The Boston Tea Party

by Rebecca Paley

  Colonial leaders, including Samuel Adams, explained the situation. The law stated that the tea from the Dartmouth had to be unloaded and all the taxes paid within twenty days. The Patriots did not want that tea, and certainly did not want to pay the taxes! They were determined to find a way to beat the king at his own game.

  The Sons of Liberty stationed guards at Griffin’s Wharf to make sure no chests left the ship. More guards were posted when a second ship, Eleanor, arrived on December 2, and a third ship, Beaver, entered port on December 15.

  Messages were sent to Governor Hutchinson, demanding that he send the ships back to Britain. He refused.

  The mood throughout Boston darkened. Tensions flared, and nerves grew tense. Patriots and Loyalists who passed one another on the street could hardly look each other in the eye.

  In the days leading up to the deadline, the Sons of Liberty held secret meetings. They reached a difficult decision: The tea had to be destroyed if they wanted to avoid paying taxes and giving in to British rule.

  * * *

  The morning of December 16 finally arrived. A cold drizzle fell as the people of Boston assembled one last time at the Old South Meeting House. The leaders voted to make a final appeal to Governor Hutchinson.

  Francis Rotch, whose family owned the Dartmouth, was sent to Hutchinson’s home outside the city. He would ask for permission to remove his ship from the harbor with the tea on board. Rotch was expected back by three o’clock that afternoon. But as the sun set over Boston, there was still no sign of him. The crowd grew restless.

  Finally, around six o’clock, Rotch returned to the hall. His slumped body language told the bad news even before he opened his mouth. The governor would not give in. The tea would remain. And in just six hours, the colonists would be forced to pay up.

  Samuel Adams took to the podium and declared, with a quiver in his voice, “This meeting can do no more to save the country!”

  As if on cue, a round of whoops and whistles rang out from the balcony at the back of the meeting hall. As the people looked around, they saw that many of the men were disguised as Mohawk Indians, their faces painted with soot and grease and blankets draped over their shoulders. The costumes were a symbolic gesture meant to show the colonists’ loyalty to America, as the Indians were native to the land.

  “Boston Harbor is a teapot tonight!” someone shouted.

  “Who knows how tea will mingle with salt water?” another asked.

  As the crowd poured onto the street, the Sons of Liberty looked on with a combination of pride and fear. “Let every man do what is right in his own eyes,” said John Hancock, one of the Sons of Liberty’s most distinguished leaders. He said it knowing full well that the men before him were prepared to take action and defy the British.

  At first, a few dozen protesters carrying axes, hatchets, and tomahawks marched down Milk Street. Others joined the mob along the way, and by the time they reached the harbor, they numbered nearly one hundred.

  The most prominent Sons of Liberty, including Samuel Adams and John Hancock, were too recognizable, so they stayed behind. Instead, young carpenters, bricklayers, butchers, and smiths, like Joshua Wyeth, a sixteen-year-old blacksmith, carried out the mission. A young man named Samuel Sprague was on his way to a date with a girl when he was swept up in the crowd. He had no disguise handy, so he blackened his face with soot from a nearby stovepipe. Peter Slater was just fourteen years old and a rope maker’s apprentice. He witnessed the scene from his upstairs bedroom, where his employer had locked him in. Rather than miss the excitement, he knotted his bedsheets into a long rope and used it to climb down the building. By the time the crowd reached the wharf it numbered anywhere from 60 to 120 men. Most of the people who took part in the raid were young. Only nine men were older than forty, and sixteen of them were still teenagers like Peter.

  At about seven o’clock, the Patriots reached the ships. They were quiet so as not to attract attention from the British warships anchored in the harbor. On the dock, nearly one thousand onlookers had gathered, standing stone silent.

  The Patriots split into three groups, one for each of the three ships. Once on board, the crew scurried belowdecks. Using pulleys and ropes, the Patriots hoisted the huge chests of tea, each weighing around 320 pounds, up from the cargo area and onto the deck. They split open the chests with axes, slashed through the tough canvas bags, and dumped the tea leaves overboard.

