Boston Tea Party: Politicizing Ordinary People | Research & Encyclopedia Articles

On the evening of December 16, 1773, a few dozen of the Sons of Liberty, opposing new British laws in the colonies, systematically dumped three shiploads of tea

into Boston harbor. They acted to prevent the royal authorities from collecting taxes on that import. The destruction of the tea was a political protest against one British tax, but it had the unintended effect of setting off a chain of events that would lead to war in April 1775.

Tea seems like an odd basis for such a bitter conflict, and a decade earlier Americans would probably have reacted tepidly to changes in imperial tea policy. But since the Stamp Act of 1765, colonial politicians had railed against taxation without representation, urging people to protest by buying fewer goods from Britain. The Sons of Liberty used "non-importation" campaigns to avoid the Townshend duties of 1767 and to pressure British merchants into lobbying for repeal. This strategy seemed to work: by 1770, Parliament had canceled the stamp tax and all but one of the Townshend duties—the tax on tea.

Boycotts pulled all consumers into the political arena—even women, who were otherwise shunted out of public affairs. In 1767 the Boston Gazette praised Mehitable May for wearing a locally woven wedding dress. In 1770 the Boston town meeting declared milliners Ame and Elizabeth Cumings "Enemies of their Country" because they continued to sell imports. The few political documents women were ever encouraged to sign were promises to boycott certain goods or shops. Duties on a popular product like tea forced all free Americans to make a political choice.

Thus, though the new Tea Act of 1773 promised to lower the consumer price of East India Company tea by eliminating costs elsewhere, most Americans had come to view any tea tax as unfair. Furthermore, the law was obviously written to benefit well-connected interests: the East India Company and the few merchants granted a monopoly on importing tea into North America, called consignees. (In Massachusetts, two of those men were the royal governor's sons.) This seemed to confirm complaints of corruption in the London government.

News of the Tea Act incited widespread protests in America. Mass meetings pressured the consignees in Philadelphia, New York, and Charleston into resigning. Bostonians stormed one importer's office, driving local tea merchants to seek shelter in an army fort. In smaller towns, tea chests washed up from shipwrecks were publicly burned. Tea ships turned away from Philadelphia and New York, but on November 28 the Dartmouth, with 114 chests on board, arrived in Boston harbor.

Sons of Liberty urged that ship's owner not to unload the tea so as to avoid triggering the tax. Royal authorities in Massachusetts responded by applying trade regulations strictly. Governor Thomas Hutchinson invoked a law that forbade the Dartmouth and two later tea ships from leaving Boston harbor without unloading. Meanwhile, customs officials warned that if the Dartmouth was still unloaded on December 17, they could confiscate its cargo. (In Charleston the customs office carried out a similar threat.)

Boston radicals had summoned "the Body of the People," calling anyone interested in the tea issue to public meetings. Hundreds of men gathered in the Old South Meeting-House; by choosing a rural businessman to moderate the discussion, they signaled that Boston and the countryside were united. Eventually the crowd overflowed even that space, the largest in town. More than 5,000 people, equal to a third of all Bostonians, thronged the final meetings.

Both sides called on military resources. Governor Hutchinson ordered the Royal Navy and the cannons of the harbor fort to keep the three ships from leaving. The tea meetings recruited armed volunteers, mustering like militia units, to patrol Griffin's Wharf and ensure the ships were not unloaded secretly at night.

The son of the Dartmouth's owner shuttled between Boston and the governor's country home, seeking a compromise. On the evening of December 16, he returned to the meeting-house and reported that Hutchinson still would not let the ship sail. Organizer Samuel Adams announced, "This meeting can do nothing more to save the country." Nonetheless, he and other prominent politicians remained at Old South, in view of the crowd.

Outside, in response to Adams's words, two or three dozen Sons of Liberty, mostly mechanics used to physical labor, moved swiftly toward Griffin's Wharf. They wore blankets and face paint to hide their identities, as New England rioters often did. Others spontaneously joined these "Mohawks," blacking their faces with soot. The group split into three squads and boarded the ships.

The Sons of Liberty were determined to harm only East India Company tea. There were customs employees on the ships, including one man a mob had tarred and feathered in 1770, but this night the crowd merely ordered them below deck. Searchers broke the padlock on one captain's trunk, but it was anonymously replaced the next day.

Working quickly, the "Mohawks" winched 342 tea chests from the holds, chopped them open, sliced through their canvas liners, and dumped the tea overboard. In an unusually low tide, leaves began to heap up beside the ships. A few apprentices were set to raking the tea into the salt water so nothing could be salvaged. By nine o'clock the men finished and marched away.

The result was no ordinary property damage. The tea had been worth £9,659, or over six times the governor's salary. Furthermore, the event was clearly an organized defiance of the law. Royal ministers sought individuals to prosecute, but could not link town leaders to the destruction. Hundreds of people had watched, yet no eyewitnesses appeared. On March 7 Bostonians destroyed tea on a fourth ship. The ministers decided to punish the town as a whole.

Parliament closed Boston harbor to transatlantic trade until locals repaid the East India Company, sending army regiments to enforce that closure. Parliament also overhauled the Massachusetts government to reduce the power of voters at every level, from town meetings to the governor's council. With the American populace already aroused, these laws produced a backlash that led to the Continental Congresses, and eventually to America's War for Independence.

Opposition to taxes mobilized ordinary people, believing they were exercising their rights as British citizens, to protest British authority. The Boston Tea Party of 1773 was among the most forceful and tightly organized of these protests. Colonists hoped that their action would force Parliament to repeal its tax on tea—not fore-seeing that it would lead to revolution.

Boston Massacre: Pamphlets and Propaganda; Continental Congresses; Hewes, George Robert Twelves; Sons of Liberty; Stamp Act Congress.

Drake, Francis S. Tea Leaves. Boston: A. O. Crane, 1884.

Hoerder, Dirk. Crowd Action in Revolutionary Massachusetts, 1765–1780. New York: Academic Press, 1977.

Labaree, Benjamin Woods. The Boston Tea Party. New York: Oxford University Press, 1964.

Young, Alfred F. The Shoemaker and the Tea Party: Memory and the American Revolution. Boston: Beacon Press, 1999.

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