• The Boston Tea Party of December 16, 1773,
took place when a group of Massachusetts
Patriots, protesting the monopoly on
American tea importation recently granted by
Parliament to the East India Company, seized
342 chests of tea in a midnight raid on three
tea ships and threw them into the harbor.
1. The “tea partiers” were not protesting a tax hike,
but a corporate tax break.
• The protestors who caffeinated Boston Harbor were railing
against the Tea Act, which the British government enacted
in the spring of 1773. Rather than inflicting new levies,
however, the legislation actually reduced the total tax on
tea sold in America by the East India Company and would
have allowed colonists to purchase tea at half the price
paid by British consumers. The Tea Act, though, did leave in
place the hated three-pence-per-pound duty enacted by
the Townshend Acts in 1767, and it irked colonists as
another instance of taxation legislation being passed by
Parliament without their input and consent. The principle
of self-governance, not the burden of higher taxes,
motivated political opposition to the Tea Act.
2. Commercial interests, perhaps more than political
principles, motivated many protestors.
• The Tea Act was a government bailout for a company on
the brink of financial collapse, the flailing East India
Company, which was deemed to be, in modern terms, “too
big to fail.” The legislation gave the East India Company a
virtual monopoly on the American tea trade, allowing it to
bypass colonial merchants as middlemen and to even
undercut the price of smuggled Dutch tea, which was
widely consumed in the colonies. Thus, the Tea Act directly
threatened the vested commercial interests of Boston’s
wealthy merchants and smugglers, such as John Hancock,
who fomented the revolt.
3. George Washington condemned the Boston Tea
Party.
• Although America’s foremost Revolutionary
figure wrote in June 1774 that “the cause of
Boston…ever will be considered as the cause of
America,” he strongly voiced his disapproval of
“their conduct in destroying the Tea.”
Washington, like many other elites, held private
property to be sacrosanct (most sacred or holy,
not to be entered or tresspassed upon) and
believed the perpetrators should compensate the
East India Company for the damages.
4. It was the British reaction to the Boston Tea Party,
not the event itself, that rallied Americans.
• Many Americans shared Washington’s sentiment and
viewed the Boston Tea Party as an act of vandalism by
radicals rather than a heroic patriotic undertaking.
There was less division among the colonists, however,
about their opposition to the measures passed by the
British government in 1774 to punish Boston. The
legislation closed the port of Boston until damages
were paid, annulled colonial self-government in
Massachusetts and expanded the Quartering Act.
Colonists referred to the measures as the “Intolerable
Acts,” and they led to the formation of the first
Continental Congress.
5. For decades, the identities of participants were
shrouded in secrecy.
• The band of protestors was tight-lipped. Even
after American independence, they refused to
reveal their identities, fearing they could still
face civil and criminal charges as well as
condemnation from elites for engaging in mob
behavior and the wanton destruction of
private property. Even today, only the names
of some of the participants are known.
6. The event wasn’t dubbed the “Boston Tea Party”
until a half-century later.
• For years, Bostonians blandly referred to the
protest as “the destruction of the tea.” The
earliest newspaper reference to the “Boston
Tea Party” doesn’t appear until 1826. In the
1830s, two books—A Retrospect of the TeaParty and Traits of the Tea Party—popularized
the moniker and cemented it in popular
culture.
7. Other protests
There was a second Boston Tea Party.
• Three months after the Boston Tea Party,
Bostonians once again sent tea splashing
when 60 disguised men boarded the Fortune
in March 1774, forced the crew below deck
and dumped tea chests into the harbor. The
sequel wasn’t quite as impressive as the
original, however, as only 30 chests were sent
overboard.
Copy
cat
Don’t mess
with
this cat !!!!!
Roar, Roar
8. Subsequent “tea parties” were held in other
colonies.
• Tea Act protests spread to other colonies
throughout 1774. In cities such as New York,
Annapolis and Charleston, South Carolina,
patriots dumped tea off ships or burned it in
protest.
9. The financial loss was significant.
• It’s estimated that the protestors tossed more
than 92,000 pounds of tea into Boston Harbor.
That’s enough to fill 18.5 million teabags. The
present-day value of the destroyed tea has
been estimated at around $1 million.
10. One “tea partier” appeared to rise from the dead.
• After being knocked unconscious by a falling
tea crate in the hold of a ship, John Crane was
reportedly thought to be dead and hidden by
his compatriots under a pile of wood shavings
in a nearby carpenter’s shop. He awoke hours
later, however, and was the only man harmed
in the Boston Tea Party.
What is being Shown in this picture?
How can you tell the ships are British?
What is in the foreground of this
painting?
What do you think is the artists point
of view?
• Did You Know?
• It took nearly three hours for more than
100 colonists to empty the tea into
Boston Harbor. The chests held more
than 90,000 lbs. (45 tons) of tea, which
would cost nearly $1,000,000 dollars
today. This happened at midnight.
Cause and Effect
• A cause:
• Is an event or action that makes something else
happen.
• An Effect:
• That something else that happens is an effect.
• Determining causes and effects can help you see
relationships between events and find patterns in
history.
Explaining the importance of the tea
act pages 118-119
• From your book
• Identify one cause and one effect of the
Boston Tea Party.
Explaining the importance of the tea
act
• From your book
• Why was the tea act passed?
• What did the act do?
• How did the Daughters of Liberty react?
• When was the tea dumped over board?
• (date and time)