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Liberty's Kids 101 - The Boston Tea Party (Pilot, Part I)

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"Friends! Brethren! Countrymen!-That worst of plagues, the detested tea, shipped for this port by the East India Company, is now arrived in the harbor."
The day the colonists dumped thousand of pounds of tea into Boston Harbor turned out to be one of the most important in American history. Dubbed the Boston Tea Party, this act of protest was both defiant and illegal. It sent a message to the British government that the colonists were fed up with unfair treatment-and it lit the fuse that ignited the American Revolution.
So what in the world was so important about tea?
In colonial times, Boston was the capital of the Massachusetts Bay colony, one of the original thirteen American colonies. About 16,000 people lived there, making Boston one of the biggest colonial towns and most important ports. Boston's shores were lined with wharves and warehouses. The winding streets were dotted with brick buildings-stores, workshops, newspaper offices, churches, meeting halls, homes, schools, and taverns.

Like all the colonies, Massachusetts was part of the British Empire. A royal governor appointed by the king was the head honcho in Massachusetts, but the colonists also elected their own assembly to pass local laws and set taxes. Although the colonists were allowed some self-government, they were subject to lots of restrictions under British law. For example, they were only allowed to trade goods with Britain.

Under this system, the colonists pushed for more freedom and often the British government pushed back. In 1765, the British Parliament gave the colonists a particularly hard push, passing the Stamp Act, which required a direct tax be paid on every piece of paper used for printing in the colonies-newspapers, legal contracts, licenses, even playing cards. The colonists had never had to pay a tax like this before. And they were especially angry because they didn't have any say in the matter. Even though they had their own local assemblies, the colonists weren't allowed to elect representatives to Parliament.

The colonists protested with the slogan, "No Taxation Without Representation," and demonstrations against the Stamp Act sometimes led to violence, with tax collectors being physically intimidated.

In Boston and New York, the Sons of Liberty was formed to organize formal opposition to the Stamp Act. Samuel Adams, a Boston politician, was one of the most outspoken leaders.

The Sons of Liberty organized meetings; wrote, spoke, and published about unfair policies of the British government; and organized secret "committees of correspondence." These committees were devoted to informing other towns and colonies about protest activities in an effort to create unity between all the colonies. This idea spread until all 13 colonies had secret committees that opposed unfair British laws.

Parliament repealed the Stamp Act, but quickly replaced it with the Townshend Acts in 1767. The Townshend Acts required the colonists to pay import taxes-called "duties"-on glass, lead, paint, paper, and tea.

The colonists rebelled against these taxes by organizing boycotts. Since they couldn't vote down the taxes, they would refuse to buy tea and the other items being taxed.

Drinking tea was a big part of people's social lives in colonial America, so boycotting tea was actually a big deal. However, many colonists decided they would rather give up tea than give up their rights. Others drank untaxed tea that was smuggled into the colonies from Holland-also in defiance of British laws.

In response to the Townshend Acts, Samuel Adams wrote a protest letter about taxation without representation. The protest letter was circulated to the other colonies and adopted by the Massachusetts House of Representatives. To punish the colony for this protest, the British government ordered that the Massachusetts legislature be disbanded. This dramatically increased the tension, and the king sent warships and 2,000 troops to Boston to enforce the order.

The people of Boston were not happy their town was occupied by a force of red-coated British soldiers. The tension grew until it finally exploded in violence on March 5, 1770. A crowd of angry Bostonians taunted and threw things at a small group of redcoats, and the soldiers shot at them, killing five Bostonians. This incident was dubbed the Boston Massacre.

Not long after the Boston Massacre, the Townshend Acts were repealed. Parliament stopped charging tax on most goods shipped to the colonies. But they kept the tax on tea, just to make sure the colonists knew that the members of Parliament and the King of England were still boss. And the British troops remained in Boston.

Parliament also passed the Tea Act in 1763. This created a tea monopoly, which made the colonists furious. The British East India Company was given the exclusive right to ship tea directly to the American colonies. Only a few hand-picked merchants in the colonies could sell the tea. And guess who the agents for the tea were in Boston? Yep, they were the sons of the colony's royal governor and a few other loyalists.

Patriots in Boston demanded that these merchants give up their commissions to sell tea-and when the merchants refused, the patriots responded with threats. A Boston mob even attacked the home of one of the merchants. Meanwhile, the Sons of Liberty were meeting nearly every day to discuss the Tea Crisis.

On November 28, 1763, the Dartmouth, the first of three ships carrying tea for the British East India Company sailed into Boston. Late that night, a notice was posted all over town by the Sons of Liberty that read, "Friends! Brethren! Countrymen!-That worst of plagues, the detested tea, shipped for this port by the East India Company, is now arrived in the harbor." The notice invited everyone to a big meeting in the morning.

The town meeting turned out to be epic. About 5,000 people from Boston and surrounding towns packed into the Old South Meeting House. The attendees called themselves the Body of the People. They voted that the tea should be sent back to England and they sent a guard to prevent the tea from being unloaded.

