The Effects of the Intolerable Acts on the American Revolution
Throughout the eighteenth century, tension between the bold and ambitious American colonists and the British Parliament increased drastically. This tension led to harbored resentment towards the Parliament and was mainly a result of a feeling of violation from the British on the new American citizens. The colonists felt themselves to be every bit the equals of those living in Britain, although they were treated as inferiors? The Intolerable Acts spurred some of the most significant revolts and rebellions that eventually led to the American Revolution. The British instilled the Intolerable Acts upon colonists, specifically Massachusetts, to discourage the other colonies from opposing British rule. “Yet nothing was done until Lord North, confronted with what he regarded as the insufferable unruliness of the Bostonians, determined in 1774 to purge the Massachusetts Constitution of its crudities --- by which he meant its democracy – and, by giving it a large dose of aristocratic monarchical principles, to restore the authority of the mother country and put the ‘respectable characters’ of the province in power.” [1]The Intolerable Acts were not merely laws passed by the British Parliament, but laws that heavily fueled the outrage against British rule in the colonies.
Four of the five Intolerable Acts were instilled upon the American colonists in response to the Boston Tea Party. At the Boston Tea Party, the Sons of Liberty disguised themselves as Narragansett Indians and destroyed many crates of tea by breaking them open and emptying them into the waters of the Boston Harbor. Another act of rebellion in Delaware was when another seven hundred chests of tea were destroyed. Samuel Adams was one of the leaders of the Boston Tea Party and exploited the idea of undermining their own current version of democratic self-rule. However, the Delaware Tea Party did not have Sam Adams to make it popular....