  Since the tide was out, the water in the harbor was only a few feet deep. After a while, the tea began to pile up, so a handful of teenage boys were sent into the harbor to stir the leaves into the water.

  The men hardly spoke as they worked. “No noise was heard except the occasional clink of the hatchet,” wrote sixteen-year-old Samuel Cooper in one of only four known accounts by participants. “Before ten o’clock that night the entire cargo of the three vessels were deposited in the docks.”

  The Boston Tea Party in progress

  The men swept the decks clean so that not a single leaf remained. They even took off their shoes and shook any leaves from them. Not without regret, though. As Samuel Cooper wrote, “Many a wishful eye was directed to the piles of tea, which lay in the docks.” One Patriot made the mistake of hiding a fistful of tea in the lining of his coat. The coat was ripped from his body and tossed into the muddy water.

  No tea meant no tea.

  As the Patriots made their way from the ships back onto the wharf, one of them pulled out a musical instrument called a fife and played a tune. The men were exhausted and exuberant.

  This afternoon, Charles, Uncle George, Father, and I went to a meeting about the ships with their unwelcome cargoes of tea. When the crowd of nearly 5,000 people heard that the governor still refused to send the ships back to England, they grew angry. I heard one man shout, “Boston Harbor is a teapot tonight!”

  Afterward, as we walked home behind Father and Uncle George, Charles whispered to me, “I’m going to help toss that tea off those ships tonight.”

  “I am, too,” I told him. He started to protest, but I said, “I may be just a child, but I’m going, and that’s that!”

  December 17, 1773, after midnight!

  Just after dusk last night, Cousin Charles and I met in the stable. I dressed in breeches to be disguised as a boy and for freer movement. Charles and I darkened our faces with soot from the fireplace so that we’d be hard to see and recognize. It was full dark when we joined the group headed to Griffin’s Wharf.

  “March quietly,” came the murmured order.

  I froze with fear when I saw why: British Royal Navy warships were patrolling the harbor.

  Nearly one thousand silent souls stood at the shoreline. “They’re here for our protection,” said Charles. “The British soldiers won’t trouble an innocent crowd.”

  At the dock we split into three groups, one for each boat. As Charles and I boarded the Dartmouth, a strong voice said to the captain, “Go belowdecks, sir. We will do you no harm.” My knees shook, and Charles nudged me. ’Twas Uncle George who spoke to the captain!

  We set to work as quietly as shadows. I heard only the creaks of ropes and pulleys hoisting the chests of tea out of the ship’s hold and then dull thuds as the chests were lowered onto the deck. Men broke open the chests with axes, slashed the canvas bags inside, and tossed the tea overboard in a blizzard of leaves. Men in canoes below beat down the floating tea so that it sank. It was my job to sweep tea off the ship’s deck. I swept until my arms ached and my hands were blistered. We had been told, “Not one tea leaf is to be left anywhere. Every bit of tea is to be destroyed.”

  By ten o’clock, all was over. I handed my broom to one of the Dartmouth’s crew, found Charles, and walked down the gangplank from the ship back onto the wharf. We joined the others marching back to town. We trudged home and went to the stable. I was glad to be in the serene presence of Mercury as we brushed the tea leaves off our coats and scrubbed the soot from our faces. I’ve never been so exhausted—or so elated.
I have truly joined the fight for justice!

  As day broke over Boston, tea leaves still blanketed the harbor and their aroma hung in the air. Though no Patriots spoke directly of the act, the mood in Boston was joyous.

  Loyalists, of course, were not so happy, least of all Governor Hutchinson. He called the events of December 16 the “boldest stroke that had been struck in America.”

