Whoever wrote this did not know that it was a classic act of civil disobedience. Most of the town knew it was going to happen. Many went to the dock to watch it. Quietly they watched their friends and neighbors, lightly disquised, march to the ship and with only token resistence from the port authorities, quickly dump the chests of tea into the harbour. Then everyone went home. To their dying days, not a soul would tell who was involved. Which is what made the Brits even more angry and why they punished the whole town by closing the port and rescinding the charter “Terroists!” Real history often doesn’t fit the educationist template, which is to try to make the past “relevant” to the present. The real question is: how relervant is the present to the past? The dope who wrote this is entirely cut off from his roots.
“Whoever wrote this did not know that it was a classic act of civil disobedience. Most of the town knew it was going to happen. Many went to the dock to watch it. Quietly they watched their friends and neighbors, lightly disquised, march to the ship and with only token resistence from the port authorities, quickly dump the chests of tea into the harbour. Then everyone went home. To their dying days, not a soul would tell who was involved. Which is what made the Brits even more angry and why they punished the whole town by closing the port and rescinding the charter “Terroists!” Real history often doesn’t fit the educationist template, which is to try to make the past “relevant” to the present. The real question is: how relervant is the present to the past? The dope who wrote this is entirely cut off from his roots.”
There was no resistance offered by the Brits and there was a pretty good crowd watching and cheering the “indians” as they dumped the tea overboard. Boston harbor was closed for a year as the British demanded that the city reimburse the crown for lost taxes on the tea.
It was just townspeople, not terorists.
Charles Townshend vowed revenge for the humiliation of Stamp Act repeal. To pay for the costs of fighting smuggling, Parliament initiated taxation on glass, lead, paint, paper, tea designed to raise about 40,000 pounds/year. Also, to make sure malcontents were not pardoned like the Stamp Act violators, colonial governors and judges would be salaried by the Brit government. Colonial defendants could be transported to offshore jurisdictions without pesky local juries.
Boycotts of Brit goods spread and some efforts were made to begin manufactures here. John Hancock, George Washington did not believe Parliament had right to tax us.
John Dickinson, in Letters from a Farmer in PA, called Townshend Acts unconstitutional, we are slaves, and attacked the Acts for stripping financial control over judges and governors. All colonies protested to the King and supported boycotts. VA called the taxes internal and therefore unconstitutional. [This is big, because it is the same argument the Anti-Federalists would use against the Constitution.] The King knuckled down and ordered even stricter enforcement!
May 9, 1768 John Hancock’s sloop Liberty smuggled Madeira into Boston. A month later, a British frigate took the Liberty. Mobs attacked customs officials and the fleeing governor requested help from General Thomas Gage, who ordered ten regiments to the rescue. In VA, the new governor Botetourt, flattered the people of Williamsburg on May 8, the first day of the Burgesses. Botetourt wined and dined the Burgesses. A week after convening, the Burgesses adopted four resolutions that reiterated right to tax themselves, and petitioned the King for redress of grievances. They condemned the creation of admiralty courts to try our people beyond their colonies and without juries or to call witnesses.
The Boston committee of correpondence issued a 7,000 word declaration that fell just short of promoting revolution, but MA Governor Thomas Hutchinson saw it as such. Both Hutchinson and John Adams [as well as Patrick Henry later on] did not think dual legislatures could coexist over the same state. By Adams it was an either/or situation. We were either to be independent or vassals of Parliament. [He made glancing reference to colonial charters. These were being shredded by Great Britain. Once a contract is violated by one party, the other is released.]
The British managed to drive colonial moneyed interests away. East India stock fell to 160 from 280 on reduced consumption from Townshend tea tax. Government halted tax collection landed in England for reshipment to America and granted monopoly to the company, which ruined colonial wholesalers. A half million pounds of tea set sail from England to America in September 1773. Ships Polly, London mentioned as tea carried to Boston, Philly, NYC, and Charleston. Hostile crowds turned back the ship in Philly. Sons of Liberty threatened consignees, who quickly resigned. William Tryon, NY Governor warned British Board of Trade. First of three ships arrived in Boston on December 16th 1773 and was met with protests.
Tea Party. 342 chests, at over nine thousand pounds, or $600,000 today. Great Britain's Attorney General formally charged John Hancock and Samuel Adams with high treason as well as high misdemeanors. Other tea parties in NYC, Annapolis, Greenwich NJ. George III promised retaliation against Boston.
He followed through and closed the port of Boston.
Who writes trash like this?
Errors:
1) ‘at our nations biggest port’.
- We were not yet a nation. We were a British colony.
2) ‘believed to be a terrorist organization’
- Really? WHO did they kill? WHO did they terrorize. That’s right, nobody.
3)’a large quantity of merchandise’
- Really? It was TEA. ‘merchandise’ is far to vague a description.
4)’considered to be valuable to its owners’
- Well, duh. They had just sailed across an ocean with the product to sell it.
5) ‘and loathsome to the perpetrators’
- Oh right. That is why the owners spent all that time sailing the Tea across the ocean to the port of Boston. Perhaps they were going to force it down the throats of the Americans? Oh no. That’s right, it is because Americans like and drink Tea. They were protesting the Tea tax raising the price of the Tea, not the Tea itself.
The author probably did not even know what Tea was.