In the fall of 1773, news of the Tea Act reached the colonies. Parliamentary legislation to make tea inexpensive struck many colonists as an insidious plot to trick Americans into buying the dutied tea. The real goal, some argued, was the increased revenue that would pay the salaries of royal governors and judges and the reassertion of Britain’s right to tax the colonists.

But how to resist the Tea Act? Nonimportation was not viable because the tea trade was too lucrative to expect merchants to give it up willingly. Consumer boycotts seemed ineffective because it was impossible to distinguish between dutied tea and smuggled tea once it was in the teapot. The appointment of official tea agents, parallel to the Stamp Act distributors, suggested one solution. In every port city, revived Sons of Liberty pressured tea agents to resign. Without agents, governors yielded, and tea cargoes either landed duty-free or were sent home.

Governor Hutchinson, however, would not bend any rules. Three ships bearing tea arrived in Boston in November 1773. The ships cleared customs, and the crews, sensing the town’s extreme tension, unloaded all cargo except the tea. Picking up on the tension in the town, the captains wished to return to England, but Hutchinson would not grant them clearance to leave without paying the tea duty. To add to the difficulties, another long-standing law imposed a twenty-day limit for the payment of duties, after which time cargo would be confiscated. Hutchinson made it clear he planned to enforce that law.

For the full twenty days, crowds swelled by concerned people from surrounding towns kept the pressure high. On the final day, December 16, a large crowd gathered at Old South Church to debate a course of action. No solution emerged at that meeting, but immediately after, 100 to 150 men disguised as Mohawk Indians, with soot-darkened faces and blankets wrapped around them, boarded the ships and dumped over 90,000 pounds of tea into the harbor. Their disguises served to distinguish them from the Boston townsmen at Old South Church, whose leaders did not join the crowd of 2,000 bystanders watching the near-silent and efficient destruction of the tea. In admiration, John Adams wrote in his diary, “This Destruction of the Tea is so bold, so daring, so firm, intrepid and inflexible, and it must have so important Consequences.”