American History Hit - The Boston Tea Party

Episode Date: December 18, 2025

Today we're delving into our back catalogue and revisiting the topic of the Boston Tea Party...On December 16th 1773, Bostonian colonists took a stand against the British Crown in the Boston Tea Party.In this episode, we dive deep into the events of that evening in Boston Harbor. Don is joined by Benjamin Carp, the Daniel M. Lyons Professor of American History at Brooklyn College. Who was involved? What signalled the start of the event? And was it really a non-violent protest?Benjamin is the author of ‘Rebels Rising: Cities and the American Revolution’; ‘Defiance of the Patriots: The Boston Tea Party and the Making of America’; and ‘The Great New York Fire of 1776: A Lost Story of the American Revolution’Produced and edited by Sophie Gee. Senior Producer was Charlotte Long.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds.American History Hit is a History Hit podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Want to explore even more history? Sign up to History Hit, where you will discover history from around the world. From the American Revolution to prehistoric Scotland, there is plenty to discover. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe to bring the past alive. Hi there, it's Don. Next year, 2006, marks 250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

You'll be hearing the term semi-quincentennial a lot, along with plenty about the long, messy, ultimately inspiring story of the American Revolution. So let's get a head start, shall we? Today, we're going back to a cold December night, December 16th, 1773, to be exact, To bear witness to a rebellious act, the British called treason that Americans would come to celebrate, steeped, as it were, in a hot revolutionary brew. The Boston Tea Party. On a frigid December night, a man rushes through the dark alleys and passageways of Boston, Massachusetts. The harbor behind him, his way is lit only by the moon and the occasional glow from hearth fires and candlelight in people's homes. His heart beats hard in his chest.

Adrenaline courses through his blood. His body aches from the night's labors, his fingers and toes numbed from the cold. At home, finally, the man slips inside and lights a candle. Briefly examining in a broken looking glass, his sooted face streaked with ochre paint, a feathered headdress upon his crown. He rips it off and washes himself clean.

No evidence can remain. In years to come, this act of public protest in the harbor will be deemed heroic, a courageous demonstration of colonial patriotism. But for tonight, the Boston Tea Party, as it will one day be known, is a flagrant destruction of private property and a serious act of treason against the British government. Hello and welcome back to American History Hit. I'm your host Don Wildman, and in this episode, we're getting back to basics. One of the legendary events of colonial American history, something we learned about in elementary school, the Boston Tea Party, still misunderstood by many.

What happened? Who was there? How was it planned? Today, in the company of Professor Benjamin Carp of Brooklyn College, we're about to find out. The old South Meeting House, a brick structure on the corner of Maine and Milk Streets, is appointed with white trim and a tall, elegant steeple. It's December 16th, 1773. And despite the chilly temperatures outside, folks have been gathering in the thousands since around 4 p.m. Some members traveling upwards of 20 miles by horseback and carriage. Now this building, the largest structure in colonial Boston at the time, is packed to the rafters and heated by the pitch debate and discussion underway.

Tensions are high on the issue of how to effectively defy the British tax still being levied on American tea imports in the wake of tax breaks to the British tea traders, the East India Company. More about this in the next episode, but it's just another example of the Crown's unfair impositions on the Americans. Taxation without representation, a gross violation of their rights, at least as perceived by the colonists. This issue has been brought to a head by the arrival of three separate shipments of tea currently afloat at Griffin's Wharf in the harbor. The first ship, the Dartmouth, arrived on November 28th.

A cargo carrier and whaler, it is owned by the Roaches, an affluent family of Nantucket Quakers. Under British customs law, the Dartmouth's cargo has to be unloaded with duties paid within a limit of 20 days since its arrival, which is tomorrow. But the colonists refuse to pay the duty, and in turn, the royal governor, Thomas Hutchinson,

refuses to allow the T-shipment to leave. It must be unloaded, and monies must be paid. Complicating the matter, two more T-shipments have also arrived, the Eleanor on December 2nd and the Beaver on December 15th, having just come out of a small-pox quarantine in the outer harbor. It is a circumstance fraught with frustration and futility. All the while, British warships stand ready in the harbor to enforce the law, under threat of musket and cannon, if necessary.

