Boston Port Act of 1774: Black Mourning Cloth and a Blockade That Backfired

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On June 1, 1774, Boston's church bells tolled a death knell, flags flew at half mast and houses were draped in black, not for a person but for a law. The Boston Port Act, also recorded as the Trade Act 1774, was Parliament's answer to the Boston Tea Party of December 16, 1773. After King George III accused the colonists on March 7 of trying to subvert the British Constitution, Lord North introduced the port bill on March 18. It barred every ship from landing, loading or discharging goods in Boston until the town paid the King's Treasury for lost customs duties and paid the East India Company for the destroyed tea. Even some of America's friends in Parliament called the measure moderate and reasonable, arguing that Boston held the keys to its own prison.

Edmund Burke, Isaac Barre and Thomas Pownall warned against it, but the act became law on March 31, 1774, passing the Commons without a division and the Lords unanimously. Royal Navy warships patrolled the harbor mouth, troops under Thomas Gage filled the streets, the colonial government moved to Salem and Marblehead became the port of entry. Instead of isolating Boston, the act gave thirteen quarreling colonies a shared cause. Relief poured in, Boston leaders boasted their town would become the chief grain port of America, and delegates met at the First Continental Congress in Philadelphia on September 5, 1774. The act was finally repealed on January 1, 1776, superseded by the Prohibitory Act.

• The act closed the port to every vessel regardless of its business, from large merchant ships to local fishermen.
• British troops were fed by military supply ships exempt from the ban while civilian trade was cut off.
• Colonists objected that whole communities faced starvation and military rule with no trial, jury or chance to make a defense.
• Grain for the relief of Boston arrived from as far away as South Carolina.
• Section 42 of the Prohibitory Act replaced the Boston blockade with a naval blockade of the entire American coast and declared the colonies in rebellion.