ONETHE COURT OF KING GEORGE III
1773–1775
On the evening of December 16, 1773, a few dozen American colonists, men with their faces darkened by lampblack or charcoal, descended with war whoops down Milk Street in Boston to board three merchant ships moored at Griffin’s Wharf. Prying open the hatches, they used pulleys to lift from the holds hundreds of heavy chests containing forty-five tons of tea. For three hours they smashed the lids and scooped the tea leaves into the harbor.
BOSTON TEA PARTY, DECEMBER 16, 1773. [LOC]
Accomplices in small boats used rakes and oars to scatter the floating piles, and by morning almost £10,000 worth of soggy brown flakes drifted from the wharf to Castle Island and the Dorchester shore. “The devil is in these people,” a British naval officer wrote after seeing the damage. But a local lawyer exulted. “This destruction of the tea,” John Adams declared, “is so bold, so daring, so firm, intrepid, & inflexible.” A silversmith named Paul Revere carried a detailed account of the event to New York and Philadelphia in the first of his famous gallops.
“I am much hurt,” King George III confessed in mid-January 1774 when news of this outrage reached him in London. As king of Great Britain since 1760, his realm also included the thirteen American colonies. Sorrow soon yielded to anger. What should be done? Confusion and uncertainty plagued the government, which was beset with conflicting reports and opinions. Was this challenge to British authority widespread or limited to a few scoundrels in New England? Was reconciliation possible?
Friction between the colonies and the mother country had been building for almost a decade. Colonists resented being taxed by Britain without representation in Parliament, Britain’s lawmaking body in London. In England, many thought of the colonists as spoiled, ungrateful children.
KING GEORGE III. [LOC]
However, some London merchants signed petitions urging caution, for fear that the loss of American markets would cripple their businesses. The colonists bought up to 20 percent of British manufactured goods, but the market for certain commodities was much bigger—a quarter of British salt; a third of sugar, tin, and wool socks; half of copper utensils, glassware, and silk goods; and two thirds to three quarters of iron nails, boat ropes, and beaver hats.
The king’s heart hardened. Rejecting petitions and appeals from those pleading for moderation, he vowed in March 1774 to “stop the present disorders.” To British lawmakers in Parliament, which included the House of Commons and the House of Lords, he denounced “a dangerous spirit of resistance” in America among “my deluded subjects.”
The king and his advisors believed that British wealth and status derived from its colonies. The erosion of authority in America would encourage rebellions in the other colonies of Canada, Ireland, the Caribbean, and India. With the empire broken up, an impoverished Great Britain, no longer great, would invite “the scorn of Europe” and exploitation by enemies in France, Spain, and elsewhere. Those piles of wet tea leaves foretold political and economic ruin.
A VIEW OF BOSTON FROM THE HARBOR. [LOC]
From late March through June 1774, Parliament adopted laws known collectively in Britain as the Coercive Acts (and later in America as the Intolerable Acts). The first was punitive: Boston’s port must close until the cost of the ruined tea was paid to the East India Company, which traded goods, including the destroyed tea, with the colonies. The other laws tightened British control over Massachusetts. British troops would occupy Boston under a commander in chief who would also serve as the royal governor. In a separate session, Parliament approved expanding the boundaries of its Canadian territory to the west and south, to the rich territory between the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. Infuriated American colonists felt that they were being confined to the Atlantic coast.
“The die is now cast,” King George wrote. “The colonies must either submit or triumph. We must not retreat.”
Copyright © 2022 by Rick Atkinson
