~ The Old Sachem ~ A Tea Party

By Bill Stewart

In high school they taught us that the colonists grew angry about the King of England, who raised the cost of tea for them. England gathered tea from India and China by a company called the East India Company. We call it an act of disobedience; the English called it an insurrection. On December 16, 1773, a group of revolutionaries gathered to board, in disguise as Indians, the ships carrying tea to Boston and proceeded to dump 340 chests of tea into Boston Harbor in the area known as Griffin’s Wharf. This amounted to about 92,000 pounds of tea, which in our current time would be worth about $1.7 million. Other territories from New York to the Carolinas also had tea delivered and did nothing about it. It was a revolutionary response to the arbitrary power of England. Most of this was taught in history classes in high school, but there is more to the story than what you learned.

A Boston merchant, John Edwards, sent a letter to a friend in Philadelphia describing the actions of the revolutionaries. “They mustered, I am told, on Fort Hill, to the number of about two hundred, and proceeded two by two to Griffin’s Wharf, where … before nine-o’clock in the evening every chest on board the three vessels was knocked to pieces and flung over the sides. They say the actors were Indians from Narragansett. Whether they were or not, to a transient observer they appeared as such, being enclosed in Blankets with the heads muffled, and copper colored countenances, being each armed with a hatchet or ax and pair of pistols.”

The Boston revolutionaries later sent Paul Revere on horseback to New York City to relay the news about the Boston Tea Party, part of an effort by Sam Adams and his cronies to dramatize and publicize the event and to gather support among the colonies.

The actions of the revolutionaries would lead to rebellion. The English closed the port to stop commerce coming in and out of the harbor, which was the mainstay of the locals financially. The colonial government of Massachusetts was suspended. A new Governor was appointed and he tried to change the way the patriots were going and suspended Town Meetings. As we know now, this approach didn’t work and eventually war with England ended the standoff.

Shawn Quigley, who is the lead ranger for the National Park Service’s social justice team stationed in Faneuil Hall, referred to the action as “identity-building foundation block,” and Evan O’Brien, creative director of the Boston Tea Party Ship & Museum, said, “the idea that ordinary citizens can do extraordinary things.”

Now you know some of the details the history class didn’t elaborate.

  (Editor’s Note: Bill Stewart, who is better known to Saugus Advocate readers as “The Old Sachem,” writes a weekly column about sports – and sometimes he opines on current or historical events or famous people.)