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48-723: After Parliament passed the Coercive Acts , also known as the Intolerable Acts , to punish Massachusetts for the Boston Tea Party , the Virginia House of Burgesses proclaimed that June 1, 1774, would be a day of "fasting, humiliation, and prayer" as a show of solidarity with Boston. In response, Lord Dunmore , the royal governor of Virginia, dissolved the House of Burgesses. The burgesses reconvened at

96-623: A fair trial following the Boston Massacre in 1770. The Quartering Act , which applied to all British colonies in North America, sought to create a more effective method of housing British troops. In a previous act, the colonies had been required to provide housing for soldiers, but colonial legislatures had been uncooperative in doing so. The new Quartering Act allowed a governor to house soldiers in other buildings if suitable quarters were not provided. While many sources claim that

144-686: A group of Patriot colonists associated with the Sons of Liberty destroyed 342 chests of tea in Boston, Massachusetts , an act that came to be known as the Boston Tea Party . The colonists partook in this action because Parliament had passed the Tea Act , which granted the British East India Company a monopoly on tea sales in the colonies, thereby saving the company from bankruptcy. This made British tea less expensive. In addition, there

192-587: A hunting ground by the Iroquois peoples. In the 1720s, a number of Native American groups began to migrate into the Ohio Country from the east, driven by pressure from encroaching European colonists. By 1724, Delaware Indians had established the village of Kittanning on the Allegheny River in present-day western Pennsylvania. With them came those Shawnee who had historically expanded further to

240-656: A series of measures to increase tax revenue from the colonies. Parliament believed that these acts, such as the Stamp Act 1765 and the Townshend Acts of 1767, were legitimate means of having the colonies pay their fair share of the costs of maintaining the British Empire . Although protests led to the repeal of the Stamp and Townshend Acts, Parliament adhered to the position that it had the right to legislate for

288-553: A view expressed by the slogan " No taxation without representation ". After the Townshend Acts, some colonial essayists took this line of thinking even further, and began to question whether Parliament had any legitimate jurisdiction in the colonies at all. This question of the extent of Parliament's sovereignty in the colonies was the issue underlying what became the American Revolution. On 16 December 1773,

336-645: The American Revolutionary War began at Lexington and Concord . Ohio Country The Ohio Country ( Ohio Territory , Ohio Valley ) was a name used for a loosely defined region of colonial North America west of the Appalachian Mountains and south of Lake Erie . Control of the territory and the region's fur trade was disputed in the 17th century by the Iroquois, Huron, Algonquin, other Native American tribes, and France . New France claimed this area as part of

384-641: The First Continental Congress . The Continental Congress created the Continental Association , an agreement to boycott British goods. Additionally, it was decided that if the Intolerable Acts were not reversed after a year, goods were to stop being exported to Great Britain as well. The Congress also pledged to support Massachusetts in case of attack, which meant that all of the colonies would become involved when

432-664: The Insufferable Acts or Coercive Acts, were a series of five punitive laws passed by the British Parliament in 1774 after the Boston Tea Party . The laws aimed to punish Massachusetts colonists for their defiance in the Tea Party protest of the Tea Act , a tax measure enacted by Parliament in May 1773. In Great Britain, these laws were referred to as the Coercive Acts . They were a key development leading to

480-573: The Northwest Indian War . Considered highly desirable, the area was subject to the overlapping and conflicting territorial ambitions of several eastern states: After negotiation with the federal government, these states ceded their claims to the United States between 1780 and 1786. In July 1787, most of Ohio Country, the southern peninsula of what is today the state of Michigan, and eastern Illinois Country were incorporated as

528-882: The Omaha and Ponca . Around 1660, during a conflict known as the Beaver Wars , the Iroquois and allied tribes seized control of the Ohio Country, driving out the Shawnee and Siouan peoples. Those tribes mostly moved further northwest and west, with several eventually settling west of the Mississippi River. In the east, the Iroquois (or Haudenosaunee ) conquered and absorbed the Erie (who also spoke an Iroquoian language ) during this time. The Ohio Country, however, remained largely uninhabited for decades, used primarily as

