The Boston Tea Party was an American political and commercial protest of the Children of Freedom in Boston, Massachusetts, on December 16, 1773. Wikipedia In Boston Harbor, a group of Massachusetts settlers disguised as Mohawk Indians board three British tea ships and dump 342 tea chests into the harbor. On Sunday, November 28, the Dartmouth, which carries 114 boxes of tea, arrives at Boston Harbor. A meeting, open to all Bostonians and anyone from neighboring cities who choose to attend (a group identified as the Corps), is convened at Faneuil Hall. When the crowd swells up, it is transferred to Old South Meeting House.
The Corps speaks, demanding that tea be returned, and the assembly appoints a 25-man guard to protect Griffin's Wharf. Coercive laws closed Boston to merchant ships, established a formal British military government in Massachusetts, rendered British officials immune from criminal prosecution in the United States, and required settlers to quarter British troops The direct sale of tea by agents of the British East India Company to the American colonies undermined the business of colonial merchants. In March 1774, 60 men disguised themselves and climbed aboard the Fortune to throw 30 boxes of tea overboard. By rejecting a summons to waive their commissions, Boston tea agents counter that they are the true children of freedom.
The midnight raid, popularly known as the “Boston Tea Party,” was in protest of the British Parliament's Tea Act of 1773, a bill designed to save the faltering East India Company by greatly reducing its tea tax and granting it a virtual monopoly on the American tea trade. Many were from or around Boston, but it has been documented that some participants come from as far away as Worcester in central Massachusetts and Maine. Delegates were divided as to how to move forward, but the Boston Tea Party had united them in their fervor for independence. In the autumn of 1773, when newspapers publish the details of the East India Company's plan, the settlers learn that tea is coming.
Protesters who drank caffeine in Boston Harbor opposed the Tea Act, which the British government enacted in the spring of 1773. In addition, they also transported Hyson and Singlo teas, which were both green teas from the Chinese province of Anhui. At the end of January, the city of Marshfield urges good and loyal subjects to speak out against the illegal act of Bostonians. British companies bought this tea and exported it to the colonies, where they resold it to merchants in Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Charleston. By voting at a December 16 meeting in Old South, the Agency decides to prevent East Indian tea from being landed, stored, sold or consumed.
While some important settler leaders, such as John Adams, were thrilled to learn that Boston Harbor was covered with tea leaves, others were not.
