A look back at local, national and world events through Deseret News archives.
On Dec. 16, 1773, 241 years ago, angry Boston citizens boarded British ships and dumped 90,000 pounds of tea into Boston Harbor. The Boston Tea Party, as it came to be known, proved one of the defining events on the road to the American Revolution.
Historians note the French and Indian War had left Great Britain with considerable debt. Prior to the war, the British Parliament had been content to let the American colonies govern themselves with a minimum of interference. The colonies, in particular the colonies of the Chesapeake and Carolinas, had proved themselves to be vast producers of wealth for the empire.
The war changed that. After the conflict, Britain searched for a way to make the empire solvent once again. The answer, it seemed to Parliament, was simple: levy new taxes upon the colonies.
First came the Stamp Act in 1763. Guess what? Not popular.
Mostly, the colonists objected to being taxed without their consent. The popular phrase “No Taxation without Representation” began about this time, and soon became a rallying cry for those opposed to the tax. So Parliament repealed the act but also issued the Declaratory Act, which stated that though Parliament backed down on this one issue, it had the legal right to issue similar taxes in the future.
Benjamin Franklin, then living in London, tried to intervene. And so the 1767 Townshend Acts were crafted. The new taxes covered things like glass, lead, tea and alcohol. Despite Franklin’s work, the new taxes met with colonial derision.
Then came the Tea Act, passed in May 1773.
Agitators like Sam Adams, Paul Revere and the patriot group the Sons of Liberty continued to harass the East India Company agents who were to collect the taxes.
The night of Dec. 16, the night before Dartmouth’s harbor tax was due, saw a huge meeting at Boston’s Old South Church, which included perhaps as many as 8,000 attendees. There, they laid their plan to deal with the crisis.
Per historians, ”A number of Bostonians, their faces blackened, boarded those ships and, with the surprising assistance of their crews, had spilled overboard a grand total of 342 chests of tea.”
All told, about 90,000 pounds of tea was cast into the harbor. The next few weeks saw tea leaves washing up along the banks of the harbor and floating upon its surface.
As expected, Parliament was not at all happy with the events of Dec. 16 and soon moved to punish the colonies through additional laws, like the Coercive Acts, or the Intolerable Acts, as they came to be called. These laws closed the port of Boston until the tea was paid for and forbade public meetings in the city, among other things.
Here are some stories from Deseret News and KSL archives of the Boston Tea Party, the American Revolution, Boston’s history and Benjamin Franklin:
“This week in history: The Boston Tea Party made revolution inevitable”
“About Utah: Tea Party not much of a party”
“Britons to apologize for inciting ‘tea party’”
“A brief history of the American Revolution”
“‘Party’ tea is hunted in Boston’s icy harbor”
“Boston Tea Party turns 250 years old with reenactments of the revolutionary protest”
“The Founders’ secret to finding happiness”
“Remembering the women of the American Revolutionary War”
“Patriots’ graves provide history lesson”
“Does Utah have a Boston Tea Party problem with water?”
“America doesn’t need a revolution. It needs a rediscovery of values and common sense”
“Boston Freedom Trail goes high-tech with audio tour”
“Boston remains a cultural capital”
