Sovereign Rights

When news of the first measures that came to be known as the Coercive Acts reached New York City, the Sons of Liberty sprang to action, calling a large public meeting in Fraunces Tavern. Moderates within the city, fearing that this radical group would take things too far by imposing an embargo that would cripple the finances of local merchants, schemed to coopt the proceedings. Radicals ...

The Boston Port Act was passed by the Parliament of Great Britain March 31, 1774. The Boston Port Act was designed to punish the inhabitants of Boston, Massachusetts for the incident that would become known as the Boston Tea Party. The Port Act was one of a series of British Laws referred to as the Intolerable Acts passed by the Parliament of Great Britain 1774. The Boston Port ...

On the 4th anniversary of the Boston Massacre, 1774, John Hancock, who would be the first to sign the Declaration of Independence, stated: “Will not a well-disciplined militia afford you ample security against foreign foes? We want not courage; it is discipline alone in which we are exceeded by the most formidable troops that ever trod the earth… A well-disciplined militia is a safe, an honorable guard ...

The Boston Massacre takes place in front of the Customs House on King Street where there were 4,000 British troops (following the Townshend Acts of 1767) and about 20,000 residents at the time of the incident. The statement issued by members of the Sons of Liberty, including Samuel Adams and John Hancock, painted the event as a malicious and unprovoked slaughter in retaliation. The incident escalated ...

The British soldiers (redcoats) arrive in Boston under martial law to punish and control the defiant Americans in Boston who deemed the taxes implemented as unconstitutional since the Americans had no representation in Parliament to vote or voice their opinions. The British kept approximately 2000 redcoats in and around Boston. The troops disembarked and initially encamped on the Boston Commons, as well as, in the Court ...

Silence Dogood, No. 8 Printed in The New-England Courant, July 9, 1722. On June 11 the Courant had insinuated that the Massachusetts authorities were not making proper exertions to capture a pirate vessel reported to be off the coast.3 Exasperated by this “High Affront,” the latest of many, the General Court the next day ordered James Franklin to be confined in jail for the remainder of the ...

Slavery is not simply a historical phenomenon.. It persists to this day in modern forms, such as trafficking. Quakers have opposed it from very early on and still do. In the first few years after the Quaker movement began in 1652, slavery would have been outside the experience of most Quakers, as it was not much practiced in Britain. But in British colonies in the Caribbean ...

Two of Charles I advisers drafted and persuaded the king to issue a document, His Majesty’s Answer to the Nineteen Propositions of Both Houses of Parliament, in which the king, eager to dismiss his image as a monarch, declared that England was a mixed government and not a condescending monarchy. The Answer was a critical turning point in constitutional history because in it the king proclaimed that ...

In 1638, John Lilburne was arrested upon his return from Holland and put on secret trial by the Star Chamber of Charles I. His crime? The writing and distribution of seditious pamphlets that skewered the legitimacy of the monarchy and challenged the primacy of the high prelates of the Church of England. He was promptly convicted of publishing writing of “dangerous consequence and evil effect.” For ...

The Petition of Right (see document) is a statement of the objectives of the 1628 English legal reform movement that led to the Civil War and deposing of Charles I in 1649. One of England's most famous Constitutional documents, it expresses many of the ideals that later led to the American Revolution. It was written by Parliament as an objection to an overreach of authority by King ...