Contents
Title Page
Chapter 1: What Was the Boston Tea Party?
Chapter 2: New World, New Freedoms
Chapter 3: Fighting the French and Indians
Chapter 4: Taxation without Representation
Chapter 5: A Massacre in Boston
Chapter 6: Teatime
Chapter 7: The Night of the Party
Chapter 8: The Party’s Over
Chapter 9: The Shot Heard Round the World
Glossary
Source Notes
Map
Timeline
About the Author
Sneak Peek: Read Chapter 1 of Real Stories From My Time: The Underground Railroad
Copyright
America’s past is filled with stories of courage, adventure, tragedy, and hope. The Real Stories From My Time series pairs American Girl’s beloved historical characters with true stories of pivotal events in American history. As you travel back in time to discover America’s amazing past, these characters share their own incredible tales with you.
December 16, 1773. As day broke in Boston, thick clouds covered the city. A bone-chilling rain kept many of its sixteen thousand residents huddled under wool blankets in their houses. One by one they rose, stoking the coals in their fireplaces to stir up a bit of heat. Soon they’d put the kettles on for cups of … something warm.
What they really wanted was a cup of tea. Throughout the thirteen colonies, or the original thirteen states, the belly-warming brew was a favorite drink. And not just on cold winter mornings—on hot summer afternoons, too, and crisp fall evenings, and rainy spring days. Anytime was teatime for the colonists of the New World. In fact, they consumed up to one million pounds a year.
At least, they did until all the trouble started brewing. In those days, the American colonies belonged to Britain, so they had to live by King George III’s rules, which wasn’t so bad at first. But then Britain started running out of money, so King George decided to impose all sorts of taxes on the colonists. The money the tax agents collected would go to Britain.
But instead of giving in to King George’s demands, many colonists decided to fight back. Still, other colonists remained loyal British subjects. These people were called “friends of government.”
Many Patriots, who were people against British control of the colonies, lived in the city of Boston. Patriots there often led loud marches protesting King George’s taxes. One tax in particular made the Patriots really angry: the tea tax. This was an extra fee the colonists had to pay for all tea shipped in from England.
Many Patriots decided to boycott English tea, which means that they refused to buy it. Others made threats against the tax agents whose job it was to collect the tax added on to the cost of the tea.
But tea from England kept coming, including a huge shipment that crossed the Atlantic Ocean in the fall of 1773. Three ships, packed with crates of tea, sat off the docks in Boston Harbor. Because of the fight over the tea tax, no one would unload the shipment.
All over the city, handbills were posted to trees and buildings that read, “Friends! Brethren! Countrymen! That worst of plagues, the detested TEA … is now arrived in this harbor.” For three weeks, Patriot leaders asked the ships’ captains to turn around and sail back to Britain. But the British captains wouldn’t budge.
December 16, 1773, was the deadline. If the ships remained in the harbor, the colonists would have no choice but to pay the tea taxes—or be fined or thrown in jail. Yet the Patriots refused to back down. They believed the freedom of the colonies was at stake.
“If we give in to this unfair tax from King George, more injustices will surely follow,” angry Patriots warned.
As the people of Boston emerged from their houses that frigid December morning, and looked at the tea-laden ships looming in the harbor, little did they know that the events of the day, which would come to be known as the Boston Tea Party, would lead to the birth of the United States of America.
The story of Felicity Merriman starts in 1773, just before the American Revolution. Felicity is a spunky girl growing up in the city of Williamsburg, in the colony of Virginia. She loves helping her father in his general store. Lately, though, Felicity has heard heated arguments in her father’s store. Some customers resent paying taxes to the king of England. Others believed that the colonists must obey their king no matter what. Also, many of the goods that flow into Mr. Merriman’s store from all over the world—such as tea, tableware, and fine silk—cost more now because they come from England. The higher prices make the customers unhappy.
Hoping to speak to other importers and merchants and find a solution to this problem, Mr. Merriman and Felicity are sailing from Virginia up to the big city of Boston, Massachusetts.
Boston Harbor is a large port, and many of the goods shipped from England to the colonies arrive first in Boston. Because of this, Boston has become the site of protests against England and the king. Little do Felicity and her father know that they are sailing into the most dangerous adventure of their lives.
Although Felicity is a fictional character, her story will help you understand why the Boston Tea Party happened and imagine what it was like to be there.
Father and I are sailing to Boston on a ship called the Dove. Whenever I’m on deck, I lean into the wind and my cloak billows out behind me, just like the Dove’s sails. The salty spray stings my face. I love it! Still, I’ll be glad to get to Boston tomorrow and see Uncle George, Aunt Charlotte, and Cousin Charles. Cousin Charles is sixteen now and has a horse of his very own!
