The January 18,
2024 meeting of the American Revolution Round Table of Richmond was a Zoom
meeting and held with the participation of the University of Richmond’s Osher
Lifelong Learning Institute. Over one hundred participants logged into the
meeting.
Dr. Benjamin Carp
presented the evening’s program and spoke on "The Boston Tea Party and Its
Legacy at 250." Dr. Carp is the Daniel M. Lyons Professor of American History
at Brooklyn College and teaches at the CUNY Graduate Center. He is the author
of The
Great New York Fire of 1776: A Lost Story of the American Revolution (Yale
University Press, 2023) and Defiance of the Patriots: The Boston Tea Party and
the Making of America (Yale University Press, 2010); and Rebels Rising:
Cities and the American Revolution (Oxford University Press, 2007).
He also has written for scholarly journals and popular publications. He
received his B.A. from Yale University, his Ph.D. from the University of
Virginia, and he previously taught at the University of Edinburgh and Tufts
University. [https://benjamincarp.com/]
Griffin’s Wharf.
Not many have heard the name but most students are taught about the event which
happened there on the night of December 16, 1773. The wharf, located on the
east end of Boston Harbor, is where a party of Bostonians boarded three British
merchant vessels docked there, awaiting customs processing, and dumped three
hundred forty-two chests of yet untaxed tea into Boston Harbor. The tea belonged
to the East India Company (a joint-stock company with investors), and,
importantly, not property of the English Crown. Many citizens wanted the tea
sent back to England without the payment of any taxes. The event later became
known as the Boston Tea Party. Dr. Carp, in a fast-paced presentation, spoke to
the events and people that motivated the citizens of Boston to openly defy Acts
of England’s Parliament, which eventually resulted in widespread revolution and
independence of the American colonies.
Thomas Hutchinson,
Governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, (and fearing trouble) had moved
to his summer home in Milton and Admiral John Montagu, the English military
commander, was at a house on the dock and watched the event. Each were aware of
the extensive legal wrangling of what to do with the tea [Samuel Adams Documents] and did
nothing to protect English tea. Each adhered to the British legal system, in
which the military would not act without a civilian government request, and the
civilian government would not call on the military until a crime was under way
or had taken place. Consequently, Bostonians were not prevented from removing
and dumping overboard the contents of tea chests into Boston Harbor nor was the
large crowd of supporters dispersed during the “party.” No harm was made to the
colonial-owned ships or their crews as destruction of the tea was the only
object for destruction that day [The
Ships].
Joshua Wyeth, a 16
year-old, was part of the crowd who met that day at the Old South Meeting House
and left en mass to resolve the tea storm. Wyeth joined others and disguised himself
as an “Indian” and boarded one of the ships. Wyeth is the only participant to
publicly tell the story of that day’s events but not until 53 years after the
fact [Joshua
Wyeth's account].
The leadup to the
“party” was the Tea Act of 1773. America seemed an obvious and politically expedient
place to unload an overabundance of tea inventory in England warehouses. The
Tea Act lowered the duty the East India Company paid on “legal” tea to the
British government but gave the Company a monopoly on the American tea trade (cutting
out the Dutch) and would save the East India Company from bankruptcy and
financial losses by its English investors. The previous
Townshend Act duty on tea was left in place except the duty was rescinded on
tea entering England but left in place on tea that entered the colonies. The
unequal treatment angered colonists and strengthened their belief that the colonies were being subjected
to “taxation without representation.” This famous slogan was applied to English
Parliamentary Acts that were passed to raise revenues after the British
government was deep in debt following the Seven Years’ War. Legal tea, smuggled
tea, Sons of Liberty agitations, rituals of Boston ladies that included highly
prized sugar flavored with licorice to sweeten their tea, merchants and ship
owners being at odds, customs officers without the authority to defuse conflicts,
corrupt public officials being bankrolled by tax schemes were some of the circumstances
that galvanized Bostonians. As colonials, they were Englishmen believing they had
the same rights as Englishmen in England, and to have their own elected
representatives in Parliament having connections
to their own constituencies, when this seemed impossible their only
recourse was acts of rebellion.
Fueling colonist dissatisfaction
with British rule, the Townshend Acts (1767) were a series of British Acts that introduced a series of
taxes and regulations to fund civil and military administration of the British
colonies in America predating the Intolerable Acts. They were, also considered, by
colonists, as an attempt to assert what Parliament considered to be its
historic right to exert authority over the colonies. This form of
revenue generation was Great Britian's response to the failure of the Stamp Act
1765, which had provided the first form of direct taxation placed upon the
colonies. The import duties proved to be similarly controversial and lead to widespread
protests in the form of boycotts of English goods, especially among merchants
in Boston and other east coast ports. Examples of these Acts follow:
1. The Suspending Act -
also known The New York Restraining Act, gave the Royal Governor of New York
the authority to suspend the colony's legislature until it complied with the
Quartering Act of 1765 and provided funds for the soldiers stationed in New
York City.
