Unit 3: Countdown to Revolution

1755-1775

The Townshend Acts

Townshend Acts Lesson Plan | Grades 7-12

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On the morning of June 10, 1768, British customs officials showed up at the Boston docks and seized the Liberty — a trading ship owned by John Hancock, the wealthiest merchant in Boston and one of the leaders of the Sons of Liberty. He was being charged with smuggling. An angry crowd of three thousand gathered on the wharf, attacked the officials as they tried to leave, smashed the windows of their homes, seized one of their boats, dragged it through the streets, and set it on fire in the Boston Common. The customs commissioners fled to a British fort in the harbor and wrote to London that Massachusetts was in open revolt.

To understand how it got to that point, you have to go back to 1767.

Protesters at the Liberty Riot. Boston

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The Townshend Acts

Thanks to colonial boycotts, The Stamp Act of 1765 had been repealed but that didn’t change the fact that Great Britain was still deeply in debt and desperately needed to find a way raise money. In comes Charles Townshend, the man in charge of Britain's finances, who tried to take a different approach by passing five laws known as the Townshend Acts.

The first law was known as the Revenue Act. It raised duties on imported glass, lead, paint, paper, and tea. The amount was small: only three pence per pound on tea, and a shilling or two on glass and lead.

Townshend was betting that if he called it a trade duty (a fee charged on goods when they cross a border) instead of tax, the colonists wouldn't notice the difference.

They noticed.

With these new duties Britain expected to raise only about £40,000 a year, a fraction of what they actually needed. But the money wasn't the main point. The revenue was earmarked to pay the salaries of royal governors and judges. Before this, colonial assemblies had controlled those paychecks, which gave them power over judges and governors that the king appointed. The Townshend Acts were going to take that power away.

The third law was the New York Restraining Act which suspended the New York Assembly for refusing to house and supply British troops. This was the first time Parliament had ever shut down a colonial legislature as a punishment for disobeying the law.

The fourth law, the Commissioners of Customs Act placed five full-time tax collectors directly in Boston, with the power to search any ship or building they suspected of carrying smuggled goods. The commissioners were paid bonuses from the cargo they seized, which meant the more merchants they caught, the more money they made.

The fifth law was The Vice Admiralty Court Act that added new court houses in Boston, Philadelphia, and Charleston to try accused smugglers. People accused of smuggling would be tried by a judge appointed by the Crown. Admiralty courts didn’t allow jury trials because in the past the juries were often the friends and neighbors of the accused and let them walk free. The judges in those courts would be paid 5% of whatever goods they confiscated when they delivered a guilty verdict.

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Letters from a Farmer

John Dickinson, a Philadelphia lawyer, published twelve letters between December 1767 and February 1768, writing under the pen name "A Farmer in Pennsylvania”. Dickinson argued that Parliament could regulate trade. But the duties in the Townshend Acts weren't about regulating trade. They were just another sneaky way to raise money for the Crown without the colonists' consent. That made them a tax, and Parliament had no right to tax the colonies.

The Letters spread quickly, reprinted in nearly every colonial newspaper from New Hampshire to Georgia. Samuel Adams, the leader of the Boston Sons of Liberty, drafted a Circular Letter calling on every colonial assembly to join together to fight the Townshend duties. The Massachusetts assembly approved it in February 1768 and sent it to every colony.

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Colonial Assemblies Dissolved

Lord Hillsborough, Britain's Secretary of State for the Colonies, responded by ordering every colonial governor in April 1768 to dissolve any assembly that endorsed Massachusetts' letter. No assembly, no organized resistance. Problem solved.

It backfired. In June, the Massachusetts assembly voted on whether to back down. The vote was 92 to 17 against backing down. Governor Bernard dissolved the assembly in response. The ninety-two men who voted to defy the Crown became instant celebrities.

The same thing happened when the Virginia assembly endorsed the Circular Letters. On May 17, 1769, Governor Botetourt dissolved the House of Burgesses. George Washington and most of the other members simply walked down Duke of Gloucester Street and gathered at the Raleigh Tavern, where they signed a formal pledge to boycott British goods until Parliament gave in. Maryland, Georgia, and other assemblies endorsed the Circular Letter and were dissolved in turn. By the end of the year every colony except for New Hampshire had adopted the Circular Letter. Parliament now had a major problem on their hands.

