Boston Tea Party

The Boston Tea Party (Dec. 16, 1773) was when Sam Adams and other members of the Sons of Liberty led other patriots thinly disguised as [[Native Americans] boarded ships of BritishEast India Company and dumped 342 chests of tea into Boston Harbor. This occurred three years after the Boston Massacre.

Bostonians and other colonists had been subjected to a tax on tea as well as paint, paper, and glass with the passage of the Townshend Acts in 1767. Non-importation movements by the colonists led the repeal of the Townshend duties in 1770, with the exception of the duty on tea. In 1773, Parliament passed the Tea Act which allowed the struggling East India Tea Company to sell a half million pounds of tea in the colonies while bypassing the importation taxes normally paid under the British Navigation Acts. For all practical purposes, the 1773 Tea Act gave the East India Tea Company a monopoly by allowing them to charge less than other merchants. Depsite the fact they were now paying less for tea, American colonists protested the act. East India ships left some American ports without unloading their cargo after protests by colonits. Massachusetts governer Thomas Hutchinson forbade ships to leave port without unloading their cargo and this was a key factor that led to the Boston Tea Party.