Nathaniel Currier, The Destruction of Tea at Boston Harbor (1846). (Museum of the City of New York; Scala/Art Resource, NY)
ON DECEMBER 16, 1773, Bostonians and representatives from surrounding communities assembled at the Old South Meeting House in Boston. Not only was the meeting house filled, but a crowd of several thousand milled around outside. New England citizens had been assembling at town meetings like this for the past several weeks, but this was by far the largest gathering. Most of those assembled had come from Boston and the surrounding communities, but one group had come from as far away as Maine, which was then part of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The topic of discussion at these meetings was a single question: What should be done about the tea that arrived on three ships at Griffin’s Wharf in Boston Harbor a few weeks earlier? Tea was one of America’s most popular beverages and all of the meeting attendees drank it, but this tea had been taxed by the British Parliament. Although the tax was negligible, the colonists were unwilling to pay it. For the colonists, as well as for the British Parliament, the tax was a matter of principle. Parliament maintained that it had the right to tax its colonies, but many North America colonists believed that only their own legislatures could levy a tax; in this case, the Massachusetts colonial assembly had not done so. The North American colonists’ view became popularized by James Otis, a Boston lawyer, who said in a speech that “taxation without representation was tyranny.”1
Many citizens attended the December 16 meeting because the tea onboard one ship would likely be landed under British military escort the next day. Colonial law required that any tax on goods brought into port must be paid within twenty days of a ship’s arrival; if the tax was not paid, the customs collector of the port was authorized to impound the goods. Bostonians had already tried several different solutions to prevent this, including asking the consignees (the local merchants who had ordered the tea) to disavow their commissions, which would mean that there would be no one to pay the tax and no reason to unload the tea. The consignees, however, had refused; when pressured by the Sons of Liberty and others opposed to paying the tax, the merchants fled to the Castle William, the fort in Boston harbor controlled by the British military.
Colonists had also asked one ship’s captain to simply take the tea back to England. The captain had agreed to do so, but he needed clearance papers from British port authorities to depart. The captain requested clearance, but the port authorities refused to grant permission until the tea was landed. To prevent the ship from just leaving the port without official clearance, the royal governor, Thomas Hutchinson, an American-born lawyer and former judge who had attended Harvard, ordered British warships to patrol the mouth of the harbor. The assemblage at the Old South Meeting House had previously requested that the ship’s captain ask Hutchinson directly for permission for his ship to return to England with the tea, and the request had been turned down. It was not likely that Hutchinson would agree to permit the ship to leave without unloading the tea this time either. Hutchinson had ordered some of the tea himself through his son, and the assembly had censured him for doing so. On several previous occasions, in fact, the Massachusetts assembly had requested that Hutchinson be removed as governor, but these requests had been ignored by the British government.
On the afternoon of December 16, the citizens assembled at the Old South Meeting House were waiting for Hutchinson’s decision. Little is known about the decisions made during the meeting because the attendees intentionally kept minimal records. At dusk, the ship’s captain arrived at the church and informed the attendees that Governor Hutchinson had refused permission for the ship to leave once again. Samuel Adams, a brewer and political leader who had advocated for independence from Great Britain as early as 1769, announced that “this meeting can do no more to save the country.”2 John Hancock, a merchant and leader of the assemblage, proclaimed, “Let every man do what is right in his own eyes!” The meeting was interrupted by calls for “Boston Harbor a tea-pot this night!” and “Hurra for Griffin’s Wharf!”3
A short time later, fifteen to twenty men appeared at the meeting, cheered on by the attendees. The men’s faces were smeared with grease and lamp black; they were dressed in blankets and wore large woolen caps, supposedly to look like Mohawk Indians. Armed with tomahawks, hatchets, pistols, and rifles, the men marched from Old South Meeting House to Boston Harbor; other men, who wore even clumsier garb acquired from a store on Fort Hill, joined the original group. When they arrived at Griffin’s Wharf, a crowd of about a thousand people watched the proceedings and cheered on the men. The boarding parties were well organized; they divided into three groups—one for each ship that carried tea—and boarded each vessel simultaneously.
To avoid damage to the ships and harm to the crews, the raiders politely asked the few crew members onboard for access to the tea consignment. The crews willingly obliged; in some cases, they even assisted by hoisting tea chests from the ships’ holds. The raiders then staved the chests and threw them into the harbor. As the destruction progressed, onlookers without disguises joined in. British sailors on men-of-war a short distance away in the harbor, as well as British Army troops at the castle, did nothing to intervene.