At the front of the Old South Meeting House prominent figures in the Sons of Liberty, a political organization mobilized against the control and taxations of the British government preside over the gathering. John Hancock has riled up the crowd, demanding that his countrymen take a patriotic stand. Let every man do what is right in his own eyes, he says. For more details, I ask the author of Defiance of the Patriots, the Boston Tea Party and the Making of America, Benjamin Carp. A number of prominent Sons of Liberty are at the head of this meeting. Ones you've heard of, like John Hancock and Samuel Adams, others you might not be as familiar

with Dr. Joseph Warren, Dr. Thomas Young. There's an anonymous loyalist who leaves an account of this, who lists all of the really prominent people who are at the head of these meetings. These were not official Boston town meetings. These were meetings of the body of the people, and they included people from some of the surrounding towns as well. Sam Adams has dispatched Francis Roch, a member of the Nantucket family who owns the Dartmouth and the Beaver, to negotiate with Governor Hutchinson for permission to send his ships back to

London. Roch, the son of an English-born colonist, who was himself born on Nantucket, has worked hard to make his Quaker family successful in the whaling and shipping industry. But he now finds himself trapped between the colonists, the customs collector, and the governor, not to mention the British warships and their cannons. He reports that the governor persists in his refusal. He will not allow the tea to be returned to Britain. Between the impatience of an audience numbering 5,000,

having waited more than three hours, the passionate oratory, and the general indignation over colonial demands being utterly ignored, the atmosphere at the Old South Meeting House is electric. Finally, Samuel Adams, Lean built with his dark hair tied back and powdered white, rises to speak. This meeting can do nothing more to save the country.

A Bostonian, John Andrews, arrives outside the meeting house, but he cannot penetrate the crowd. Making it no further than the porch, he hears the meeting called to a close and returns home to his tea, unaware the night's activities have only just begun. There is some debate over what happens next. was Adam's statement at the meetings close a secret signal,

or just a coincidence that as the meeting breaks up, a battle cry is heard at the door of the meeting house. The cry resounding through the meeting hall pews and galleries. George Hughes, a Boston shoemaker, recalled decades later, a loud voice shouting, Boston Harbor, a teapot this night. On cue, a crowd of colonists dressed in Native American garb, proceeds down Milk Street to Griffin's Wharf, where the ships are moored. The Dartmouth, Elnour, and the beaver, all float in Boston waters

laden with tea owned by the East India Company. The tradition states that Samuel Adams is giving a secret signal when he says this meeting can do nothing more to save the country. It does seem clear that some kind of prior coordination must have been involved, but we don't know because people who participated in the Boston Tea Party basically kept it secret for another 50 years. So we don't have a kind of firm idea of like, okay, here's the plan that was in place and they followed this and they followed that. Like, that's lost to historians because, you know, I don't know if you watch the wire, but you don't take notes on a criminal conspiracy, right?

So, you know, if the notes aren't there, there's nothing for historians to read. But it does seem as if there was prior coordination and some sort of prearranged signal that some of these guys had already prepared disguises. They were already dressed up. They were prepared for this eventuality that Governor Hutchinson was going to say no. And they say, that's it. The deadline is about to expire. If the T is not unloaded, then by law, it will be.

landed and we'll have given up our opportunity to do something about the tea. If we can't send it back and we can't land it, the only choice is to destroy it. And so they marched down. I think it was about a hundred guys who boarded the three ships. You know, some of them stood on the wharf and kind of stood guard and were involved in crowd control. Other guys, you know, boarded the ships, opened the holds, used block and tackle to lift these heavy crates of tea onboard the decks. In all, it's 46 tons of tea that they're about to move. They chop open these chests and they dumped the loose tea leaves over the sides of the gunwales. Who was in this crew that was boarding the ship?

I mean, the answer is it's hard to know for sure because people didn't start coming forward until 50 years later. They really swore each other to secrecy and stuck to that. But from what I've been able to reconstruct, it's a really interesting mix. They were mostly younger men and also some teenage boys. Most of them were local, but some may well have been from out of town. There were a couple guys who were Harvard educated or might be described as wealthier merchants, but others were craftsmen, you know, worked in various waterfront crafts like sailmaking or caulking, you know, or boat building or something like that, a variety of trades.

