Reaction to the Boston Tea Party and Intolerable Acts Primary Sources: Olive Branch Petition & “Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms”

The Intolerable Acts were the American Patriots' term for a series of punitive laws passed by the British Parliament in 1774 after the Boston Tea Party. They were meant to punish the Massachusetts colonists for their defiance of throwing a large tea shipment into Boston Harbor in reaction to being taxed by the British. The acts included the following:

▪ Closed Boston Harbor until the owners of the tea were compensated and order was restored. ▪ Massachusetts charter altered; town meetings were banned. ▪ Elected officials removed from office and replaced. (Example: General Gage, the commander of British forces, was appointed governor of Massachusetts.) ▪ British authorities had right to send people to England to stand trial for crimes. ▪ Greater freedom was granted to house their soldiers in private dwellings.

Despite the difficulties imposed by the Acts, and even while many colonists were rushing to join military forces gathering near Boston, members of the Second Continental Congress believed they could still persuade the king and Parliament to resolve the colonists' grievances without more bloodshed. In June 1775, Congress approved two different official messages. The first, written by John Dickinson, was sent to King George III in England. Known as the "Olive Branch Petition," it reads, in part:

Attached to your Majesty’s person, family, and Government, with all devotion that principle and affection can inspire; connected with Great Britain by the strongest ties that can unite societies, and deploring every event that tends in any degree to weaken them, we solemnly assure your Majesty, that we not only most ardently desire the former harmony between her and these Colonies may be restored, but that a concord may be established between them upon so firm a basis as to perpetuate its blessings, uninterrupted by any future dissensions, to succeeding generations in both countries, and to transmit your Majesty’s name to posterity, adorned with that signal and lasting glory that has attended the memory of those illustrious personages, whose virtues and abilities have extricated states from dangerous convulsions, and by securing the happiness to others, have erected the most noble and durable monuments to their own fame.

The day after adopting the first petition, the delegates endorsed the Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms. Written by Dickinson and Thomas Jefferson, it was meant for colonial eyes. In part, it read:

Our cause is just. Our union is perfect. We most solemnly, before God and the world, declare, that- the arms we have been compelled by our enemies to assume, we will, in defiance of every hazard, with unabating firmness and perseverence, employ for the preservation of our liberties; being with one mind resolved to die freemen rather than to live slaves. Lest this declaration should disquiet the minds of our friends and fellow-subjects in any part of the empire, we assure them that we mean not to dissolve that Union which has so long and so happily subsisted between us, and which we sincerely wish to see restored. -Necessity has not yet driven us into that desperate measure. -We have not raised armies with ambitious designs of separating from Great Britain, and establishing independent states. We fight not for glory or for conquest. We exhibit to mankind the remarkable spectacle of a people attacked by unprovoked enemies, without any imputation or even suspicion of offence. They boast of their privileges and civilization, and yet proffer no milder conditions than servitude or death. In our own native land, in defence of the freedom that is our birth-right, and which we ever enjoyed till the late violation of it-for the protection of our property, acquired solely by the honest industry of our fore-fathers and ourselves, against violence actually offered, we have taken up arms. We shall lay them down when hostilities shall cease on the part of the aggressors, and all danger of their being renewed shall be removed, and not before.

Five months later, word arrived that King George III refused to receive the Olive Branch Petition and officially proclaimed the colonies to be in “open and avowed rebellion.” The king ordered the closing all colonial ports, defined resistance to the Crown as treason, and ordered the hiring of foreign soldiers to crush the colonies. Afterwards, the Continental Congress adopted a resolution stating that “That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States.” A committee consisting of Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Roger Sherman, Robert Livingston, and Thomas Jefferson were appointed to prepare a formal declaration of independence.

1- Answer the Q Name: Period: 2-Use Quote(s) Primary Sources Analysis: Olive Branch/Cause and Necessity 3-Explain quote(s)

1. In what way did the intended audience for each petition appear to influence its message or tone? Use evidence from the texts in your answer.

2. Did the two petitions succeed in communicating the desire to resolve the conflict without more bloodshed? Use evidence from the texts in your answer.

3. Which section(s) of the passages might have had a false ring to them, depending on the point of view of the audience at the time?

4. According to the second petition, the colonists are “resolved to die freemen rather than to live (as) slaves”. What do you think they mean by this statement? Use evidence from the text in your answer.