Overview

Upon hearing word of the details in the British Tea Act of 1773, the Sons of Liberty took action after officials in Boston refused to return three shiploads of taxed tea to Britain. The Boston Tea Party was the culmination of a resistance movement throughout British America against the Tea Act, which had been passed by the British Parliament in 1773. Colonists objected to the Tea Act for a variety of reasons, especially because they believed that it violated their right to be taxed only by their own elected representatives. Protesters had successfully prevented the unloading of taxed tea in three other colonies, but in Boston, embattled Royal Governor Thomas Hutchinson refused to allow the tea to be returned to Britain.

Background

In September and October of 1773, seven ships carrying British East India Company tea were sent to the colonies. Four were bound for Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston. In the ships were more than 2,000 chests containing nearly 600,000 pounds of tea. Americans learned the details of the Tea Act while the ships were en route, and opposition began to mount. Activists calling themselves the Sons of Liberty began a campaign to raise awareness and to convince or compel the consignees to resign, in the same way that stamp distributors had been forced to resign in the 1765 Stamp Act crisis.

"Americans throwing Cargoes of the Tea Ships into the River, at Boston"

1789 engraving of the destruction of the tea in Boston Harbor.

South of Boston, protesters successfully compelled the tea consignees to resign. In Charleston, the consignees had been forced to resign by early December, and the unclaimed tea was seized by customs officials. By early December, the Philadelphia consignees had resigned and the tea ship returned to England with its cargo following a confrontation with the ship's captain. The tea ship bound for New York City was delayed by bad weather. By the time it had arrived, the consignees had resigned, and the ship returned to England with the tea.

Standoff in Boston

In every colony except for Massachusetts, protesters were able to force the tea consignees to resign or to return the tea to England. In Boston, however, Governor Hutchinson was determined to hold his ground. He convinced the tea consignees, two of whom were his sons, not to back down.

When the tea ship, Dartmouth, arrived in Boston Harbor in late November, Sons of Liberty leader Samuel Adams called for a mass meeting. British law required the Dartmouth to unload and pay the duties within 20 days, or customs officials could confiscate the cargo. The mass meeting passed a resolution, introduced by Adams and based on a similar set of resolutions promulgated earlier in Philadelphia, urging the captain of the Dartmouth to send the ship back without paying the import duty. Meanwhile, the meeting assigned men to watch the ship and prevent the tea from being unloaded. 

Governor Hutchinson refused to grant permission for the Dartmouth to leave without paying the duty. Meanwhile, two more tea ships, the Eleanor and the Beaver, arrived in Boston Harbor. While Adams tried to reassert control of the meeting, people poured out of the Old South Meeting House to prepare to take action. On the evening of December 16th, a small group of colonists, some dressed in Mohawk warrior disguises, boarded the three vessels and, over the course of three hours, dumped all 342 chests of tea into the water. Protected by a crowd of spectators, they systematically destroyed goods worth almost $1 million in today’s dollars—a very significant loss. 

Whether or not Samuel Adams helped plan the Boston Tea Party is disputed, but he immediately worked to publicize and defend it. He argued that the Tea Party was not the act of a lawless mob, but was instead a principled protest and the only remaining option the people had to defend their constitutional rights. By "constitution," he was referring to the idea that all governments have a constitution, written or not, and that the constitution of Great Britain could be interpreted as banning the levying of taxes without representation. 

This act soon inspired further acts of resistance up and down the East Coast. However, not all colonists, and not even all patriots, supported the dumping of the tea. The wholesale destruction of property shocked people on both sides of the Atlantic. In Britain, this act united all parties against the colonies. The British government felt this action could not remain unpunished; they responded by closing the port of Boston and putting in place other laws known as the "Coercive Acts." The tax on tea was repealed with the Taxation of Colonies Act of 1778, part of another Parliamentary attempt at conciliation that eventually failed.