Boston Tea Party (1773)

BOSTON TEA PARTY (1773)

At nine o'clock on the night of December 16, 1773, a band of Bostonians disguised as Native Americans boarded the British merchant ship Dartmouth and two companion vessels anchored at Griffin's Wharf in Boston harbor. The Americans, who numbered around 70, shared a common aim: to destroy the ships' cargo of British East India Company tea. Many years later George Hewes, a 31–year–old shoemaker and participant, recalled "We then were ordered by our commander to open the hatches and take out all the chests of tea and throw them overboard. And we immediately proceeded to execute his orders, first cutting and splitting the chests with our tomahawks, so as thoroughly to expose them to the effects of the water." Urged on by a crowd of cheering townspeople, the disguised Bostonians destroyed 342 chests of tea estimated to be worth between £10,000 and £18,000. Their actions, which became known as the Boston Tea Party, set in motion events that led directly to the American Revolution (1775–83).

The Boston Tea Party was one of a long series of conflicts between the American colonies and the English government after the British victory in the French and Indian War (1754–63). The French and Indian War was the last and most expensive of almost a century of colonial wars between France and England. Since a lot of this money was spent to protect the American colonists from French Canadians and their Native American allies, the British government felt the Americans should help pay for the war. They also wanted the colonists to pay some of the future costs of stationing soldiers at forts scattered over the new Western frontier. The Americans, for their part, saw little sense in sending money to England to pay for troops that were needed much closer to home.

During the 1760s Parliament passed a series of acts designed to reduce the British national debt and to finance the costs of keeping regular soldiers on the American frontier. The most notorious of these was the Stamp Act (1765), which placed a tax on almost every public piece of paper in the colonies, including newspapers, pamphlets, diplomas, licenses, packs of cards, almanacs, and dice. The colonists fiercely resisted these taxes, organizing public protests and intimidating tax collectors. The Stamp Act resistance was the most widespread and best organized inter–colonial protest before the tea crisis of the 1770s. In the face of such widespread opposition the British Parliament backed down. It repealed the Stamp Act and its companion taxes in 1766.

The following year Parliament tried another means of raising money, through the Townshend Duties or Revenue Acts (1767), so named after Chancellor of the Exchequer Charles "Champagne Charlie" Townshend. Instead of placing a direct tax on materials that colonists bought and sold, these acts made certain important items such as lead, glass, paint, paper, and tea more expensive. The colonists responded by refusing to buy those products. Nonimportation agreements were signed throughout the American colonies. Citizens at all levels of society either refused to drink tea or bought black-market varieties that came from Dutch colonies. Faced with widespread American opposition, the British government backed down. The Townshend Duties were repealed on March 5, 1770, with the exception of a three penny duty on tea, kept to prove that Parliament had the right to tax the colonies. However, although this piece of legislation is credited with causing the Boston Tea Party, it had nothing to do with the American colonies.

The duty on tea mandated by the Townshend Duties act was meant to save the old British East India Company from bankruptcy. Until the Townshend Duties were first passed the Company had made much of its money transporting tea from India to England, where it was sold first to English wholesalers and then to American wholesalers before being sold to the colonial public. The American boycott of British tea, combined with intensive smuggling of Dutch tea, cut into Company profits. In an attempt to revive the East India Company, Prime Minister Lord Charles North(1770–1782) persuaded Parliament to pass the Tea Act (1773). This legislation effectively cut the wholesalers out and allowed the East India Company to sell tea directly to agents in America. It gave the Company a monopoly on the sale of tea in the colonies.

The monopoly hurt colonists at all levels of society. Because the Tea Act allowed the East India Company to name its own sales agents to distribute the tea in American ports, business for local merchants and middlemen decreased. The Act offended politicians and patriots, who saw it as an attempt by Parliament to tax them without their consent. Even smugglers—who included wealthy merchants such as John Hancock (1737–1793)—were hurt because it made East India tea competitive with or cheaper than Dutch tea. Other Americans sought to profit from the Act. Governor Thomas Hutchinson of Massachusetts (1771–74), for example, used his influence to get his sons Thomas and Elisha named East India Company sales agents.

In September of 1773 the East India Company readied 600,000 pounds of tea in 2,000 chests for shipment to the colonies. The cargoes arrived at major colonial ports a month and a half later and met with hostile receptions. In New York and Philadelphia angry crowds forced local officials to send the tea ships

back to England without unloading their cargoes. In Annapolis, Maryland, demonstrators burned a tea ship, and in New Jersey arsonists set fire to a warehouse where unloaded tea was stored. In Massachusetts, however, Governor Hutchinson decided to face down the demonstrators. When Boston citizens, led by patriot Samuel Adams (1722–1803), refused to allow the tea ships to unload, Hutchinson called on the Royal Navy to blockade Boston harbor so that the ships could not leave port. He knew that British law required a ship to unload its cargo after 20 days in port and he planned to use this law to sidestep Adams and his patriot followers.

The 20 day waiting period ended for the Dartmouth on December 16. On that day Sam Adams and his party tried to contact Governor Hutchinson to convince him to let the ships leave harbor. Hutchinson refused and, at five o'clock in the afternoon, the meeting of Boston citizens broke up. Some of them followed George Hewes' example, by dressing up as Native Americans. Carrying tomahawks and clubs, they marched to Griffin's Wharf. Hewes and his companions took great pains that nothing but the tea was destroyed and that no one profited from the destruction. "One Captain O'Connor, whom I well knew, came on board [to steal some tea], and when he supposed he was not noticed, filled his pockets, and also the lining of his coat," Hewes recalled. "But I had detected him and gave information to the captain of what he was doing. We were ordered to take him into custody, and just as he was stepping from the vessel, I seized him by the skirt of his coat, and in attempting to pull him back, I tore it off; but, springing forward by a rapid effort he made his escape."

The Boston Tea Party led almost directly to the American Revolution. To punish the city of Boston for its role in the destruction of so much East India Company property, the British Parliament passed a series of laws known collectively as the Coercive Acts (1774). These laws closed the port of Boston until the citizens paid for the destroyed tea, dismantled Massachusetts's colonial charter, expanded the powers of the king's governor, and made it harder to convict royal officials of crimes. In the Quebec Act (1774), Parliament also took away lands that had been claimed by the American colonies since their founding. In reply the Americans formed the First Continental Congress to organize and coordinate their response. Sixteen months after the tea finally sank in Boston harbor, the first shots of the American Revolution were fired.

See also: American Revolution, French and Indian War, John Hancock, Stamp Act, Townshend Act

FURTHER READING

Labaree, Benjamin Woods. The Boston Tea Party. New York: Oxford University Press, 1968.

McCusker, John J., and Menard, Russell R. The Economy of British North America, 1607–1789. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,1985.

"Recollections of George Hewes," in A Retrospective of the Boston Tea Party, 1843. Reprinted in Commager, Henry Steele, and Morris, Richard B., editors. The Spirit of 'Seventy-Six: The Story of the American Revolution as Told by Participants. Volume I. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Co., Inc., 1958.

in about three hours from the time we went on board, we had . . . broken and thrown overboard every tea chest to be found in the ship, while those in the other ships were disposing of the tea in the same way, at the same time.

george hewes, shoemaker and participant