Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm editor Candice Gibson, joined by staff writer Jeane McGrath.
Speaker 1: Hey there, Candice, Jane. It's getting to be that time
Speaker 1: of year when people are doing their holiday shopping and
Speaker 1: the kids out there compiling their Christmas list, and a
Speaker 1: little Candice, you know, from the days of yore, one
Speaker 1: of the hottest items I ever ever wanted was an
Speaker 1: American girl doll you ever have strowing out. All my
Speaker 1: friends talk about how they love them. When I growing up,
Speaker 1: they were the best, and I guess it was just,
Speaker 1: you know, fate that I turned out to be sort
Speaker 1: of a history buff because these dolls are all steeped
Speaker 1: in history, American history. And the one I loved the
Speaker 1: most was Felicity because she was a redhead like me.
Speaker 1: And the premise behind Felicity was that she was a
Speaker 1: colonist and her parents for patriots. And there was a
Speaker 1: time that came when Felicity, who was learning how to
Speaker 1: be a young woman with manners, had to start refuge
Speaker 1: in Tea because her parents. Again we're teaching the family
Speaker 1: that it was unpatriotic to drink tea. That's really interesting.
Speaker 1: That would have been hard for me because I liked
Speaker 1: you a lot now and it's free here, you know,
Speaker 1: at the office. Why not, Yeah, gulp it down. And
Speaker 1: it wasn't just you know, without rhymer reason that Felicity
Speaker 1: had to refuse tea. There's actually historical basis for this, yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh it all started basically back in colonial days
Speaker 1: when like American Commons were still being ruled by Britain.
Speaker 1: And uh basically Britain had left the colonies alone for
Speaker 1: a long time, like they do your own things sort
Speaker 1: of thing. And soon the Parliament started instituting taxes on
Speaker 1: the columnist and already enforcing it in such a way
Speaker 1: that like columnsts were used to it, and they're like,
Speaker 1: this doesn't make sense anymore. You're treating us like below citizens.
Speaker 1: And uh so they enforced the stamp backed way back
Speaker 1: in seventeen sixty five, and uh, this this was an
Speaker 1: interesting people kind of think that it all only had
Speaker 1: to do with like stamps, like mailing stamps would actually
Speaker 1: lots of things had had to be stamped at this
Speaker 1: time because of the tax, like newspapers and playing cards,
Speaker 1: even had to be stamped. This TAXI had to pay
Speaker 1: something for the for the stamp in order to pay
Speaker 1: the taxes to Britain. And so this was seen a
Speaker 1: sort of an oppressive act and so uh um, the
Speaker 1: columnists rejected it and Britain came back. I was like, okay,
Speaker 1: all right, you can't. You can't take internal taxes. That's fine.
Speaker 1: What we're gonna come back and do and we're gonna
Speaker 1: tax the stuff you're what's called duties. Um uh, things
Speaker 1: that were taken in imports, to the to the colonies.
Speaker 1: And things got so bad around the time of the
Speaker 1: Stamp BacT that the people who are actually in charge
Speaker 1: of overseeing the stamping resigned and left their posts. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was such a big scandal. But you know, you've
Speaker 1: probably all heard the expression no taxation without representation. You
Speaker 1: certainly didn't miss that in history class. But you may
Speaker 1: not know why this was such a big deal. And
Speaker 1: so before we get into the t side of the situation, um,
Speaker 1: I have an analogy for you, sort of like when
Speaker 1: you're off at college, you're doing your own thing, you're
Speaker 1: in charge of your self. You know, you may not
Speaker 1: be paying the bills your parents may be helping out
Speaker 1: a little bit, but essentially you're ruling ruce. Just set
Speaker 1: your schedule, you go to class, you feed yourself, and
Speaker 1: then Christmas break strikes and you come home and you're
Speaker 1: back under your mom and dad's roof, and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, you know, curfew is back on. They want
Speaker 1: to tell you what you're gonna be eating for dinner,
Speaker 1: They want to tell you how to spend your time
Speaker 1: when you were seeing. You want to know where you're
Speaker 1: going exactly. And this is probably how the colonists sort
Speaker 1: of felt because Parliament was essentially loving all these rules
Speaker 1: and policies against them, and if they made enough noise,
Speaker 1: Parliament back off. They'd either amend the policies or they'd
Speaker 1: repeal them entirely. And so the colonists learned that this
Speaker 1: would work. Make enough noise, cause enough riots, protests, just
Speaker 1: enough and Parliament's going to stop. And the thing is,
Speaker 1: people over in England who were under the monarchy's rule, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was sort of okay for Parliament to make the
Speaker 1: rules for them because they had representatives, but and the
Speaker 1: colonies there was no one. It's right, and they when
Speaker 1: they started rallying the taxation with representation. They didn't. They
Speaker 1: didn't vote for anybody to represent them in parliament. So
Speaker 1: they thought, why do you have the right to tax us?