Paul Revere was a silversmith and an engraver, you know, and then also other people who were probably laborers, right, and coming from even humbler backgrounds or apprentices for that matter. So it's really an interesting mix of Boston slash New England life. All men, as far as we can tell. I don't have any evidence that any of them were men of color. It's possible, but I don't know for sure. I mean, this was a three-hour meeting at the old meeting house there, and that's how stoked up this crowd is. Finally, when they head out to the wharf, it's a fraction of those people.

I mean, thousands of people were involved in this whole evening. Is Sam Adams part of the crew? Definitely not. That's one thing we know. From that anonymous loyalist account that I mentioned, that very explicitly says that the principal leaders basically stayed behind at the front of the meeting. And they were like, no, no, everybody stay. We have more speeches we want to give. about American rights.

Like, but in other words, very ostentatiously staying behind so that the most recognizable figures of the resistance, you know, had plausible deniability. We were at the head of the meeting. We didn't know what was going on. And even though only 100 men were involved in actually unloading the tea and dumping it over the side, hundreds, maybe even thousands of people still went down to the wharves to watch this happen. Right.

So there is broader community involvement. The impostors are mostly silent as they approach the docks, brandishing hatchets, styled as tomahawks used by the indigenous people of the East Coast. Upon arriving at the wharf, they divide into three groups, each with an appointed leader. George Hughes, that Boston Shoemaker, is commanded by his crew captain to obtain the keys to the hatches and a dozen candles from the ship's captain. George Hughes is one name that has come down the ages. Explain his role in this. Well, he's such a fascinating character. You can compare him to kind of the forest gum.

of revolutionary Boston. He was at the Boston Massacre. He participated in the Boston Tea Party. He helped to precipitate the tarring and feathering of John Malcolm. And then he serves on privateers during the revolution. He's a diminutive man, an impoverished shoemaker, his whole life. He doesn't seem to have been very involved in politics before the 1770s. And then all of a sudden, right, he's this ordinary guy participating in events like this. And the reason we know so much about him is that he, in the 1830s, a couple of as-told-memoirs are published about him. A couple of different guys find him in upstate New York or in Boston when he visits and they interview him and they tell his story and he reflects on these events when most of the people who had participated in these

events by then, by the 1830s had died. And so he's known as kind of one of the last surviving participants. He has his portrait painted, which you can go see at Revolutionary Spaces in Boston. So he's an interesting figure. And the scholar, the late scholar Alfred Young wrote a brilliant book called the Shoemaker and the Tea Party about his life and what his memoir says about how the revolution was remembered in the 1830s. The captain complies, giving over the keys and candles with only one request.

The colonists do no damage to the ship or its rigging. Silently, surreptitiously, with just the occasional clink of hatchlocks being opened, the crews jump into the shipholds, passing chests of tea out. The largest of the wooden chests, lined with lead and filled with loose tea leaves, weigh over 400 pounds each. So the parties are having to work in groups,

lifting chests together. Even the smaller chests, carrying the more expensive, higher-grade tea, weigh between 65 and 75 pounds. This is a test of teamwork, strength and sheer determination. On deck, the chests are broken into and their valuable contents dumped into the water.

342 chests in all. filled with coveted Chinese tea, are pitched into the icy waters, which fast become a sea of floating tea, causing some to snicker about making one large cup of tea for the fish. It's such a surreptitious act. I mean, they board in silence. It's a whole kind of secret move. But I'm always surprised that there wasn't some sort of fight to keep them off.

I mean, the crew alone, right? The Royal Navy watches this happen. And there are tons of British troops on Castle Island in the harbor. So this all happens, right? But the Army and Navy couldn't act without the governors say so. And the governor couldn't act without his counsel's say so. And one of Governor Hutchinson's big frustrations was that he could never get the council to do anything because the council was answerable to the Massachusetts House of Representatives.