Three hours later, all 342 tea chests (about forty-three tons valued at £18,000) were destroyed, and the raiders and spectators departed. As the crowd left the wharf, British Admiral John Montagu, who was staying with a loyalist family a few blocks from the port, told some participants: “Well, boys, you have had a fine pleasant evening for your Indian caper—haven’t you? But mind, you have got to pay the fiddler yet!” The participants and onlookers then went to a tavern where they proceeded to have dinner and drink. The following day, some tea was still afloat in the harbor, so several colonists rowed out and dispersed it to prevent tea-hungry Bostonians from absconding with it.4
On the day after the Boston Tea Party, as the event would inevitably be called, John Adams, the future second president of the United States, wrote in his diary: “This Destruction of the Tea is so bold, so daring, so firm, so intrepid and inflexible, and it must have so important Consequences, and so lasting, that I cannot but consider it as an epocha [sic] in history. The question is: Whether the destruction of this tea was necessary? I apprehend it was absolutely and indispensably so.”5 This simple act of defiance set in motion events that culminated sixteen months later in the beginning of the Revolutionary War.
The consumption of tea (an infusion of cured leafs and buds of the Camellia sinensis plant) is thought to have originated in southwestern China at least 5,000 years ago. In the succeeding millennia, tea drinking expanded slowly to other parts of Asia, and finally to Europe in the early seventeenth century. Tea drinking was adopted in England in the mid-seventeenth century, and colonists brought the custom to British North America soon afterward.
The mercantilist economic policy of the British government dictated that tea be imported from China to England; from there, it was exported to British colonies. English merchants made a profit in the transaction, and the policy upped the price of the beverage in the colonies. Hence, until the early eighteenth century, tea was a luxury that only the well-to-do could afford. By 1720, however, tea production in China shot up to meet demand. Tea became widely available; as the price dropped, tea drinking became increasingly popular. In fact, tea became the most common libation in the British North American colonies, second only to water.
Tea was more than just a beverage; social functions emerged around tea drinking. As Massachusetts historian Alonzo Lewis reported about life in the 1730s, “When ladies went to visiting parties, each one carried her tea-cup, saucer and spoon. The tea-cups were of the best china, very small, containing as much as a common wine-glass.”6 By 1737, a traveler in New England reported that tea had become “the darling of our women. Almost every little tradesman’s wife must set sipping tea for an hour or more in the morning, and it may be again in the afternoon if they can get it. They talk of bestowing thirty or forty shillings upon a tea equipage.”7 Tea parties, usually composed of women, were commonly held throughout the colonies. By the mid-eighteenth century, drinking tea had expanded to the lower classes. Peter Kalm, a Swedish scientist who visited America in 1750, noted that “there is hardly a farmer’s wife or a poor woman who does not drink tea in the morning.”8
Not everyone knew how to prepare tea properly at first. When a woman in Haverhill, Massachusetts, first acquired tea, she purportedly boiled a whole pound of it in water and added a large piece of beef. It was so strong that the family could not consume it—or so the story goes.9 In western Pennsylvania, another colonist boiled ham with a mess of tea leaves rather than typical greens.10 Some women in Connecticut boiled the tea in a kettle and served it with the leaves for thickening.11 Long Island resident Mrs. Miller told a number of stories about the awkward manner of consuming tea: one person boiled it in a pot and ate it like samp porridge. Another spread the tea on his bread and butter; after he bragged about eating half a pound at a meal, a neighbor informed him how long a time a pound of tea should last. Miller remembered:
The first teakettle that was in East-Hampton … came ashore at Montauk in a ship (the Captain Bell). The farmers came down there on business with their cattle, and could not find out the use of the tea-kettle, which was then brought up to old “Governor Hedges.” Some said it was for one thing, and some said it was for another. At length one, more knowing than his neighbors, affirmed it to be the ship’s lamp, to which they all assented.12
Such popularity did not mean that everyone liked tea imports. In 1734, a New York writer reported: “I am credibly informed that tea and china ware cost the province, yearly, near the sum of £10,000; and people that are least able to go to the expence, must have their tea tho’ their families want bread. Nay, I am told, often pawn their rings and plate to gratifie themselves in that piece of extravagance.”13
Benjamin Franklin reported in the Pennsylvania Gazette in 1742 that a Quaker, Benjamin Lay, went to the marketplace with his late wife’s tea china and began breaking the cups and saucers as a protest against tea drinking. Evidently, Lay believed that tea “was a luxury, causing the expenditure of much money, and producing little good.” Boys in the market pushed him away and grabbed as much of the china as they could and ran off with it, saving some of it from destruction.14 In 1762, William Smith, writing in his history of New York, noted bitterly that “our people both in town and country are shamefully gone into the habit of tea-drinking.”15 Pennsylvania Germans did not consume tea, and neither did many settlers in the back country or frontier—but these people were the minority.16 Everyone else drank tea, especially women.
