This is but an overview - a commemoration - of the Boston Tea Party, not a weighty tome. Obviously a number of details have been left out, though the major details that tell what happened that night are here.
To be honest, I lifted most of the actual information directly from the Boston Tea Party web site, and the History site.
They tell the story much better than I do.
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| The official 250th Boston Tea Party logo~ |
The year of this writing, 2023, is the 250th anniversary of something deeply embedded in the American consciousness: The Boston Tea Party.
These colonists were protesting the Tea Act of 1773, enacted by Britain earlier that year (May). The Tea Act did not raise taxes on the colonists - Americans had been paying taxes on tea since 1767, when the infamous Townshend Acts were enacted. At the time, there had been so much anger over the Townshend Acts that most of its taxes—taxes on glass, lead, oil, paint, and paper—were repealed. Yet even after all the repeals, the tea tax remained because Britain wanted to prove that it had a right to tax the colonists. Many of the colonists disagreed and felt they should not be taxed when they had no representation in Parliament.
So the Tea Act of 1773 was enacted to help bail out the British East India Company, which had 17 million pounds of surplus tea. The Tea Act effectively gave a monopoly to the British East India Company, and it severely undercut American merchants. Ultimately, all of these actions resurrected old frustrations: the colonists did not think that the taxes on tea were legitimate in the first place. And they did not intend to pay taxes on a forced monopoly.
Something needed to be done....but who had the nerve to stand up against the giants from across the Atlantic?
The Sons of Liberty were a group of colonial merchants and tradesmen founded to protest the Stamp Act of 1765 and other forms of taxation. The group of revolutionists included prominent patriots such as Benedict Arnold, Patrick Henry, and Paul Revere, as well as Samuel Adams and John Hancock.
So, events leading up to what became known as the Boston Tea Party were as presented here:
November 29 to 30, 1773 - The people of Boston and the surrounding towns meet to discuss the “tea crisis” at the Old South Meeting House, for the first load of tea arrived in Boston. According to British law, taxes on tea were due within 20 days of a ship arriving in harbor.
Two more ships arrived on December 2 and December 15. Boston residents wanted to reject the tea and send the ships back, but Governor Thomas Hutchinson (a Loyalist) would not allow the ships to leave the port. The taxes for the first ship had to be paid by December 17.
December 5, 1773 - “The Tea that bainfull weed is arrived. Great and effectual opposition has been made to the landing of it. To the publick papers I must refer you for perticuliars. You will there find that the proceedings of our citizens have been united, spirited and firm. The flame is kindled and like lightening it catches from soul to soul. Great will be the devastation if not timely quenched or allayed by some more lenient measures.”
~ Abigail Adams to Mercy Otis Warren
Early December 1773 - In December, tensions grew to an all-time high with the arrival of the Eleanor and Beaver. As the deadline to pay the tax on the Dartmouth’s tea fast approached, another large-scale meeting to discuss the “tea crisis” was planned for Tuesday, December 14 at the Old South Meeting House. Prior to this, smaller meetings had been held by the Sons of Liberty at the Old South Meeting House almost daily since November 30 to discuss the “tea crisis”.
The Sons of Liberty planned a course of action of the utmost secrecy to deal with the “tea crisis” if the issue could not be resolved diplomatically through negotiations. A pamphlet was distributed throughout Boston to announce and call forth the concerned citizenry to meet at 10:00 in the morning on December 14 at the Old South Meeting House.
Tuesday, December 14, 1773 - News of the meeting was spread to towns in close vicinity to Boston, and towns throughout Massachusetts sent proclamations of support. Ultimately, thousands of people from Boston and towns across Massachusetts gathered at the Old South Meeting on that December 14 morning.
Samuel Adams recorded the following about the meeting: “The people met again at the Old South church, and having ascertained the owner, they compelled him to apply at the custom house for a clearance for his ship to London with the tea on board, and appointed ten gentlemen to see it performed; after which they adjourned till Thursday the 16th.”
