December 16, 2006
Today in History: Boston Tea Party
Under the rule of King George III of Britain, the American Colonies were fed up with the way he was ruling them. The Stamp Act of 1765 and the Townshend Acts of 1767 angered many citizens because he was taxing the colonies despite a lack of representation.
Samuel Adams decided that he wasn’t going to take it anymore and gathered a group of 150 protesters to make a stand and destroy the tea sold by the East India Company. On December 16, 1773, the protesters left the Old South Meeting House and headed to the wharf dressed as Mohawk Natives to try and disguise their identities. Groups of 50 people took over three ships called Dartmouth, the Eleanor and the Beaver which were carrying hundreds of crates of tea. They opened about 350 crates of tea and dumped it into Boston Harbor.
The Boston Tea Party is known around the world and has been inspirational to other rebels. For example, Erik H. Erikson records in his book “Gandhi’s Truths” that when Mahatma Gandhi met with the British viceroy in 1930 after the Indian salt protest campaign, Gandhi took some duty-free salt from his shawl and said, with a smile, that the salt was “to remind us of the famous Boston Tea Party.”
Benjamin Franklin stated that the destroyed tea must be repaid, and he offered to repay with his own money. The British government responded by closing the port of Boston and put in place other laws that were known as the Intolerable Acts. The Boston Tea Party eventually proved to be one of the many causes that led to the American Revolution.