Taxing Tea
Tea may well have remained one of America’s most important beverages had the British Parliament not needed money after the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763). However, Parliament began passing revenue bills that required the British North American colonies to help foot some of the bill for the war and the cost of defending the vast new territory acquired in the war. One bill was the Townshend Act, passed in 1767, which taxed a number of products—including paper, paint, and tea—imported into the colonies from Great Britain. The colonists objected strenuously to the taxes because their own colonial legislatures had not given their consent.
Colonial resistance to the British tax acts included refusals to import the taxed products and boycotts of products that managed to arrive. It was at this time that the Sons of Liberty were first organized in New York (later expanding to Massachusetts and other colonies). Women began making homemade “liberty tea,” consisting of herbs and leaves of common plants steeped in hot water.17 The Boston Gazette reported in 1768 that tea was made from a shrub grown near Portland, Maine. It was served to
a circle of Ladies and Gentlemen in Newbury Port, who pronounced it nearly, if not quite, equal in Flavor to genuine Bohea tea…. So important a Discovery claims, especially at this Crisis, the Attention of every Friend of America. If we have the Plant nothing is wanting but the Process of curing it, to have Tea of our own Manufacture. If a Receipt cannot be obtained, Gentlemen of Curiosity and Chymical Skill would render their Country eminent Service, if by Experiments they would investigate the best method of preparing it for use.18
Resistance to the tax acts was strong in Boston. British troops were sent to the city in 1768; two years later, their presence led to the Boston Massacre, which killed three Bostonians and wounded others. In 1770, the British Parliament extended a peace offering to the colonists by rescinding all the Townshend taxes—except for the tax on tea. That tax caused the price of tea in Britain and the colonies to be at least 80 percent higher than the price for tea on the world market. As a result, an estimated 4 to 6 million pounds of tea were smuggled into Great Britain alone.19 The price of tea was even higher in the British colonies because tea could be legally shipped into the colonies only from England, which involved extra shipping costs, warehousing, and even more taxes. In British North America, the East India Company even had a harder sell because tea had been boycotted on and off by many merchants since 1767 when the British Parliament had first levied the tea tax. When any ship arrived in Boston carrying tea from England, extensive discussion ensued among the populace about what should be done. John Hancock, a wealthy merchant and supporter of the colonial cause, agreed to return the “detestable weed” back to the consignees in London without charge.20
Colonial anger grew. Delegations of citizens visited merchants to discourage them from selling tea, women pledged to not to buy tea, and colonial assemblies expressed their dissatisfaction over British policies. Tea continued to be imported, but it was put in storage because few merchants would sell it. As the Boston Gazette reported in April 1770, “There is not above one seller of tea in town who has not signed an agreement not to dispose of any tea until the late revenue acts are repealed.”21
Americans continued to consume tea, but most of it was smuggled in from Dutch sources. Perhaps as much as 3 million pounds of smuggled tea arrived in the colonies, and smuggling cost the British East India Company an estimated £40,000 annually in lost revenue. So as not to offend those organizing the boycott of taxed tea, American colonists made the smuggled tea in coffee pots and drank it in back rooms.22 But was the tea really smuggled in? Colonists did not know for sure. John Adams confessed in his diary in 1771 that, while dining with John Hancock, he “drank green tea, from Holland, I hope, but don’t know.”23 Although the boycott continued, tea as a topic of discussion subsided.
The issue might have quietly died had the East India Company, which imported tea from China, not begun to suffer financial reverses due to the boycott and smuggling. By 1773, the East India Company had 17 million pounds of tea sitting in chests in warehouses that it could not sell in England or North America. The company was teetering on the verge of bankruptcy, so much so that the British government had to lend it money. Parliament wanted the company to thrive so that the government would have a revenue stream and the East India Company would be able to pay off its loan.
Officials of the East India Company had a good idea to solve their problem. They approached Parliament with the idea of lowering the tax even more so that English tea would be more competitive with smuggled Dutch tea. Parliament responded by passing the Tea Act, which lowered taxes on tea shipped from England to the North American colonies. Colonists would have to pay only 1 penny per pound. To take advantage of this change, which the East India Company believed would be well received in North America, the company rushed 600,000 pounds of tea to North America. Seven ships loaded with tea were sent to ports from Charleston to Boston.24 From Parliament’s perspective, this had the advantage of establishing the principle that Parliament could tax British colonies.