Wednesday, December 15, 1773 -
The owners of the tea ship---Beaver, Dartmouth, and Eleanor----found themselves caught in the middle of the “tea crisis”.
Thursday, December 16, 1773 -
On that morning, the day before the deadline for payment of the tax on the Dartmouth’s tea was due, thousands from all over Massachusetts gathered in Boston. They gathered in the streets, at Griffin’s Wharf, the Green Dragon Tavern, and at the Old South Meeting House. The atmosphere was tense, and the Sons of Liberty did its part to rouse the masses. It is estimated that 5,000 to 7,000 people gathered at the Old South Meeting House at 10:00 in the morning for resumption of the meeting, which had been adjourned two days earlier. The crowd gathered was more than a third of Boston’s entire population. The deadline for the payment of the tea tax was midnight, and the decision of what was going to be done needed to be made.
On December 16, Lieutenant Governor Hutchinson was conveniently in Milton, Massachusetts. The meeting forced the Dartmouth owner, Francis Rotch, to immediately travel the ten or more miles to Milton to get in contact with Hutchinson. Upon meeting with Hutchinson, Rotch was denied a pass to allow the Dartmouth to sail unmolested out of Boston Harbor and to return the cargo of British East India Company tea back to England.
The meeting at the Old South Meeting House was tense, and spirited language filled the air as thousands waited hours for Rotch to return with the response from Hutchinson. John Rowe, the owner of the Eleanor, was reputed to have been at the meeting. Rowe was known for his smuggling and staunch anti-British policy leanings and was so angered with the situation that he is recorded to have said, “Perhaps salt water and tea will mix tonight!” Rowe is remembered as one of the inciters of the Boston Tea Party, yet he attempted to cover up his participation in the planning by recording false entries in his diary as to his whereabouts on December 16.
With the Dartmouth refused a pass to safely sail out of Boston Harbor and to return her cargo of British East India Company Tea, time was running out and the Patriots exhausted all legal means to keep the ship from being unloaded. Since the arrival of the Dartmouth on November 28, the Sons of Liberty had been secretly planning a last resort alternative measure to prevent the unloading of the British East India Company tea if all diplomatic negotiations with government officials failed.
Thomas Hutchinson was the final word in regards to colonial policy in Massachusetts, and with his refusal to cooperate with the people’s demands, Samuel Adams declared, “This meeting can do nothing more to save the country!”
With those words Adams addressed the thousands gathered at the Old South Meeting House, the meeting came to a close, and it was the signal for the Sons of Liberty to take action and carry out their plan. Cries of “huzza!” and “make Boston Harbor a teapot tonight!” resonated throughout the Old South Meeting House. With war whoops, members of the Sons of Liberty, dressed in their best interpretations of “Indian Dress,” emerged from the Old South Meeting House, mustered at Fort Hill, and marched to Griffin’s Wharf.
