Intolerable Acts in the context of "Continental Association"

The American Revolution (1765–1783) was a political conflict involving the Thirteen Colonies and Great Britain, culminating in the American Revolutionary War and the independence of the colonies as the United States. The Second Continental Congress established the Continental Army and appointed George Washington as its commander-in-chief in 1775. The following year, the Congress unanimously adopted the Declaration of Independence. Throughout most of the war, the outcome appeared uncertain. However, in 1781, a decisive victory by Washington and the Continental Army in the Siege of Yorktown led King George III and the British to negotiate the cessation of colonial rule and the acknowledgment of American independence, formalized in the Treaty of Paris in 1783.

Discontent with colonial rule began shortly after the French and Indian War in 1763. Even though the colonies had fought in and supported the war, the British Parliament imposed new taxes to compensate for wartime costs and transferred control of the colonies' western lands to British officials in Montreal. Representatives from several colonies convened the Stamp Act Congress in 1765; its "Declaration of Rights and Grievances" argued that taxation without representation violated their rights as Englishmen. In 1767, tensions flared again following British Parliament's passage of the Townshend Acts. In an effort to quell the mounting rebellion, King George III deployed British troops to Boston, where they killed protesters in the Boston Massacre in 1770. In December 1773, Sons of Liberty activists instigated the Boston Tea Party, during which they dumped chests of tea owned by the British East India Company into Boston Harbor. London responded by enacting a series of punitive laws, which effectively ended self-government in Massachusetts but also intensified the revolutionary cause.

The American Revolutionary War (April 19, 1775 – September 3, 1783), also known as the Revolutionary War or American War of Independence, was the armed conflict that comprised the final eight years of the broader American Revolution, in which American Patriot forces organized as the Continental Army and commanded by George Washington defeated the British Army. The conflict was fought in North America, the Caribbean, and the Atlantic Ocean. The war's outcome seemed uncertain for most of the war, but Washington and the Continental Army's decisive victory in the Siege of Yorktown in 1781 led King George III and the Kingdom of Great Britain to negotiate an end to the war. In 1783, in the Treaty of Paris, the British monarchy acknowledged the independence of the Thirteen Colonies, leading to the establishment of the United States as an independent and sovereign nation.

In 1763, after the British Empire gained dominance in North America following its victory over the French in the Seven Years' War, tensions and disputes began escalating between the British and the Thirteen Colonies, especially following passage of Stamp and Townshend Acts. The British Army responded by seeking to occupy Boston militarily, leading to the Boston Massacre on March 5, 1770. In mid-1774, with tensions escalating even further between the British Army and the colonies, the British Parliament imposed the Intolerable Acts, an attempt to disarm Americans, leading to the Battles of Lexington and Concord in April 1775, the first battles of the Revolutionary War. In June 1775, the Second Continental Congress voted to incorporate colonial-based Patriot militias into a central military, the Continental Army, and unanimously appointed Washington its commander-in-chief. Two months later, in August 1775, the British Parliament declared the colonies to be in a state of rebellion. In July 1776, the Second Continental Congress formalized the war, passing the Lee Resolution on July 2, and, two days later, unanimously adopting the Declaration of Independence, on July 4.

John Jay (December 23 [O.S. December 12], 1745 – May 17, 1829) was an American statesman, diplomat, signatory of the Treaty of Paris, and a Founding Father of the United States. He served from 1789 to 1795 as the first chief justice of the United States and from 1795 to 1801 as the second governor of New York. Jay directed U.S. foreign policy for much of the 1780s and was an important leader of the Federalist Party after the ratification of the United States Constitution in 1788.

Jay was born into a wealthy family of merchants and New York City government officials of French Huguenot and Dutch descent. He became a lawyer and joined the New York Committee of Correspondence, organizing American opposition to British policies such as the Intolerable Acts in the leadup to the American Revolution. Jay was elected to the First Continental Congress, where he signed the Continental Association, and to the Second Continental Congress, where he served as its president. From 1779 to 1782, Jay served as the ambassador to Spain; he persuaded Spain to provide financial aid to the fledgling United States. He also served as a negotiator of the Treaty of Paris, in which Britain recognized American independence. Following the end of the war, Jay served as Secretary of Foreign Affairs, directing United States foreign policy under the Articles of Confederation government. He also served as the first secretary of state on an interim basis.

