Boston Tea Party

Boston Tea Party (1773).The Boston Tea Party was a catalyst that precipitated the Revolutionary War. On the night of 16 December 1773, as a crowd gathered on Boston's Griffin's Wharf, a group of about fifty men lightly disguised as Indians boarded the ships Dartmouth, Beaver, and Eleanor. In the next three hours, they broke open 340 chests of tea and dumped their contents into the water, destroying cargo worth nearly ten thousand pounds sterling belonging to Great Britain's East India Company. This dramatic action stemmed from a running controversy over Parliament's power to raise revenue by placing duties on imports into America. Colonists protested “taxation without representation,” but Parliament retained the duty on tea as a symbol of its taxing authority. In 1773, ignoring warnings of a colonial reaction, Parliament authorized the East India Company to reduce its massive surplus by shipping thousands of pounds of dutied tea to Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, and Charleston, South Carolina.

At the other ports the tea ships were either turned back or their cargo seized by customhouse officials, but at Boston, Governor Thomas Hutchinson insisted that the tea be landed and the duties paid. His longtime adversary Samuel Adams adamantly opposed such payment. When negotiations broke down, Adams rallied his supporters at Boston's Old South Church, from where they marched to Griffin's Wharf. The event's larger importance lay in Great Britain's reaction. Instead of seeking reconciliation, the ministry passed the Coercive Acts (1774), closing the port of Boston, altering the colony's charter, and ordering British troops under General Thomas Gage to occupy the town. As colonists elsewhere rallied behind the beleaguered Bostonians, the First Continental Congress approved a stringent boycott of British goods. With neither side willing to back down, the final crisis was at hand.
See also Revolution and Constitution, Era of.

Bibliography

Benjamin W. Labaree , The Boston Tea Party, 1964; reprints 1968, 1981.

Benjamin W. Labaree