On this day in 1773, a group of Massachusetts colonists disguised as Mohawk Indians board three British tea ships and dump over 300 chests of tea valued at some $18,000 into Boston Harbor. This effectively came to be known as The Boston Tea Party, a milestone event in the build up to the American Revolution.
The Boston Tea Party was in protest of the British Parliament's Tea Act of 1773, a bill created to save the struggling East India Company by greatly lowering its tea tax and giving it a virtual monopoly on the American tea trade.
When three tea ships arrived in Boston, the colonists -- which viewed the tea act as a blatant form of taxation tyranny -- demanded that the tea be returned to England. When Massachusetts Governor Thomas Hutchinson failed to budge, Patriot leader Samuel Adams organized the "tea party" with roughly 60 membets of the Sons of Liberty, his underground resistance group.
Outraged by what they considered a flagrant destruction of British property, Congress enacted the Coercive Acts (also known as the Intolerable Acts) in 1774, which established formal British military rule in Massachusetts, required colonists to quarter British troops, closed Boston to merchant shipping, and even made British officials immune to criminal prosecution in America.
This was the final nail in the coffin for the colonists, who then called the first Continental Congress to mull a united American resistance to the British.
The Boston Tea Party was in protest of the British Parliament's Tea Act of 1773, a bill created to save the struggling East India Company by greatly lowering its tea tax and giving it a virtual monopoly on the American tea trade.
When three tea ships arrived in Boston, the colonists -- which viewed the tea act as a blatant form of taxation tyranny -- demanded that the tea be returned to England. When Massachusetts Governor Thomas Hutchinson failed to budge, Patriot leader Samuel Adams organized the "tea party" with roughly 60 membets of the Sons of Liberty, his underground resistance group.
Outraged by what they considered a flagrant destruction of British property, Congress enacted the Coercive Acts (also known as the Intolerable Acts) in 1774, which established formal British military rule in Massachusetts, required colonists to quarter British troops, closed Boston to merchant shipping, and even made British officials immune to criminal prosecution in America.
This was the final nail in the coffin for the colonists, who then called the first Continental Congress to mull a united American resistance to the British.
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