This strategy might have worked in 1766. However, by 1773, the colonists were united in their opposition, in principle, to any tax Parliament levied that had not been approved by their own colonial legislatures. Even if the tax on tea was lower, it was still a tax levied by Parliament, not by their own assemblies. Therefore, the leaders in the North American colonies banded together to oppose the landing of any taxed tea.
It was Boston where the first tea ships arrived in late November 1773. After numerous attempts to send the ships back to England failed, colonists tossed the tea into the harbor on December 16. The ship destined for Charleston, South Carolina, arrived on December 3. Opponents of the tea tax convinced local consignees who had ordered the tea to refuse its delivery. The law required all duties on the tea to be paid by the twenty-first day after the ship arrived; if the duties were not paid, the tea could be confiscated. This is precisely what happened in Charleston: all 257 chests of tea were confiscated by the port’s customs collector. Leaders in other colonies were disappointed because Charleston was the only city in which the tea was unloaded. But the tea remained in storage for more than two years, until July 1776, when it was sold by local officials to help support the revolution.25
America’s largest city, Philadelphia, had been astir for weeks before the Polly, another of the ships laden with tea, arrived at the city’s waterfront on December 25, 1773. The harbor pilots who escorted ships into Philadelphia’s shallow harbor were warned not to bring this ship near the port, so it anchored four miles away. Meanwhile, an estimated 5,000 men gathered in the city, and many more were on the way from surrounding communities. These colonists decided that the ship would not land and the tea would not be unloaded. The consignee for the tea denounced the contract he had made, and the leaders of the meeting convinced the ship’s captain to leave the harbor within twenty-four hours, which he did. His departure may have been hastened by a threat that his ship would be burned if it did not leave.26 In New York, the consignees withdrew their orders for tea based on threats to them if they did not. Thus the ship bound for New York returned to England.27 It was only in Boston—where the British had a strong military presence—that the matter came to a head when neither the loyalist colonial governor nor those opposed to paying the tax on tea would back down when the ships carrying the tea arrived in the harbor.
When word of the Boston Tea Party reached England, the news astonished and angered most leaders there. They considered the action an act of defiance (which it was) and concluded that Parliament must respond forcefully if it were to retain its authority over the colonies. In their view, Parliament had “to make such provisions as should secure the just dependence of the Colonies, and a due obedience to the laws, throughout all the British dominions.” Parliament thus decided to punish Boston, which had been a hotbed of resistance to royal policies for the previous eight years. In March 1774, Parliament passed the Boston Port Bill, “interdicting all commercial intercourse with the port of Boston, and prohibiting the landing and shipping of any goods at that place” until Bostonians paid the East India Company for the tea that had been destroyed and complied with Parliament’s tax on imported tea.28 In addition, the new law disbanded the Massachusetts colonial assembly and prohibited all public meetings in Boston. To enforce these measures, Great Britain sent more warships and troops to the city.
These actions might well have forced Boston’s compliance with the British law, but surrounding communities came to the city’s relief by sending food and supplies. The British actions alienated other colonies, and they too sent money and supplies to help those in Boston who suffered as a result of British policies. A number of colonial leaders established committees of correspondence to improve communications among the colonies. What emerged from these efforts was the First Continental Congress, which met in Philadelphia in September 1774 and consisted of representatives from twelve colonies. One of the first things this Congress did was pass a nonimportation agreement, by which those colonies represented at the meeting agreed not to import or export any goods to Great Britain, Ireland, or the West Indies.