New England is a region consisting of six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York to the west and by the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick to the northeast and Quebec to the north. The Gulf of Maine and Atlantic Ocean are to the east and southeast, and Long Island Sound is to the southwest. Boston is New England's largest city and the capital of Massachusetts. Greater Boston, comprising the Boston–Worcester–Providence Combined Statistical Area, houses more than half of New England's population; this area includes Worcester, Massachusetts, the second-largest city in New England; Manchester, New Hampshire, the largest city in New Hampshire; and Providence, Rhode Island, the capital of and largest city in Rhode Island. In 1620, the Pilgrims established Plymouth Colony, the second successful settlement in British America after the Jamestown Settlement in Virginia, founded in 1607. Ten years later, Puritans established Massachusetts Bay Colony north of Plymouth Colony. Over the next 126 years, people in the region fought in four French and Indian Wars until the English colonists and their Iroquois allies defeated the French and their Algonquian allies.

In the late 18th century, political leaders from the New England colonies initiated resistance to Britain's taxes without the consent of the colonists. Residents of Rhode Island captured and burned a British Royal Navy ship which was enforcing unpopular trade restrictions, and residents of Boston threw British tea into the harbor. Britain responded with a series of punitive laws stripping Massachusetts of self-government which the colonists called the "Intolerable Acts". These confrontations led to the first battles of the American Revolutionary War in 1775 and the expulsion of the British authorities from the region in spring 1776. The region played a prominent role in the movement to abolish slavery in the United States, and it was the first region of the U.S. transformed by the Industrial Revolution, initially centered on the Blackstone and Merrimack river valleys.

The First Continental Congress was a meeting of delegates of twelve of the Thirteen Colonies (Georgia did not attend) held from September 5 to October 26, 1774, at Carpenters' Hall in Philadelphia at the beginning of the American Revolution. The meeting was organized by the delegates after the British Navy implemented a blockade of Boston Harbor and the Parliament of Great Britain passed the punitive Intolerable Acts in response to the Boston Tea Party.

During the opening weeks of the Congress, the delegates conducted a spirited discussion about how the colonies could collectively respond to the British government's coercive actions, and they worked to make a common cause. As a prelude to its decisions, the Congress's first action was the adoption of the Suffolk Resolves, a measure drawn up by several counties in Massachusetts that included a declaration of grievances, called for a trade boycott of British goods, and urged each colony to set up and train its own militia. A less radical plan was then proposed to create a Union of Great Britain and the Colonies, but the delegates tabled the measure and later struck it from the record of their proceedings.

The land which became the United States was inhabited by Native Americans for tens of thousands of years; their descendants include but may not be limited to 574 federally recognized tribes. The history of the present-day United States began in 1607 with the establishment of Jamestown in modern-day Virginia by settlers who arrived from the Kingdom of England, and the landing of the Mayflower by English pilgrims to Plymouth in 1620. In the late 15th century, European colonization began and largely decimated Indigenous societies through wars and epidemics. By the 1760s, the Thirteen Colonies, then part of British America and the Kingdom of Great Britain, were established. The Southern Colonies built an agricultural system on slave labor and enslaving millions from Africa. After the British victory over the Kingdom of France in the French and Indian Wars, Parliament imposed a series of taxes and issued the Intolerable Acts on the colonies in 1773, which were designed to end self-governance. Tensions between the colonies and British authorities subsequently intensified, leading to the Revolutionary War, which commenced with the Battles of Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775. In June 1775, the Second Continental Congress established the Continental Army and unanimously selected George Washington as its commander-in-chief. The following year, on July 4, 1776, the Second Continental Congress unanimously declared its independence, issuing the Declaration of Independence. On September 3, 1783, in the Treaty of Paris, the British acknowledged the independence and sovereignty of the Thirteen Colonies, leading to the establishment of the United States. On September 17, 1787, the U.S. Constitution was signed by a majority of delegates, and was later ratified by the Thirteen Colonies, leading to the first modern U.S. government.

