#boston tea party

[beardedmrbean]

[massachusetts-official]

between the great molasses flood and the tea party, boston harbor has to be one of the most beverage harbors

Bold move claiming molasses is a beverage. It's barely a liquid.

[married-to-a-redhead]

[beggars-opera]

Spirit Halloween was having a blowout sale on costumes ok

[midnights-dragon]

if you’re american with a british friend, when learning about the boston tea party, you are legally obligated to send a picture of your apush notes saying “does this hurt you pookie”

[on-partiality]

Today's the 250th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party so here's some information on the Sons of Liberty, the lead up to the Boston Tea Party and what happened after!

apologies for any inaccuracies, I wrote this pretty late

The conflict between the American colonies and New England started after the French and Indian war ended with the Treaty of Paris on the 10th of February, 1763. The French and Indian war started because of conflicting territory claims in North America between the British and the French. Originally it was fought between only the British Americans and the French colonists with Native Americans helping on either side (especially with the French because they were severely outnumbered). However two years into the war the United Kingdom - except for ireland - decided enough was enough and officially declared a war with France which started a large world-wide conflict over many territories. In the end, the war was won by the Colonial Americans and British, the French lost all of their North American territory and what used to be their territory was split somewhat evenly between the Spanish and the British but that was only sorted out after the British fought in a war against the Spanish called the Anglo-Spanish war (the first one). So a victory, that sounds good for America right? Wrong. Wars are expensive, maintaining an army is expensive and the British were dealing with many other wars in all different territories at around the same time so England had a national debt of nearly 177.645 MILLION modern day USD.

England had a HUGE poverty crisis. They had to come up with a way to get money and quickly so on April the 5th 1764 the British parliament amended their pre-existing Sugar and Molasses Act. A tax on the importation of wine, molasses, indigo and sugar from places that weren't part of Britain, mainly the non-British Caribbean. This act also banned all foreign rum. Then on March the 22nd, 1765 the British parliament passed the stamp act. A tax on playing cards, newspapers, legal documents. The main problem with this tax was that it couldn't be paid in the paper money used in the 13 colonies, it had to be paid off using the British Sterling which wasn't easy to obtain in America. That and paper was possibly the most important resource in the 18th century. Later in October 1765, a Stamp Act Congress was held in Philadelphia to discuss all of the problems with this act. Then on March the 24th the British passed the Quartering Act which stated that if British troops want to stay at your house you have to provide them with food and let them inside of your house. This was a clear invasion of two very basic rights of Englishmen, private property and personal security.

The Americans fought back against these acts like with Boston's non-importation agreement where merchants from Boston agreed not to buy or sell anything from/to Britain and the Golden Hill riot in New York and the Gaspée Affair which was when a group burned a British ship while the soldiers were off looking for smugglers in Rhode Island, the group was then accused of treason. The most notable of all of these protests though was the later Boston Tea Party.

The Boston Tea Party happened because of a group called the Sons of Liberty which was created in 1765 out of a strong hatred of the Stamp Act. They believed that it was ridiculous that the British could tax the Americans when the Americans didn't even have a representative in parliament, their phrase was 'no taxation without representation'. There's a lot of dispute over what kind of organisation the Sons of Liberty actually was. I might go into all of the theories in another post but for the moment if you want to come up with your own idea on it I suggest looking into them yourself, for this post I'm just going to call them a group or organisation because it's pretty ambiguous. Anyway, the Sons of Liberty usually met at liberty poles/liberty trees which are believed to have been marked as meeting places using the Sons of Liberty's flag. The group was founded in Boston in the Massachusetts Bay colony and it's leader was Samuel 'Sam' Adams.

The Sons of Liberty's first big really move was to burn an effigy of the local Stamp Act enforcer, Andrew Oliver and then burn his office and destroyed the house of his associate. The group's protests were more often then not violent but they got their points across. It didn't help when the Boston Massacre happened in 1770, which only further outraged the colonists, expect the Boston Massacre to get it's own in depth post one day because the court trial was super interesting. Then on the 10th of May, 1773 the British made another act called the Tea Act which made it so that the colonists had to pay more for tea that wasn't legally imported. The Tea Act was meant to help the British East India Tea Company because they were making most of Britains money and they'd gone into a huge debt which caused 20-30 English banks to collapse and started the British Credit Crisis of 1772-1773. The problem was that because the imported tea from Britain was really cheap people didn't buy from local businesses which caused farmers to go completely bankrupt. The Tea Act was the final straw for the Sons of Liberty and many Americans.

Britain sent a shipment of East India Company Tea to America and all of the American colonies that the tea was going to be sent to convinced the people on the ship to resign except for Massachusetts. So the Dartmouth, a ship full of tea arrived in Boston Harbour, Samuel Adams called for a meeting at Fanueuil Hall and thousands of people turned up so they had to move meeting places. During the meeting the Colonists discussed possible resolutions, they decided to have a medium group of men watching the tea to make sure it wouldn't be unloaded and pleaded for the ship to leave. The governor of Massachusetts refused to let the ship leave and two more ships arrived. On December the 16th, 1773, Samuel Adams met with the people of Massachusetts again to tell them about the governors refusal, the meeting caused total fury amongst all of the colonists.

