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An excerpt from *Tea Leaves*, an 1884 collection of letters and documents relating to the Boston Tea Party.

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On December 16, 1773, over one hundred American colonists dressed as Native Americans boarded three merchant ships in Boston Harbor and dumped 342 chests of tea (valued at approximately $1.7 million in today's currency) into the water. The tea belonged to the British East India Company, which had been granted a monopoly over tea imports into the colonies by the Tea Act of May 1773. This monopoly let the company undercut colonial merchants' prices on untaxed tea, forcing colonists who bought the cheaper product to recognize a British tax. Three ships loaded with tea, the Dartmouth, the Eleanor, and the Beaver, had arrived in Boston between November 28 and December 15. Colonists initially insisted that the tea be returned to England, but the colonial governor of Massachusetts and the East India Company's consignees-officials empowered to sell and collect taxes on the tea-refused.

In response, the Sons of Liberty organized a mass meeting of thousands at Boston's Old South Meeting House. When final word came that the tea ships would not be allowed to return to England, the Sons of Liberty set in motion a secret plan to destroy the tea. A group of colonists disguised in Native American attire headed from the meeting to Griffin's Wharf, where the tea ships were moored. Many hundreds more followed to watch the destruction of the tea.

When word got back to England about what the Bostonians had done, British officials punished the rebellious Massachusetts colonists by passing a series of laws that became known as the "Intolerable Acts," further increasing tensions between Britain and the American colonists. The destruction of the tea, which came to be known as the Boston Tea Party, was a crucial turning point in the escalation of the American Revolution and became a powerful symbol of American protest and independence.

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On December 16, 1773, over one hundred American colonists dressed as Native Americans boarded three merchant ships in Boston Harbor and dumped 342 chests of tea (valued at approximately $1.7 million in today's currency) into the water.

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Most Americans can tell you that the first unofficial "Declaration of Independence" happened in Boston, when a band of tax-hating renegades dumped King George's beloved tea into the harbor, a spirited act of defiance that united the colonies in revolution.

But as with most well-trod origin stories, the true history of the Boston Tea Party is far more complicated than the grammar-school version, and the real facts of what happened on that fateful night in 1773 might surprise you.

1. Colonists weren't protesting a higher tax on tea.

Easily the biggest surprise about the Boston Tea Party is that the uprising wasn't a protest against a new tax hike on tea. Although taxes stoked colonist anger, the Tea Act itself didn't raise the price of tea in the colonies by one red cent (or shilling, as it were).

The confusion is partly timing and partly semantics. Boston's Sons of Liberty were absolutely responding to the British Parliament's passage of the Tea Act of 1773 when they planned the Boston Tea Party. And with a name like the Tea Act, it's fair to think that the law was all about raising taxes on tea.

The truth is that tea imports to the American Colonies had been taxed by the Crown since the passing of the 1767 Townshend Revenue Act, along with taxes on other commodities like paper, paint, oil and glass. The difference is that all of those other import taxes were lifted in 1770, except for tea, a pointed reminder of the King's control over his far-off subjects.

Benjamin Carp, a history professor at Brooklyn College and author of Defiance of the Patriots: The Boston Tea Party and the Making of America, says that the Tea Act of 1773 was onerous in a different way. It was essentially a British government bailout of the British East India Company, which was hemorrhaging money and weighed down with unsold tea. The Tea Act allowed the East India Company to unload 544,000 pounds of old tea, commission-free, on the American Colonies at a bargain price.

Cheaper tea sounds good, says Carp, but for the Sons of Liberty -many of whom were merchants and even tea smugglers-the Tea Act smelled like a ploy to get the masses comfortable with paying a tax to the Crown.

"You're going to seduce Americans into being 'obedient colonists' by making the price lower," says Carp. "If we accept the principle of allowing parliament to tax us, they'll eventually make the taxes heavier on us. It's the slippery slope argument."

