On this day 250 years ago, Abigail Adams wrote to her friend and fellow Patriot Mercy Otis Warren: “The Tea that bainfull weed is arrived. Great and effectual opposition has been made to the landing of it. . . . our citizens have been united, spirited and firm. The flame is kindled and like lightening it catches from soul to soul.”
Source: https://www.americanhistorycentral.com/entries/boston-tea-party/
On this day 250 years ago the Sons of Liberty of New York published a broadside declaring “It is essential to the freedom and security of a free people, that no taxes be imposed upon them but by their own consent, or their representatives.”
Source: https://openlibrary.org/books/OL14601740M/The_association_of_the_Sons_of_Liberty_of_New-York.
On this day 250 years ago, the Exchange building in Charleston was filled to capacity with angry Patriots upset with the arrival of the ship London carrying East India Company tea the day before. The crowd formed a Committee composed of Christopher Gadsden, Charles Pinckney, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, Thomas Ferguson and Daniel Cannon and many signed a non-importation agreement pledging not to import any tea. The Committee would evolve into South Carolina’s independent government in a little less than two years.
On this day 250 years ago, a Resolution was issued by “The People” that declared that those “aiding and assisting in” the landing of East India Company tea from the ships in Boston Harbor will “in a great Measure accelerate Confusion and a Civil War: This is to assure such public enemies of this Country, that they will be considered and treated as Wretches unworthy to live, and will be made the first Victims of our just Resentment.”
On this day 250 years ago, young college graduate James Madison wrote to his classmate William Bradford and asked Bradford about “the extent of your religious Toleration. Here allow me to propose the following Queries. Is an Ecclesiastical Establishment absolutely necessary to support civil society in a supream Government? & how far it is hurtful to a dependant State?”
For the rest of his life Madison would answer these questions by making Separation of Church and State a bedrock principle in his contributions to the Founding of our Republic.
Source: https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-01-02-0027
On this day 250 years ago, “The People” of Boston met again at Old South Meeting House to consider the response of the East India Company’s consignees. The meeting was interrupted by the delivery of a proclamation of acting Governor Thomas Hutchinson that ordered the meeting “To disperse and to surcease all further unlawful proceedings at your utmost peril.” “The People” ignored Hutchinson’s order and issued their own declaration that “It was solemnly voted by the body of the people of this and the neighboring towns assembled at the Old South meeting-house on Tuesday, the 30th day of November that the said tea never should be landed in this province.”
On this 250 years ago the Boston Committee of Correspondence and Sons of Liberty called a meeting of Bostonians and citizens from neighboring towns at Faneuil Hall to respond to the arrival of the Dartmouth and its cargo of East India Company tea. Sam Adams estimated the size of the crowd to be 5000 and the meeting was forced to shift to the larger Old South Meeting House. The people assembled demanded that the tea be returned to England and appointed a watch of 25 Sons of Liberty to guard Griffin’s Wharf to make sure the tea would not be unloaded.
On this day 250 years ago, the Dartmouth, carrying 114 chests of tea, sailed into Boston Harbor.
Today, November 28, 2023, at 11:00 am Eastern, the City of Boston will lay wreaths at the graves of Samuel Adams and John Hancock to commemorate the response of Adams, Hancock and the Sons of Liberty to this event. https://www.downtownboston.org/explore-downtown-boston/downtown-boston-events-calendar/special-boston-tea-party-commemoration-samuel-adams-and-john-hancock/
On this day 250 years ago, the “Committee for Tarring and Feathering” sent a public letter to river pilots threatening them as the committee’s name implies if they assisted Captain Ayers and the Polly in docking to unload the ship’s cargo of tea in Philadelphia.
Source: https://www.loc.gov/resource/rbpe.14303100/?st=text
On this day 250 years ago, The Massachusetts Spy published a letter by someone writing under the pseudonym “Locke” addressed to The American Colonies with a clarion call to rebellion:
“YOUR exertions in the great cause of freedom have been noble; and they must be continued with redoubled vigour. The time is now come which requires your united strength and wisdom. Act agreeable to the character of FREEMEN, and you shall continue FREE. You need not be instructed in the rights of mankind; you know them. The principles held up in my treatise on government, which you have approved and highly honoured, are, that whoever invades the liberties of the people, is guilty of treason, and may justly be punished by them, be his character high or low; and if he oppose them by force, he thereby becomes their enemy, and may be opposed by force until he is brought to reason, or to ruin . . .
“Liberty has taken deep root and will reign in America. . . .
“A misguided administration in Great-Britain, has for a number of years, pursued plans calculated to destroy the nation; and it fully appears, that nothing but the stern virtue of this country can resist the depotism which now threatens to involve all in ruin — it is therefore the indispensible duty of the Americans to defend their own rights from every approach of tyranny.”
Source: https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83021194/1773-11-26/ed-1/seq-3/
On This Day In The Revolution 