Father is eager to meet with Uncle George, his brother. Uncle George imports goods from England, and he supplies our store with many fine things to sell. But Father is worried. Those imported goods are more expensive every day, and Father is afraid he’ll go into debt buying them for the store. Already, he has had to raise his prices, and his customers are unhappy. On top of the higher prices, now the customers have to pay a tax on tea, and we drink lots of tea. I do hope Uncle George can help Father find a way to get tea and other imported goods to sell in our store at lower prices so that our customers are happy again.
Almost two hundred years before the Boston Tea Party, Europeans were exploring and claiming parts of what they called the New World. North America’s east coast was rich in natural resources. Once forests were cleared, the land could be used for grazing and for growing corn (which the Native Americans were already growing!), beans, and other crops. So Europeans began to settle there in the 1500s.
Life in the New World wasn’t easy for the early European settlers. Many died from disease or starvation during the long and treacherous trip across the ocean. Those who survived the voyage often became sick with diseases such as malaria and yellow fever. When they tried to claim land that Native American Indians had been living on for thousands of years, they found that the Indians would not give up the land without a fight.
A drawing of early European settlers fighting with Native American Indians
By the start of the 1600s, enough Europeans were living in the New World that they began to set up colonies. They were known as colonists. Colonists are people who leave their homelands to live in places that are often far away.
The first British colony was set up in Jamestown, Virginia, on May 14, 1607. Life in Jamestown was hard for the settlers, who struggled to grow food and find clean drinking water. Mosquitoes and other insects carried diseases. Out of the one hundred colonists who settled in Jamestown, eighty became ill and died within the first three years.
A drawing of the Jamestown colony in Virginia
After the initial hardships, the Virginia colony began to grow and thrive. The settlers were able to plant tobacco plants, and they
made money selling the plants’ leaves to tobacco companies back in England.
Thirteen years later, in 1620, another group of English settlers landed on Plymouth Rock, about six hundred miles north of Jamestown. These settlers, known as Pilgrims, established Plymouth Colony.
The first Plymouth settlers arrived on a three-masted ship called the Mayflower. Many people thought girls weren’t strong enough to make the hard trip across the ocean and then survive the harsh conditions of life in the New World. Despite that common belief, there were eleven girls aboard the Mayflower in 1620 as it sailed to Plymouth Rock. The youngest, Humility Cooper, was only a year old!
The oldest girl on the Mayflower was Priscilla Mullins, who made the trip with her father, mother, and brother when she was about seventeen years old. Priscilla was the only one in her family to survive the first cold and brutal Massachusetts winter.
A drawing of the Mayflower
In 1629, the Massachusetts Bay Colony was founded by about four hundred settlers. Its numbers quickly grew. By 1640, as many as twenty thousand settlers had arrived from England to join the new colony. Like many of the settlers before them, they had braved the long journey and the tough life of settling in a strange and wild land because in England they weren’t allowed to worship God the way they wanted to. The official religion, the Church of England, was against their particular form of Christianity.
Religious freedom was one reason people traveled to the New World. There were also those who wanted a say in their local government and to be allowed to vote. Any white male landowner could vote and have a say in the government, which wasn’t the case back in England.
There was another good reason to come to the New World: It offered new ways to make money. The land was rich in natural resources like trees for fuel and lumber and animals for food and fur. Many settlers were farmers. Some built mills along rivers for sawing lumber and grinding wheat and corn. Others pulled cod, lobsters, whales, and other sea life from the mighty Atlantic Ocean.
Still, life was hard for the colonists. In Boston, there were outbreaks of smallpox, a painful disease that caused sores all over the body and was often fatal. Food could be hard to grow in the rocky soil. The Great Boston Fire of 1760 destroyed nearly 350 buildings and left more than a thousand people without homes. Still, despite the many hardships they faced, the British colonies in Boston and beyond continued to grow.
We sailed into Boston Harbor today. The Dove docked at Griffin’s Wharf next to another ship that also arrived today, called the Dartmouth, which had sailed all the way from England. I saw a stern group of men lined up on the wharf like stone statues. When the crew tried to unload cargo from the Dartmouth, the men blocked their way. “We don’t want your tea!” one shouted.
“What is this trouble?” Father asked Uncle George as he hurried us away from the wharf.
“We colonists have demanded that the Dartmouth—and its cargo of tea—return to England immediately. We don’t want to sell the tea and pay the tax on it,” Uncle George explained. “But the king’s man, Governor Thomas Hutchinson, has refused our demand.” Uncle George sighed. “We’re in for a fight now.”
It seems the fight is not only at the wharf. As we walked through the streets, I saw two British soldiers in red coats. Uncle George said the king has sent soldiers to Boston to police the colonists, which they don’t like.
Aunt Charlotte welcomed us into her house with a cup of tea. “Mind you, it’s not real tea—it’s brewed from herbs I grew in my garden,” she said. “We drink no tea from England in this house.”
I can see that the Boston Merrimans are Patriots. A feeling begins to grow in my heart: sympathy for the Patriot cause.
