Revolutionary Tea Parties and the Reasons for Revolution

NCSS.D2.His.1.6-8. Analyze connections among events and developments in broader historical contexts.

NCSS.D2.His.2.6-8. Classify series of historical events and developments as examples of change and/or continuity.

NCSS.D2.His.3.6-8. Use questions generated about individuals and groups to analyze why they, and the developments they shaped, are seen as historically significant.

NCSS.D2.His.4.6-8. Analyze multiple factors that influenced the perspectives of people during different historical eras.

NCSS.D4.1.6-8. Construct arguments using claims and evidence from multiple sources, while acknowledging the strengths and limitations of the arguments.

NCSS.D4.3.6-8. Present adaptations of arguments and explanations on topics of interest to others to reach audiences and venues outside the classroom using print and oral technologies (e.g., posters, essays, letters, debates, speeches, reports, and maps) and digital technologies (e.g., Internet, social media, and digital documentary).

• Review the lesson plan. Locate and bookmark suggested materials and other useful websites. Download and print out selected documents and duplicate copies as necessary for student viewing.
• This lesson works best if students are already familiar with the Boston Tea Party, which is covered in The Boston Tea Party: Costume Optional?. If the Boston Tea Party is a new concept for students, you can select some of the first-hand accounts used in the other lesson plan, and assign the Boston Tea Party to one student group in Part 2. If your class has completed The Boston Tea Party: Costume Optional?, proceed directly to Part 2.
  • For background information, consult the following EDSITEment resources:
  • America During the Age of Revolution, 1764–1775, a timeline available on American Memory.
  • Tax History Project, a comprehensive article on the events leading up to and following the Boston Tea Party, with an emphasis on taxes, available via a link from History Matters.
  • The complete text of The Tea Act
• In Part 4, one student group will look at the response of the Continental Congress to Lord North's Conciliatory Proposals, described here in a recent journal article:

  "Lord North's conciliatory proposal was the linchpin of the government's attempt to resolve the conflict during the final peacetime months. This proposal was presented to the House of Commons on February 20, shortly after the Commons had agreed to an address to the crown describing Massachusetts as in a state of rebellion. North's bill provided that any colony that would make a contribution to the common defense of the empire and support its own government (subject to the approval of king and Parliament) would not be taxed for as long as it continued its contribution. The amount contributed by the colony for defense would be subject to the disposal of Parliament. In presenting his proposal, North made very clear that the government would not deal directly with the congress; responses would have to come from the colonial assemblies. By the end of March, the conciliatory bill had passed, together with the New England Restraining Act.
  
  "The timing of North's proposal, offered as it was in the midst of further punitive measures and at a juncture when government had withdrawn from any idea of an initiative toward provincial leaders in congress, has led many commentators, then and now, to question its sincerity. North's motives in making his offer have been variously interpreted. At best, his proposal has been seen as an effort to mollify British public opinion or as an inadequate, last-ditch effort to detach moderate elements in the colonies from the widening rebellion. At worst, it has been seen as a cynical attempt to divide the colonies in order to augment a general strategy of coercion."
  
  —Flavell, Julie M. "Government Interception of Letters from America and the Quest for Colonial Opinion in 1775." The William and Mary Quarterly. 58.2 (2001): 57 pars. May 31, 2002.

Activity 1. Brief review of the Boston Tea Party

If your class did not complete The Boston Tea Party: Costume Optional?, and students are unfamiliar with the Boston Tea Party, conduct a brief review of the events surrounding the historical incident. If students are familiar with the events, make a list of what they already know. If desired, consult An Outline of American History (1994), Chapter Three: Boston "Tea Party", on From Revolution to Reconstruction, a link from the EDSITEment-reviewed website History Matters. (NOTE: The section on the Tea Party begins on page 6 and continues through Page 8. Click on "Next Page" or "Previous Page" to navigate as desired.)

Activity 2. Comparison of various tea parties

Tell students that a number of colonial cities, including New York, Charlestown, Md., and Greenwich, N.J., staged "tea parties" as protests in the months preceding the American Revolution. In what ways were these protests similar to the Boston Tea Party? In what ways were they different? Students will try to answer these questions in this lesson. Break the class into six groups and assign each group one of the three locations (two groups for each location). Download, copy, and distribute to each group a Venn Diagram.

Using the documents listed below, available through EDSITEment resources, students should attempt to discover (1) what events preceded the protest, (2) how the protest was conducted, and (3) what reasons for the protest, if any, were given.