Attempts to unload shipments of taxed tea continued but faced major opposition. A tea ship destined for Boston arrived on March 7, 1774; it too was boarded by men in disguise and its tea destroyed.29 In April 1774, two tea ships—the Nancy and the London—entered New York harbor at about the same time. The tea consignee to the Nancy sent a note to the captain, reporting that the populace of the city was “violently opposed” to the landing or vending of the tea and “that any attempts in us, either to effect one or the other would not only be fruitless, but expose so considerable a property to inevitable destruction.” The Nancy returned to England without unloading its tea. The captain of the London claimed that there was no tea onboard, but when the ship was searched, it was found to contain eighteen chests of tea. The Sons of Liberty, dressed like American Indians, threw the chests into New York harbor and threatened the captain, who hid to avoid bodily harm. He left New York at the earliest opportunity.30
In August 1774, the brig Mary and Jane arrived at the St. Mary’s River in Maryland with several packages of tea on board, consigned to merchants in the towns of Georgetown and Bladensburg. The merchants who had ordered the tea were called before the Charles County Committee, whose members supported the boycott of tea. After it became clear that the duty on the tea had not been paid, the consignees agreed to send the tea back to England.31 The Peggy Stewart, a ship owned by a merchant named Anthony Stewart, arrived in Annapolis, Maryland, on October 15, 1774. Thomas William, a merchant in the city, had contracted for the tea while in London and, according to the commander of the brig, brought back seventeen chests (about 2,320 pounds) of that “detestable plant” with him without the commander’s knowledge. Stewart paid the duty on the tea, but left it on the vessel. Subsequently, Stewart and Williams were brought before the Committee of the County, composed of citizens of Anne Arundel County who supported the tea boycott. When threatened with tarring and feathering and hanging, Stewart agreed to burn his ship with the tea onboard. The committee also required Stewart and Williams to acknowledge their misdeeds in the Maryland Gazette. Both Williams and Stewart wisely headed off to London with their families shortly after the incident.32 Six months after the burning of the Peggy Stewart, the American War of Independence broke out.
When the Party Was Over
Although tea was available sporadically in North America during the Revolutionary War, it was considered unpatriotic to drink it. John Adams particularly loved tea and tried to acquire some in Falmouth shortly after the Boston Tea Party. But in a letter to his wife, he wrote that he asked the proprietress of the house where he was staying in Falmouth, “Is it lawfull for a weary Traveller to refresh himself with a Dish of Tea provided it has been honestly smuggled, or paid no Duties?” The proprietress replied, “No sir, … we have renounced all Tea in this Place.” Adams thereafter drank coffee, but he added in the letter to his wife the rousing comment, “Tea must be universally renounced, and I must be weaned, and the sooner the better.”33 As historian Benjamin W. Labaree wrote, an “anti-tea hysteria” swept the colonies.34
On April 13, 1776, the Continental Congress lifted the ban on selling tea while keeping the ban on buying tea from the East India Company. All East India tea then warehoused in America was sold.35 Although the consumption of tea was limited by the British blockade, it appears to have been regularly available throughout the American Revolution. George Washington tried to acquire as much tea as possible for the Continental Army, and Swedish military officer Jean Axel, Comte de Fersen, reported that tea was available to the troops at Valley Forge, even though many necessities were not.36
French military officers in America during the Revolution commented freely on the custom of drinking tea. Claude Victor Marie, Prince de Broglie, who visited Philadelphia in 1782, drank twelve cups at the home of Mrs. Robert Morris. Of this experience, he wrote:
I partook of most excellent tea and I should be even now still drinking it, I believe, if the Ambassador had not charitably notified me at the twelfth cup, that I must put my spoon across it when I wished to finish with this sort of warm water. He said to me: it is almost as ill-bred to refuse a cup of tea when it is offered to you, as it would be indiscreet for the mistress of the house to propose a fresh one, when the ceremony of the spoon has notified her that we no longer wish to partake of it.37
Claude C. Robin, a Catholic abbot serving as the “chaplain-in-chief” of the French Army in America, took delight in tea drinking while in Newport, Rhode Island: “[T]he greatest mark of civility and welcome they can show you, is to invite you to drink it with them”38 Louis Philippe, Comte de Ségur, another aristocrat who served in the French Army in America, recounted that he was in good health despite the “quantity of tea one must drink with the ladies out of gallantry, and of Madeira all day long with the men out of politeness.”39
Others purportedly suffered due to tea’s absence. When the Frenchman J. P. Brissot de Warville visited America after the war, he reported on “several persons whom the deprivation of tea had made ill for a long time, although they had tried illusive means, by substituting the infusion of agreeable simples for that of the tea-leaf.”40
When the American Revolution ended in 1783, tea drinking again became fashionable among America’s well-to-do. Tea parties and tea balls regained their former glory.41 In 1791, a visiting Prussian military officer, Dietrich Heinrich, Freiherr Von Bülow, reported that in Philadelphia a guest was expected to consume two cups of tea.42 Médéric Moreau de Saint-Méry, a French Creole from Martinique, was an early leader of the French Revolution; he ran afoul of other radicals in France and took his family to America during the 1790s. Moreau de Saint-Méry reported that Americans “passionately loved” their tea, which was served at the first and second meals of the day; tea constituted the entire third meal, when “the whole family is united at tea, to which friends, acquaintances and even strangers are invited…. Evening tea is a boring and monotonous ceremony. The mistress of the house serves it and passes it around, and as long as a person has not turned his cup upside down and placed his spoon upon it, just so often will he be brought another cup.”43 Tea remained an important beverage in America after the War of Independence—especially among the well-to-do—but the price remained high because it could be acquired only from China.