2. The attacked ships were American and the tea wasn't the King's.

The popular notion of the Boston Tea Party is that angry colonists "stuck it to King George" by boarding British ships and dumping crate loads of the King's precious tea into the Boston Harbor. But that story is not true on two accounts.

First, the ships that were boarded by the Sons of Liberty, the Beaver, the Dartmouth and the Eleanor, were built and owned by Americans. Two of the ships were primarily whaling vessels. After delivering valuable shipments of sperm whale oil and brain matter to London in 1773, the ships were loaded with tea en route to the American Colonies. Although not British, some of the ship's American owners were indeed Tory sympathizers.

Second, the tea destroyed by the night raiders was not the King's. It was private property owned by the East India Company and transported on privately contracted shipping vessels. The value of the 340 chests of squandered tea would total nearly $2 million in today's money.

3. The tea was Chinese, not Indian, and lots of it was green.

This is another naming problem. The East India Company exported a lot of goods from India in the 18th century, including spices and cotton, but it obtained almost all of its tea from China. Trading ships traveled from Canton to London loaded down with Chinese tea, which was then exported to British colonies the world over.

East India didn't install its first tea plantations in India until the 1830s.

Another surprising tidbit is that 22 percent of the tea that the patriots sent to the bottom of Boston Harbor was green tea. According to the Boston Tea Party Ships and Museum, Thomas Jefferson and George Washington were fans of a particular Chinese green tea variety called "hyson."

4. The Tea Party, itself, didn't incite revolution.

There's this idea that the Boston Tea Party was the rallying cry that galvanized the colonies for revolution, but Carp says that many strong opponents of British rule, George Washington among them, denounced acts of lawlessness and violence, especially against private property.

While the Tea Party itself didn't mobilize Americans en masse, it was Parliament's reaction to it that did. In 1774, the UK passed what are known as the Intolerable Acts or the Coercive Acts, a series of punitive measures meant to teach the rebellious colonists who was boss.

Many of these sanctions were levied on the Massachusetts Colony and Boston itself, including the closing of Boston Harbor, replacing Boston's elected leaders with those appointed by the Crown, and forcing the quartering of British troops in private homes.

"Taxation without representation was a dangerous precedent in and of itself, but now they were messing with the Massachusetts charter," says Carp, "taking away rights that Massachusetts had previously enjoyed. As uncomfortable as some colonists might have been with the Tea Party action itself, they were way more uncomfortable with the authoritarian reaction by Parliament."

In response to the Coercive Acts, the First Continental Congress met in 1774 and Jefferson wrote " A Summary View of the Rights of British America." Revolution was officially in the air.

5. Tea Party protestors dressed as 'Indians,' but not convincingly.

The Sons of Liberty famous masqueraded in Native American dress on the night of the Tea Party raid, complete with tomahawks and faces darkened with coal soot. But were they really trying to pass themselves off as local Mohawk or Narragansett tribesmen?

Not likely, says Carp. For starters, it was customary in 18th-century England for protestors to "crossdress" in one way or another-blackening their faces, dressing as women, or even Catholic priests-to create an atmosphere of misrule.

Secondly, the Sons of Liberty were cashing in on the image of the Native American as an independent spirit, the epitome of anti-colonialism. "By adopting that identity, they're saying, 'We are defiant. We are unbowed. We won't be defeated,'" says Carp.

And third, there was the practical reason for masking their identities. They were committing a crime! Even if they knew that no one would believe they were actual Native Americans, the disguise sent a clear message to anyone who would dare to snitch: don't you dare!

6. No one called it the 'Boston Tea Party.'

The Boston Tea Party occurred in 1773, but the very first time that the words "Boston Tea Party" appeared in print was in 1825, and in most of those early mentions, the word "party" didn't refer to a celebratory event with cakes and balloons, but to a party of men. An 1829 obituary of Nicholas Campbell notes that he was "one of the ever-memorable Boston Tea Party."

