Illustration of a teen on a ship during the Boston Tea Party times

Illustration by Sam Kennedy

STANDARDS

Common Core: RH.6-8.1, RH.6-8.2, RH.6-8.4, RH.6-8.7, RH.6-8.9, WHST.6-8.4, WHST.6-8.9, RI.6-8.1, RI.6-8.2, RI.6-8.4, R.6-8.7, R.6-8.9, W.6-8.4, W.6-8.9, SL.6-8.1

NCSS: Time, Continuity, and Change • Individuals, Groups, and Institutions • Power, Authority, and Governance • Production, Distribution, and Consumption • Global Connections • Civic Ideals and Practices

U.S. HISTORY

True Teens of History

Boston Tea Party

Teen of the Revolution

250 years ago, the Boston Tea Party helped spark the war for America’s independence. This is the story of one teen who was there.

Click here to take a Prereading Quiz before you read this article.

As You Read, Think About: How did this event, which happened hundreds of years ago, shape the world we live in today?

As 15-year-old Joshua Wyeth rushed through the bustling streets of Boston, hushed whispers seemed to follow him at every turn. It was a frosty December day in 1773. A plan was brewing to launch a daring attack on three ships anchored in the city’s harbor. Joshua had to decide: Would he risk arrest to take part?

Sneak Attack

Joshua lived in Massachusetts Bay Colony, one of the 13 Colonies in North America ruled by Great Britain. Over the years, the relationship between the Colonies and Britain had grown increasingly tense. It was like a pot of water getting hotter and hotter. Now the Colonies’ anger was ready to boil over.

A secret message was being passed around the blacksmith shop where Joshua worked. (Blacksmiths make objects out of iron.) The message said that the tea sitting on ships in Boston Harbor had to be destroyed. 

If the wrong person discovered the message, they could all be arrested—or worse. 

At last, night fell. About 100 men made their way through Boston’s streets to Griffin’s Wharf, where the ships were docked. Teenage apprentices, including Joshua, filed in among them. 

“We had smeared our faces with grease, and soot, or lampblack” as a disguise, Joshua later recalled. Many of the men also wore blankets or shawls, as they imagined Native Americans might. They were dressed for battle.

If Joshua was caught, he could be arrested—or worse.

The harbor was guarded by powerful British warships. Would the ships fire on the men? Would soldiers come and throw them in jail?

Despite the risks, the men went ahead. Under the cloak of darkness, they dumped some 90,000 pounds of tea into the dark water. History would remember their bold action as the Boston Tea Party. And it would help spark a chain of events that would change the world.

The Trouble With Tea

The Colonies and Britain were separated by about 3,000 miles of ocean. So for nearly two centuries, Britain had let the Colonies mostly run things on their own. Although Parliament, Britain’s lawmaking body, had appointed leaders to oversee them, each Colony had its own government, laws, and taxes

The situation changed after the French and Indian War (1754-1763), when Britain and France fought for control of North America. Britain won but ended up deeply in debt—owing what today would be trillions of dollars. Parliament tried to raise money by taxing the colonists on goods they imported, or purchased from other countries. By 1767, those fees had raised the price of many essential items—including tea.

Each new tax triggered anger over what many colonists called “taxation without representation.” Parliament was forcing taxes on them without giving them any say in the decision. Groups of colonists responded by boycotting, or refusing to buy, British goods. 

One boycott hit Britain especially hard: the one on tea imported by the British East India Company. Most colonists switched to drinking tea smuggled in from Dutch and other traders. 

Partly because of this, the East India Company was stuck with warehouses full of tea going bad, and was about to go broke. Then, in May 1773, Parliament passed the Tea Act. It got rid of a tax that the East India Company had to pay to the British government. This let the company sell its tea cheaper than the smuggled stuff. British officials believed that the move would convince colonists to start buying it again. 

“Parliament was determined to make people import this tea,” says Peter Drummey of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

Many colonists burned with anger at Parliament’s control. But a Boston leader named Samuel Adams seized the opportunity. Since the Colonies’ creation, they had largely operated independently from each other. Adams believed that outrage over the Tea Act could convince them to unite against Britain once and for all.

The Tea Arrives

By October 1773, word was out that seven ships carrying East India Company tea were heading for the Colonies’ four largest ports: Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston. No one knew how long it would take the ships to arrive—or which port they would reach first. 

On October 16, colonists in Philadelphia passed a resolution vowing to send the tea back to Britain. Groups in the other port towns made the same promise. 

On November 28, the Dartmouth, the first of the seven ships, entered Boston Harbor. Within hours, handbills appeared all over town: “Friends! Brethren! Countrymen! That worst of plagues, the detested Tea, shipped for this Port by the East-India Company, is now arrived.”

Would outrage finally unite the colonies against Britain?

Time Is Up

Image of a box from the Boston Tea Party which is now labeled as an artifact

Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum

This 10- by 13-inch tea chest may have been the only one to survive the Boston Tea Party. A teen, John Robinson, found it half-buried in the sand the morning after and secretly kept it. His family passed down the chest for generations, using it to hold everything from dolls to a litter of kittens. It is now in a Boston museum.

Determined to keep their promise, some Boston colonists appointed a guard to patrol the docks. No tea would come off that ship.

But they knew the guard was only a temporary solution. By law, the Dartmouth had 20 days—until December 17—to unload its cargo. Once that deadline passed, officials would bring the tea to shore by force. 

On December 16, as many as 6,000 people—about a third of Boston’s population—packed into the Old South Meeting House. By then, two other ships carrying the tea had also arrived in the harbor. 

At the long meeting, Adams, John Hancock, and other leaders vowed to keep the tea from being unloaded. The rowdy crowd stamped its feet and roared its approval.