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576-715: The Raleigh Tavern on May 27 and called for Virginia's counties to elect delegates to a special convention to meet in August. George Washington and Charles Broadwater were elected as Fairfax County's representatives to the convention. On July 5, 1774, Washington and others from Fairfax County met in Alexandria, Virginia , to appoint a committee to draft a statement that would, as Washington described it, "define our Constitutional Rights." The statement would also formally serve as instructions to Fairfax County's delegates to

624-757: The Thirteen Colonies . The British Parliament hoped these punitive measures would, by making an example of Massachusetts, reverse the trend of colonial resistance to parliamentary authority that had begun with the Sugar Act 1764 . A fifth act, the Quebec Act , enlarged the boundaries of what was then the Province of Quebec notably southwestward into the Ohio Country and other future mid-western states, and instituted reforms generally favorable to

672-633: The Tuscarora , an Iroquoian-speaking tribe from the Carolinas , completed a migration to the area and were allowed to settle near the lands of the Oneida . They were considered cousins to the Iroquois and became the sixth nation in the confederacy. In the late 1740s and the second half of the 18th century, the British and French angled for control of the territory. The English intended to gain control of

720-466: The francophone Catholic inhabitants of the region. Although unrelated to the other four Acts, it was passed in the same legislative session and seen by the colonists as one of the Intolerable Acts. The Patriots viewed the acts as an arbitrary violation of the rights of Massachusetts, and in September 1774 they organized the First Continental Congress to coordinate a protest. As tensions escalated,

768-542: The British Empire, but they insisted that "we will use every means which Heaven hath given us to prevent our becoming its slaves." The short document provided the following: The Resolves directed Washington and Broadwater to present the resolutions to the Virginia Convention. The Fairfax Resolves, like the many other similar resolutions passed in county meetings throughout the colonies, summarized

816-776: The British in a war council at Chalawgatha , a Shawnee village located along the Little Miami River , where they planned what was to become a successful rout of the Americans two weeks later at the Battle of Blue Licks . In 1783, following the Treaty of Paris in which America had gained its independence, Britain ceded its claims over the area to the new United States. The new federal government immediately opened this area to settlement by American pioneers , considering it unorganized territory. The Ohio Country quickly became one of

864-734: The French who were more interested in hunting in the region and were not actively settling the area as was their British colonial rivals. Armed with supplies and guns from the French, the Indians launched raids against their enemies via the Kittanning Path east of the Alleghenies. After they destroyed Fort Granville in the summer of 1756, Pennsylvania's Proprietary Governor John Penn ordered Captain John Armstrong to destroy

912-665: The Port Act because it unilaterally took away Massachusetts' charter and brought it under control of the British government. Under the terms of the Government Act, almost all positions in the colonial government were to be appointed by the governor, Parliament, or the king. The act also severely limited town meetings in Massachusetts to one per year, unless the governor called for one. Colonists outside Massachusetts feared that their governments could now also be changed by

960-481: The Quartering Act allowed troops to be billeted in occupied private homes, historian David Ammerman's 1974 study claimed that this is a myth, and that the act only permitted troops to be quartered in unoccupied buildings. Although unrelated to the aforementioned Acts, the Quebec Act , passed in the same parliamentary session, was considered by the colonists to be one of the Intolerable Acts. The Act expanded

1008-703: The Revolutionary War broke out in April 1775, leading to the declaration of an independent United States of America in July 1776. Relations between the Thirteen Colonies and the British Parliament slowly but steadily worsened after the end of the Seven Years' War (French and Indian War) in 1763. The war had plunged the British government deep into debt, and so the British Parliament enacted

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1056-623: The Shawnee villages west of the Alleghenies, hoping to put an end to their raiding activities. Meanwhile, other British and colonial forces drove the French from Fort Duquesne . They built Fort Pitt at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers that form the Ohio River. After being defeated by Britain, France ceded their claims to the entire Ohio Country in the 1763 Treaty of Paris . They had done so, however, without consulting their Native American allies who—in many cases—continued

1104-606: The Virginia Convention. The committee wrote a draft that was, in all likelihood, primarily the work of George Mason. Mason and Washington met at Washington's Mount Vernon home on July 17, and perhaps revised the resolutions. The following day in Alexandria, the Fairfax Resolves were endorsed in a meeting of freeholders chaired by Washington. In the Resolves, the freeholders expressed a desire to remain subjects of

