The Parliament of Great Britain passed the Intolerable Acts, also known as the Coercive Acts, in 1774 in response to the Boston Tea Party of December 1773. Angry with the "dangerous commotions and insurrections" that had roiled Boston, the British ministry passed these acts in Parliament for the "reestablishment of lawful authority" in Massachusetts. By doing so, Parliament inspired widespread resistance in North America to its policies, including the meeting of the first Continental Congress later in 1774 and the actions at Lexington and Concord the following year.
The Boston Port Act closed and blockaded the city's harbor beginning 1 June 1774. Boston could neither ship outward nor import any goods (with the exception of supplies for the British armed forces and fuel or food via the coastal trade). The blockade would not be lifted until the townspeople had repaid the East India Company for the tea that had been destroyed. The Massachusetts Government Act altered the colony's cherished charter by directing that the king could appoint members of the council and that the royally appointed governor could appoint judges and county sheriffs, who in turn selected jurors; Parliament sought effective law enforcement by ridding these offices of men with Whig sympathies. In addition to stripping the House of Representatives of these powers, the act also curtailed the incidence of town meetings. The Administration of Justice Act allowed the Massachusetts governor to transfer the trials of certain persons (magistrates, those suppressing riots, and customs officials) to another colony or to Great Britain, particularly in the case of capital offenses. The law was intended to protect British officials and supporters of the crown, who believed they could not get a fair trial in front of a Boston jury. The law's detractors believed (erroneously) that soldiers might now kill Massachusetts people with impunity. The Quartering Act, which applied to all the colonies, allowed British officers, in conjunction with governors, to demand suitable billeting in uninhabited buildings.
The colonists also associated the Quebec Act of 1774 with the Intolerable Acts, though it was not intended as a response to the Boston Tea Party. The bill expanded the boundaries of Quebec to include the land north of the Ohio and Illinois Rivers, allowed French Catholics the free exercise of their religion, recognized French civil law (which did not include trial by jury) in Canada, and established a council appointed by the king in lieu of an elected legislature. To the Protestant colonists south of the St. Lawrence River, many of whom feared ecclesiastical control, the Quebec Act was a provocation: the establishment of an arbitrary, tyrannical government filled with Catholic subjects menacing their borders and blocking westward expansion. To the north, however, the Act effectively helped Parliament retain Canadian loyalty to the British Crown.
Though most of the Intolerable Acts were aimed solely at Massachusetts, people throughout the colonies recognized them as setting a dangerous precedent for the subversion of constitutional rights and liberties. Parliament was testing its supremacy against the autonomy of colonial legislatures, and it was clear which side most Americans favored. Arguments against the Intolerable Acts spread through newspapers and committees of correspondence across North America. Though the colonies had often bickered over boundaries and other issues, the acts motivated them to unite. Boston became a martyr, suffering for the cause of all America. Americans sent aid to the blockaded city, and twelve colonies sent delegates to the first Continental Congress at Philadelphia in September 1774. These delegates soon endorsed the Suffolk Resolves, passed by Boston and its surrounding towns, which proclaimed the Intolerable Acts unconstitutional and called for a boycott of British goods. The Continental Congress enumerated the Intolerable Acts as grievances and asserted the Americans' rights as citizens under the British constitution. The Intolerable Acts provoked a striking unanimity and assertiveness among the delegates.
Meanwhile, the king had appointed General Thomas Gage, commander of His Majesty's forces in America, to serve as governor of Massachusetts. When Gage attempted to enforce the Intolerable Acts by appointing sympathetic judges and suspending town meetings, he met with anger and resistance. General Gage, therefore, believed it prudent to seize the colony's stores of arms, powder, and ammunition. In each instance, New Englanders rose to stop his movements. Gage sent one such expedition of seizure to Concord on 18 April 1775, and the next day British troops exchanged fire with Americans for the first time. Boston became a city under siege. Thus, the Intolerable Acts mobilized military and political action in ways that united the colonies in their resistance to Great Britain. The execution of the acts had failed, just as these laws had misfired as tools of persuasion and authority.