Lull Period and the Boston Tea Party

849 Words4 Pages
Lull Period: The years of calm 1770-1773 Anglo American problems: * Congregationalists and other non-Anglicans were worried by rumors that the Church of England intended to appoint an American bishopric. They feared that the Anglican Church might grow at the expense of their own congregations. * In 1772 Hutchinson revealed that he and the senior Massachusetts judges were to receive their salaries direct from the Crown, payable from the tea duties. Some saw this as evidence of a British design to impose arbitrary rule. * Two events in June 1772 broke the period of quiescence in the quarrel with the mother country. The Gaspee (the revenue cutter that patrolled Rhode Is. ran aground and were put on fire) * Nov 1772, Committees of correspondence sprang up from Mass, by Sam Adams and spread into other colonies. * In the Boston town meeting Sam Adams created a committee of correspondence which was to communicate colonial grievances to all towns of Mass as well as to the people throughout the 13 colonies. Hutchinson letters affair, 1773 * Dec 1772, the relationship between G.B and American colonies was strained following the Sugar, Stamp, Quartering, Declatory and Townshend Acts. * Franklin a parliamentary representative of several colonies received a package of letters in which Hutchinson, the royal governor of Mass, recommended that popular government to be taken away from the people ‘by degrees’ and there should be an ‘abridgement of English liberties.’ * The letters were published in Boston’s Gazette 1773. The Tea Act 1773 * Was designed to save near bankrupt East India Co. rather than assert parliamentary sovereignty over the colonies. * Aim: relieve the financial stresses of the company by permitting it to export tea to the colonies. * The Act abolished British duties on the company’s tea while obliging

More about Lull Period and the Boston Tea Party

Open Document