An eyewitness to the Boston Tea Party, John Andrews, a merchant, described the events to Philadelphia merchant William Barrell in a December 18, 1773 letter:
“They mustered, I’m told, upon Fort Hill, to the number of about two hundred, and proceeded, two by two, to Griffin’s wharf, where Hall, Bruce, and Coffin lay, each with 114 chests of the ill-fated article on board… and before nine o’clock in the evening, every chest from on board the three vessels was knocked to pieces and flung over the sides. They say the actors were Indians from Narragansett. Whether they were or not, to a transient observer they appeared as such, being clothed in blankets with the heads muffled, and copper-colored countenances, being each armed with a hatchet or axe, and pair pistols, nor was their dialect different from what I conceive these geniuses to speak, as their jargon was unintelligible to all but themselves…”
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| Photo courtesy of the Boston Tea Party page |
Reports from the time describe the participants as dressed as Mohawks or Narragansett Indians. The disguise was more symbolic in nature; they knew they would be recognized as non-Indians. The act of wearing “Indian Dress” was to express through symbolism to the world that the American colonists identified themselves as “Americans” and no longer considered themselves British subjects. They were not dressed as Indians in the classic sense with headdresses and full authentic regalia; rather they wore wool blankets matchcoat style, painted their faces with soot, and employed other modes of dress commonly known at the time as “Indian dress” which had been adopted by soldiers during the French and Indian War. Boston Tea Party participant George Hewes dictated his account of the Boston Tea Party many years after the event and described his “Indian dress” as the following:
“It was now evening, and I immediately dressed myself in the costume of an Indian, equipped with a small hatchet, which I and my associates denominated the tomahawk, with which, and a club, after having painted my face and hands with coal dust in the shop of a blacksmith, I repaired to Griffin’s wharf, where the ships lay that contained the tea. When I first appeared in the street after being thus disguised, I fell in with many who were dressed, equipped and painted as I was, and who fell in with me and marched in order to the place of our destination.”
It is estimated hundreds took part in the Boston Tea Party, and the event was witnessed by thousands. For fear of punishment, many participants of the Boston Tea Party remained anonymous for many years after the event. John Adams would later recount he did not know the identity of a single participant. To date it is known 116 people are documented to have participated. Not all of the participants of the Boston Tea Party are known; many carried the secret of their participation to their graves. The participants were made up of males from all walks of colonial society. Many were from Boston or the surrounding area, but some participants are documented to have come from as far away as Worcester (in central Massachusetts), and Maine. The vast majority were of English decent, but men of Irish, Scottish, French, Portuguese, and African ancestry are documented to have participated. The participants were of all ages, but the majority of the documented participants were under the age of forty. Sixteen participants were teenagers, and only nine men were above the age of forty.
There were 340 chests of British East India Company tea, weighing over 92,000 pounds (roughly 46 tons), on these ships. The chests filled with tea were smashed open with axes and dumped into Boston Harbor. It was all loose tea because the colonists were not fond of the tea bricks, and tea bags were still 150 years in the future. Author and historian, Benjamin Woods Labaree, wrote the three tea ships contained 240 chests of Bohea, 15 of Congou, 10 of Souchong (all black teas), 60 of Singlo, and 15 of Hyson (both green teas). The damage the Sons of Liberty caused by destroying the 340 chests of tea, in today’s money, was worth more than $1,700,000 dollars.
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Here is something kind of cool I picked up in 2022: It is a display of the types of teas that were dumped into Boston Harbor on the night of December 16, 1773 - otherwise what became known as the Boston Tea Party. According to researcher and historian Benjamin Woods Labaree, it was all loose tea because the colonists had no taste for tea bricks, and tea bags were still 150 years in the future. The three tea ships contained 240 chests of Bohea, 10 of Souchong, 15 of Congou, (all black teas), 60 of Singlo, and 15 of Hyson (both green teas), all produced in China. The teas mentioned here can be seen in this photo in the same order. I love collecting Americana and American history almost as much as I enjoy "living" it. |
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| Photo courtesy of the Boston Tea Party page |
After the destruction of the tea, the participants swept the decks of the ships clean, and anything that was moved was put back in its proper place. The crews of the ships attested to the fact there had been no damage to any of the ships except for the destruction of their cargoes of tea.
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| Essex Gazette Dec 21, 1773 |
When they were done, the protestors returned home, without attempting to discover each other’s identities. One protestor, George Hewes, later recalled the events: “We then quietly retired to our several places of residence, without having any conversation with each other, or taking any measures to discover who were our associates….There appeared to be an understanding that each individual should volunteer his services, keep his own secret, and risk the consequence for himself. No disorder took place during that transaction, and it was observed at that time that the stillest night ensued that Boston had enjoyed for many months.”