• New York Tea Party
  • To the Public, the Sense of The City, a broadside announcing the celebration to be held upon the departure of one of the detested tea ships.
  • A letter, from Tom Bowline, to his worthy messmates, the renowned Sons of Neptune, belonging to the Port of New-York, a copy of an earlier broadside calling for unity among sailors in protesting tea.
  • The broadside The long expected tea ship has arrived, written days before the New York Tea party.
• Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919). New York. 1906: IX. The Unrest Before the Revolution. 1764-1774. To locate the relevant passage, use the "Find" option under "Edit" in the browser to search for "Tea Act." This brief secondary account is of interest because the author was President of the United States at the time of its publication and because Roosevelt credits the protests largely to the work of radicals who "resisted simply to test the principle of taxation."
• Greenwich, N.J., Tea Party
  • Crossroads of the American Revolution in New Jersey (1774), available through Links to the Past
  • 1774: The Tea Burning Incident
• Chestertown/Annapolis, MD, Tea Party
  • Annapolis, on American Memory
  • Chestertown Tea Party Festival: A Local Legacy and Chestertown Tea Party Festival (photo), from America's Library, a link from American Memory
  • Chestertown Tea Party Festival, from The Library of Congress

If desired, use the Venn Diagram as a model for constructing on the blackboard a large, composite diagram with attributes every protest had in common in the intersection. Use the diagram to compare the protests.

As a class, discuss why the Boston Tea Party inspired so many similar protests. Why were the colonists so incensed about something as simple as tea, or was there more to the matter?

Activity 3. Exploring the reasons for the Boston Tea Party

Share with the class the information related to the Tea Act from A Survey of American History (Alan Brinkley, et al. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1991.), available at Boston Tea Party on From Revolution to Reconstruction, a link from the EDSITEment resource History Matters. Share also the information (including the cartoon) related to the Boston Tea Party available at The Boston Tea Party on Liberty!, another link from History Matters.

Download, copy, and distribute the handout Revolutionary Tea Parties: Why Was Everyone So Angry?, available here as a PDF. Based on students' knowledge of the Boston Tea Party and their findings about the other tea parties, students should complete the ratings and then share their beliefs about the foremost reasons that many colonists became so passionate about the tax on tea.

Activity 4. Objections to British Taxes

The tax on tea was the last remaining tax, and as such, became symbolic of all attempts at taxing the colonists and, eventually, of all of their grievances.

Assign one of the following documents related to the Boston Tea Party and taxation to each student group (two groups can have the same document). Each group should scan the sections of the document specified below, looking for any expression of reasons for objections to British taxes. Download, copy, and distribute to the groups the chart Taxation and Related Issues, available here as a PDF. Students should use this to note and document the issues in the specified selections; no document is likely to address all the issues. Some documents will stress one or two issues, while others will present a long list.

• Broadside: Tea Destroyed by Indians, on the EDSITEment-reviewed website American Memory.
• Declaration and Resolves of the First Continental Congress, October 1774. Students need only look at the bulleted items-the rights the Congress declared the colonists had, some of which they felt were invalidated by the tax on tea and other acts of Parliament.
• Resolutions of Congress on Lord North's Conciliatory Proposal, Feb. 1775, on the EDSITEment-reviewed website The Avalon Project at the Yale School of Law. Students should consider eight paragraphs beginning with the fourth ("That the colonies of America…"). North's Conciliatory Proposals, passed at the same time as punishment was being meted out to the Massachusetts colony, stated that no colony would be taxed as long as it would pay for its own government and for defense. Parliament would set the amount of the tax. In these matters, Parliament would communicate with each colony's assembly (over which it had at least some control) and not the Continental Congress.

After reviewing these documents, would students now change their opinion of the most significant reasons behind the protests?

Activity 5. Result of legislation: the Tea Act

Review the events on the timeline America During the Age of Revolution, 1764-1775, on the EDSITEment-reviewed website American Memory, from 1773 to the battles of Lexington and Concord, with special focus on the Coercive Acts. Do students agree that "the result of the legislation [the Tea Act] was the loss of the American colonies?" (Marjie Bloy, on the EDSITEment resource Victorian Web)?

Based on their knowledge of events, students should now be able to create a cause-and-effect ladder, starting from the initial passage of taxes on tea and other goods and ending with the American Revolution. You can download a Sample Cause-and-Effect Ladder. Also available is a version of the cause-and-effect ladder as a Fill-in-the-Blanks Exercise.