2. The Townshend duties
or the Revenue Act 1767 - placed new duties
on paper, paint, lead, glass, and tea that were imported into the colonies.
These were items that were not produced in North America and that the colonists
were only allowed to buy from Great Britain.
3. The Commissioners of
Customs Act 1767 - established the American Board of Customs Commissioners
which was viewed as notoriously corrupt. It was at the Board's request that
troops were sent to Boston to quell hostilities against it. The Boston Massacre
took place before their headquarters.
4. The Indemnity Act
1767 - reduced taxes on the British East India Company when they imported tea
into England. This allowed the Company to avoid bankruptcy and to re-export the
tea to the colonies more cheaply and resell it to the colonists at prices below
Dutch tea.
The path to
liberty was further advanced, in coming years, when the British Parliament
passed a series of laws to punish the colonies. These laws became known as the
Coercive Acts (also known as the Intolerable Acts): the Boston Port Act, the
Massachusetts Government Act, the Administration of Justice Act, the Quartering
Act, and the Quebec Act.
The destruction of
East India Company’s tea brought together a diverse array of people from around
the world--from Chinese tea-pickers to English businessmen and soldiers, American
merchants, firebrand and behind the scene patriots against loyalists, Native
American tribes, sugar plantation slaves, and Boston’s elite tea drinking
ladies.
While the
destruction of the tea, that day, looked like a triumph for the Bostonians, it
was viewed as a significant crime in London deserving severe punishment and
marked another step towards open rebellion, and eventually the American
colonies’ independence. “Well boys, you have had a fine, pleasant evening for
your Indian caper, haven’t you? But mind, you have got to pay the fiddler yet!”
Admiral Montague.
Fred Sorrell
------------------------
Eighteenth Century
Parliamentary Acts and Colonial Actions
Sugar Act (1764) –
revised taxes on sugar, coffee, tea, wine and forced shipments to go through
Britain first; those found guilty of violating were sent to Vice-Admiralty
Courts in Nova Scotia and were denied juries and presumed guilty.
Stamp Act (1765) –
tax on all printed documents (deeds, newspapers, marriage licenses, etc.),
which was an internal tax (not an external import tax) - opposed heavily,
particularly by groups like the Loyal Nine and Sons of Liberty, some tax
collectors forced to resign.
Stamp Act Congress
(1765) – representatives of nine colonies met in NYC (1st such meeting since
Albany in 1754) – planning coordinated protests of the Stamp Act and declared Great
Britain lacked authority to tax here, and to deny a person a jury trial.
“No Taxation
Without Representation” – best articulated in a Boston town meeting by James
Otis.
"Virtual
Representation” – counter-argument that states that colonists (as are all
British subjects) are represented by all members of the British Parliament (“they
do have representation”).
Quartering Act
(1765) – British soldiers allowed to quarter in all buildings even if occupied
by families and furnish maintenance needs and colonial legislatures had to pay for
quartering those soldiers.
Declaratory Act
(1766) – Parliament declared sovereignty over the colonies (despite repeal of
Stamp Act) “in all cases whatsoever.”
New York
Suspending Act – Parliament nullified all laws of an assembly that refuses
American Board of Customs Commissioners (1767) – created by Parliament to stop
smuggling in violation of the Navigation Acts; Britain paid informers and
seized ships of those found guilty; heavy-handed enforcement upset colonists.
Townshend
Duties/Revenue Act (1767) – taxed certain goods imported from Britain.
“Letter From a
Farmer in Pennsylvania”– written by John Dickenson in 1767 - argued that a tax
on imports to raise money (not to protect trade) was unconstitutional unless
elected representatives voted for it.
Non-importation,
non-consumption – boycotts on imports from Britain, and the consumption of
goods from Britain (particularly effective with tea) to force the repeal of the
Townshend duties (which were repealed in 1770).
Boston Massacre
(1770)
Tea Act (1773) –
tax on tea, revenue paid royal governors which took away colonies “power of the
purse” and made governors more dependent on and loyal to Britain.
Boston Tea Party
(1773)
Coercive/Intolerable
Acts (1774) – in response to the Boston Tea Party - closed port of Boston until
the tea was paid for, revoked Massachusetts charter (disbanding assembly), and
gave power to the governor.
James Monroe Birthplace Foundation - nominated by Chris Yohn 