Speaker 1: We don't have a say in it. And UH Parliament
Speaker 1: argued that the colonies did have representation is something they
Speaker 1: called virtual representation, that every single um person in in
Speaker 1: UH in the government represented all of the colonies. But
Speaker 1: that didn't sit well with the colonists, not at all.
Speaker 1: And so you mentioned that things that were imported into
Speaker 1: the colonies had taxes attached to them, and one of
Speaker 1: these items was tea. And you've got to understand how
Speaker 1: popular te wise. M Essentially it was the only thing,
Speaker 1: you know that well, it wasn't the only thing that
Speaker 1: people drink. But yeah, it's hard to imagine in our
Speaker 1: coffee obsess culture. But I guess if we replace it
Speaker 1: with coffee, and we think if all of a sudden
Speaker 1: there was a monopoly on coffee, or or all of
Speaker 1: a sudden coffee was taxed um of the wazoo, like
Speaker 1: we would we would get really upset because a lot
Speaker 1: of caffeine addicts would be upset, exactly. And I think
Speaker 1: that the colonies were con doing about one point two
Speaker 1: million pounds pounds waite wise, not money wise, but here
Speaker 1: that is a ton of tea. And if you drink coffee,
Speaker 1: like you were saying, Jane, you've got a couple of
Speaker 1: different purveyors that you can choose from. You know, you
Speaker 1: can go to Nary, you can go high class, you
Speaker 1: can get middle of the road grocery store brand whatever.
Speaker 1: But for the colonists, it was only the tea coming
Speaker 1: from the British East India Company, and that upset a
Speaker 1: lot of people, like especially merchants who had contracts with
Speaker 1: with other providers and all of a sudden they had
Speaker 1: to only deal with with English tea and they were
Speaker 1: a little upset about that as well. So the idea
Speaker 1: behind these different laws regarding the taxes on teas where
Speaker 1: that Parliament could levy the popularity of tea and the
Speaker 1: limited supply of tea to raise money for the French
Speaker 1: and Indian wars. And again the colonists were mad about
Speaker 1: this because they felt like they had no say in
Speaker 1: these wars. They're helping to fund a war that they
Speaker 1: weren't really participating in that much. Yeah, it's interesting, I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess you could say England had a somewhat of
Speaker 1: a good case in saying that, you know, the French
Speaker 1: and Indian War went on in the colonies, we were
Speaker 1: protecting you, protecking your lives from from the French and
Speaker 1: the Indian forces, and we want to pay for not
Speaker 1: only the deaths that we incurred during that war, but
Speaker 1: for a standing army to protect it. But at the
Speaker 1: same time, I mean, obviously England wasn't acting exactly selflessly
Speaker 1: like they had steak in their American colonies. They had
Speaker 1: value to them, so it's not just that they were acting,
Speaker 1: you know, to protect the colonists. Right and out of
Speaker 1: all the colonies, I think Boston was really one of
Speaker 1: the hot seats, yeah, for this sort of protesting sentiment
Speaker 1: sweeping through the colonies. And one of the reasons was
Speaker 1: that there were soldiers stationed there starting around in October
Speaker 1: seventeen sixty gay and you have to imagine, you know,
Speaker 1: there's unrast, people are talking, people are dissatisfied, and then
Speaker 1: these soldiers come in. And not only that, the colonists
Speaker 1: were asked to actually quarter them in their homes. I
Speaker 1: can't even imagine what that was like. The quartering um
Speaker 1: idea of of um British soldiers shoulder soldiers coming in
Speaker 1: and saying you do you Uh, we're not going to
Speaker 1: pay you back, but you have to give me a
Speaker 1: place to a and uh, you know, you deal with it.