By 1755, there were nearly two million British living in the thirteen colonies. The colonies were: Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Georgia, Connecticut, Massachusetts Bay, Maryland, South Carolina, New Hampshire, Virginia, New York, North Carolina, and Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.
These colonists weren’t the only Europeans who had claimed land in the New World. There were also sixty thousand colonists from France living in North America. Although this was a much smaller population than the British colonists, the French controlled a lot of land.
French settlers were very interested in North American furs, because they knew that furs from beaver, bear, fox, and mink would sell for a lot of money in Europe. As a result, the French formed important friendships with the Ottawa, Shawnee, and other Indian tribes, who trapped the animals or traded with other tribes for the pelts. The French bought the furs from the Indians and sent them on ships back to Europe, where they were sold for a nice profit.
Indians trading with French settlers
As the fur trade grew, the French started to claim more land in North America. But the British wanted that land, too. Small skirmishes broke out between the two nations. In 1754, war was declared.
At first, it looked as though the French would win the war. They had a bigger army in the New World, and many Native Americans fought on their side. For the first four years of the war, the French and Indians won battle after battle against the British. The members of the British government, however, didn’t seem too concerned. Back in Britain, the feeling was “Let Americans fight Americans.”
But one British statesman, William Pitt, saw the importance of winning the war that had become known as the French and Indian War. He eventually convinced Parliament, the name for the British government, to put him in charge of the war and to give him all the money he needed.
That was the turning point in the conflict. Pitt took advantage of the fact that Britain was much richer than France at the time. The British Royal Navy was also far superior to the French navy. And the British colonies themselves were a major source of food as well as fighters. Soon the tide of war had turned in Britain’s favor. Some Shawnee Indians even decided to switch sides to fight with the British.
On September 8, 1760, the French soldiers, along with their remaining Indian allies, laid down their weapons and surrendered.
It took three years for Britain and France to work out the terms of the surrender, but finally, on September 3, 1763, the Treaty of Paris was signed. France had to give up almost all the land it had claimed in North America.
It was a major victory for Britain. And many back home assumed it meant that the flag of Britain would fly over the British colonies in North America forever.
However, the war had left Britain with enormous debts. Parliament came up with a solution: It would tax the colonists to make up the debt. After all, Parliament reasoned, if not for the British military, the colonists would all be under French rule now.
Yet the colonists did not see it that way. They had fought hard and bravely to defend their lives and liberty. Many believed that they would do just fine without the support of the mother country. The fact that Britain now expected them to pay for that support was more than they could bear.
Just outside Uncle George’s house is a handbill nailed to a tree trunk. It says angry things about the king of England and the tea tax, and announces a public meeting to discuss what to do about the shipload of tea in the harbor. It almost seems as if the people of Boston are itching to stir up trouble.
I can’t help thinking of my grandfather, whom we visit every summer. Grandfather was born in England and came to the Virginia colony as a young man. He loves the king of England and is loyal to him. He says that although we live in America, England is our mother country, so we are all British subjects and should feel proud and glad to be so. Grandfather would not like the critical things that the people of Boston are saying about our mother country. Charles told me that some people have even started to secretly say that we should break free and declare our independence from Britain.
I know that Grandfather would call that treason. Oh, it is all so confusing! Grandfather loves and respects the king, and I love and respect Grandfather—but I am not sure I can agree with him. Still, I believe that we can be on differen
t sides of the matter, and still love each other.
The rulers in Britain didn’t listen to the colonists. They wanted to collect more money from them—no matter what! On April 5, 1764, Parliament passed the Sugar Act. The act put a tax on sugar and molasses that were brought in from non-British foreign colonies. The act also lowered the tax on sugar and molasses that were brought in from British colonies. This meant that the colonists had to buy these goods from the British West Indies, or pay more money in tax. Or the colonists could smuggle in sugar and molasses.
But there was a problem: The Sugar Act cracked down on smuggling, making it harder to sneak in the goods. So the colonists were forced to buy from the British West Indies. The colonists, however, did not think that the British West Indies could produce enough molasses for their needs. Rum makers relied on molasses to make their product. So if it cost more to make the rum, the price for rum would have to go up. And if the price went up, then fewer people could afford to buy rum, thereby putting many rum makers out of business.
The Sugar Act also put a tax on indigo, a blue dye used to color cloth. In Boston, some merchants decided to stop ordering fine clothing and other luxury goods from Britain. Others went about their usual business. They figured the tax would be lifted.
Britain, however, was only getting started with its taxation of the colonies. On March 22, 1765, Parliament passed the Stamp Act, and it forced colonists to pay taxes on all printed papers, including newspapers, books, marriage licenses, legal contracts, and playing cards. Some members of Parliament thought this new tax went too far, but supporters pushed it through anyway.
Colonists protesting the Stamp Act
As word reached the colonies of the new tax, a protest movement formed practically overnight. Throughout the colonies, angry crowds marched. At towns along the coast, ships carrying the dreaded stamps used to enforce the tax were prevented from docking.
The Boston Tea Party Page 1