Boston Tea Party: Colonists Dump British Taxation

Colonists disguised as Mohawk Indians smashed open 342 chests of tea and dumped them into Boston Harbor, destroying a shipment worth roughly ten thousand pounds sterling. On the night of December 16, 1773, members of the Sons of Liberty boarded three merchant ships at Griffin's Wharf and carried out the most consequential act of political vandalism in American history, pushing Britain and its colonies toward open war. The confrontation had been building since May, when Parliament passed the Tea Act. The law gave the British East India Company a monopoly on colonial tea sales and retained the Townshend duty of three pence per pound. Colonists saw the tax as a violation of the principle that they could only be taxed by elected representatives. "No taxation without representation" was not merely a slogan but a constitutional argument rooted in English common law. Other colonial ports turned the tea ships away. Philadelphia and New York refused to let the cargo land. But in Boston, Royal Governor Thomas Hutchinson refused to grant the ships clearance to leave. Under customs law, if the tea was not unloaded within twenty days, it would be seized and sold with the duty paid. The deadline for the Dartmouth was December 17. On December 16, after a final mass meeting at the Old South Meeting House failed to resolve the standoff, Samuel Adams reportedly gave a prearranged signal. Between 30 and 130 men, faces darkened with coal dust and dressed in rough imitations of Mohawk clothing, marched to the wharf. Working over three hours, they hauled chests on deck, broke them open, and threw roughly 92,000 pounds of tea into the harbor. Parliament's response was punitive. The Coercive Acts of 1774 closed Boston's port, revoked Massachusetts's charter of self-government, and quartered troops in private homes, driving the colonies toward the Continental Congress and revolution.