Boston Tea Party

“ The sound of the fife and drum had drawn these people there, and hearing that the survivors of the Tea-party were in the house, they had become very anxious to see them. As soon as the old men appeared, they jostled around them, and it was with much difficulty that they were safely placed in the carriages by their young friends. Hand and his comrades at last bade the veterans an affectionate farewell, and the carriages drove away amid cheers given by the crowd for "The Boston Tea-party." ”

“ Americans will buy their tea where they can buy it cheapest, and then we will have them in a trap." But this was a huge blunder, as we shall now see.
The East India Company arranged to ship cargoes of tea to Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston. When the tea arrived, the people in New York and Philadelphia refused to let it land, and in Charleston they stored it in damp cellars, where it spoiled. But in Boston, where the Tory Governor, Hutchinson, was determined to fight a hard battle for the King, there was a most exciting time. The result was the famous "Boston Tea Party." ”

“ The Women's Anti-Tea Leagues of Boston were formed nearly five years previous to the historic "Boston Tea Party," when men disguised as Indians, threw the East India Company's tea overboard, and six years before the declaration of war. ”

“ In December, 1773, three ships laden with tea, private property of an innocent corporation, arrived at Boston, and on the 16th of that month, forty or fifty men, disguised as Mohawk Indians, under the direction of Samuel Adams, John Hancock, and others, boarded the vessels, posted sentinels to keep all agents of authority off at a distance, and flung the three cargoes, consisting of three hundred and forty-two chests, into the harbor. How can we, law-abiding citizens, applaud the "Boston Tea Party" and condemn the high-handed conduct of strike-leaders of the present time? ”

“ In our own country, the Boston Tea Party was a typical "militant outrage," generally regarded as a fine piece of patriotism. If the tradition of England is such that violence must be a preliminary to all final persuasion, perhaps censure of the militants can find some mitigation in that fact. ”

“ She said:
389On today, the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party, in the name of the liberty-loving women of Massachusetts, I consign these words to the flames in protest against the exclusion of women from the Democratic program of this Administration.
Henrietta Briggs Wall burned President Wilson’s address given at Independence Hall, July 4, 1919, when he said:
Liberty does not consist in mere general declarations of the rights of man. ”

“ The crowd now poured out of the Old South, and on reaching the street saw a band of men, disguised as Indians, rushing toward the pier. These make-believe Indians took possession of the dock, boarded the three ships, broke open the tea chests with their tomahawks, and poured their contents into the harbor, which thus became a monster teapot at Boston's famous Tea Party. ”

“ These remarks apply, especially, to those who first threw themselves into the breach, and resolved that, if the British ministry would adopt such measures as the stamp act, their execution should be resisted and become difficult, and if such measures were passed as the act taxing tea, coffee, and the comforts of life, that the tea should never be landed, and thus prove a loss to its owners. The men who threw the tea into Boston harbor were patriots united by a sense that union was necessary for the salvation of liberty ”

“ We wanted no captain—each man could command for himself. We resolved to disguise ourselves in Mohawk dresses, and carry such arms as would enable us to sell our lives pretty dearly; we also pledged ourselves never to reveal the names of any of the party while there was danger in it. We expected to have a fight anyhow, and the first man who faltered was to be thrown overboard with the tea. We came to Boston and found the people ripe for the deed. ”

“ First partition of Poland between Russia, Austria, and Prussia. Samuel Adams actively advocates independence in Boston. British ship, the Gaspee, burned by Rhode Islanders. Virginia Assembly appoints Committee of Correspondence to keep in touch with other colonies.
1773. “Boston Tea-party”—taxed tea from England thrown overboard in Boston harbor by disguised Americans.
78 1774. Five oppressive Acts, including Boston Port Bill, passed by British Parliament. General Gage, commissioned as Governor, comes to Boston with additional British troops. ”