• Students interested in learning more about the events leading up to the Boston Tea Party can start with these EDSITEment resources:
  • America During the Age of Revolution, 1764–1775, a timeline available on American Memory.
  • Tax History Project, a comprehensive article on the events leading up to and following the Boston Tea Party, with an emphasis on taxes, available via a link from History Matters.
  • The complete text of The Tea Act, available via a link from History Matters.
• Students can analyze political cartoons from the years of protest that preceded the Revolutionary War. If desired, use the Cartoon Analysis Form available on the EDSITEment resource National Archives Educator Resources.
  • The Repeal or the Funeral Procession of Miss Americ-Stamp: A satiric cartoon commemorating repeal of the Stamp Act, c. 1766
  • The Bostonians paying the excise-man or tarring & feathering, 1774
  • Cartoon depicting the rough treatment of a barber's customer once his identity as a British officer was revealed, 1775
  • An allegorical depiction of the Coercive Acts, specifically the closing of Boston Harbor by the British (by Paul Revere)
• Students can read the following poems about the Boston Tea Party, written during the 19th century. How accurate are the accounts? What attitudes about our nation's formative years do they express?
  • The Boston Tea Party by Ralph Waldo Emerson, available on the EDSITEment resource The American Verse Project.
  • "A Ballad of the Boston Tea-Party" by Oliver Wendell Holmes, available via a link from the EDSITEment-reviewed website American Memory, starting on page 219 of The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 33, Issue 196, February 1874, and continuing with pages 220 and 221.
• Students can also read more by and about Ralph Waldo Emerson, who coined the phrase "The shot heard 'round the world," and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. A Biography of Emerson and Biography of Holmes are available on From Revolution to Reconstruction, a link from the EDSITEment resource History Matters.
• The Boston Tea Party was a grand example of street theater protest, something we often associate now with the 1960s. For more about that era of protest, look at the online exhibit The Psychedelic Sixties: Literary Tradition and Social Change from the Special Collections Department of the University of Virginia Library, available through a link from the EDSITEment-reviewed website Center for the Liberal Arts. Students can expand their knowledge of the protest movements of the sixties by interviewing eyewitnesses. They can also conduct a poll about attitudes today toward those protests of the past. Students can conclude their study by making comparisons between the two eras of protests.
• Consider using two related EDSITEment lessons-Colonial Broadsides and the American Revolution and Colonial Broadsides: A Student-Created Play.

Selected EDSITEment Websites

• American Memory
  • A letter, from Tom Bowline, to his worthy messmates, the renowned Sons of Neptune, belonging to the Port of New-York
  • America During the Age of Revolution, 1764–1775
  • Annapolis
  • Broadside: Boston, December 1, 1773
  • Broadside: Boston, December 20, on Tuesday last
  • Broadside: Tea Destroyed by Indians
  • The long expected tea ship has arrived
  • America's Library
  • Chestertown Tea Party Festival: A Local Legacy
  • Chestertown Tea Party Festival (photo)
  • "A Ballad of the Boston Tea-Party" by Oliver Wendell Holmes
  • The Library of Congress
  • Chestertown Tea Party Festival
  • A letter, from Tom Bowline, to his worthy messmates, the renowned Sons of Neptune, belonging to the Port of New-York
  • The long expected tea ship has arrived
  • To the Public, the Sense of The City
• The American President
  • The White House
  • Samuel Adams
• The American Verse Project
  • The Boston Tea Party
• The Avalon Project at the Yale School of Law
  • Resolutions of Congress on Lord North's Conciliatory Proposal, Feb. 1775
• Center for the Liberal Arts
  • University of Virginia
  • The Psychedelic Sixties: Literary Tradition and Social Change
• National Archives Educator Resources
  • Cartoon Analysis Form
  • Written Document Analysis Worksheet
• History Matters
  • "A Shoemaker and the Tea Party" by George Robert Twelve Hewes
  • The Tea Act
  • From Revolution to Reconstruction
  • Biography of Emerson
  • Biography of Holmes
  • Boston Tea Party
  • An Outline of American History (1994), Chapter Three: Boston "Tea Party"
  • Liberty!
  • The Boston Tea Party
  • Tax History Project
  • An allegorical depiction of the Coercive Acts, specifically the closing of Boston Harbor by the British (by Paul Revere)
  • Cartoon depicting the rough treatment of a barber's customer once his identity as a British officer was revealed, 1775
  • Declaration and Resolves of the First Continental Congress, October 1774
  • The Bostonians paying the excise-man or tarring & feathering, 1774
  • The Repeal or the Funeral Procession of Miss Americ-Stamp
• Internet Public Library
  • Bartleby.com
  • Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919). New York. 1906: IX. The Unrest Before the Revolution. 1764–1774
  • State of New Jersey Home Page
  • Seamore of Cumberland County
  • 1774: The Tea Burning Incident
  • Camps and Firesides of the Revolution. Hart, Albert Bushnell with Mabel Hill: "Another Account of the Tea Party BY JOHN ANDREWS (1773)"
  • Camps and Firesides of the Revolution. Hart, Albert Bushnell with Mabel Hill: "The Boston Tea Party from the MASSACHUSETTS GAZETTE (1773)"
• Links to the Past
  • Crossroads of the American Revolution in New Jersey (1774)
• Victorian Web
  • Marjie Bloy