The meeting lasted for two days, and on the second day, the sheriff showed up with a proclamation from the royal governor. It stated that the people were "openly violating... the good and wholesome laws of the province." They were ordered to "disperse and cease all further unlawful proceedings." The Body of the People greeted the proclamation with hissing sounds and immediately voted to ignore the order to disperse.

Over the next few days, two more ships carrying tea sailed into Boston Harbor, the Beaver and the Eleanor. All their other cargo was unloaded, but the tea remained on the ships. And the ships remained in the harbor under guard.

Twenty days after the Dartmouth arrived was the deadline for paying the tea tax. The owner of the Dartmouth, Francis Rotch, was caught in the middle between the patriots and loyalists. The Body of the People wouldn't let him unload the tea, but if he left the harbor with the tea still onboard, he worried the Dartmouth would be impounded by British warships-or worse that the ship would be fired on with cannons. Could he get a pass from the royal governor to take the tea back to England? On the morning of December 16, 1773, the Body of the People agreed to let Rotch make the attempt.

It took all day for Rotch to ride out to see the royal governor-and when he finally returned to the meeting, it was after dark. His trip had been a failure. The royal governor, he told the crowd, had refused to let the Dartmouth leave with the tea still onboard. Although the town meeting officially continued, there was a distinct change in the atmosphere.

Samuel Adams is said to have told the crowd, "This meeting can do nothing more to save the country." Some historians believe Adams' statement was a signal to put a secret plan in motion. Within a short time, a group of men dressed up as Mohawk Indians walked passed the meeting house and several attendees followed them. The men carried axes, wore feathered bonnets, and had covered their faces in coal dust so that they could not be recognized.

They walked down to the wharf where the tea ships were docked. Although we call this event the "Tea Party" today, it wasn't considered a party then-it was dead serious. The participants knew they were breaking the law and defying the king. They swore an oath of secrecy about their participation, because if anyone found out who they were, there would be serious consequences.

What happened next was peaceful and smoothly executed. About 100 people in disguises boarded the three ships. Over the next three hours, 342 crates, holding 90,000 pounds of tea, were removed from the ships' holds and broken open with axes. The loose-leaf tea in the crates was then dumped into the harbor. Many years later, one of the participants said they had made a "giant cup of tea for the fishes." None of the ships was vandalized or damaged-and after the tea was dumped, the participants melted back into the night.

What was the British response to the Boston Tea Party? The British government passed a series of laws meant to punish and control the colonists. These laws were called the " Coercive Acts " by the British and the "Intolerable Acts" by the colonists.

The first of these laws was the Boston Port Act, which ordered the shut-down of Boston Harbor until the entire cost of the dumped tea was re-paid to the British East India Company. No ships or goods could go in or out of the harbor, leaving Boston cut-off from supplies.

The other coercive acts put even more restrictions on self-government in Massachusetts and demanded that the colonists provide quarters for British soldiers-in private homes if necessary.

The colonies swiftly united against the Coercive Acts. Within a year, the First Continental Congress met in Philadelphia with delegates from 12 of the 13 colonies, including Samuel Adams from Massachusetts.

All this-inspired by the Boston Tea Party-lit the fuse leading to the American Revolution and the Declaration of Independence.
Written by Margaret Middlebach
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"Friends! Brethren! Countrymen!-That worst of plagues, the detested tea, shipped for this port by the East India Company, is now arrived in the harbor." The day the colonists dumped thousand of pounds of tea into Boston Harbor turned out to be one of the most important in American history.

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Boston Tea Party

Part of the American Revolution

Date

December 16, 1773

Location

Caused by
Tea Act

Goals

To protest British Parliament's tax on tea. "No taxation without representation."

Methods

Throw the tea into Boston Harbor but do no damage to anything else.

Resulted in
Intolerable Acts

Parties to the civil conflict

The Boston Tea Party was a political protest by the Sons of Liberty in Boston, Massachusetts, on December 16, 1773. They were upset by the Tea Act of May 10, 1773, which allowed the British East India company to sell tea from China in American colonies without paying taxes on it, while the colonists were charged tax when they purchased it by order of the Townshend Acts.

American Patriots were upset because the taxes in the Townshend Act were a violation of their rights. Demonstrators, some disguised as Native Americans, destroyed an entire shipment of tea sent by the East India Company.

They boarded the ships and threw the chests of tea into the Boston Harbor. The British government responded harshly and the events grew into the American Revolution which began near Boston in 1775. The Tea Party became a famous event in American history, and since then other political protests such as the Tea Party movement have referred to themselves as historical successors to the Boston protest of 1773.

Background

The Stamp Act of 1765 and the Townshend Acts of 1767 angered colonists because they meant that the British could tax the colonies with no representation in the Westminster Parliament ("no taxation without representation"). One man who did not like the taxes was John Hancock. In 1768, his ship Liberty was forcefully taken by British customs officials and he was charged with smuggling. He was defended by John Adams and the charges were eventually dropped. However, Hancock later faced several hundred more accusations.

Hancock organized a boycott of tea from China sold by the British East India Company, whose sales in the colonies then fell from $383,458 (320,000 pounds) to $623 (520 pounds). By 1773, the company had large debts, huge stocks of tea in its warehouses, and no possibility of selling it because smugglers such as Hancock were importing tea without paying taxes (import tax). The British government passed the Tea Act, which allowed the East India Company to sell tea to the colonies directly, which allowed them to sell for lower prices than those offered by the colonial merchants and smugglers.

