M

Tensions had been steadily growing between those living in Britain’s 13 North American colonies and the British Crown.

The colonists carried the heavy burden of being overly taxed at any time with a simple decree from the king. Duties imposed by the Crown in 1773 on tea coming into Boston Harbor was the “straw that broke the camel’s back” for the American colonists.

Having already pushed back on the Crown’s increased taxation three years earlier in 1770, it was time to mount a formidable resistance to these increased duties on tea and other goods being transported from England by three American-made and American-owned ships of the East India Company: the Beaver, the Dartmouth and the Eleanor.

The passage of the Tea Act in 1773 by the British gave this company exclusive rights to ship 544,000 thousand pounds of tea to the colonies, enabling the East India Co. to undercut its competitors in price.

This company had become so involved politically that it had become an agent of British imperialism, but it was drowning in debt and needed additional money to lessen its financial burden.

Its ships were given special passage into the harbor by Thomas Hutchinson, the royal governor of the British North American province of Massachusetts Bay and deep loyalist to the Crown.

Hutchinson despised the colonists and their fiercely dedicated efforts toward independence. He had an aversion to Samuel Adams, a leader of the Sons of Liberty, a group of colonists who continued to mount active resistance to the Crown’s overarching government rule.

Having received the group’s name from a speech given to the British Parliament, these men lived up to the hype.

Earlier in 1765, Hutchison’s home was ransacked during which time many valuable papers and documents were destroyed. It is thought that this personal attack was the catalyst to Hutchison’s recommendations for more repressive acts taken by the Crown against the colonists.

Hutchinson, a businessman prior to his governorship, was happy to allow the tea, the favored drink of the colonists, to come through, but with high imposed taxation. This allowed extra money to be made to service the East India Company’s debt.

Adams and the colonists were infuriated at the over-reaching authority imposed and labeled this action of the Crown taxation without representation.

The colonists or patriots, as they are often called, wanted freedom from England’s tyrannical and oppressive government rule. Thus, colonial unrest escalated.

On the night of December 16, 1773, approximately 60 American colonists stealthily made their way to  Griffin’s Wharf in the Boston Harbor.

In a surprise move, the colonists dressed in Native American clothing complete with headdresses and tomahawks. One historical account suggested this action was not so much to disguise themselves, but more so to alert other colonists that this was a particular “party of men” on a special mission, defiant to the English Crown.

The masquerade as Native Americans represented a strong sentiment of fierce independence and a resolve that the colonial patriots “would not be defeated”, the same sentiment held by determined Native American braves whom the colonists often fought against.

One by one, all 342 chests of tea belonging to the East India Company weighing a combined 92,000 pounds were thrown overboard into the Boston Harbor. The value of the tea today would be more than $3.5 million.

Only one member of the Sons of Liberty was caught and imprisoned. No one else was arrested for their participation. No one died and no violence or confrontation with the British soldiers or the shipmen occurred due to this organized insurgence.

In response to the colonists dumping the tea overboard, the British Crown passed the Intolerable Acts of 1774 to severely punish those of the Massachusetts Colony and the Boston city proper. According to David Roo of A&E History, the British closed Boston Harbor, required the colonists to house British troops in their private homes and replaced duly elected colonial leaders with their own appointed replacements.

The Crown’s resolute stripping away of these colonists’ rights resulted in the initial meeting of the First Continental Congress, ultimately leading to the American Revolution which began on April 19, 1775, in Massachusetts with the Battles of Lexington and Concord.

The Boston Tea Party would not be referred to as such until the name was printed by Nathaniel Carter in 1825, 50 years later. Until then, people referred to this historical event as “The Destruction of Tea”.

“This is the most magnificent movement of all. This Destruction of the Tea is so bold, so daring, so firm, so intrepid, and so inflexible, and it must have so important consequences and so lasting, that I cannot but consider it as an epoch in history.”

— John Adams, Second US President, December 17, 1773

Melinda Huffman is a member of the General James Winchester Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution and a native of Franklin County.