Boston Tea Party Of 1773 Research Paper

The Boston Tea Party of 1773 “drove up political hostility on both sides of the Atlantic” (Fredriksen 309). It was a political protest to the Tea Act which had been passed by the British Parliament in the same year to aid the East India Company which was on the verge of bankruptcy. On December 16 the Sons of Liberty reacted to British tax policies in Boston. The demonstrators, some of whom disguised as Mohawk Indians, boarded three tea ships, Dartmouth, Eleanor, and Beaver, sent by the East India Company and ruined the tea by throwing it into Boston Harbor. “Property losses to the East India Company are 10,000 pounds. This constitutes a direct challenge by colonials to royal authority” (313). “In the ensuing months, mobs boarded East India
The Suffolk Resolves, a declaration made on September 9, 1774, limited the British control of Massachusetts only to the city of Boston. It was the first act of rebellion. Although the British government deemed the colonies in rebellion, the colonists themselves were not looking for independence. The American Revolutionary War also known as the U.S. War of Independence (1775–1783) began in April 1775 when Patriot militia and British regulars started the armed conflict at Lexington and Concord. In a few month rebels realized that they should fight for their independence. British assault on American troops near Boston in June 1775 is known as the Battle of Bunker Hill and is often considered the first major battle of the Revolutionary War. The British “won the battle but suffered heavy losses” (Berkin et al. 152). “More than 40 percent of their combatants were killed or wounded” (Ayers et al. 143). It “quickly became an important symbol of American fortitude. Untrained soldiers had stood against the best-trained army in the world. … [R]evolutionaries considered the battle a triumph and used the phrase ‘Bunker Hill’ as a rallying cry during the war” (Mancall et al., 3:
“In the months that followed the publication of Common Sense, groups of Americans at the town, county, and state levels issued petitions and resolutions calling on the Continental Congress to declare American independence from Britain” (Kazin 143). On June 7, Richard Henry Lee (1732–1794), in the Second Continental Congress announced, “That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved” (qtd. in Berkin et al. 140). While a five-man committee including Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) and John Adams (1735–1826) was chosen to draft a formal declaration of independence, it was the youngest member of the committee, Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), who prepared the bulk of the draft. On July, 2 the Continental Congress decided to cut all connection with the British Empire and “finally ratifie[d] the Declaration of Independence from Great Britain, 12–0, with delegates from New York abstaining” (Fredriksen 391). On July, 4 at “Philadelphia, the Declaration of Independence [was] signed by President of Congress John Hancock of the Continental Congress and