February 1774

 Our Chapter began having a three minute informational talk about the events leading up to the revolution in December with the talk about the 250th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party.  

Everything moved slow in the days leading up to the Revolution.  The News of the tea party had to travel by ship to Great Britain and then the repercussions had to travel back by ship as well.  So we can know that while this was not a quiet month as the news of the Tea party traveled to all parts of the Colonies,  there were no new big events that happened during this month that were directly related to the upcoming Revolution.

But there was an event that was mentioned in the January/February National Defender that is near and dear to my heart.  It is not exactly a Revolutionary War fact, but it does include George Washington.

In 2015, in preparation for a trip to downtown Philadelphia, I asked my Quaker mail list what I should be sure to see.  My friends on the mail list explained that there are very few Quaker sites left from the late 1600s and early 1700s. That one should see the usual sites with Quaker eyes.  And one of my favorite examples of this is the Liberty Bell.

The State House bell, now known as the Liberty Bell, rang in the tower of the Pennsylvania State House. Today, we call that building Independence Hall. Speaker of the Pennsylvania Assembly Isaac Norris first ordered a bell for the bell tower in 1751 from the Whitechapel Foundry in London. That bell cracked on the first test ring. Local metalworkers John Pass and John Stow melted down that bell and cast a new one right here in Philadelphia. It's this bell that would ring to call lawmakers to their meetings and the townspeople together to hear the reading of the news. Benjamin Franklin wrote to Catherine Ray in 1755, "Adieu, the Bell rings, and I must go among the Grave ones and talk Politicks." It's not until the 1830s that the old State House bell would begin to take on significance as a symbol of liberty.

                                                       https://www.nps.gov/inde/learn/historyculture/stories-libertybell.htm

In one of his books, historian David Hackett Fischer examines the bell as a uniquely Quaker sort of tool. Essentially, his observation was that the bell could be heard by all announcing that the assembly was in session.  Legislatures elsewhere operated more quietly, more "sub rosa," if you will.  Into that, Fischer read a more democratic attitude in the Quaker life style.

 

January 1774

After the Boston Tea Party the Sons of Liberty of Boston engaged Paul Revere to ride to New York and to Philadelphia to tell the Sons of Liberty in those two cities about the audacious act that they had been a part of in Boston:  The Boston Tea Party.  

The news was heard in every Colony as the information was published in papers and talked about in every town.  As far away as Williamsburg the news had traveled:

From the Boston Gazette:

 

December 1773

photo from Wikipedia

December 16th, 2023 is the 250th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party.  To celebrate I spoke briefly at my DAR chapter's Christmas luncheon about the event:

  The Boston Tea Party took place the night of December 16th 1773.  116 men are documented as having participated, but it is estimated that 100s of men actually took part.

The three ships holding tea had arrived in the Boston Harbour at the end of November and the first and middle of December....each carrying more than a 100 chests of British East Indian Tea.  The colonists had asked the Royal Governor Hutchinson to allow the ships to be sent back to England without unloading the tea.  He did not respond to this request.  On December 17th customs officials were scheduled to board the ships to unload the tea.  Once the tea was unloaded the tax would have to be paid.

The colonist's major complaint was not that the tea was being taxed but that Parliament implemented the tax with no representation by the colonists,  Parliament exerted this power move to gain more control over the colonists.

Remember that the British Government and the colonists had recently fought the French and Indian war which ended in 1763.  This had been an expensive war for the British and they felt that the colonists should help pay the bill.  Great Britain was deep in debt.  

Great Britain had imposed the Stamp Act in 1765 and the Townsend Act in 1767 which taxed essentials such as lead, glass, paint and tea.

John Hancock and Samuel Adams, architects of the Boston Tea party planned the even, but stayed at Faneuil Hall to establish an alibi.  These were ordinary men doing an extraordinary action.

The Tea Party participants (a group of men who called themselves the sons of Liberty) destroyed 340 chests of tea weighing more than 92,000 pounds by dumping it into Boston Harbor.

What happened after the Boston Tea Party was even more amazing.  Men and women in other colonies rallied behind this idea and organized similar protests in their cities.

As a result of the destruction of the tea in Boston, the British cut off all access to Boston by land and sea for three years.  Bostonians were prevented from starving by sneaking food into Boston during those three years.