In 1774, Parliament passed a number of acts deemed by the Ten Colonies the Intolerable Acts. Passed in the same year was the Southern America Act of 1774, removing the restrictions on expansion of the Southern American Colonies, deemed more trustworthy then the Middle Colonies, into the region South of the Ohio, West of the Appalachians, and East of the Mississippi.
While the act did only a small amount to assuage the anger felt by Virginia over the Quebec Act of the same year, which assigned land long claimed by Virginia to the territory north of the Ohio to Quebec, it did help sway many on the fence to the British cause in the rest of the Southern Colonies. While rebel delegations were sent to the Continental Congress from these states, only the Virginian and South Carolinian delegations were sanctioned by their state legislatures.