The Boston Tea Party

 

I shall therefore conclude with a proposal that your watchmen be instructed, as they go on their rounds, to call out every night, half-past twelve, ‘Beware of the East India Company’.

From a pamphlet signed by ‘Rusticus’, 1773

 

The Boston Tea Party was a demonstration by American colonists against Great Britain’s decision to put a heavy tax on tea. Britain’s part in both the French and Indian War had been a very costly exercise, so when the war came to an end in 1763, King George III and his government needed to find ways of recouping their losses. They looked at taxing the American colonies and a series of actions, including the Stamp Act of 1765, the Townsend Acts of 1767 and the Boston Massacre of 1770, angered the colonists and strained the relationship of the two countries. The final straw was Britain’s attempt to tax tea, which spurred the colonists into action. The incident, known as the Boston Tea Party, took place on December 16, 1773, and is said to have been a contributory factor to the American Revolution.

The colonies refused to comply with the levies enforced by the Townsend Act, saying they had no obligation to pay taxes to a government in which they had no representatives. One of the main protesters was a man named John Hancock. Parliament decided to retract the taxes, with the exception of the duty they had imposed on tea.

In the year 1773, Britain’s East India Company was sitting on enormous stocks of tea that they were unable to sell in England, and it was on the verge of going bankrupt. In an effort to save the company, the government passed the Tea Act, which gave them the right to export its merchandise directly to the colonies without having to pay any of the taxes imposed on the Americans. This meant that they could undersell the American merchants and monopolize the colonial tea trade.

Naively, the British government thought this would appease the situation because Americans would now be able to get their tea at a cheaper rate. However, what they overlooked was the fact that the colonists were not prepared to pay the duty on imported tea, because then they would be agreeing to unrepresentational taxation. Even though tea was a staple diet to the colonists, they were not fooled by the British government’s ploy, and when the East India Company sent shipments of tea to Philadelphia and New York, the colonists would not allow their ships to land.

The only place the ships were allowed to dock was Boston, because there the East India Company had the assistance of the British-appointed governor, who arranged for the tea to be landed with the aid of British armed ships. The inhabitants of Boston were furious after failing to turn back three ships – the Dartmouth, the Eleanor and the Beaver – in the harbour, and it all came to a head on the evening of December 16, 1773.

The Tea Act required that the requisite tax be collected within 20 days of a ship’s arrival in port, which made December 16 the deadline. It was at this time that a man named Samuel Adams came to the fore. He began to question the fairness of the laws imposed by the governor, who was appointed by the British government. Adams and his father spent several years trying to prevent British officials from taking their home and land. Adams believed the colonists had a right to elect their own government officials, and he began to convince others about their rights for fairness, justice and representation. He wrote newspaper articles and essays and promoted his ideas at taverns and meetings. As a result he formed the Country Party, which included farmers who supported his ideas.

Adams kept public passion high by holding meetings in the Old South Meeting House, and as many as 5,000 people filled the surrounding streets. At one of these gatherings, a resolution was adopted that asked the consignees to return the tea to England. However some of the tea agents were relatives of the governor and refused to comply. On December 16, the owner of the Dartmouth, who sympathized with their plight, agreed to sail his ship back to England. This opportunity to ease tensions was abruptly ended, however, when British officials denied permission for the ship to clear the port and began preparations to seize the vessel for nonpayment of tax.

This was when the men took the matter into their own hands. Three groups of 50 Boston residents – calling themselves the Sons of Liberty – burst out of the Old South Meeting House and headed towards Griffin’s Wharf. Masquerading as Mohawks they passed through a large crowd of spectators that had gathered on the docks and boarded the three ships waiting at the wharf. The ships were loaded with hundreds of crates of tea, and the raiders opened all the hatches and took out the tea chests and threw them overboard, first cutting and splitting the chests open with their tomahawks. By 9 o’clock that evening they had opened 342 crates of tea and thrown the contents into the water of the Boston Harbour. Even though the harbour was surrounded by British armed ships, no attempt was made to stop the raids. After rampage, the leader of the groups made the men remove their shoes, wash and sweep the decks, and also made the first mate agree to say that the Sons of Liberty had only destroyed the tea and nothing else. The whole event was remarkably peaceful and the next day, the raiders even sent a man to one of the ships to repair a padlock that had been broken the evening before.

The following morning it was discovered that large quantities of the tea were still floating on the surface of the water, and to prevent the possibility of any of it being saved, a number of small boats were rowed out into the harbour and the inhabitants beat the surface of the water with their oars so that the tea was thoroughly drenched in sea water.

Soon the news of the Boston Tea Party spread and other seaports followed their example and held similar acts of resistance.

When the people of Boston refused to pay for the tea they had destroyed, the British government responded by closing the port of Boston. On top of this, in 1774, they introduced the Restraining Acts, or Coercive Acts as they were popularly known in England, which sparked off new resistance up and down the coast of America. It was these new acts, instigated by Lord North with the backing of George III, which led to the American Revolution. Some members of parliament voiced their opinions that these stern measures would lead to something far worse, but their advice went unheeded.

The Boston Tea Party, however, was not a futile reaction to Britain’s unfair taxes because it received a lot of backing and served to rally support for revolutionaries in the 13 colonies. These colonies were eventually successful in their fight for independence.

Samuel Adams continued to represent the people of Boston, and ultimately became president of the Massachusetts Senate. He voted for the Constitution in 1788, and he strongly supported the need for a bill of rights. He spent the rest of his life as a voice for reform. Adams died in Boston in 1803. His strong belief in independence and his ability to persuade support for the cause of freedom earned him the name ‘the Father of the American Revolution’.