“ The tea destroyed was contained in three ships, lying near each other at what was called at that time Griffin's wharf, and were surrounded by armed ships of war, the commanders of which had publicly declared that if the rebels, as they were pleased to style the Bostonians, should not withdraw their opposition to the landing of the tea before a certain day, the 17th day of December, 1773, they should on that day force it on shore, under the cover of their cannon's mouth. ”

“ AMERICA'S WELCOME HOME, Henry van Dyke
THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER, Angela Morgan
BOSTON SICUT PATRIBUS, SIT DEUS NOBIS RALPH WALDO EMERSON [sidenote: Dec. 16, 1773] This poem was read in Faneuil Hall, on the Centennial Anniversary of the "Boston Tea-Party," at which a band of men disguised as Indians had quietly emptied into the sea the taxed tea-chests of three British ships. ”

“ A fourth tea-ship, destined for Boston, was wrecked on Cape Cod. The few chests of tea saved from her cargo were, by the governor's order, placed in the castle. Twenty-eight chests, brought a little later by another vessel from London, on the joint account of Boston merchants, were destroyed by a disguised party, on March 7, 1774. The people of Charlestown destroyed, in the market place, all the tea they could find in the town, paying the owners its value. ”

“ Revere does not mention the fact that he was himself a member of the Tea-Party. When he goes on to speak of still more important events, he suppresses the fact that he was one of the leaders, if not the chief leader, of the Boston artisans.
"In the fall of 1774, and winter of 1775, I was one of upwards of thirty, chiefly mechanics, who formed ourselves into a committee for the purpose of watching the movements of the British soldiers, and gaining every intelligence of the movements of the Tories. We held our meetings at the Green Dragon Tavern. ”

“ It must be remembered that until this time the Whigs of Massachusetts had remained within their constitutional rights. Apart from the Tea-Party, no word or act of town meeting or of legislature, or even of any prominent citizen, needed for justification anything more than the ancient charter rights of the province. But now the provincial congress went beyond anything that had ever been done before. It appointed a [Pg 139] Committee of Safety, which should prepare for equipping and raising an army. ”

“ I guess there was about a hundred and fifty of us on the third ship, all hard at work passing up the chests, cutting 'em open and spilling the tea. Within two hours, about three hundred and fifty chests of the tea were thus destroyed. The crowd cheered us once in a while, and we knew we'd have friends enough if the red-coats attempted to attack us. When we had emptied the last chest that could be found, we gave three of the loudest cheers and gained the wharf. A drummer and fifer were ready, as Mr. Brown and Mr. Hanson can inform you, and we formed a procession and marched up to this tavern. ”

“ The holders of Russian official appointments. They are mainly drawn from the ranks of the nobles and the clergy, and in particular from certain noble families, who may be said to be the real rulers of Russia. There are fourteen classes of officials, which classes are called “Tchins.” Every official, whatever his birth, has to enter in the lowest Tchin, and promotion is nominally by merit only.{249}
Tea-Party.
The Boston tea riots are so called.
Tea-room Party.
A party of advanced Radicals who opposed Mr. Gladstone’s amendment to Lord Derby’s Reform Bill of 1867. ”

“ Franklin was deprived of his office under the crown, and the king who directed the punishment, the council who condemned him, and the Parliament which cheered them both on, were not yet satisfied. When the news of the Tea-Party came, they felt that their chance had come to strike at the real culprit. The king consulted General Gage, who was fresh from Boston, and listened eagerly to his fatally mistaken account of the situation. "He says," wrote the king to Lord North, "'They will be lions while we are lambs ”

“ British parliament, after nine years of the saddest haggling, and baffling to and fro under constitutional stress of weather, and such east winds and west winds of parliamentary eloquence as seldom were, has made up its mind that America shall pay duty on their teas before infusing them, and America, Boston more especially, is tacitly determined that it will not, and that to avoid mistakes the teas shall never be landed at all.... ”

