Picture of the Day: December 16

The Boston Tea Party

On December 16, 1773, Massachusetts revolutionary Samuel Adams' Sons of Liberty, crudely dressed as Indians and plied with rum, boarded British East India Tea Company ships anchored in Boston Harbor and tossed the tea overboard to protest the hated Tea Act. Parliament passed the 1773 Tea Act not to regulate trade or make the colonies pay their own administrative costs, but to save the nearly bankrupt British East India Tea Company. The Tea Act gave the company a monopoly over the American tea trade and authorized the sale of 17 million pounds of tea in America at prices cheaper than smuggled Dutch tea. In spite of the savings, Americans would not accept what they considered to be taxation without representation. Overreacting to the Tea Party, the British attempted to punish Boston and the whole colony of Massachusetts with the Intolerable Acts of 1774–another in the series of events that ultimately led to American independence.

Image: National Archives

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