1152-609: The Virginia legislature organized a nominal civil government over the area. They called this first official territory Illinois County, Virginia . It encompassed all of the lands lying west and north of the Ohio River to which Virginia had previously laid claim. The high water mark of the Native American struggle to retain control of the region was in 1782, when the Ohio Valley Indian Nations met with

1200-542: The act (the Loudoun and Fairfax resolves ) was swift, and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia described the acts as "a most wicked System for destroying the liberty of America". The citizens of Boston viewed the Intolerable Acts as unnecessary and cruel punishment, further inflaming hatred toward Britain. Even more Bostonians turned against British rule. Great Britain hoped that the Intolerable Acts would isolate radicals in Massachusetts and cause American colonists to concede

1248-672: The administrative district of La Louisiane . France and Britain fought the French and Indian War over this area in the mid-18th century as the North American front of their Seven Years' War (1756–1763). Following the British victory, France ceded its territory east of the Mississippi River to the British Empire in the 1763 Treaty of Paris . During the following decades, several minor frontier wars, including Pontiac's Rebellion and Lord Dunmore's War , were fought in

1296-512: The area by sheer number of settlers on the ground. In 1749, The Crown through the government of the Colony of Virginia granted the Ohio Company a beneficial deal on this territory on the condition that it be settled by colonists from the Thirteen Colonies . With the arrival of Europeans to America, both Great Britain and France had claimed the territory and sent fur traders into

1344-549: The area to do business with the Ohio Country Indians. The Iroquois League also claimed the region by right of conquest. The rivalry among the two European nations, the Iroquois nations, and the Ohio valley Indian tribes for control of the region played an important part in the French and Indian War that lasted from 1754 through 1760. Having initially remained neutral, eventually the Ohio Country Indians largely sided with

1392-478: The authority of Parliament over their elected assemblies. The calculated risk backfired: the harshness of some of the acts made it difficult for colonial moderates to speak in favor of Parliament. Instead, the acts only served to distance the colonies from the Crown, create sympathy for Massachusetts and encourage colonists from the otherwise diverse colonies to form committees of correspondence which sent delegates to

1440-558: The colonies "in all cases whatsoever" in the Declaratory Act of 1766. Many colonists argued that under the unwritten British constitution , a British subject's property could not be taken from him (in the form of taxes) without his consent (in the form of representation in government). Therefore, because the colonies were not directly represented in Parliament, it followed that Parliament had no right to levy taxes upon them,

1488-589: The colonists as competitors to their resources and a threat to their way of life. Because of this, the Shawnee and other Indian tribes of the Ohio Country, chose to side with the British against the American colonists during the American Revolutionary War. They hoped to expel the colonists permanently from their lands. In 1778, after several Patriot military victories in the region by an expeditionary force led by General George Rogers Clark ,

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1536-469: The east. Other eastern bands of the scattered Shawnee tribe began to return to the Ohio Country in the decades that followed. A number of Seneca and other Iroquois peoples also migrated to the Ohio Country, moving away from the Anglo-French rivalries and warfare south of Lake Ontario . The Seneca were the westernmost of the original Five Nations of the Iroquois centered in western New York. In 1722,

1584-580: The federal government by 1787, and it became part of the larger, organized Territory Northwest of the River Ohio . Most of the former areas north-west of the Ohio River were eventually organized as the state of Ohio , admitted to the Union in 1803. In the 17th century, the area north of the Ohio River was occupied by the Algonquian -speaking Shawnee and some Siouan language -speaking tribes, such as

1632-435: The feelings of many colonists in mid-1774 — a conviction that their constitutional rights were being violated by British policies. The Resolves also marked a step forward in inter-colonial cooperation as more Americans began to realize that a threat against one colony was a threat against all. Finally, political rivalries in Virginia were muted to some degree, allowing such figures as Washington and Mason to work productively with

1680-497: The fight against the colonial frontiersmen. Colonies such as Pennsylvania , Virginia , New York , and Connecticut claimed some of the westward lands as had been granted by their original charters. The area, however, was officially closed to European settlement by the Royal Proclamation of 1763 , an attempt to preserve the western lands as territory exclusively set aside for use by Native American peoples. By enacting

1728-607: The following year, in 1775. Despite the Crown's actions limiting westward expansion, frontiersmen from the Virginia and Pennsylvania colonies had migrated across the Allegheny Mountains for over a decade since the Proclamation. This eventually led them into conflict with the Shawnee tribes that claimed the area as their hunting grounds. The Shawnee, who referred to the settlers as the ' long knives ', viewed