Speaker 1: But the people of Boston weren't ready to do that,
Speaker 1: and so they fought back. So as far as the
Speaker 1: question of tea goes, they did to make a lot
Speaker 1: of noise, get the laws repealed thing, and that worked
Speaker 1: a couple of times. We had the seventeen sixty nine
Speaker 1: Indemnity Act which repealed the t tax, but then the
Speaker 1: Townshend Acts restored it, and then those were repealed in
Speaker 1: seventeen seventy. But then in seventeen seventy three we have
Speaker 1: the Tea Act that comes along. So it lowers the
Speaker 1: price of tea because the British East India Company can
Speaker 1: bring the tea directly to the colonies, but there's still
Speaker 1: a tax on it. So that's true. And there's sort
Speaker 1: of two things going on here. One is the fact
Speaker 1: that only the East India Company could provide the tea,
Speaker 1: so there was a monopoly that they were enforcing on
Speaker 1: the colonies. And also, even though there was the most
Speaker 1: recent thing that happened was that it was sort of
Speaker 1: a cut on the Texas on t so they could
Speaker 1: get tea a little bit cheaper than they usually could.
Speaker 1: So it wasn't just about money. It was about the principle,
Speaker 1: and it was about the monopoly right, the principle of
Speaker 1: the matter. And so on November seventeen seventy three, there's
Speaker 1: us notice that goes up in Boston, and essentially it's
Speaker 1: informing the citizens that the quote unquote detested tea is
Speaker 1: on its way from a ship called the Dartmouth. And
Speaker 1: so some people from Boston gathering the old Meeting House,
Speaker 1: the Old South Meeting House, excuse me, and they start
Speaker 1: talking about what they can do about this tea. And
Speaker 1: there's a couple of different solutions that they flowed, a
Speaker 1: couple different ideas, and ultimately these sorts of meetings go
Speaker 1: on for months and months and months. And during this time,
Speaker 1: the Royal British Governor, Thomas Hutchinson, he's getting wind that
Speaker 1: the colonists and the Patriots and in particular planning something
Speaker 1: and so he tells his troops to use force to
Speaker 1: keep the ships in the harbor. Because one of the
Speaker 1: tactics that the colonists have tried, was asking if the
Speaker 1: ship's captains would just sail away, just leave, and this
Speaker 1: is sort of a stand sill. We should also know
Speaker 1: that the ships wanted to unload their tea, but the
Speaker 1: columnists particularly didn't want them to do that because then
Speaker 1: they would have to pay the duty. One is, apparently,
Speaker 1: according to the law, as soon as the tea was unloaded,
Speaker 1: somebody had to pay the duties on it, right, So
Speaker 1: that's really significant. So not just keeping the ships, you know,
Speaker 1: in the harbor, but keeping the tea on board the ships.
Speaker 1: So over time, these meetings start to draw about five
Speaker 1: thousand different people, and that's a really big number considering
Speaker 1: that the population was only around fifteen thousand. And eventually
Speaker 1: they get enough people clamoring, especially um By Virtue of
Speaker 1: the Sons of Liberty, who were pretty active group of
Speaker 1: protesters and patriots, that they Sam Adams Pow reviewer John Hancock,
Speaker 1: that they decide they can do something about this. And
Speaker 1: around this time there's two more ships that come in,
Speaker 1: the Eleanor and the Beaver. So they're down at Griffin's Wharf.
Speaker 1: The people are at the old South Meeting House. They've
Speaker 1: been meeting for months they've been discussing and then finally,
Speaker 1: out of nowhere, well maybe not out of nowhere, but
Speaker 1: sort of unexpectedly, someone lets out sort of a battle cry,
Speaker 1: and it's more of a guttural noise I think than
Speaker 1: anything else, and it eiles the people up and they
Speaker 1: and they turned into a mob, and they stormed down
Speaker 1: to the wharf and they spent three hours. There's a
Speaker 1: hundred sixteen of them dumping tea into the harbor and
Speaker 1: they ended up dupping nine pounds I think it was. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and by today's dollars, that's about one million dollars worth
Speaker 1: of tea or eighteen point five million cops. And the
Speaker 1: water was brown for days. But it was sort of
Speaker 1: a I guess, a polite mobs as far as you
Speaker 1: can use that. There wasn't it wasn't violence. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that there was some kicking and screaming um. And
Speaker 1: the colonists who actually tried to filter some day and
Speaker 1: take it home for themselves, they were rebuked by kicking, pinching, hitting,
Speaker 1: that sort of thing, which shows the testament to the
Speaker 1: principle of the matter. Like the writers had some pride
Speaker 1: in in the principle of the thing right, they were
Speaker 1: making a statement. It was completely against the British government.