All the Tea in China
Prior to the Revolutionary War, all legally sold tea had been shipped from China to England and then to North America. Tea smuggled into the colonies came from China via Holland, as American vessels could not trade directly with China. As the war was ending, Robert Morris, a Philadelphia merchant and a signer of the Declaration of Independence, saw a great opportunity: it was time to cut out the middlemen and trade directly with China. Morris joined with others to outfit a ship, the Empress of China, which sailed out of New York on February 22, 1784, and returned fifteen months later with a cargo mainly of tea. When this tea was sold, each investor netted $30,000. Other ships made the journey to China as well, and soon a thriving business between the two countries was under way. By 1789, more American ships were sailing to Canton, China, than to any country other than Great Britain. During the following decade, American consumption of tea remained constant.44
During the last year of the American Revolution, a German flute maker named John Jacob Astor immigrated to America. Starting from scratch, Astor built a business based on the fur trade and made a fortune. When he saw the profits in the tea trade with China, Astor jumped in, shipping furs to China and bringing back tea in return. Astor’s trade with China began in 1800 and ended in 1826, earning him another fortune. Astor invested this money in Manhattan real estate and then farm land, making himself a third fortune.45
During the War of 1812, a new type of sailing ship was launched in Baltimore—fast sailing ships that could outrun the blockade that Great Britain maintained during the war. After the war ended in 1815, even larger versions of these clipper ships began sailing to China to acquire tea; this trade that continued to generate good sales in the United States up until the Civil War. Despite increased sales, however, tea slipped in favor; during the 1830s, coffee consumption overtook that of tea.
Poisonous Tea
During the eighteenth century, some medical professionals questioned the benefits of tea drinking. A physician from Edinburgh, Scotland, for instance, demonstrated in 1707 that green tea “had the same effect as henbane, tobacco, cicuta, etc., on the living tissues of the animal body; in all cases first diminishing and finally destroying their vital properties.” In 1730, a writer in the New York Gazette proclaimed that tea produced fatal effects on health and mind. A scientist from Sweden who visited the colonies in 1750 believed that American women lost their teeth because of the amount of tea they were drinking—although after more careful consideration, he concluded that probably was not accurate. In 1803, an English doctor named Thomas Beddoes demonstrated that tea was “as powerfully destructive to life as laurel water, opium, or digitalis.” Indeed, the doctor claimed that even “a small quantity of a strong decoction of tea or coffee will destroy human life.”46
Beginning in the 1830s, a number of American health professionals also opposed the consumption of tea. The food reformer Sylvester Graham, for example, believed that tea was “stimulating food” and therefore should be banned. The medical professional William Alcott maintained that tea was not only useless, but positively hurtful. He concluded that it was a narcotic and therefore poisonous.47 Many health professionals throughout the nineteenth century agreed. As Dio Lewis, a Harvard-trained physician who campaigned around the country against the use of tea, noted in one of his books:
I frequently met three or four middle-aged or old women, and during several hours had opportunity to observe them closely. If some time had passed since they had partaken of tea, they were unsocial and irritable. Their eyes would not sparkle, except on hearing the question, “I wonder when tea will be ready?” When they had drank their two cups “that would hold up an egg,” what a loosening of tongues! Each would talk straight on, for an hour, without a comma; but when its influence was over, they fell into weariness and irritability again, only to be revived by another dose. When we witness the same phenomenon among opium eaters, we are sure they are ruining their health. That tea-drinking seriously impairs the health of many women, I know. How exactly alike all strong tea-drinkers are—the same black teeth and dry, yellow skin; the same expression of eye; the same nervousness and periodical headache.48
It wasn’t health concerns, however, that dethroned tea as America’s most important hot beverage. It was the introduction of lower-cost and higher-caffeinated coffee from Central and South America beginning in the 1830s. Coffee gave a greater jolt to consumers and had none of the feminine associations as tea did.