That's why the coercive acts, the Massachusetts Government Act, says, okay, from now on, the council is going to be appointed by royal authorities, not by the Massachusetts House of Representatives. We want to make them less accountable so that if Bostonians are behaving, treasonously, you know, the governor can kind of call in the troops. So it's, you know, they're not super surreptitious. They're being noisy, but what they are is disciplined. They don't harm anything else on the ship. They actually break a lock and then supposedly like replace it, you know, to kind of show like, we are not just wantonly destroying things and we are not thieves. We're not allowing anyone to pocket the tea for themselves. We are only destroying this one

commodity that we find constitutionally offensive. And so they do it in plain sight, but they are also being disciplined about what they're doing. But it is at night, right? Well, the sun has gone down, but it's December in Boston, so sure. While the cargo is all floated, wistful eyes watch the tea on the decks and floating and try to steal some away. It is often said that the Boston Tea Party was a nonviolent protest. I asked Benjamin Carp how that measures up. They were destructive of property, but mostly not destructive of persons.

There is one guy who's beaten up at the Boston Tea Party, a man named Charles. Connor is caught pocketing tea. He was one of the members of the guys boarding the ships and he starts pocketing tea for himself. And they're like, no, that's not what we're about. And they beat him up and they nail his coat to his front door and they say this guy was, you know, trying to mess with us. And they kind of shame him as a result. So he is beaten up. But the thing to remember is that the Boston Tea Party happens after weeks of trying to intimidate the merchants and the shipowners, you know, the merchants were assaulted at their homes and their place of business and menaced. And, you know, shot was fired into the street.

So there's a backdrop of violence, even though the Tea Party itself was mostly nonviolent. How long did it all go on? Really from late November is when it really torts up. I would say from early November to December 16th is when the tea crisis is a sort of active thing pretty much every day in Boston. For three hours in the depth of night, the ships are emptied of their entire cargoes. As Benjamin mentioned, this meant 46 tons. Over 92,000 pounds of tea in 342 crates. If you're a tea drinker, that's around 18.5 million cups.

In 1773, it was worth around 10,000 British pounds. In 2023, that's around a million American dollars. A costly blow to the East India Company. The men returned to their homes, still in native dress. They don't speak or share identities. Mission accomplished. I asked Benjamin why the tea partiers were dressed as indigenous Americans. This is so hard.

You know, I have a whole chapter in my book about this. You know, one thing that's clear to me is that the disguises weren't actually meant to conceal anybody's identities. I mean, Boston only has 16,000 people. And less than a quarter of that would have been adult men. And you knew how your neighbor walked or your cousin carried himself. Everybody knew who these guys were. But what the disguises were meant to kind of say is, don't tell anyone who we are, right?

It's meant to send the message. And it's also meant to send the message. like, these aren't Bostonians, we have to all pretend that these are outsiders so that the town of Boston won't be blamed for this act of property destruction. But there may well have been symbolic meaning as well. The scholar Phil Deloria, who's now at Harvard, wrote a great book called Playing Indian about the history of white people dressing as Native Americans, looking at high school mascots and Boy Scouts and things like that. And he talks about the Boston Tea Party in his very first chapter and kind of saying, it's a way of saying, we are not European,

but we are also not native. We are something in between. You remember that we are white guys underneath, even though we are trying to adopt the fearsomeness and independence of mohawks or of Narragansets. In the morning hours, some tea still remained afloat

at considerable distance from the ships, lodged against the shore or still bobbing on the surface. Somewhat comically, the tide was out, and so the tea actually begins clumping above the water line, And so they send a few teenage apprentice boys to kind of be like, all right, go out in little boats and bat at these piles so that it dissolves into the water and floats out to sea.

Deed now done. Tea lost to the waters, taxes unpaid. The colonists' spirits are now a more potent brew than ever, steeped in a rising tide of revolution. I hope you've enjoyed this episode of American History Hit. Join me next time as Benjamin Carp and I explore the buildup to the Boston Tea Party and its place in the revolution. Why was tea such a sore topic by the 1770s? Besides those who were present at the event, how did American colonists feel about the Tea Party

in its immediate aftermath? And what were the coercive acts that the British forced on the Bostonians as reprisal? Until then, don't forget to like, follow and review us wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. See you next time.