Toleration Act

Examples of Toleration Act in the following topics:

• Maryland

  • The Calvert family recruited Catholic aristocrats and Protestant settlers for Maryland, luring them with generous land grants and a policy of religious toleration.
  • In 1649, Maryland passed the Maryland Toleration Act, also known as the Act Concerning Religion, a law mandating religious tolerance for Christians.
  • Passed by the assembly of the Maryland colony, it was the first law requiring religious tolerance in the British North American colonies.
  • Although Maryland was an early pioneer of religious toleration in the English colonies, religious strife among Anglicans, Puritans, Catholics, and Quakers was common in the early years.
  • Full religious toleration would not be restored in Maryland until the American Revolution.

• The Demographics of the Middle Colonies

  • The Middle Colonies were more ethnically diverse than elsewhere in British North America and were somewhat more socially tolerant.
  • Once colonization had begun, the Middle Colonies were more ethnically diverse than the other British colonial regions in North America and tended to be more socially tolerant.
  • The Pennsylvania Gradual Abolition Act of 1780 was the first attempt to abolish slavery in the colonies and what would become the United States.

• Chinese Exclusion and Chinese Rights

  • The Chinese Exclusion Act was a United States federal law signed by Chester A.
  • During the early stages of the gold rush, when surface gold was plentiful, the Chinese were tolerated, if not well-received.
  • The Act also affected Asians who had already settled in the United States.
  • The Scott Act (1888) expanded upon the Chinese Exclusion Act, prohibiting reentry after leaving the U.S.
  • The Act was renewed for ten years by the 1892 Geary Act , and again with no terminal date in 1902.

• A Strained Neutrality

  • Wilson repeatedly warned that the U.S. would not tolerate unrestricted submarine warfare, in violation of international law and U.S. ideas of human rights.
  • Wilson was under pressure from former president Theodore Roosevelt, who denounced German acts as "piracy".

• Origins of the War of 1812

  • He initiated a sweeping ban on trade, known as the Embargo Act of 1807.
  • At the very end of his second term, Jefferson signed the Non-Intercourse Act of 1808, which lifted all embargoes on American shipping except for those vessels bound for British or French ports.
  • As this proved to be unenforceable, Macon's Bill Number 2 replaced the Non-Intercourse Act in 1810.
  • Calhoun from South Carolina, would not tolerate British insults to American honor and advocated going to war against Great Britain.

• Settlers and the West

  • As an organic act, the ordinance created a civil government in the territory under the direct jurisdiction of the Congress.
  • The ordinance was thus the prototype for the subsequent organic acts that created organized territories during the westward expansion of the United States.
  • The Territorial Secretary was authorized to act for the Governor, if he died, was absent, was removed, or resigned from office.
  • In the Northwest Territory, various legal and property rights were enshrined and religious tolerance was proclaimed.

• The Nativist Response to Immigration

  • The Chinese Exclusion Act was a U.S. federal law signed by Chester A.
  • During the early stages of the gold rush, when surface gold was plentiful, the Chinese were tolerated, if not well received.
  • The Chinese Exclusion Act was one of the most significant restrictions on free immigration in U.S. history.
  • The Act also affected Asians who had already settled in the United States.
  • This sentiment led eventually to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.

• The Knights of Labor and the "Conditions Essential to Liberty"

  • In some cases, it acted as a labor union, negotiating with employers, but it was never well organized.
  • The Knights of Labor had a mixed history of inclusiveness and exclusiveness, accepting women and blacks (after 1878) and their employers as members, and advocating the admission of blacks into local assemblies while tolerating the segregation of assemblies in the South.
  • The Knights strongly supported the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the Contract Labor Law of 1885, as did many other labor groups, although the group did accept most others, including skilled and unskilled women of any profession.

• The Old South

  • Many individual acts of manumission freed thousands of slaves in total.
  • For some that meant the immediate abolition of slavery because it was a sin to hold slaves and a sin to tolerate slavery.
  • (Virginia had also attempted to do so before the Revolution, but the Privy Council had vetoed the act.)
  • These northern emancipation acts typically provided that slaves born before the law was passed would be freed at a certain age, so remnants of slavery lingered.

• Setbacks for Unions

  • The collapse of radical unionism was significantly aided by federal repression during World War I by means of the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918, the former making it a crime to pass information harmful to the success of American armed forces, while the latter prohibited speaking, writing or publishing anything opposed to the government or war effort.
  • Neither the federal nor state governments tolerated strikes and allowed businesses to sue unions for damages incurred during strikes.
  • The unions held on to their gains among machinists, textile workers, and seamen and in the food and clothing industries, but overall membership fell to 3.5 million, where it stagnated until the New Deal passed the Wagner Act in 1935.