As dusk arrived, the gathering began to disperse. People who were leaving the meeting hall sensed a restless energy. “Let every man do what is right in his own eyes!” Hancock may have said. Someone else allegedly called out, “Boston Harbor a teapot this night!”

Painting of colonists riding in a boat. Text, "The Road to Revolution"

“I Never Labored Harder”

For Joshua Wyeth and other young people, the call to action was irresistible. Henry Purkitt, about 18, heard a loud whistle through the open door of the barrel-maker’s shop where he worked. He joined the crowd surging toward Griffin’s Wharf. 

Samuel Sprague, 20, met some friends on the street who told him what was happening. He followed them to the harbor—where he found his bricklayer employer already busy!

Not all employers were as understanding. Peter Slater’s boss locked him in a room to keep him from going. The 13-year-old crawled out a window to get to the action.

The men divided up into three groups and boarded the ships. First step: Find the tea, kept below deck in big chests. Next, haul the chests onto the deck with ropes. This was no easy task—the heaviest were 400 pounds! On deck, men used axes to smash the chests to pieces. Others dumped the loose tea overboard. 

It was a lot of tea—some 45 tons of it. “I never labored harder in my life,” Joshua would say. The tide was low, and tea leaves bunched up in the shallow water like grass in a new-mown field. Some of the boys waded in to break up the clumps with poles or their hands and feet. From the wharf, at least 1,000 Bostonians watched protectively over them, largely in silence.

In less than three hours, the work was done. Then everyone melted back into the night. 

Illustration of colonists enraged

Illustration by Sam Kennedy

Samuel Adams stirs up the crowd at the Old South Meeting House. 

Resistance Spreads

Word of Boston’s defiance electrified resistance in the other ports. When the East India Company tea arrived in Charleston, it was locked up in the basement of a building so it couldn’t be sold. The captains of other tea ships headed for Philadelphia and New York were so unnerved that they turned around and sailed back to England.

The rebellion continued to spread. In October 1774, public pressure forced a captain who had arrived in Annapolis, Maryland, with a load of tea to torch his entire ship! Two months later, a group of men in Greenwich, New Jersey, raided a cellar where East India Company tea had been hidden—and burned it all in the town square.

Uniting the Colonies

For Britain, the acts of destruction were the last straw. Beginning in March 1774, Parliament passed laws known as the Coercive Acts to punish the Colonies, particularly Boston. 

The first law closed Boston Harbor until the town paid for the destroyed tea—valued at about $1.5 million today. With ships unable to pass in or out, many local businesses were devastated. Another Coercive Act required colonists to house British soldiers in their towns. 

Parliament’s crackdown only inflamed resistance. In September 1774, representatives from 12 of the 13 Colonies met in Philadelphia. The gathering, now known as the First Continental Congress, formally demanded that the Coercive Acts be ended. Parliament refused.

But as the divide with Britain grew, the relationship between the Colonies deepened. The acts of rebellion “helped to unite the Colonies for war and independence,” says historian Benjamin Carp. It was exactly what Adams had hoped for.

Virginia delegate Patrick Henry made that plain at the Continental Congress. “The distinctions between Virginians, Pennsylvanians, New Yorkers, and New Englanders are no more,” he said. “I am not a Virginian, but an American.” 

Within months, the Americans and the British were at war. When the American Revolution ended eight years later, the Colonies formed a new nation, the United States of America.

As for Joshua? He joined the revolution himself, fighting in several battles. In 1826, nearing 70 years old, he became one of the first people to tell a reporter a long-held secret—the role he and others had played decades earlier in an incident that was just beginning to become an American legend: the Boston Tea Party.

PRIMARY SOURCE

Be a History Detective

Painting of Lord North

Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy Stock Photo

Lord North

The Boston Tea Party wasn’t the first clash between Britain and the Colonies over taxes. Trouble started with the Sugar Act in 1764. 

Every time the British government taxed the Colonies, the colonists would get upset and protest. Parliament would then cancel the tax, only to add a new one later. This cycle kept repeating. 

By March 1770, Britain’s prime minister, Lord North, had had enough. See if you can figure out why after reading this excerpt from his speech to Parliament.

We repealed the Stamp Act to comply with their desires, and what has been the consequence? Has the repeal taught them obedience? Has our lenity inspired them with moderation? No, that very lenity encouraged them to insult our authority, to dispute our rights, and to aim at independent government. The best time to exert our right of taxation is when the right is refused. To temporize is to yield and the authority of the mother country would be relinquished forever. 

The Stamp Act, passed in March 1765, taxed all paper documents, even playing cards. The colonists were so furious about the act that Parliament canceled it in 1766
Why is North mentioning this act?

Lenity means gentleness or kindness. 
What does North suggest that Britain is encouraging by being kind to the colonists?

Temporize means to delay. Yield means to submit. 
What does North warn will happen if Britain gives in to the colonists again? 

What do you think the “mother country” is?

Questions: Why has Lord North run out of patience with the colonists? Is he giving good advice in this speech? Why or why not?

videos (1)
Video

History

Why Did the Colonies Declare Independence?

Watch a video about events leading up to the American Revolution and the Declaration of Independence.

Skills Sheets (5)
Lesson Plan (1)
Lesson Plan
Lesson Plan: Teen of the Revolution

A step-by-step guide to teaching this article in your classroom

Leveled Articles (1)
PDF
Leveled Text: Teen of the Revolution

A lower-Lexile® version of the article in a printer-friendly PDF

Text-to-Speech

Start Your Free Trial

Reserve your risk-free subscription today. Cancel within 30 days and owe nothing.

Try Us Free