Later that night 200 tea party guests boarded those ships. “They say the actors were Indians from Narragansett. Whether they were or not, to a transient observer they appear’d as such, being cloath’d in Blankets with the heads muffled, and copper color’d countenances, being each arm’d with a hatchet or axe, and pair pistols,” reported eye-witness Andrews.
They smashed the tea barrels and threw them overboard. “Before nine o’clock in ye evening, every chest from on board the three vessels was knock’d to pieces and flung over ye sides,” Andrews reported.
Unlike today’s protests of sending tea bags to government officials or rallying for speeches, the Boston Tea Party was a crime, the stealing and destroying of property.
What made the Boston Tea Party a history-turning event were not the profits lost from the 350 tea chests or the tea-colored harbor water. The king’s aftertaste was longer-lasting. King George III was so angry that he revoked the charter of Massachusetts and sent 3,000 soldiers to occupy the city and take up residence in people’s homes. Talk about government overreach. Think about how amazing that is. Because of a protest over a tea tax, the king kiboshed their constitution and forbade them from assembling.
The substance behind today’s tea parties is also government overreach but of a different kind. Today’s government is far more solid and representative than the monarch of 1773. The Constitution is still in place. The very fact that American tea parties can freely exist today is the legacy of incidents like the Boston Tea Party. Massachusetts lost its right to freely assemble after the Boston Tea Party. The rallying cry of “friends, citizens and countryman” spread throughout the other twelve colonies. If the king could revoke the charter of Massachusetts, then what was to stop him from doing the same thing in Pennsylvania, Virginia, or elsewhere? The patriots took action by sending delegates to the newly-formed Continental Congress, the precursor of Congress today.
It took a war, a Constitution, and a Bill of Rights to correct it, but the long-lasting aftertaste of the Boston Tea Party is the freedom to speak and assemble—the freedom to send a tea bag to the White House or Congress today without fear of a soldier being quartered in your home as a consequence. That’s a legacy worth savoring. Today’s tea parties are reminders of principles worth preserving.