  News of the “destruction of the tea” spread quickly to the colonists, thanks to the horseback-riding heroics of Paul Revere. He was sent by the Sons of Liberty to tell as many colonists as possible about what had happened in Boston. Never one to shy away from a challenge, Revere took off from Boston the day after the Tea Party and rode to New York, where he arrived on December 21. All along the two-hundred-mile journey, he stopped at inns and taverns to tell the locals there about the destruction of tea. From New York, he rode another one hundred miles or so to the city of Philadelphia.

  By the end of December, the event in Boston, later called the Boston Tea Party, was the hottest topic of discussion throughout the thirteen colonies.

  It took several weeks for the news to reach Britain, since the news couldn’t travel any faster than it took a ship to cross the ocean. Finally, on January 19, 1774, King George III got the full report from his advisers. And he probably wasn’t very happy!

  The king and Parliament decided to punish the entire city of Boston with the passage of the Coercive Acts, which the Patriots later called the Intolerable Acts. As one member of Parliament put it, “The town of Boston must be knocked down about their ears and destroyed.” The British Parliament also passed these acts in the hopes that they would prevent other colonies from resisting or protesting their rule.

  Paul Revere on horseback circa December 21, 1773

  The Coercive Acts shut down Boston Harbor until the East India Tea Company was repaid for the destroyed tea. That meant that only food and firewood were allowed into the port. Everything else was banned—not even hay was allowed in to feed the starving horses. The people of Boston were forced to provide housing for the thousands of British troops sent there to enforce the new laws. So, many British soldiers slept in barns, taverns, and other buildings, making these places unusable for the colonists. And there was nowhere for them to complain since town meetings of any kind were outlawed.

  At first, these acts did seem to make life in Boston so hard that the Patriots would be knocked down and destroyed as Parliament hoped. But then something incredible happened, something King George never could have expected. People throughout the colonies rallied to save Boston. The people of Windham, Connecticut, sent 258 sheep to feed their starving neighbors in Boston. More food and supplies arrived from all over the colonies.

  Official statements of support followed. “If our sister colony of Massachusetts Bay is enslaved we cannot long remain free,” wrote representatives from Virginia. “United we stand, divided we fall.”

  Thomas Jefferson of Virginia added, “An attack on one of our sister colonies … is an attack on [us] all.”

  The leaders of the colonies knew they had to come together to determine their next steps. Each colony would send representatives, known as delegates, to a convention to decide their next move. The meeting was known as the First Continental Congress. It took place place on September 5, 1774, at Carpenters’ Hall in Philadelphia. Fifty-six delegates from twelve colonies (Georgia was the only holdout) attended the meetings, which went on for several weeks.

  By the middle of October, the congress decided to boycott almost all British goods until the Intolerable Acts were repealed. They drafted a statement, known as the Declaration of Colonial Rights, and sent it by ship across the Atlantic to King George III. It called for many freedoms from British rule.

  The congress also agreed to meet again, on May 10, 1775. The delegates wanted to allow enough time for their demands to reach King George and for the British government to respond. Some of the delegates still believed that some kind of understanding could be reached between the colonies and Britain.

  Others, like John Hancock, were not as optimistic. As early as November, just a month after the First Continental Congress, he was calling for twelve thousand men to volunteer as minutemen. The name came from the idea that they could be ready to fight in one minute. Patriots signed up—and started to stockpile gunpowder. Many Patriots agreed with John Hancock that the colonies should prepare for war—especially after King George sent back orders to crush any revolt.

  War was clearly in the air—even if neither side had declared it. The mood was best summed up by Patrick Henry, a leader from Virginia, who announced in March 1775, “The war is actually begun! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty! Or give me death.”

  The rallying call would soon echo throughout the land.

  Patrick Henry

  The Dove welcomed us back aboard and swept us away from Boston with billowing sails and wild, wintry winds. Father and I are sailing home, and I’m glad, for he says that if the winds cooperate, we’ll be home in Williamsburg for Christmas. As we sailed out of Boston Harbor, I imagined that I saw tea leaves floating in the water. Perhaps I did, for Charles told me that enough tea was tossed to make many millions of cups of tea.

