Tea Leaves: Being a Collection of Letters and Documents relating to; the shipment of Tea to the American Colonies in the year; 1773, by the East India Tea Company. (With an introduction,; notes, and biographical notices of the Boston Tea Party)Drake, Francis S. (Francis Samuel)
History
Tea Leaves: Being a Collection of Letters and Documents relating to; the shipment of Tea to the American Colonies in the year; 1773, by the East India Tea Company. (With an introduction,; notes, and biographical notices of the Boston Tea Party)
Drake, Francis S. (Francis Samuel)
Boston Tea Party, 1773; Tea tax (American colonies)
Accounts vary greatly as to the number and appearance of the tea party.
The original body which arrived so opportunely at the door of the "Old
South," and which may have included Molineux, Revere, and the more
prominent leaders, was probably not numerous. They, however, had passed
the word, and trusty coadjutors were not long in following them. Colonel
Tudor and Colonel Stevens say they were not disguised, but all other
accounts state that they were in the Indian dress, or something
resembling it.
The historian, Gordon, places their number at seventeen, "though judged
to be many more as they ran across Fort Hill." "Our number was between
twenty-eight and thirty," says Wyeth, one of the party. Hutchinson says
about fifty, and many have since adopted his statement. Tudor, in his
"Life of Otis," says seventy or eighty. Colonel Ebenezer Stevens agrees
with him. "None put the number lower than sixty, nor higher than
eighty," is the recollection of "a Bostonian," fifty years after the
event. John Andrews was told that they mustered on Fort Hill to the
number of about two hundred. "From one hundred to one hundred and fifty
being more or less actively engaged" thought Hewes, one of the actors.
"Two or three hundred dressed like Indians," wrote Dr. Cooper to Dr.
Franklin.
These varying estimates may be accounted for in this way. Those who
report the smaller number either repeated what they were told, or saw
only one of the parties on its way to the ships, while the others speak
of the entire body after its separate parts had united at the wharf.
Some may mean only such of the party as were in Indian dress. If we
place the number on board the ships at fifty or sixty, and estimate
those at work by the sides of the vessels at sixty or seventy, we shall
probably not be far out of the way, the whole number then aggregating
from one hundred and ten to one hundred and thirty. The names of more
than one hundred of these have been preserved.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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