The British East India Company ships carrying tea were prevented from landing, as most American ports turned the tea away. Protesters had successfully prevented the unloading of tea in three other colonies, but in Boston, the British-appointed Royal Governor Thomas Hutchinson refused to allow the tea to be returned to Britain. He convinced the tea brokers, two of whom were his sons, not to back down.

The East India Company with the help of Governor Hutchinson made plans to bring in - by force - the tea under the protection given by British armed ships. Governor Hutchinson had been urging London to deal harshly with the Sons of Liberty. If he had done what the other royal governors had done and let the ship owners and captains resolve the issue with the colonists, Dartmouth, Eleanor, and Beaver would have left the harbor without unloading any tea.

The Boston Tea Party

On December 16, 1773, the evening before the tea was supposed to be landed, the Sons of Liberty, in three groups of 50 Boston residents each, organized by Samuel Adams, burst from the Old South Meeting House and headed toward Griffin's Wharf. Three ships - the Dartmouth, the Eleanor, and the Beaver - had hundreds of crates of tea on them. The men boarded the ships and began destroying the cargo. By 9 pm they had opened 342 crates of tea in all three ships and had thrown them into Boston Harbor.

They took off their shoes, swept the decks, and made sure that each ship's first mate knew that the Sons of Liberty had destroyed only the tea. The whole event was remarkably quiet and peaceful. The next day, they sent someone around to fix the one padlock they had broken.

John Adams and many other Americans considered tea drinking to be unpatriotic following the Boston Tea Party. Tea drinking declined during and after the Revolution, resulting in a shift to coffee as the preferred hot drink of Americans.

The Reaction

Whether or not Samuel Adams helped plan the Boston Tea Party is debated, but he immediately worked to advertise and defend it. He explained that the Tea Party was not the act of a lawless mob but was instead a peaceful, meaningful protest and the only remaining option the people had to defend their constitutional rights. The issue was never the tax itself but how the tax was passed without American input. United States Congress taxed tea from 1789 to 1872.

There were both colonial and British officials who disliked that the Boston Tea Party happened. For instance, Benjamin Franklin stated that the destroyed tea must be paid for. The British government punished the colonies by closing the port of Boston and put in place other laws that were known as the " Intolerable Acts," called the Coercive Acts in Britain.

The Boston Tea Party was one of the important events that led to the American Revolution. At the very least, the Boston Tea Party and the reaction that followed caused support to grow for revolutionaries in the thirteen colonies who were eventually successful in their fight for independence.

American activists with different political views have used the Tea Party as a symbol of protest. In 1973, on the 200th anniversary of the Tea Party, a mass meeting called for the impeachment of President Richard Nixon and protested oil companies in the ongoing oil crisis. Afterward, protesters boarded a replica ship (an exact copy of a ship) in Boston Harbor and dumped several empty oil drums into the harbor.

In 1998, two conservative U.S. Congressmen put the federal tax code into a chest marked "tea" and dumped it into the harbor.

The Boston Tea Party Museum is located on the Congress Street Bridge in Boston. It features reenactments, a documentary, and a number of interactive exhibits. The museum features two replica ships of the period, Eleanor and Beaver. Additionally, the museum possesses one of two known tea chests from the original event as part of its permanent collection.

Interesting facts about the Boston Tea Party

Boston was one of four cities that was to receive tea shipments from the British East India Company.

The Beaver, one of the ships that was boarded by the Sons of Liberty, had been quarantined in the outer harbor for two weeks because of a case of smallpox.

The tea that was destroyed was originally from China.

George Washington condemned the Boston Tea Party, which was not referred to as a "party" until about 50 years later.

The identities of the participants were hidden for decades after the event.

One of the members of the raiding party was Moby Dick author Herman Melville's grandfather, Thomas Melville.

Enough tea was dumped into the harbor to fill 18.5 million teabags.

The only person harmed in the Boston Tea Party was John Crane. He was knocked unconscious by a falling crate and thought to be dead. He was reportedly hidden under a pile of wood shavings in a nearby carpenter's shop but awoke hours later.

Images for kids

This iconic 1846 lithograph by Nathaniel Currier was entitled The Destruction of Tea at Boston Harbor; the phrase "Boston Tea Party" had not yet become standard. Contrary to Currier's depiction, few of the men dumping the tea were actually disguised as Native Americans.

This notice from the "Chairman of the Committee for Tarring and Feathering" in Boston denounced the people who bought tea as "traitors to their country."

Plaque affixed to side of the Independence Wharf building (2009)

The Boston Tea Party Museum in Fort Point Channel

Replica of the Beaver in Boston

In Spanish: Motín del té para niños

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Kids learn about the Boston Tea Party major event in the American Revolutionary War.

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Learn about the Boston Massacre where five colonies were killed by the British. Major event in the American Revolutionary War.

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Learn about the The Stamp Act of 1765. A tax the Britain placed on the American colonies eventually leading the Revolutionary War.