Tea Revival
Despite medical concerns about tea and coffee’s rise to ascendency, tea continued to be consumed in large quantities, especially by women.49 Afternoon teas became common in restaurants and homes, particularly in the South. Tea drinking was buttressed by the arrival of immigrants from tea-drinking countries. It was first the Irish who arrived en masse due to the potato famine that began in the late 1840s, and later immigrants from Russia who began arriving later in the century. During the 1850s, articles appeared in American magazines extolling “tea for the ladies,” and tea was romanticized in other articles about plantations in Ceylon, China, and India. Tea wagons prowled city streets offering tea, coffee, and other specialty items.
The most unusual innovation in tea drinking began in the 1850s, when many Americans started drinking tea as an iced beverage in the summer. By that time, ice was widely available throughout the United States, and it chilled other beverages.50 Serving iced tea with lemon was fashionable; it was called “à la Russe.” Iced tea became extremely popular in the United States after the Civil War, especially in the South.51
Despite the decline in per capita tea consumption, fortunes were still to be had in importing and retailing tea. New Yorkers enjoyed tea. By 1860, there were sixty-five retail tea shops in the city.52 J. Stiner & Company, for instance, made good money importing and selling tea. It diversified the products that it sold; by 1871, it was New York’s largest chain store operation.53
Another tea shop was launched by George F. Gilman and George H. Hartford. They imported teas, coffees, and other products. Gilman and Hartford opened a retail tea store in New York City and also began selling tea through the mail. Three years later, they named their business the Great American Tea Company. Sales were good enough that Gilman and Hartford started buying tea in bulk, which enabled them to lower their expenses even further and undersell other grocers. Like J. Stiner & Company, Gilman and Hartford expanded their line of goods to include coffee and other luxury products. By 1865, the partners had five small stores in New York City. The completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869 made it possible for the Great American Tea Company to receive shipments of tea and other specialty goods from Asia via San Francisco, and then transport them by train throughout the United States. Hartford and Gilman opened stores across the nation, and they changed the name of the new bicoastal company to the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company, subsequently shortened to A&P. In the 1870s, A&P was the largest distributor of tea in America. Over the next few decades, the A&P stores gradually augmented their inventory to include a full range of groceries.54
Other companies that started out as tea distributors followed similar paths. In 1876, Bernard H. Kroger, for instance, began selling tea and coffee door to door in Cincinnati. Eight years later, he and a friend formed the Great Western Tea Company. By 1885, the company had four stores. The company expanded its offerings and, in 1902, the company’s name was changed to Kroger Grocery and Baking Company. Tea was readily available in specialty stores as well as grocery stores, which expanded throughout the nation in the late nineteenth century.
Tea consumption was not just boosted by its availability in grocery stores and specialty shops. Tea companies promoted their products, as did plantation owners in India. The Indian Tea Association sent Richard Blechynden to the United States to promote its tea. In 1893, Blechynden invested $15,000 to build and staff the East India Pavilion at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The pavilion included exhibitions demonstrating how tea was grown and manufactured. Tea was served at the pavilion and throughout the exposition by vendors. When the Louisiana Purchase Exposition was held in St. Louis in 1904, plantation owners in India and Ceylon thought it was worthwhile to increase their investment to $150,000 to lavishly promote their teas. At both fairs, iced tea was distributed; because the summers were hot, it received visibility among fairgoers.55
Per capita tea consumption hit a peak in 1897 with Americans consuming an average of 1.56 pounds of tea. The federal government then placed a 10-cent per pound tariff on imported tea. Tea consumption declined to a per capita consumption of 1 pound by 1907. To stop this decline, tea distributors created the National Tea Association to press for increased tea consumption. It was a losing battle, with per capita consumption continuing to decline thereafter.56
There were some positive developments. Tearooms became common in many large cities and rural areas in the United States during the late nineteenth century. These tearooms were largely owned, operated, and frequented by women, who saw the establishments as good alternatives to the saloons where men congregated. Although tearooms did not revolve around tea—they were more like lunchrooms—tea was an important item on their menus. Tearooms became particularly popular during Prohibition but went out of fashion after repeal in 1933.57
Until the early twentieth century, tea was purchased in bulk; loose tea had to be measured for each cup of tea. Hot water was then added, and the tea had to be steeped. The tea then had to be strained from the cup. This process was simplified by the invention of tea bags, eggs, and balls in the early twentieth century.58 By the 1920s, restaurants began using tea bags as a more efficient way to make and serve tea. During the following decade, a diversity of tea bags were manufactured and home use increased.59
Tea drinking largely disappeared in America during World War II, when importation of tea from Asia was impossible. However, it reemerged as an important beverage after the war ended. Lipton introduced the four-sided tea bag in 1952, and Instant Tea came out five years later. In the 1960s, countercultural groups began marketing herbal teas. Celestial Seasonings, for instance, was established in 1969 in Boulder, Colorado. The company offered herbal teas that were additive free, organically grown, or gathered in the wild; some of the teas were suggested as remedies for ailments such as sore throat and insomnia. Erewhon, after acquiring the venerable cereal company U.S. Mills in 1986, is now one of largest retailers, manufacturers, and distributors of natural foods (including tea) in the United States. Celestial Seasonings, sold to Kraft in 1984, became independent again in 1988 and is now the country’s largest purveyor of specialty teas.
