bostonians and they'd been using it since the Stamp Act James Otis spoke at rallies here with Paul Revere and John Adams looking on some Sinister behaviors took place at this site as well including tarring and Feathering by protesters and Loyalists alike now tarring and Feathering sounds quaint but you don't want to think of it that way you want to think of it as a form of public torture it was deeply humiliating and it left terrible injuries and the practice also subject the victim to a horrific public shaming so a tiring and Feathering went down like this first a mob would grab the victim and beat that person to an inch of his or her life the person would typically be forced to publicly go back on his or her beliefs then the individual would be stripped and if the weather permitted they were stripped completely they were tarred and feathered with hot Roofing tar not enough to scald the skin but enough to make it sticky they were tarred and feathered the feathers were put on the tar and then the person would be mounted on a horse or in the back of a cart and paraded around town looking like a giant bird and during the parade neighbors and acquaintances and just people in general would scream and yell at the person laugh at them throw things at them make fun of them and just treat them horribly and after that the individual went home typically broken both physically and psychologically tarring in feathers scared people to death it was so frightening that people left Boston and other cities if they heard so much as a threat that they were going to be tarred and feathered if you want to think of this practice as a really severe form of public torture