1776-582: The legislative fiat of Parliament. The Administration of Justice Act allowed the royal governor to order trials of accused royal officials to take place in Great Britain or elsewhere within the Empire if he decided that the defendant could not get a fair trial in Massachusetts. Although the act stipulated for witnesses to be reimbursed after having traveled at their own expense across the Atlantic, it

1824-408: The lenient provisions granted to their erstwhile enemies whom they had fought hard against during the French and Indian War . Many colonists saw the Intolerable Acts as a violation of their constitutional rights , their natural rights , and their colonial charters. They, therefore, viewed the acts as a threat to the liberties of all of British America, not just Massachusetts. Legislation denouncing

1872-406: The more radical Patrick Henry , Richard Henry Lee and others. The non-importation protest called for in the Resolves recalled, with some modifications, the Virginia Association , which in turn provided the pattern for the Continental Association which was passed by the First Continental Congress on October 20, 1774. Coercive Acts The Intolerable Acts , sometimes referred to as

1920-545: The most desirable locations for Trans-Appalachian settlements, in particular among veterans of the Revolutionary War, who were often granted land in lieu of pay for their military service during the war. In the treaties of Fort Stanwix (late 1784) and Fort McIntosh (early 1785), the United States fixed boundaries between territory open to settlement and the native tribal lands. The Shawnee and other tribes , however, continued to resist American encroachment into their historic hunting grounds. This resistance eventually led to

1968-413: The outbreak of the American Revolutionary War in April 1775. Four acts were enacted by Parliament in early 1774 in direct response to the Boston Tea Party of 16 December 1773: Boston Port, Massachusetts Government, Impartial Administration of Justice, and Quartering Acts. The acts took away self-governance and rights that Massachusetts had enjoyed since its founding, triggering outrage and indignation in

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2016-424: The programme in the House of Commons , saying: The Americans have tarred and feathered your subjects, plundered your merchants, burnt your ships, denied all obedience to your laws and authority; yet so clement and so long forbearing has our conduct been that it is incumbent on us now to take a different course. Whatever may be the consequences, we must risk something; if we do not, all is over. The Boston Port Act

2064-426: The territory of the Province of Quebec into the Great Lakes region and much of what is now the Midwestern United States , which appeared to void the land claims of the Ohio Company on the region. The guarantee of free practice of Catholicism, the majority religion in Canada, was seen by colonists as an "establishment" of the faith in the colonies which were overwhelmingly Protestant. Furthermore, colonists resented

2112-435: The territory. In 1783, the Ohio Country became unorganized U.S. territory under the Treaty of Paris that officially ended the American Revolutionary War and became one of the first American frontier regions of the United States. Several of the original U.S. states had overlapping claims to portions of it , based on historical royal and colonial charters . The states' claims were largely extinguished after negotiations with

2160-405: The treaty, the British Crown no longer recognized prior claims that the colonies made on this territory. On June 22, 1774, Parliament in England passed the Quebec Act , which annexed the region to the Province of Quebec . Colonists in the Thirteen Colonies considered this one of the Intolerable Acts that contributed to the call for American Revolution the following year, which began in earnest

2208-432: Was added a small tax. This angered the colonists. News of the Boston Tea Party reached England in January 1774. Parliament responded by passing four laws. Three of the laws were intended to directly punish Massachusetts. This was for the destruction of private property, to restore British authority in Massachusetts, and to otherwise reform colonial government in America. On 22 April 1774, Prime Minister Lord North defended

2256-402: Was not stipulated that this would include reimbursement for lost earnings during the period for which they would be unable to work, leaving few with the ability to testify. George Washington called this the "Murder Act" because he believed that it allowed officials to harass colonists and then escape justice. Many colonists believed the act was unnecessary because British soldiers had been given

2304-508: Was the first of the laws passed in 1774 in response to the Boston Tea Party. It closed the port of Boston until the colonists paid for the destroyed tea and the king was satisfied that order had been restored. Colonists objected that the Port Act punished all of Boston rather than just the individuals who had destroyed the tea, and that they were being punished without having been given an opportunity to testify in their own defense. The Massachusetts Government Act provoked even more outrage than

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