The tea act & the boston tea party
In an attempt to defuse the tension in the colonies, the British Parliament passed the Tea Act in 1773. This act repealed almost all taxes in the colonies, including the Townshend Acts, but kept the tax on tea. The government knew that the colonists were smuggling imported tea so as to keep up the boycott, so they created the Tea Act for the purpose of convincing the colonists to purchase British tea again. The tax allowed for the British merchants to sell tea at extremely low prices, but still gain revenue. This worked to the benefit of the British for a while, but the profits of the colonial merchants and smugglers began to decline. They felt that their customers were being stolen, and they were going to lose their method of income if the Tea Act continued to be implemented. The other colonists worried that the British East India Company would gain complete control of the tea trading industry, so they united with the merchants and smugglers to protest the Tea Act.
After weeks of protests and boycotting, the patriots decided that a bigger action needed to be taken to catch the attention of the British Parliament. On December 16, 1773, a group of over 100 patriots, including some members of the Sons of Liberty, participated in the Boston Tea Party. They disguised themselves as Native Americans and snuck onto three British ships containing massive shipments of tea. Under the cover of the night, the rebels managed to dump approximately 340 chests of tea into Boston Harbor.
Only one person was caught and imprisoned for his participation in the Boston Tea Party: a Son of Liberty named Francis Akeley. Othern than that, those who contributed went individually unpunished. However, the British Parliament felt that something big had to be done to force the colonies back into obedience, so they created and passed a group of laws that came to be known as the Intolerable Acts. These included the shutdown of Boston Harbor and the replacement of the governor of Massachusetts.
After weeks of protests and boycotting, the patriots decided that a bigger action needed to be taken to catch the attention of the British Parliament. On December 16, 1773, a group of over 100 patriots, including some members of the Sons of Liberty, participated in the Boston Tea Party. They disguised themselves as Native Americans and snuck onto three British ships containing massive shipments of tea. Under the cover of the night, the rebels managed to dump approximately 340 chests of tea into Boston Harbor.
Only one person was caught and imprisoned for his participation in the Boston Tea Party: a Son of Liberty named Francis Akeley. Othern than that, those who contributed went individually unpunished. However, the British Parliament felt that something big had to be done to force the colonies back into obedience, so they created and passed a group of laws that came to be known as the Intolerable Acts. These included the shutdown of Boston Harbor and the replacement of the governor of Massachusetts.