In the 1788-89 presidential election, Washington was elected the nation's first U.S. president. Along with his Treasury Secretary, Alexander Hamilton, Washington sought to create a relatively stronger central government than that favored by other founders, including Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. On March 4, 1789, the new nation debated, adopted, and ratified the U.S. Constitution, which is now the oldest and longest-standing written and codified national constitution in the world. In 1791, a Bill of Rights was added to guarantee inalienable rights. In 1803, Jefferson, then serving as the nation's third president, negotiated the Louisiana Purchase, which doubled the size of the country. Encouraged by available, inexpensive land, and the notion of manifest destiny, the country underwent westward expansion in a project of settler colonialism marked by a series of conflicts with the continent's indigenous inhabitants. The most notable advocate of manifest destiny was President James K. Polk, who annexed Texas in 1845, and declared war on Mexico the next year. An overwhelming U.S. victory in the Mexican-American War led to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, where the U.S. acquired much of the American Southwest from Mexico. Whether or not slavery should be legal in the expanded territories was an issue of national contention, and led to increasing tensions over slavery.

The Battles of Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775, were the first major military actions between the British Army and Patriot militias from British America's Thirteen Colonies during the American Revolutionary War. The opposing forces fought day-long running battles in Middlesex County in the Province of Massachusetts Bay, in the towns of Lexington, Concord, Lincoln, Menotomy (present-day Arlington), and Cambridge.

After the Boston Tea Party (1773), the British Parliament passed the Intolerable Acts (early 1774), including the restrictive Massachusetts Government Act. Patriot (Colonial) leaders in Suffolk County, Massachusetts, adopted the Suffolk Resolves in resistance to the acts. The leaders formed a Patriot provisional government, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, and called for local militias to train for possible hostilities. The Provincial Congress effectively controlled the colony outside of Boston. On September 17, the First Continental Congress endorsed the Suffolk Resolves. In response, in February 1775, the British government declared Massachusetts to be in a state of rebellion.

The American Revolution (1765–1783) was a political conflict involving the Thirteen Colonies and Great Britain, that began as a rebellion demanding reform and evolved into a revolution that resulted in a complete separation that entirely replaced the social and political order, as an outcome of the American Revolutionary War and the resulting sovereign independence of the former colonies as the United States. The Second Continental Congress established the Continental Army and appointed George Washington as its commander-in-chief in 1775. The following year, the Congress unanimously adopted the Declaration of Independence. Throughout most of the war, the outcome appeared uncertain. However, in 1781, a decisive victory by Washington and the Continental Army in the Siege of Yorktown led King George III and the British to negotiate the cessation of colonial rule and the acknowledgment of American independence, formalized in the Treaty of Paris in 1783.

Discontent with colonial rule began shortly after the French and Indian War in 1763. Even though the colonies had fought in and supported the war directly with funds and materiel, the British Parliament imposed new taxes to ostensibly compensate for wartime costs and transferred control of the colonies' western lands to British officials in Montreal. Representatives from several colonies convened the Stamp Act Congress in 1765; its "Declaration of Rights and Grievances" argued in part that this taxation without representation violated their rights as Englishmen. In 1767, tensions flared again following British Parliament's passage of the Townshend Acts. In an effort to quell the mounting rebellion, King George III deployed British troops to Boston, where they killed antagonists in the Boston Massacre in 1770. In December 1773, the underground Sons of Liberty orchestrated the Boston Tea Party, during which they dumped chests of taxed tea owned by the British East India Company into Boston Harbor. Parliament responded by enacting a series of punitive laws, which effectively ended self-government in Massachusetts but also intensified support for the revolutionary cause.