In protest of the Tea Act and all of the other taxes the British had put on the Americans, the people ran out of the meeting room, some of them put on Native American costumes both in an attempt to conceal their identity because what they were about to do was illegal and as a symbolic choice to show that America's their country, not Britain. They then ran onto the 3 tea ships while Samuel Adams was telling everyone to calm down and stay for the end of the meeting. And spent 3 hours hurling all of the chests of tea into the water.

The British did not respond well, they believed that the Colonists needed to be punished so they passed the infamous Intolerable Acts which consisted of the Boston Port Act, meant to force Boston to pay for the tea by closing the port until the people of Boston paid for the tea which the Colonists argued was unfair because it was punishing the whole population for something only about half of them did, the Massachusetts Government Act which changed the way that the government of Massachusetts worked by giving people appointed by the British Parliament/King far more power, this made it easier for the British government to manage the Massachusetts Bay colony from England, the Administration of Justice Acts which state that any accused Royal officials can get a trial in England if they don't believe that they would be judged fairly in Massachusetts - which seems like a strange thing to add given how the Boston Massacre trial with John Adams went? - And I've already talked about the last intolerable act, the Quartering act which states that you have to let British troops stay in your house if they want to and you have to give them food.

[grits-galraisedinthesouth]

What Happened on December 16th, 1773?

One of the most important dates in the history of the United States of America. On this night, the Sons of Liberty dumped more than 300 crates of East India Company tea into Boston Harbor. To many who were still loyal to the crown, this was an act of sedition and treason by “ill designing men”. But to those whose loyalty to King George III—and his taxes—had faltered; this was a galvanizing event. Bostonians from all statuses and walks of life came together, as equal citizens, to make a peaceful protest against tyranny and taxation without representation. It was their patriotism that sparked the American Revolution.

For years, the colonies had been taxed without receiving equal representation in Parliament. The first direct tax on the colonies was the Stamp Act of 1765, taxing all paper goods. This would be followed by the Townsend Acts which taxed glass, lead, paint, and tea. This taxation without representation led to protests, riots, and further unrest in an already tense city.

The Boston Tea Party was the culmination of a series of meetings beginning on November 29, 1773—two days after the first of the three ships bearing East India Company tea arrived in Boston Harbor. The arrival of the Dartmouth, with her 114 chests of tea on board, sent Boston into a frenzy. The Sons of Liberty demanded the tea be sent back to England, but those requests were refused by Royal Governor Thomas Hutchinson.

A few days later, the ship Eleanor and brig Beaver arrived with more cargoes of tea. With the deadline to unload the tea looming, Bostonians met at Old South Meeting House on Thursday December 16, 1773 to decide the fate of the cursed East India Company Tea. It was still the hope of those assembled that a peaceable agreement could be reached. Francis Rotch, owner of the Beaver and Dartmouth, was sent to Milton to obtain a pass from the Royal Governor so that his ships could be sent safely past the guns of Castle Island, and back to England with the tea still onboard. When Rotch returned and gave word that this request was denied, a mighty cry echoed through the historic hall. Samuel Adams stood up and said “This meeting can do nothing more to save the country.” This was a secret signal to the Sons of Liberty. They sprang into action as hundreds of men, loosely disguised as Mohawks, marched to Griffin’s Wharf and into history.

Copyright © 2023 December16.org

[spaceshipsandpurpledrank]

An inaccurate telling of American History Part 1

[spidertalia]

he's doing it again y'all

[dimity-lawn]

“I saw the fall of Troy, World War Five. I pushed boxes at the Boston Tea Party. Now I’m going to die in a dungeon…. in Cardiff.”

[acrossthewavesoftime]

I sat down for a cup of tea and realised that the podcast I'm listening to while sipping my mid-morning cuppa is about the Boston Tea Party. I consciously selected the podcast, I consciously made the tea, but it took a while for me to make that connection and realise the inherent irony...

[disast3rtransp0rt]

December 19th, 2023 is the 250th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party in the United States.

I think we should all celebrate by yeeting our government officials (yeah, all of them) into the harbor and removing the ladders a la Sims until they agree to do their fucking jobs correctly.

[eliasbell23]

"Da Only Tea Party I'd Join.. Is Da Boston Tea Party!"

[childoftheriver]

Feeling a little Crimson-y.

[gracehosborn]

@therealvalerie had requested that I share my history mug collection so far. ‘Tis small, but every collection has to start somewhere:

Featuring my blue and buff Continental Army uniform mug, and my “Spilling The Tea Since 1773” mug 😊

What mug should I get next? Suggestions welcome.

[akonoadham]