On this day in 1765, Parliament passed the Quartering Act, which detailed conditions and locations in which British soldiers were to garner room and board in the American colonies. The Quartering Act of 1765 required the colonies to house British soldiers in barracks provided by the colonies. If the barracks were too small to house all the soldiers, then localities were to accommodate the soldiers in livery stables, ale houses, local inns, victualing houses, and the homes of sellers of wine. Should there still be soldiers without accommodation after all such public houses were filled, the colonies were then required to utilize uninhabited houses, outhouses, barns, or other buildings for said purpose. As the language of the act specifies, the popular image of Redcoats tossing colonists from their bedchambers in order to move in themselves was not the intent of the law; neither was it the practice. However, the New York colonial assembly disliked being exhorted to provide quarter f...

On December 16, 1773, a group of Massachusetts colonists disguised as Mohawk Indians boarded three British tea ships in Boston Harbor and dumped 342 chests of tea into the water. The midnight raid, widely known as the "Boston Tea Party," was in protest of the British Parliament's Tea Act of 1773, a bill aimed at saving the foundering East India company by drastically lowering its tea tax and giving it a virtual monopoly on the American tea trade.  As if that weren't enough, the low tax even allowed the East India Company to undercut tea smuggled into America by Dutch traders, much to the consternation of the colonists.  When three tea ships arrived in Boston Harbor, the colonists demanded that the tea be returned to England. When Massachusetts governor Thomas Hutchinson refused to accede, Patriot leader Samuel Adams organized the "tea party" with roughly six members of his resistance group, the Sons of Liberty. The British tea dumped in Bos...

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 prope...