New England Restraining Act

Examples of New England Restraining Act in the following topics:

• The Spreading Conflict

  • Trade with Great Britain fell sharply, and the British responded with the New England Restraining Act of 1775.
  • The petition expressed loyalty to the king and hoped for redress of grievances relating to the Coercive Acts and other issues that helped foment the American Revolution.
  • Many American colonists saw the Coercive Acts as a violation of the British Constitution and a threat to the liberties of all of British America, not just Massachusetts.
  • In May 1774, the Boston Town Meeting, with Samuel Adams acting as moderator, passed a resolution that called for an economic boycott in response to the Boston Port Act, which was one of the Coercive Acts.
  • Parliament responded by passing the New England Restraining Act, which prohibited the northeastern colonies from trading with anyone but Britain and the British West Indies, and barred colonial ships from the North Atlantic fisheries.

• The First Continental Congress

  • It was called in response to the passage of the Coercive Acts by the British Parliament.
  • The Congress also called for another Continental Congress in the event that their petition was unsuccessful in halting the enforcement of the Coercive Acts.
  • Pennsylvania and New York had sent delegates with firm instructions to pursue a resolution with Great Britain.
  • Trade with Great Britain fell sharply, and Parliament responded by passing the New England Restraining Act, which prohibited the northeastern colonies from trading with anyone but Britain and the British West Indies and barred colonial ships from the North Atlantic fisheries.
  • The petition expressed loyalty to the king and hoped for redress of grievances relating to the Coercive Acts and other issues that helped foment the American Revolution.

• Mill Towns and Company Towns

  • In the early and mid-19th century, mills proliferated in New England.
  • Beginning with technological information smuggled out of England by Francis Cabot Lowell, large mills were established in New England in the early- to mid-19th century.
  • "In the nineteenth century, saws and axes made in New England cleared the forests of Ohio; New England ploughs broke the prairie sod, New England scales weighed wheat and meat in Texas; New England serge clothed businessmen in San Francisco; New England cutlery skinned hides to be tanned in Milwaukee and sliced apples to be dried in Missouri; New England whale oil lit lamps across the continent; New England blankets warmed children by night and New England textbooks preached at them by day; New England guns armed the troops; and New England dies, lathes, looms, forges, presses and screwdrivers outfitted factories far and wide. " - Jane Jacobs, The Economy of Cities, 1969
  • Finally, the Great Depression acted as a catalyst that sent several struggling New England firms into bankruptcy.

• Enforcing the Navigation Acts

  • The English Navigation Acts, which were passed in the 17th and 18th centuries, restricted foreign trade by England's colonies.
  • The Act banned foreign ships from transporting non-English goods to England or its colonies.
  • The Act specifically targeted the Dutch, excluding the Netherlands from essentially all trade with England.
  • Later revisions of the Act added new regulations.
  • The Acts required all of a colony's imports to be either bought from England or resold by English merchants in England, regardless of what price could be obtained elsewhere.

• The Magna Carta

  • Henry I of England named his daughter Matilda his heir, but when he died in 1135 Matilda was far from England in Anjou or Maine, while her cousin Stephen was closer in Boulogne, giving him the advantage he needed to race to England and have himself crowned and anointed king of England.
  • The rebels knew that King John could never be restrained by Magna Carta, and so they sought a new King.
  • With the failure of the Magna Carta to achieve peace or restrain John, the barons reverted to the more traditional type of rebellion by trying to replace the monarch they disliked with an alternative.
  • It influenced the early settlers in New England and inspired later constitutional documents, including the Constitution of the United States.
  • John of England signs the Magna Carta.

• The Townshend Acts

  • The acts were also meant to create a more effective means of enforcing compliance with trade regulations, to punish the province of New York for failing to comply with the 1765 Quartering Act, and to establish the precedent that the British Parliament had the right to tax the colonies.
  • The first of the Townshend Acts, sometimes simply known as the Townshend Act, was the Revenue Act of 1767.
  • This act represented a new approach for generating tax revenue in the American colonies after the repeal of the Stamp Act in 1766.
  • On March 5, 1770—the same day as the Boston Massacre—Lord North, the new Prime Minister, presented a motion in the House of Commons that called for partial repeal of the Townshend Revenue Act.
  • A view of the town of Boston in New England and British ships of war landing their troops in 1768

• A Virtuous Citizenry

  • They were especially concerned with the history of liberty in England and were primarily influenced by the "Country party" (which opposed the Court Party that held power).
  • Thomas Jefferson defined a republic as: "...a government by its citizens in mass, acting directly and personally, according to rules established by the majority; and that every other government is more or less republican, in proportion as it has in its composition more or less of this ingredient of the direct action of the citizens.
  • Such a government is evidently restrained to very narrow limits of space and population.
  • I doubt if it would be practicable beyond the extent of a New England township.
  • In New England, Adams noted, "even the Farmers and Tradesmen are addicted to Commerce. " As a result, there was "a great Danger that a Republican Government would be very factious and turbulent there. "

• Navigation Acts

  • A large trade had been growing between the New England and Middle colonies and the French, Dutch, and Spanish West Indian possessions.
  • If actually collected, the tax would have effectively closed that source to New England and destroyed much of the rum industry.
  • New England ports especially suffered economic losses from the Sugar Act, as the stricter enforcement made smuggling molasses more dangerous and risky.
  • With supply of molasses well exceeding demand, the islands prospered with their reduced expenses while New England ports saw revenue from their rum exports decrease.
  • Overall, however, there was not an immediate high level of protest over the Sugar Act in either New England or the rest of the colonies.

• The Glorious Revolution in America

  • The Glorious Revolution led to the dissolution of the Dominion of New England and the establishment of the Province of Massachusetts Bay.
  • King Charles II of England began taking steps in the early 1680s to reorganize the New England colonies.
  • Andros was extremely unpopular in New England.
  • He also enforced the Navigation Acts, laws that restricted New England trade.
  • Nicholson was deposed as lieutenant governor of the Dominion of New England when news of the Glorious Revolution reached North America.

• Colonies in Crisis

  • The events of the Glorious Revolution in England had tumultuous repercussions for British colonies in America.
  • They arrested dominion officials as a protest against the rule of Sir Edmund Andros, the governor of the Dominion of New England.
  • Andros, commissioned governor of New England in 1686, had earned the enmity of the local populace by enforcing the restrictive Navigation Acts, denying the validity of existing land titles, restricting town meetings, and appointing unpopular regular officers to lead colonial militia, among other actions that were part of an attempt to bring the colonies under the closer control of the crown.
  • Furthermore, he had infuriated Puritans in Boston by promoting the Church of England, which was disliked by many Nonconformist New England colonists.
  • Royal authority was not restored until 1691, when English troops and a new governor were sent to New York.