FREE ESSAY ON BOSTON TEA PARTY LEADS TO INDEPENDENCE

BOSTON TEA PARTY LEADS TO INDEPENDENCE

Boston Tea Party Leads to Independence
The Boston Tea Party was an important and influential part of America becoming
independent from Great Britain. 
America was formed on the basis of being a free country, however Great Britain held it
back from being autonomous. Britain controlled everything about America. Though America
was free of some things like religion and politics it was still taxed on many things.
Following the Seven Years War, England went through a serious financial crisis as a
result of which it was obliged to impose taxes on many products. Among them in particular
were goods destined for the colonies, including wine, sugar, molasses, and tea. The Stamp
Act, passed in 1765, and a little later the Townshend Act enunciated these taxes, setting
off a huge wave of protest. The colonists distributed tracts and organized a boycott
campaign. Many newspapers published a declaration renouncing tea. The colonists replaced
tea with infusions of local herbs or berries, with coffee, or with contraband tea
imported mostly by Dutch merchants. 
Merchants in the colonies refused to buy from the East India Company. Even though the Tea
Act of 1773 reduced taxes, the agitation continued. The East India Company decided to
export cargoes of tea to America, intended for sale directly to the colonists, without
going through the merchants. In December, three of the company's ships, the Dartmouth,
Eleonor, and the Beaver reached port in Boston. 
During a three-year interval of calm, a relatively small number of patriots or radicals
strove energetically to keep the controversy alive. As long as the tea tax remained, they
contended, the principle of Parliament's right over the colonies remained. And at any
time in the future, the principle might be applied in full with devastating effect on
colonial liberties. 
Typical of the patriots was their most effective leader, Samuel Adams of Massachusetts,
who toiled tirelessly for a single end: independence. From the time he graduated from
Harvard College, Adams was a public servant in some capacity-inspector of chimneys, tax
collector, moderator of town meetings. A consistent failure in business, he was shrewd
and able in politics, with the New England town meeting the theater of his action. 
Adam's tools were men: his goal was to win the confidence and support of ordinary people,
to free them from awe of their social and political superiors, make them aware of their
own importance, and arouse them to action. To do this, he published articles in
newspapers and made speeches in town meetings, instigating resolutions appealing to the
colonists' democratic impulses. 
In 1772, he induced the Boston town meeting to select a committee of correspondence to
state the rights and grievances of the colonists, to communicate with other towns on
these matters, and to request them to draft replies. Quickly, the idea spread. Committees
were set up in virtually all the colonies, and out of them soon grew a base of effective
revolutionary organizations. 
In 1773, Britain furnished Adams and his co-workers with a desired issue. The powerful
East India Company, finding itself in critical financial straits, appealed to the British
government and was granted a monopoly on all tea exported to the colonies. Because of the
Townshend tea tax, the colonists had boycotted the company's tea and, after 1770, such a
flourishing illegal trade existed that perhaps nine-tenths of the tea consumed in America
was of foreign origin and imported duty-free. 
The company decided to sell its tea through its own agents at a price well under the
customary one, thus simultaneously making smuggling unprofitable and eliminating the
independent colonial merchants. Aroused not only by the loss of the tea trade but also by
the monopolistic practice involved, the colonial traders joined the patriots. In
virtually all the colonies, steps were taken to prevent the East India Company from
executing its design. 
In ports other than Boston, agents of the company were persuaded to resign, and new
shipments of tea were either returned to England or warehoused. In Boston, the agents
refused to resign and, with the support of the royal governor, preparations were made to
land incoming cargoes regardless of opposition. The answer of the patriots, led by Samuel
Adams, was violence. On the night of December,16 1773 a band of men disguised as Mohawk
Indians boarded three British ships lying at anchor and dumped their tea cargo into the
Boston Harbor. In return, London forbade all commerce with Boston. The other American
cities joined in a united front, burning or throwing into the sea other English cargoes
of tea. The stakes grew as skirmishes escalated into battles, and the United States ended
up winning their independence in 1776. 
I think the leaders in the action knew exactly what they were doing, getting the people
to gain their own independence instead of someone else getting independence for them. The
leaders for independence were ver important to us gaining our freedom. Significant Tea
Party leaders like, Samuel Adams, made the colonists believe that they too were worthy
for of complete freedom and independence from Great Britain and any other country that
wanted to control them.
It goes without saying that tea is not responsible for the independence of the United
States. Nevertheless, tea was seen as a symbol of the intolerable relationship between
colonies and mother country. 
The Boston Tea Party was an important act made by the revolutionists to promote our
independence. The act was one of the very influential proceedings the directly led to the
Revolutionary War and soon afterwards our independence. I believe that the Boston Tea
Party was the most significant event leading to our freedom and independence.
"When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the
political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of
the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God
entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should
declare the causes which impel them to the separation."-Declaration of independence