The Boston Tea Party: When Fighting for Freedom is a Crime!

On December 16, 1773 (not two years before the full scale American Revolution), Colonists (members of the secret Patriot organization termed the "Sons of Liberty" and others) in the New World disguised themselves as Mohawk Indians, then boarded ships loaded with East India Company tea, and dumped 342 chests of tea into Boston Harbor.

The Boston Tea Party was an "in-your-face" rebellion by Colonists in the New World against the Old World's attempts to maintain control on freedoms and to exert "taxation without representation". The Boston Tea Party represented the culmination of frustrations and pressures from the British Government that the Colonists had tried to escape by coming to the New World in the first place.

One of the rebels who participated in the Boston Tea Party was John Hancock, a name now well recognized as the first person to sign the United States Declaration of Independence.

John Hancock (and numerous others) had been involved in the smuggling of tea into the Colonies, and promoting boycotts on tea from China, where the East India Company tea originated. Smuggling tea helped to make John and others quite wealthy.

The rebellion was as much against the East India Company's perceived monopoly on tea as it was against the British Parliament for favoring the company by passing legislation which positioned them to gain back the Colonies' tea revenues.

Of course, the wealthy smugglers were not very happy with Parliament's favoring of the East India Company, since they knew that the company had engaged lobbyists to schmooze the members of Parliament. And, the Colonists were convinced that Parliament was selling them out to big business, and they took it as a direct attempt to restrict and control their new found freedoms in the New World...and they did not like that at all!

The rebellion escalated to the point where some of the wealthy smugglers started to terrorize and attack some of the consignees of the East India Company; their warehouses, and even their homes.