Join Our Cast. Shop Merchandise. Search for: Search. Close search. First edition of the Tea Act of The Boston Tea-Party, New York Public Library. Read a Transcript of The Tea Act. Go Top. More about museum contributor. Related Articles Open Post. Open Post. Once again, colonial resistance had undermined the new system of taxation, and once again, the British government bowed to reality without abandoning the principle that it had rightful authority to tax the colonies. The repeal of the majority of the Townshend Act took the wind out of the sails of the colonial boycott.
Although many colonists continued to refuse to drink tea out of principle, many others resumed partaking of the beverage, though some of them salved their conscience by drinking smuggled Dutch tea, which was generally cheaper than legally imported tea. The American consumption of smuggled tea hurt the finances of the East India Company, which was already struggling through economic hardship.
A glut of tea and a diminished American market had left the company with tons of tea leaves rotting in its warehouses. In an effort to save the troubled enterprise, the British Parliament passed the Tea Act in The act granted the company the right to ship its tea directly to the colonies without first landing it in England, and to commission agents who would have the sole right to sell tea in the colonies.
If Parliament expected that the lowered cost of tea would mollify the colonists into acquiescing to the Tea Act, it was gravely mistaken. By allowing the East India Company to sell tea directly in the American colonies, the Tea Act cut out colonial merchants, and the prominent and influential colonial merchants reacted with anger.
The fact that the agents commissioned by the company to sell its tea included a number of pro-Parliament men only added fuel to the fire. The Tea Act revived the boycott on tea and inspired direct resistance not seen since the Stamp Act crisis. The act also made allies of merchants and patriot groups like the Sons of Liberty. In several towns, crowds of colonists gathered along the ports and forced company ships to turn away without unloading their cargo.
The most spectacular action occurred in Boston, Massachusetts , where on December 16, , a well-organized group of men dressed up as Native Americans and boarded the company ships. The men smashed open the chests of tea and dumped their contents into Boston Harbor in what later came to be known as the Boston Tea Party. The Boston Tea Party caused considerable property damage and infuriated the British government. Parliament responded with the Coercive Acts of , which colonists came to call the Intolerable Acts.
The series of measures, among other things, repealed the colonial charter of Massachusetts and closed the port of Boston until the colonists reimbursed the cost of the destroyed tea. Parliament also appointed General Thomas Gage , the commander in chief of British forces in North America, as the governor of Massachusetts. Since the Stamp Act crisis of , radical colonists had warned that new British taxes heralded an attempt to overthrow representative government in the colonies and to subjugate the colonists to British tyranny.
Colonial resistance intensified until, three years after Parliament passed the Tea Act, the colonies declared their independence as the United States of America. The American Revolution had begun. The smell of grilled meat mixes with the exotic wafts of cinnamon tea served with a mush of sweet brown dessert.
That act forever sealed his feeling for the Chief, bound it up with the war, with violence, with the gun. The Samaritan guidelines are written around the assumption that suicide is a purely irrational act, an act spurred by illness. He caught himself in the act of listening to you too credulously—and that seemed to him unmanly and dishonorable.
Being quieted by the Captain with a draught of cold tea, and made to sit down, the examination of the book proceeded. He was aware that his act by this time, had helped nobody, had made no one happy or satisfied—not even himself.
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