“ The other colonies, it seems, have no scruples about it, for we find that whenever tea arrives in any of them, whether from the East India Company, or any other quarter, it never fails to share the fate of that in Boston. All men will agree that such steps ought not to be taken, but in cases of absolute necessity, and that such necessity must be very clear. But most people in America now think, the destruction of the Boston tea was absolutely necessary, and therefore right and just. ”

“ The mechanics of Boston, whatever their rank in the social scale, were the active patriots of the revolutionary period.
The Sons of Liberty having failed, and the Tories asserting that the meeting at Liberty Tree was irregular, petitioners for a town meeting declared that the people were alarmed at a report that the tea had been shipped to America, and feared that the tribute would be exacted, and that the liberties, for [xxix] which they had so long contended, would be lost to them and their posterity. ”

“ The New York Sons of Liberty at once reorganized; owners and occupants of stores were warned against harboring the [xix] tea, and all who bought, sold or handled it, were threatened as enemies to the country. Handbills were issued, notifying the "Mohawks" to hold themselves in readiness for active work. At the very moment when the tea was being destroyed in Boston, handbills were circulating in New York calling a meeting of "all friends to the liberties and trade of America," for one o'clock the next day, at the city hall, "on business of the utmost importance." ”

“ And with respect to the East India tea, forasmuch as we are now informed that the town of Boston and the neighboring towns have made such noble opposition to said teas being brought into Boston, subject to a duty so directly tending to the enslaving of America, it is our opinion that your opposition is just and equitable, and the people of this town are ready to afford all the assistance in their power to keep off all such infringement. ”

“ There were thousands of people in England to whom it never occurred that there was any good reason why a British parliament should be allowed to levy a duty on tea in the London docks and should not be allowed to levy a duty on tea at the wharves of Boston. ”

“ Listening from the distance you could hear distinctly the ripping open of the chests and no other sound. About ten p.m. all was finished, ... the Mohawks gone like a dream, and Boston sleeping more silently even than usual."
In England, the news of the destruction of the tea at Boston was received with astonishment, not unmixed with anger. Men of all parties were swept into the hostile [lxxxix] current. Coercive measures were at once brought forward in parliament. In the debates that ensued, a member said, "The town of Boston ought to be knocked about their ears and destroyed." ”

“ He is neither a patriot nor a philanthropist who would compare the destruction of the tea in the harbor of Boston with every abolition riot, or every resistance to our own solemnly enacted laws, or every lynching mob that chooses to caricature the forms of justice, or every French émeute, or revolutionary movement with its mock heroics—its burlesque travestie of institutions it can not comprehend, and of a liberty for which it so soon shows itself utterly unqualified. ”

“ There isn't a thing that was ever said or done in Boston, from pitching the tea overboard to the last ecclesiastical lie it tore into tatters and flung into the dock, that wasn't thought very indelicate by some fool or tyrant or bigot, and all the entrails of commercial and spiritual conservatism are twisted into colics as often as this revolutionary brain of ours has a fit of thinking come over it.—No, Sir,—show me any other place that is, or was since the megalosaurus has died out, where wealth and social influence are so fairly divided between the stationary and the progressive classes! ”

“ And when, in Boston, cupidity overcame patriotism, and the defection of a few merchants who loved gold more than liberty, aroused the friends [Pg 4] of the non-importation leagues, and assembled them in general council in Faneuil Hall, there to declare that they would "totally abstain from the use of tea," and other proscribed articles, the women of that city, fired with zeal for the general good, spoke out publicly and decidedly upon the subject. ”

“ One hundred and twenty merchants and others of Boston signed an address to General Gage, expressing a willingness to pay for the tea destroyed. It is averred, also, that some of the wealthiest people of Boston actually endeavored to raise money to pay the East India Company for the tea, but the attempt failed. There were some others who protested against the course of the Committee of Correspondence and the action of a large portion of the ministers of the Gospel, who, they averred, were unduly exciting the people, and urging them headlong toward ruin. ”