5. The Boston Tea Party

Despite the hopes of Patriots like Sam Adams, the Boston Massacre did not spark larger protests against British rule.  Instead, the repeal of the Townshend duties led to a period of calm.  While there was still a small duty on tea, the tax didn't seem to bother Loyalists very much, and the Patriots knew they could always drink Dutch tea that had been smuggled into the colonies without paying duties.

However, things did not stay peaceful because in 1773, a new law called the Tea Act prompted more protests. One of these protests became known as the Boston Tea Party.

The Tea Act was Lord North's attempt to rescue the British East India Company. This large trading company controlled all the trade between Great Britain and Asia. Although it had been a moneymaker for Great Britain for years, the American boycott of British tea hurt the company badly. By 1773, the tea company was in danger of going broke unless it could sell off the 17 million pounds of tea that were sitting in its London warehouses.

The Tea Act lowered the cost of tea that was sold by the British East India Company in the colonies. As a result, even taxed British tea became cheaper than smuggled Dutch tea.  The Tea Act also gave the British East India Company a monopoly, or complete control, over tea sales in the colonies.  From now on, the only merchants who could sell the bargain-priced tea were those chosen by the company.

Lord North may have thought he could persuade Americans to buy taxed tea by making it so cheap, but colonists weren't fooled. They saw the Tea Act as still another attempt to tax them without their consent.

In addition, many merchants were alarmed by the East India Company's monopoly over the tea trade. They wondered what the British government might try to control next. Would their next monopoly be on cloth or on sugar? Nervous merchants wondered what would happen to their businesses if other goods were also restricted.

 When the British East India Company's tea ships sailed into American ports, angry protesters kept them from unloading their cargoes, causing more than one ship to turn back for England still filled with tea. In Boston, however, the royal governor ordered the British navy to block the exit from Boston Harbor, insisting that the three tea ships would not leave until all their tea was unloaded.

On December 16, 1773, the Sons of Liberty decided to unload the tea, but not in the way the governor had in mind. That night, about 60 men dressed as Mohawk Indians boarded the three ships. One of them, George Hewes, described what happened:

We then were ordered by our commander to open the hatches and take out all the chests of tea and throw them overboard . . . and we immediately proceeded to execute his orders, first cutting and splitting the chests with our tomahawks . . . In about three hours from the time we went on board, we had thus broken and thrown overboard every tea chest to be found on the ship . . . We were surrounded by British armed ships, but no attempt was made to resist us.

The Sons of Liberty dumped about 90,000 pounds of tea into the sea that night, leaving everything else aboard the ship untouched. News of the Boston Tea Party excited Patriots throughout the colonies. “This is the most magnificent moment of all,” wrote John Adams in his journal the next day. “This destruction of the tea is so bold, so daring, so firm . . . it must have . . . important consequences.” He was right.

To protest the tax on tea, Patriots disguised as American Indians threw 342 chests of tea overboard from three British ships. Colonists later called this the Boston Tea Party.