Speaker 1: It wasn't about each other. And only one man out
Speaker 1: of that one hundred sixteen people was arrested. And so
Speaker 1: at this point, you know, the colonists sort of had
Speaker 1: to revive. Wait, well, what happens next. And the day
Speaker 1: after this, which would have been December seventeen, seventeen seventy three,
Speaker 1: they went back. They observed the harbor there were still
Speaker 1: some tea floating around, and so they they beat it
Speaker 1: with their oars and you know, made it go underwater,
Speaker 1: and it had all but been destroyed. But the British
Speaker 1: government didn't get word of the Tea Party it was
Speaker 1: called until January seventeen, because obviously it took some time
Speaker 1: for the news to get over there. With the ships.
Speaker 1: There wasn't planes back then, um. So when the message
Speaker 1: finally got there, they were less than pleased, to say
Speaker 1: the least, um, And they enacted a few different things
Speaker 1: to punish as as punishment to Boston. In particular, one
Speaker 1: was the port of Boston was closed and they said
Speaker 1: you can't reopen until the East India companies reimbursed for
Speaker 1: all the tea that you destroyed and other things where
Speaker 1: like the Quartering Act was reinstated. Um, the idea of
Speaker 1: making British troops they can stay in the in the
Speaker 1: houses of of colonists at the time, and another one
Speaker 1: was that British officials who were accused of major crimes
Speaker 1: couldn't be tried in in the colonies. England was obviously
Speaker 1: suspicious of that at this point, so he said, you
Speaker 1: have to ship them back to Britain before you try them.
Speaker 1: And uh. And finally, I think there are restrictions on
Speaker 1: town meetings in Massachusetts in particular, and they were obviously
Speaker 1: afraid of more rebel rousing going on there. And so
Speaker 1: a lot of people have the misconception that the Boston
Speaker 1: Tea Party was the direct link to the American revelation.
Speaker 1: It's kind of the idea you getting history class, of course. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's not true because we know that again, the
Speaker 1: concept of make noise, get it repeal. This sort of
Speaker 1: went on for a little while. But then finally, I
Speaker 1: guess it was about ten months after the tea Party occurred. Uh,
Speaker 1: some citizens got together and this is when the Declaration
Speaker 1: of Independence began to be drafted and people really started
Speaker 1: to think about having UH an organized rebellion against England,
Speaker 1: not just the citizens of Boston, not just Massachusetts, been
Speaker 1: all the colonies who had been feeling this way for
Speaker 1: a while. And you could make the case even um
Speaker 1: other columnsts who were for independence eventually looked at the
Speaker 1: Boston Tea Party as like rebel rousers, as a nuisance,
Speaker 1: sort of an uncalled for mob. Some people considered UH.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting to look back on it and and
Speaker 1: see now, well, now it goes down in history as
Speaker 1: as this myth of our creation of the United States
Speaker 1: at least. And I love the name Boston Tea Party.
Speaker 1: And I'm not quite sure how that came to be,
Speaker 1: but we know that one of the cry that was
Speaker 1: uttered during the rebellion was, you know, let's let's make
Speaker 1: a teapot off the harbor. And they did, they did,
Speaker 1: And I just think it really speaks to the American
Speaker 1: spirit that these people were inventive and they were sort
Speaker 1: of ingenious and what they did because in the end,
Speaker 1: like you said, you know, they owed some money to
Speaker 1: the British. He didn't accompany, but there weren't lives lost,
Speaker 1: you know, it was all done in good patriotic forms,
Speaker 1: protestists somewhat you know. Yeah, moms are funny like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And if you want to learn more about moms, there's
Speaker 1: a there's a podcast called Smart Moms on Stuff you
Speaker 1: should know another house stuff works podcast, you want to
Speaker 1: check that out. And for even more about the city
Speaker 1: of Boston and the American Revolution and t itself, be
Speaker 1: sure to check out how stuff works dot com. For
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