Volume 3, Chapter 56, The Boston Tea Party
The first concrete step of the East India Company to invade the American market came
at the end of August 1773 and was published in the American press in September.
Aiming eventually to construct a factory in Philadelphia and its own warehouse in each
In the reach of three leading American ports, the company decided to begin by shipping 600,000 pounds of tea to a few favored merchants as agents or consignees in the four leading ports of America.
The merchants of the four ports quickly mobilized against this threat and were backed by the press in the bulk of the populace.
It was clear to the resistors that the best way to meet the tea invasion was in the same way that the hated stamps had been repulsed by revolutionary mob violence or the threat thereof against the few favored distributors of the commodity.
In 1765 the appointed stamp distributors had been persuaded by force to resign their post.
Now it was the few consignees designated by the company to receive the tea.
After securing their resignation, the next step was to prevent the East India tea from landing on American shores.
The British government had no idea that the Tea Act would cause any particular stir,
much less that violence against its agents, direct or indirect, would be resumed.
Not surprisingly, matters came to a head in Boston. That great center of Anglo-American
confrontations faced a British fleet and troops stationed offshore. Moreover, it had as governor
the flint-hearted Tory Thomas Hutchinson. Opinion had been inflamed against Hutchinson
the previous spring when the wily Benjamin Franklin, to ingratiate himself with his employers,
of the Massachusetts Assembly secretly sent them old letters of Hutchinson and of his
henchmen, Andrew Oliver, expressing Tory views and calling on Britain for tough policies
against the colonies. Sam Adams' publication of the letters in June polarized the silent
conflict between Massachusetts and its governor and provoked him to be more intransigent than
Three of the Boston T consignees, by no coincidence, turned out to be two sons and a nephew of Hutchinson, in a firm of which the governor himself was a member and probable partner.
Hutchinson's personal interest in East India T simply strengthened his Tory resolve to give not an inch to the colonist.
The mob stormed the store of Richard Clark, Hutchinson's nephew, and was only driven
off after prolonged struggle by a group of friends of the consignees.
Two days later, on November 5 and 6, a Boston town meeting was assembled and presided over
by John Hancock.
The meeting unanimously adopted resolutions demanding that no merchants import any British
and appointed a committee including such radical leaders as Sam Adams, William Molyneux and
Dr. Joseph Warren to pressure the resignation of the consignees. But the consignees were
emboldened by Hutchinson's support and repeatedly refused to resign. When the tea arrived, they,
along with the harassed customs commissioners, took secure refuge with the British troops
at the University of New York, New York, New York, New York, New York, New York, New
The committee was instructed to raise the town to immediate and effectual opposition.
The Boston town meeting, furthermore, was now superseded by the unofficial, flexible
and more powerful revolutionary institution, the Body Meeting, a recurring mass meeting
of the body of all inhabitants of Boston and Roxbury, Brookline and Cambridge.
The first tea ship, the Dartmouth, arrived at Boston Harbor on November 27.
Two other East India tea ships followed a few days later.
Promptly, two great mass meetings of the body met through November 29 and 30, presided over
by the eminent merchant, Jonathan Williams.
The mass meeting adopted unanimously the resolution of Sam Adams that the tea be shipped back
by the East India Company and that no duty whatever be paid on the T. The latter demand
represented an advance in American goals. Hutchinson sent the sheriff to disperse the
unlawful assemblage, but he was hissed down by the meeting. While the consignees discreetly
repaired to Casa William, Hutchinson responded to the popular demand by refusing the ship's
Permission to leave the harbor unless duty were paid. Thus, the East India ships were
caught between two swords. On receiving word of the situation from their committees of
correspondence, town after town in Massachusetts resolved to back the Boston mass meeting to
the hilt, including Cambridge, Brookline, Roxbury, Charlestown, Marblehead, Plymouth,
Maldon, Gloucester, Lexington, Groton, Newbury Port, Lynn and Medford
The deadlock at the port could not continue indefinitely. The tea ships at entry and port
made the vessels liable to seizure by the customs officers after twenty days for non-payment
of duty. The rebels were afraid that once the customs officers had the tea, they could
land it, sell it secretly to the people, and use the money to pay the salaries of the appointed
officials of the colony. Meanwhile, the Boston Committee of Correspondence provided a military
guard on the tea ships to make sure that the tea was not landed in secret. Clearly the
tea must be destroyed before its confiscation by customs, and the period of grace for the
The Dartmouth was up on December 17. The last chance for the colonists was therefore
on December 16. That day, the 16th, a great mass meeting of the body of 8,000 people learned
of Hutchinson's refusal to allow the Dartmouth to sail home. The meeting heard the news with
great restiveness and anger. Several angry speeches ensued. The prominent merchant John
John Rowe asked meaningfully, Who knows how tea will mingle with salt water? Finally Sam
Adams arose to give the signal that angry words must now give way to deeds. This meeting
can do nothing more to save the country. Thereupon a remarkably disciplined ginger group of sons
of liberty disguised as Mohawk Indians rushed to Griffin's wharf, boarded all three tea
The heroic band of mohawks that defied British armed might numbered over a hundred and represented
from leading merchants to farmers, carpenters and blacksmiths.
The band also probably included such prominent radical leaders as the merchants William Molino
and Henry Bass, the engraver Paul Revere, the young clerk and writer James Swan, the
old South End gang leader Ebenezer McIntosh and the ardent radical theoretician Dr. Thomas
The Mohawks had done their work well, and Hutchinson soon found that no Americans, whether
the council, grand juries, justices of the peace, sheriffs, or the militia, would help
to track down the culprits.
Only one witness to the tea party was willing to testify, but only if the trial took place
in England.
John Adams hailed the Tea Party as an epic in history and as the most magnificent moment
of all the actions of the patriot forces before the outbreak of the revolution.
Many Massachusetts towns leaped to the support of the Tea Party. Many were sufficiently radicalized
by the occasion to deny Parliament's rights to legislate for and to tax the colonies and
And to pay for the salaries of colonial officials. These included the towns of Hadley, Braintree,
Sheffield, Andover and Worcester. On the other hand, a few towns were frightened by the radical
and dissolved their Committees of Correspondence.