American Leaders and Heroes: A preliminary text-book in United States HistoryGordy, Wilbur F. (Wilbur Fisk)
History
American Leaders and Heroes: A preliminary text-book in United States History
Gordy, Wilbur F. (Wilbur Fisk)
United States -- Biography
In 1767, therefore, through his tool, Townshend, Parliament levied new
port duties on a few articles, including glass, lead, paper, and tea.
These new taxes were hateful to the colonists because they were levied
by Parliament, and because the money thus raised was to be used to their
disadvantage in various ways: For example, some of it was to pay for
maintaining in America a small English army. This army, the colonists
believed, the King would use to compel them to do as he willed.
The opposition to the new taxes was just as bitter as it had been
against the Stamp Act. Samuel Adams felt that only slaves would submit
to such high-handed oppression. He urged the people of Boston and
Massachusetts to join in refusing to import any goods from England as
long as the new taxes were imposed by Parliament. They did so agree, and
thus inflicted great injury upon English merchants, as they had done two
or three years before.
Of course these merchants suffered heavy losses, and again begged for a
repeal. But the dull-witted King could not understand the Americans.
Thus far he had not been able to coerce them; he now made a shrewd
attempt to outwit them.
Influenced by him, Parliament took off all the new taxes except the one
on tea. "There must be one tax to keep the right to tax," he said. If he
could only succeed in getting the Americans to submit to paying any
tax--no matter how small--that Parliament might levy, he would carry his
point. He therefore urged not only the removal of all taxes except the
one on tea, but also made arrangements whereby Americans could buy their
taxed tea cheaper than it could be bought in England and cheaper even
than they could smuggle it from Holland, as they had been doing. No
doubt the King had great faith in this foolish scheme. "Of course," he
argued, "the Americans will buy their tea where they can buy it
cheapest, and then we will have them in a trap." But this was a huge
blunder, as we shall now see.
The East India Company arranged to ship cargoes of tea to Boston, New
York, Philadelphia, and Charleston. When the tea arrived, the people in
New York and Philadelphia refused to let it land, and in Charleston they
stored it in damp cellars, where it spoiled. But in Boston, where the
Tory Governor, Hutchinson, was determined to fight a hard battle for the
King, there was a most exciting time. The result was the famous "Boston
Tea Party."
It was a quiet Sunday morning, on the 28th of November, 1773, when the
Darmouth, one of the three tea-ships on the way to Boston, sailed into
the harbor.[10] The people were attending service in the various
churches. "The Darmouth is in!" spread like wildfire, and soon the
streets were astir with people, Sunday though it was, in old Puritan
Boston.
[10] The other two ships arrived a few days later.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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