The Boston Tea Party of 16 December 1773 is an iconic event in American history, revealing the nature of American resistance and bringing severe retaliation from the ministry of Great Britain. The Tea Party was a brazen and radical action that demonstrated the organization and resilience of Boston's waterfront community. By precipitating the Intolerable Acts, the tea action helped to accelerate the dissolution of the British Empire in North America.
Boston was already in a ferment in 1773 over a proposal to pay the Massachusetts civil list from customs revenues and over the publication of royal governor Thomas Hutchinson's letters, which recommended curtailing American liberties. In the midst of this turmoil, the North American seaports learned of the passage in the spring of 1773 of the Tea Act, which granted the East India Company the ability to undersell its competitors (often American smugglers) while still paying the hated Townshend duty on tea shipped to America. As the seven ships bearing the East India Company tea sailed across the Atlantic Ocean, Boston and other seaports took steps to ensure that the dutied tea would not land.
Bostonians tried to force the tea consignees to resign their commissions and return the tea. By law, however, the tea could not be re-exported to England. On 28 November 1773, the Dartmouth was the first of three tea ships to arrive in the harbor. The following day the people of Boston crowded Faneuil Hall to plan a course of action, while the consignees fled to Castle William in the harbor for safety. Negotiations continued without success: the customs officers and the governor would not allow the tea to be sent back to England. If the duty was unpaid by 17 December, British customs officers could seize the tea and then sell it at auction.
Thus, on 16 December some five thousand people from Boston and its surrounding towns met at the Old South Meeting House. As day turned into evening, Governor Hutchinson refused one final time to allow the Dartmouth to leave the harbor. The crowd gave shouts of defiance, and a group of about 150 men hastened to Griffin's Wharf where the tea ships were docked. Under the guns of the Royal Navy, these men began heaving the tea into the harbor. Many disguised themselves as Indians or blackened their faces to avoid recognition. The men aboard the tea ships represented all ranks of society: apprentices and journeymen as well as artisans, merchants, and Patriot leaders. With speed, order, and discipline, they destroyed ninety thousand pounds of tea worth £9,659.
The Boston Tea Party aroused opposite reactions on the two sides of the Atlantic Ocean. Bostonians celebrated the action, as did many other American radicals. The British citizenry, meanwhile, saw this action by the rebellious Bostonians as a slap in the face. Although New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston had also prevented the dutied tea from landing, only in Boston had Americans taken the drastic step of destroying the East India Company tea, and so it was Boston that the ministry singled out. Since it proved impossible to name specific individual participants in the Tea Party, the ministry resolved to hold Bostonians collectively responsible for indemnifying the property of the East India Company. The Boston Tea Party demonstrated the government's loss of control over Boston, and the Boston Port Act of March 1774, in conjunction with the other Intolerable Acts of that year, aimed to reestablish parliamentary authority on a firmer footing in Massachusetts.