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Merchant Boycotts

Boston merchants signed a formal agreement in August 1768 refusing to import most British goods until the Townshend duties were repealed. It didn’t take long before people in every colony were in joining the protest.

The Sons of Liberty enforced the boycott with good old-fashioned public shaming. Merchants who ignored the boycott had their names and addresses published on the front pages of patriot newspapers, flyers posted on their storefronts, and angry mobs showing up outside their doors.

When a Boston shopkeeper named William Jackson kept importing British goods, the Sons plastered broadsides across the city identifying him by name and address: "WILLIAM JACKSON, an IMPORTER... It is desired that the SONS and DAUGHTERS of LIBERTY would not buy any one thing of him, for in so doing they will bring Disgrace upon themselves, and their (children), for ever and ever, AMEN." His store traffic collapsed. For merchants who ignored even that kind of pressure, things could turn uglier.

Newspaper calling out William Jackson for violating the boycott of British goods.

On February 22, 1770, a crowd of boys placed a sign reading "IMPORTER" outside the shop of Theophilus Lillie, a dry goods merchant who had publicly refused to honor the boycott. When a customs informer named Ebenezer Richardson tried to tear the sign down, the crowd pelted him with stones and chased him back to his house. Richardson retrieved a musket and fired into the crowd from an upstairs window, killing an eleven-year-old boy named Christopher Seider. Samuel Adams organized the funeral, and two thousand Bostonians attended. Eleven days later, the Boston Massacre took place on the same streets.

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The Daughters of Liberty

While the men were passing resolutions and signing pledges, women were the ones making the boycott happen. The Daughters of Liberty organized spinning bees — public gatherings where women came together to spin wool into yarn and weave it into cloth, producing homespun fabric to replace British textiles banned under the boycott.

Over the next 32 months starting in March 1768, more than 60 spinning bees were held from Maine to Long Island. One early gathering reported by the Boston Gazette had 18 women spinning from sunrise until dark.

Unknown Artist, Women spinning and weaving cloth in a colonial home. Courtesy of the Westford Historical Society.

By February 1770, 300 women in Boston alone had signed a public pledge to stop drinking British tea, and switch to substitutes from raspberry leaves, currants, mint, and birch bark instead. They pressured their neighbors to comply, refused to shop at merchants who kept selling British goods, and in South Carolina published announcements in newspapers calling on the mistress of every household to support the boycott. A young New York woman named Charity Clarke wrote to her cousin in London that if Britain kept pushing, she was ready to gather women armed with spinning wheels, retreat beyond the reach of British power, and clothe themselves with their own hands — what she called "a fighting army of Amazons".

In a society where women had no vote and no voice in politics, colonial women played an important role in keeping the boycott going.

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Townshend Acts Repealed… Mostly

By 1769, the boycott had cut British exports to the colonies by nearly 40 percent. British merchants, watching their revenues collapse, pressured Parliament to act. Lord North, Britain's new Prime Minister, repealed the Townshend duties in March 1770. But he kept the tax on tea to prove that Parliament still had the right to tax the colonies whenever it chose.

With most of the taxes repealed and the boycotts over, merchants resumed trading and life went back to normal. The tea tax stayed on the books for three years, until the Tea Act of 1773 opened a whole new can of worms. But, by that point the colonies had spent three years learning how to organize, boycott, and push back. When the next crisis came, they would be ready.

Exit Ticket

Take a stand on one of these questions. Use 3-5 sentences to explain your thinking based on what you just read.

Exit Ticket 1: Parliament's Decision

Parliament repealed almost all the Townshend duties but kept the tax on tea specifically to prove they still had the right to tax the colonies. Was that a smart move or a mistake?

Exit Ticket 2: Turning Up the Heat

William Jackson kept selling British goods even after the Sons of Liberty plastered his name all over Boston. Was the public shaming of merchants who broke the boycott justified, or did it go too far?