Tea was more than something to drink -- it was a valuable, so valuable, says McGill that some "deemed it a 'second currency'" (McGill). It was also valuable socially. Norton maintains that tea was an important aspect of social life, with the elite socializing and holding tea parties. The colonists wanted not just to prove a point but a valuable one when they dumped the tea overboard. When Samuel Adams and others dumped the entire shipment into the harbor, they were telling Britain that one of their most prized imports was not worth anything to them if it meant giving up some of the freedoms the colonists left Britain for in the first place. Norton claims the total cost of the tea dumped into the harbor was around $14,000. The British concern might have been monetary, but the meaning was already deeper than that for the colonists and thei ability to rise up and strike out was the very thing that saved them.
Samuel Adams might not have seen the unfolding of all the events associated with the dumping of the tea in Boston harbor but he did not have to see them to know that the encroaching government from across the sea was bad news. It was an act of defiance but it was also an act of faith, putting a passion for what is right before the long arm of the government. Tea became...
There were few opportunities for the colonists to express themselves in a way that made a point with Parliament but the dumping of the tea goes down in history as one of the best. It forced Parliament to open their eyes to what the people wanted and it allowed the colonists to realize their own power. Brinkley writes, "A declaration of independence was no longer a pipe dream but a revolutionary plan in the making. From the Tea Party to the bloody fields of Concord, the thirteen colonies had proved that direct action was the surest way to free themselves from British tyranny" (Brinkley). The events of the Boston Tea Party demonstrate the strength and influence people have when thy dare to hope and put their dreams into action.
Works Cited
Brinkley, Douglas. "The Sparck of Rebellion." American Heritage. 2010. Vol. 59. 4. 05 June,
2010. EBSCO Resource Database. http://search.epnet.com Web.
McGill, Sara Ann. "The Road to Revolution." Road to Revolution, 2009. 05 June, 2010. EBSCO
Resource Database. http://search.epnet.com Web.
Norton, Mary Beth, ed. A People and a Nation: Third Edition. Boston: Houghton Mifflin
Company. 1990.