Soon after the rebellious act was committed, Carp says, it was simply referred to as "the destruction of tea in Boston Harbor, or something similarly cumbersome."

There's some question if the society known as a "tea party" even existed in the 1770s. The British practice of high tea didn't take hold until the Victorian Era in the mid-19th century, and Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, with its famous "Mad Hatter's Tea Party," wasn't published until 1865.

7. After Boston, there were other 'tea parties.'

According to a 2012 book by Joseph Cummins, there were at least 10 "tea parties" up and down the Eastern seaboard that were inspired by the original and most famous.

During the Philadelphia Tea Party, which took place just nine days after Boston's, no tea was destroyed, but the captain of a ship carrying the largest delivery of East India Company tea was threatened with being tarred and feathered if he didn't return the "wretched weed" to England. Which he did.

In Charleston, South Carolina, a ship arrived in November 1774 carrying tea, but the captain swore that he was unaware of the controversial cargo. Angry residents blamed local merchants who had ordered the tea and forced them to dump it in the harbor themselves.

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7 Surprising Facts About the Boston Tea Party | HISTORY

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The true history of the Boston Tea Party is far more complicated than the grammar-school version, and the real facts of what happened on that fateful night in 1773 might surprise you.

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The Boston Tea Party

It was another cold December night in Boston. The three British ships the were sitting in Boston harbor, their holds full of tea that wasn't being unloaded because the angry residents of Boston were threatened not to buy or use the tea. Dartmouth, the Eleanor, and the Beaver

The anger was directed at the government of Great Britain, which at that time had passed the Tea Act, a law that almost guaranteed that the American colonists would buy tea from the East India Company. Why? Because the law lowered the price on tea that the East India Company so much that it was the cheapest tea around. In fact, it was way below the price charged by other tea companies. Most American colonists, looking for ways to cut costs and save money, would choose a cheaper tea over a more expensive tea any day.

Why did this law come about? Well, the East India Company wasn't doing so well and the British government wanted to help the company get back on its feet.

Other tea companies weren't happy about the Tea Act, of course, but the American colonists viewed it as another example of "taxation without representation": In effect, the Tea Act was putting a tax on tea sold by companies other than the East India Company. As with the Stamp Act and other unpopular taxes, they were all voted in by Parliament, which was thousands of miles away, and the American colonists had no way to influence the law or speak out against it while it was being debated in government.

So the colonists were angry. They wanted to do something else to let the British know about the unhappiness that the Tea Act was causing. Some people wanted to keep things nonviolent; others wanted bloodshed. The result was somewhere in the middle.

group of colonists determined to make things change was the A Sons of Liberty. Led by such impassioned patriots as Samuel Adams and John Hancock, the Sons of Liberty had secret meetings at which they discussed how best to get their message across to Great Britain, that the American people wanted more of a role in governing themselves.

Christmas was approaching in the year 1773, and the colonists faced another year of unopposed and unrepresentative taxes. The Sons of Liberty decided to take action.

Donning disguises that made them look like they were Native Americans, a large group of the Sons of Liberty on December 16 stormed aboard those three unsuspecting British ships and dumped 342 crates full of tea overboard. By any standards, that's a lot of tea. These crates happened to be jammed full of tea, and so the companies that made that tea lost a lot of money that night.

Because the Sons of Liberty were disguised as Native Americans, they could claim that they were not guilty of dumping the tea. The British government knew better, of course, and grew angrier than ever at what it saw as Americans' ingratitude. The very next year saw the passage of what came to be called the Intolerable Acts, one of which closed the port of Boston entirely.

The Boston Tea Party was a symbolic act, an example of how far Americans were willing to speak out for their freedom. Two short years later, Americans were willing to give their lives for their freedom, as shots rang out on Lexington Green.

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The Boston Tea Party It was another cold December night in Boston. The three British ships the were sitting in Boston harbor, their holds full of tea that wasn't being unloaded because the angry residents of Boston were threatened not to buy or use the tea.

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this link isn't about pandas! :)

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