Yet another recent development has been the rise of bottled and canned ready-to-drink teas in the late 1980s. These teas include a number of different product lines, including Ferolito Vultaggio and Sons (AriZona), Honest Tea, Thomas J. Lipton, Nestlé (Nestea), South Beach Beverages (SoBe), and Turkey Hill. The most successful bottled teas have been those released by the Snapple Beverage Company in 1987. Today, there are “an endless number of categories, types, blends and brands to chose from,” notes Laura C. Martin.60
Tea was an unlikely beverage to set in motion a series of events that would lead to a revolution, but the Boston Tea Party was the spark that ignited the American War of Independence. Tea also became important in American trade with China during the early and mid-nineteenth century. Today, it is the most consumed hot beverage in the world, but in the United States it lags far behind coffee and soda.
Postscript
On April 15, 1775, General Thomas Gage, commander of the British forces in Boston, ordered the destruction of the arsenals and arms that the colonists had collected in Lexington and Concord, thus beginning the Revolutionary War. On June 17, 1775, he won a pyrrhic victory over the colonial forces on Breeds and Bunker Hill. As soon as word reached London of this engagement and its 1,000 British casualties, Gage was recalled to England, where he remained until his death in 1787. Faced with death threats even after he burned his brig, Anthony Stewart took his family to London. When the British Army occupied New York in 1776, Stewart moved back to the city and joined an association of other Loyalists. When the war was over, Maryland confiscated Stewart’s property, declared him a traitor, and sentenced him to death. Like many other Loyalists fleeing the American Revolution, Stewart fled to Nova Scotia.
After the American Revolution, Prince de Broglie returned to France, where he was guillotined during the French Revolution in 1794.
J. P. Brissot de Warville became a leader of the French Revolution, but he ran afoul of those who were even more radical, and he too was guillotined in October 1793.
Jean Axel, Comte de Fersen, the Swedish military officer, became a close friend of Marie Antoinette, France’s queen, before the American Revolution and remained in contact with her after the war. After King Louis XVI was guillotined during the French Revolution, Fersen set up an escape plan for Marie Antoinette, but before it could be implemented, she too was guillotined. Fersen returned to Sweden, where in 1810 he was tortured and murdered by a mob who disagreed with his political views.
The aristocrat Louis Philippe, Comte de Ségur, survived the French Revolution and died in France in 1830.
Upon his return to Prussia, Dietrich Heinrich, Freiherr Von Bülow, wrote a number of works that were contemptuous of Prussia. Because of this, he was thrown into prison, where he died in 1807.
Robert Morris engaged in land speculation in Philadelphia and lost his fortune. He was thrown into debtors’ prison, where he became ill. He died shortly after his release from prison in 1806.
When John Jacob Astor died in 1848, he was the wealthiest man in America.
George F. Gilman remained president of the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company until 1879; he died in 1901. George H. Hartford became president of the company in 1879 and remained in that position until his death in 1915. At that time, there were more than 3,000 A&P grocery stores in the United States. Hartford’s sons took control of the business and expanded the number of stores even further. The efforts of both Gilman and Hartford ensured that A&P would be the largest grocery store chain for more than fifty years.
Samuel Adams served as a delegate to the Continental Congress and also the Massachusetts ratifying convention for what became the U.S. Constitution. He was elected lieutenant governor of Massachusetts in 1789 and then governor in 1793. He died in Boston in 1803.
The 1773 Boston Tea Party has regularly served as an inspiration for disgruntled anti-tax advocates ever since. Its most recent reincarnation is the tea party movement, which emerged in 2009.
When refrigerators with freezer compartments became common in the mid-twentieth century, iced tea became one of America’s favorite beverages. Today, most tea in the United States—about 85 percent—is consumed iced.
Although taxes on tea and rum contributed to the American War of Independence, a tax on whiskey would lead to a rebellion against the United States.
