12/16/2024
ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY: The Boston Tea Party ☕️🇺🇸
December 16th, 1773
On this day, we celebrate the act of defiance from the revolutionaries opposing the British army: the night they tossed all that tea into the harbor!
What was the Boston Tea Party?
The Tea Act of 1773 gave the British East India Company, who had a surplus of tea in their warehouses, a tax break and a monopoly on the tea trade in North America. British East India Company tea was of higher quality than the tea being smuggled into the colonies from foreign countries.
Samuel Adams successfully kept Bostonians focused on the idea that Parliament had no right to tax the colonies and buying British tea would run contrary to that idea.
On November 28th, 1773 the ship Dartmouth, carrying 114 chests of British East India Company tea, arrived at Griffin’s Wharf in Boston Harbor. The law was clear: Based on the dates the tea arrived in Boston, if the tax was not paid on the tea by December 17, 1773, Customs Officers would seize the ships and their cargo. Samuel Adams called an open meeting at Faneuil Hall to discuss how to respond.
Upon hearing for the last time that Governor Thomas Hutchinson refused to send the tea back, Samuel Adams is believed to have said: “There’s nothing more a meeting can do to save this country! The time for action has arrived!”
A total of 342 crates of tea were tossed into the Boston Harbor that night. Now that’s a lot of tea!
Want to hear the whole story and all the juicy details? Join us on the Freedom Trail! Tours resume in the springtime, but don’t worry, we’ll be here dishing out snippets of history throughout the winter. Looking for more of a deep dive? Check out our blog! Head over to our website to get your history fix~
https://www.tourofthefreedomtrail.com/