The British government was irate when it learned about the occurrence, and it responded by passing a series of measures that would be known as the Intolerable Acts (at the end of today's post, I have information on the Intolerable Acts). This series of punitive measures were meant to teach the rebellious colonists who was boss.
What eventually became known as the Boston Tea Party (it was not called that until 1825) was just one of the many dominoes that fell that moved America closer to Revolution. There’s this idea that the Boston Tea Party was the rallying cry that galvanized the colonies for revolution, but many opposed such a crime, George Washington among them, who denounced acts of lawlessness and violence, especially against private property.
In June of 1774, Washington wrote: “the cause of Boston…ever will be considered as the cause of America.” But his personal views of the event were far different. He voiced strong disapproval of “their conduct in destroying the Tea” and claimed Bostonians “were mad.” Washington, like many other elites, held private property to be sacrosanct.
Benjamin Franklin insisted the British East India Company be reimbursed for the lost tea and even offered to pay for it himself.
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| From left we have John Locke, Nathaniel Greene, Thomas Melvill, Henry Prentiss, and Paul Revere. On the far right we have Samuel Adams, who did not participate in the actual tea destruction as the others here did, though he was considered a prime mover of the event. To date it is known 116 people are documented to have participated. These are just a few images I was able to bring up. |
While the Tea Party itself didn’t mobilize Americans for a revolution per se', it was Parliament’s reaction to it that did.
Some important colonist leaders such as John Adams were thrilled to learn Boston Harbor was covered in tea leaves. According to what he wrote in his diary:
"This is the most magnificent Movement of all. There is a Dignity, a Majesty, a Sublimity, in this last Effort of the Patriots, that I greatly admire."
In a letter he received from his wife Abigail dated December 30, 1773, she writes (in part): "If you have any news in Town which the papers do not communicate, pray be so good as to write it. We have not heard one Word reporting the Tea at the Cape or elsewhere."
Well, sometimes news just traveled slower than usual, I suppose.
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| Pennsylvania Packet April 18, 1774. It is a different slant than we're used to hearing - daily life. |
There is an old revolutionary song said to have been written and sung as a “rallying song” by the “tea party” at the Green Dragon Tavern:
Rally, Mohawks!—bring out your axes!
And tell King George we’ll pay no taxes
On his foreign tea!
His threats are vain—and vain to think
To force our girls and wives to drink
His vile Bohea!
Then rally boys, and hasten on
To meet our Chiefs at the Green Dragon.
Our Warren’s there, and bold Revere,
With hands to do and words to cheer
For Liberty and Laws!
Our country’s “Braves” and firm defenders,
Shall ne’er be left by true North-Enders,
Fighting Freedom’s cause!
Then rally boys, and hasten on
To meet our Chiefs at the Green Dragon.
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| "Where we went to plan the Consignment of a few shiploads of tea. Dec. 16, 1773" It was deemed the headquarters of the revolution” by Samuel Adams, Daniel Webster, and Paul Revere, the Tavern explains. The idea of the British to capture Sam Adams and John Hancock were discovered at the Green Dragon Tavern, is printed on the placemats inside. It was here where the Boston Tea Party was planned. |
According to historian J.L. Bell (click HERE to visit his page), he is doubtful this "rallying song" was an actual rallying cry at that time:
"The internal evidence gives good reason to doubt that the men involved in destroying the tea sang these words that night. Why would people before or shortly after committing an illegal act declaim where they were meeting (“at the Green Dragon”) and who their leaders were (Dr. Joseph Warren and Paul Revere)?
As shown by John Johnson’s picture of the Green Dragon, Boston’s post-Revolutionary Freemasons celebrated the link between their lodge and the destruction of the tea. Older members of that lodge knew Warren, and even younger men (...) probably knew Revere, who lived to 1818. And I think one of those men composed this song to honor their forebears’ actions—not to rally men behind them in 1773."
