1973 8c Boston Tea Party

On December 16, 1773, a group of Massachusetts colonists known as the Sons of Liberty staged a dramatic protest against British taxes – the famed Boston Tea Party.

Britain continued to impose new tea taxes on the colonies. The colonists weren’t simply upset at the taxes themselves, but a number of important factors. For one, they didn’t believe Parliament should have the authority to tax the colonies if they didn’t have a representative there to act in their interests. Also, Britain had essentially formed a tea monopoly (by only allowing colonies to buy from one source) and colonists feared this could later extend to other goods.

In the early fall of 1773, Britain sent seven ships carrying 600,000 pounds of tea to the colonies. Protesters met with the consignees (colonial merchants who would sell the incoming tea) and convinced many of them to resign and send the arriving tea back to England. In fact, they resigned everywhere except Massachusetts. The colonial governor there refused to back down and convinced his consignees not to resign. On November 29, when the tea ship arrived in Boston Harbor, Samuel Adams called for a meeting. Thousands turned out, and Adams presented a resolution, urging the ship’s captain to take the tea back to England. The governor refused to allow the ship to leave without paying the duty.

It’s been debated whether Adams helped plan the Boston Tea Party or not. Either way, once it was over, he widely publicized and defended it. Similar “tea parties” soon took place elsewhere in America, and the British government was outraged. Following the Boston Tea Party, the British Parliament decided on harsher means to make the colonies more cooperative. Parliament passed a series of laws they called the Coercive Acts – bluntly called the Intolerable Acts by American patriots. These laws greatly restricted the colonies, particularly Massachusetts, which lost its self-government and commerce.