  “Father,” I said, “is there any hope for peace between the Patriots and the people still loyal to the king? I worry for Uncle George and Aunt Charlotte’s safety if war comes. I’m especially afraid that Charles will go off to be a soldier and risk his life.”

  “’Tis right for a person to stand up for what they believe in,” said Father. He tilted his head and looked at me. “Even if she’s just a young girl, who goes to a very unusual tea party and comes to breakfast the next morning with a tea leaf tangled in her hair.”

  I gasped. Charles and I were certain we had not been recognized! “F-Father—” I stammered.

  “Hush,” said Father. “You and I are both pledged to secrecy, and Uncle George and Charles are, too.” He put his arm around my shoulder. “There’s trouble ahead for our colonies,” he said sadly. “It may be many years before our families are together again. It will be impossible for the Virginia Merrimans to see the Boston Merrimans for a long time, if war comes.” He sighed. “And it will, I fear.”

  I fear that when the king finds out about the destruction of the tea, he’ll be as fast and furious in his punishments—and just as impossible to stop—as the winds driving the Dove out to sea.

  Patrick Henry was right: The war had begun. British troops flooded the city of Boston. Under strict orders from General Thomas Gage, the soldiers were determined to find the leaders of the rebellion, including Samuel Adams and John Hancock. The soldiers also searched the colonists’ homes for weapons and smuggled goods.

  By the middle of April 1775, most of the leaders of the Sons of Liberty had managed to escape Boston. That made General Gage nervous. What if they were planning some sort of uprising? He couldn’t have that happen.

  Gage sent a battalion of soldiers to Lexington, a town about twelve miles northwest of Boston, where Adams and Hancock were rumored to be hiding. More soldiers were sent to Concord, a nearby town where the Patriots had stockpiled muskets, bullets, gunpowder, and other weapons. It was time to show the Patriots who was in charge.

  The Sons of Liberty heard about Gage’s plans on April 18, and thought it was another job for Paul. They were referring to Paul Revere, of course, the fearless horseman who could always be counted on to spread messages quickly. Along with a handful of other messengers, Revere jumped on his horse and rode through the night, warning colonial minutemen, from Boston to Concord, about the planned British attack.

  Though the warning helped the colonists prepare, it didn’t change the fact that the British vastly outnumbered them. The following morning, April 19, 1775, about seventy-five colonial fighters confronted several hundred British Redcoats in an open area called Lexington Green.

  At first, the confrontation seemed harmless enough. A British officer ordered t
he group to break up and leave the green. There was some grumbling from the crowd. But tensions settled, and it looked as though the morning would pass without a shot having been fired.

  All of a sudden, a gunshot pierced the air, followed by more gunfire. Eight Patriots lay dead, nine more were wounded, and a British solider was also injured. No one knows who fired the first bullet, but it came to be known many years later as “the shot heard round the world,” since it was the first real battle of the American Revolution.

  Artist’s depiction of “the shot heard round the world”

  And there was more action to come that morning, as the British soldiers marched on to Concord. Though the Redcoats had had the advantage in Lexington, by the time they reached Concord, many more Patriots had arrived.

  Now it was seven hundred British soldiers defending themselves against thousands of colonists. As they retreated to Boston, the Patriots continued to shoot at them from behind trees, walls, and houses. Although the British had the best-trained army in the world at the time, they were easy targets for men hidden from sight. Finally, the British soldiers ditched everything, even their weapons, to make a fast retreat. All total, 73 British soldiers were killed that day and another 174 were wounded. By comparison, 49 colonists died and 39 were wounded.

  The Battles of Lexington and Concord ended in victory for the Americans. But they were just the beginning.

  On July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, in which the colonies formally declared their independence from England. For the next eight and a half years, British and American forces would be locked in a bloody war. As the war continued, there would be setbacks for the Patriots. At no point during the American Revolution was victory assured, and nearly seven thousand Patriots would make the ultimate sacrifice, losing their lives in battle. Even more died as prisoners of the British or from disease.