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| Peter Mackintosh |
And here is a bit of a Tea Party treat - now we get to see an actual photograph of one who witnessed a small part in the Destruction of the Tea:
Peter Mackintosh was a 16-year-old apprentice blacksmith in Boston working in the shop of his master, Richard Gridley, the night of December 16, 1773 when a group of young men rushed into the shop, grabbed ashes from the hearth and rubbed them on their faces. They were among those running to Griffin’s Wharf to throw tea into the harbor as part of the Destruction of the Tea that helped to ignite the Revolution.
Mackintosh later served in the Continental Artillery as an artificer, a craftsman attached to the army who shoed horses and repaired cannons, including one mortar whose repair General George Washington oversaw personally. During his last years, Mackintosh and his lawyers fought for the pension he deserved. The government awarded it to his family only after his death, which was on November 23, 1846 at age 89.
An epilogue of sorts:
December 17, 1773 - On the morning after 340 chests of tea had been emptied of their contents and the remnants thrown into the harbor, the debris could be seen down the shoreline. According to tea party participant George Robert Twelves Hewes, a number of men rowed out into the harbor to break up any clumps of tea and broken crates remaining on the surface. 15-year-old John Robinson came across a mostly intact tea chest on Dorchester Flats, a large muddy bank just southeast of Griffin's Wharf, picked it up and took it home. His family hid it in his home for many years until after the Revolutionary War.
Dubbed “The Robinson Tea Chest," this wooden box would be handed down through generations of family stewards who understood and respected its significance and held its favor with the same curiosity as young John Robinson did in December of 1773. This tea chest passed from the Robinson to the Shaffstall to the Ford and finally to the Goodman family before being acquired by Historic Tours of America to be on permanent display at the Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum. The Robinson Tea Chest is the only known surviving tea chest from the Boston Tea Party and is on permanent display in that museum!
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| The Robinson Tea Chest - an original!! |
And my own little Boston Tea Party collectible - - - - -
As you may or may not know, I collect Bicentennial items, celebrating America's 200th birthday.
And here is something kind of cool I saw and purchased:
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A 1973 Boston Tea Party Bicentennial Commemoration Decanter - celebrating the very beginnings of the American Revolution - the 200th anniversary. And now we're at the 250th...  |
I'm trying to find 250th "cool"-ectibles, but there are not very many to be had. Perhaps as we get closer to 2026.
Intolerable Acts of 1774:
In response to colonial resistance to British rule during the winter of 1773–74, Parliament was determined to reassert its authority in America and passed four acts that were known as the Coercive Acts in Britain but were labeled the Intolerable Acts by the colonists. Because Boston had been the center of resistance, the acts targeted Boston and Massachusetts in particular.
In response to colonial resistance to British rule during the winter of 1773–74, Parliament was determined to reassert its authority in America and passed four acts that were known as the Coercive Acts in Britain but were labeled the Intolerable Acts by the colonists. Because Boston had been the center of resistance, the acts targeted Boston and Massachusetts in particular.
The four Intolerable Acts passed by Parliament in 1774 in response to colonial resistance to British rule were
(1) the Boston Port Bill, which closed Boston Harbor;
(2) the Massachusetts Government Act, which replaced the elective local government with an appointive one and increased the powers of the military governor;
(3) the Administration of Justice Act, which allowed British officials charged with capital offenses to be tried in another colony or in England;
(4) the Quartering Act, which permitted the requisition of unoccupied buildings to house British troops.
Much of the information here came from three sources: Boston Tea Party Museum, History, and Journal of the American Revolution.
Also, you might enjoy reading about what happened at the Boston Massacre
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| The official logo of America's Semiquincentennial - 250th birthday |
"On July 4, 2026, our nation will commemorate the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States. The journey toward this historic milestone is an opportunity to pause and reflect on our nation’s past, honor the contributions of all Americans, and look ahead toward the future we want to create for the next generation and beyond."
Click HERE for more information on America's 250th celebration.
Until next time, see you in time.
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