Page 26 - ASM Book 9/2020

20
Colonists Stirred Into Action
1773
• MARCH 12 - AMERICAN ACTION: The Virginia House of Burgesses appointed an 11 member Committee of Correspondence. Within a few months committees had been appointed in New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut and South Carolina.
• MAY 10 - BRITISH ACTION: The Tea Act took effect on this date. It maintained the three-pence per pound tax on tea imported into the colonies. The Act also authorized the East India Company to ship half a million pounds of tea to its colonial tea agents.
• OCTOBER 16 - AMERICAN ACTION: A mass meeting was held in Philadelphia to oppose the tea tax and the East India Company monopoly. A citizen-appointed committee met with the British tea agents and convinced them to resign.
• NOVEMBER - AMERICAN ACTION: A town meeting was held in Boston to endorse the actions taken by Philadelphia residents in October. Bostonians tried to get their British tea agents to resign, but failed.
• NOVEMBER 28 - BRITISH ACTION: Three ships - the Dartmouth, Eleanor and Beaver - loaded with 342 chests of English tea sailed into Boston Harbor and anchored.
• NOVEMBER 29 to 30 - AMERICAN ACTION: Two mass meetings were held in Boston on what to do about the three tea ships. They decided to send the tea on the Dartmouth back to England without paying the import duties. BRITISH ACTION: Massachusetts Royal Governor Hutchinson ordered harbor officials not to let the ship sail until the tea taxes were paid.
• DECEMBER 16 - AMERICAN ACTION: About 8,000 Bostonians gathered to hear
Sam Adams report that Royal Governor Hutchinson had repeated his earlier command
not to allow the Dartmouth to leave until the taxes were paid. That night, the Boston Tea Party took place when colonial activists disguised as Mohawk Indians boarded the ships and dumped all 342 chests of tea into the harbor.
This notice from the “Chairman of the Committee for Tarring and Feathering” in Boston denounced
the tea consignees as “traitors to their country.”