Today is the 231st anniversary of the Boston Tea Party:
The Boston Tea Party took place this day, December 16, 1773, just three years after the Boston Massacre, where the British fired into a crowd, killing five.The British passed unbearable taxes:
1764 Sugar Act -taxing sugar, coffee, wine;
1765 Stamp Act -taxing newspapers, contracts, letters, playing cards and all printed materials;
1767 Townshend Acts -taxing glass, paints, paper; and
1773 Tea Act.While American merchants paid taxes, British allowed the East India Tea Company to sell a half million pounds of tea in the Colonies with no taxes, giving them a monopoly by underselling American merchants.
Disguised as Mohawk Indians, a band of patriots called Sons of Liberty, led by Sam Adams, left the South Meeting House toward Griffin's Wharf, boarded the Dartmouth, Eleanor and Beaver, and threw 342 chests of tea into the harbor.The men of Marlborough, Massachusetts, declared:
"Death is more eligible than slavery. A free-born people are not required by the religion of Jesus Christ to submit to tyranny, but may make use of such power as God has given them to recover and support their liberties... We implore the Ruler above the skies that He would bare His arm...and let Israel go."
The result of a mob of angry settlers confronting British soldiers on March 13, 1770, the Boston Massacre was a tragic if inevitable event that helped to accelerate the collision between colony and crown.
As a faithful and patriotic American I should appreciate its significance as a milestone towards my country's independence. I do, with qualifications.
In seventh grade, my American History class held a debate, presented to the class as if they were French dignitaries, over the justification of armed revolution. Two classmates, Brendan and Steve, argued for the United States. A third classmate named Niki and I represented the King of England.
Niki and I did well. It's not easy to assume a position that opposes both nation and conscience; not even revisionist historians can do much to weaken the rightfulness of human liberty or the legitimacy of its modern and definitive introduction by Americans. Oddly enough I remember little of the two-day debate beyond highlights (I invite uBlog readers who were present in that classroom, even those accused of "cutting" students seated behind them, to offer any anecdotes), but I can say with certainty that the British case was well-prepared and smoothly delivered. Our strategy would have been a defense of most of the King's punitive measures and a rationalization for the rest. On one hand we would press for calm conciliation with the colonists and on the other condemn them as unreasonable, ungrateful and unprepared for a war they had poorly considered. And we would tie them up in knots over their continued possession of black slaves. A classmate friend of mine, Dave, would use the second day's question-and-answer session from the floor to powerful effect, eliciting some angry mutters from our opponents.
For their part, I can also confidently say that the American argument was inconsistent when not off-the-cuff. Steve and Brendan were both very intelligent but Steve was a sour kid who seldom applied himself and Brendan, a born defense attorney, chose aggressive theatrics and rhetoric over reason. The result was Steve sitting silently for two class periods while Brendan stood on his chair and appealed for French support on the basis of American suffering, chiefly the five killed in the Boston Massacre. Almost exclusively, the five killed in the Boston Massacre. Paul Revere's engraving, shown here, receives from some foreign and leftist quarters a characterization as sensationalist libel that most of us would consider unfair. Brendan, however, armed with a photocopy of the famous print, dotted his presentation from start to finish waving it about, out of his chair, shouting, "Boston Massacre! Five killed! A dozen wounded! Cold blood!" Niki and I would make a point, Brendan would stare blankly for a second before jumping out of his chair to yell the litany again.
When the vote was cast, King George won, a poignant reminder that a matter can't be won on melodrama. Although Brendan's cheap stunts made the debate memorable — the next year I advocated and won Abraham Lincoln's case for the preservation of the Union but remember nothing else — they left a deep impression of New England's publicization of the Massacre as at best brazen and at worst, tawdry. Fortunately, revisiting history books over the last decade-and-a-half has nearly pulled out the wrinkle.