Boston 1773: The Destruction of the Tea

After the Seven Years’ War, the British government in London sought to have subjects in North America and the Caribbean pay more of the costs of running the empire. Parliament first tried the Stamp Act in 1765, which provoked so much resistance that the government collected almost no money from the mainland colonies. The debate over that law instead produced a new slogan for what people argued was a fundamental principle of British government: “No taxation without representation.”

In Britain, that principle was widely accepted to mean that only the elected House of Commons could determine how the British people were taxed. North Americans interpreted the same principle to mean that only the legislatures they elected within their colonies could lay taxes on them. Parliament disagreed, arguing that as the supreme legislature of the empire it had sovereign power everywhere. (Representation was quite limited already. In both Britain and the colonies, only white men with property were allowed to vote at all; they made the choices for women, children, the poor, and the enslaved.)

In 1767, the government in London decided that the most acceptable way to collect more revenue from North America was to tax certain goods shipped there from Britain. That form of tax was called “tariffs” or “duties.” Under the new Townshend Act, officials in the customs department collected tariffs from merchants importing paper, glass, painters’ colors and lead, and tea. That money was to go toward paying salaries for the governors, judges, customs officers, and other officials administering the colonies—almost all appointed directly or indirectly by the government in London, not elected. Royal salaries insulated those officials from the people they governed. Once again, the colonists showed their objections to this new arrangement through petitions, boycotts, and occasional riots.

In 1770, a new British prime minister, Lord North, led Parliament in repealing most of the Townshend Act tariffs, leaving only the tax on tea—the tax that brought in most of the revenue. That money was still going to pay royal appointees in North America. Activists urged their fellow colonists to keep boycotting tea—particularly women (Source 1), who usually handled buying food for their households—but those calls had little effect.

The Tea Act of 1773

In 1773, Lord North turned to a new problem. The large and politically well-connected British East India Company was in financial trouble. That mercantile enterprise had been set up in the 1600s to trade with the countries of South Asia (modern India, Ceylon, Pakistan, and Bangladesh), which in turn traded with East Asia (particularly China). The company was so big that its failure could damage Britain’s economy and world standing. Lord North designed a new law that lowered the tariffs that the East India Company paid to bring tea into Great Britain and also for the first time let the company sell tea in North America.

That law would have additional benefits, Lord North thought. It made the tea tariff easier to collect since the East India Company would pay that tax in London as soon as it learned the cargos had landed in North America. Because the company’s agents would sell its tea, instead of working through a chain of middlemen, the price that American consumers paid would probably be lower than before. That price might even be so low that colonists would stop buying tea smuggled in from Dutch territories, keeping their money within the British economy.

In September 1773, the provisions of the Tea Act were published in North American newspapers. (It usually took six weeks for news to cross the Atlantic.) Then more details arrived, including the names of the merchants selected as the East India Company’s sales agents in the four largest ports: Philadelphia, New York, Boston, and Charleston, South Carolina.

Instead of accepting the new law, most North American politicians objected to it just as strongly as they had objected to the previous revenue laws. This was just another form of taxation without representation, newspaper writers said. Furthermore, if the government in London could decide that one company had special rights to sell tea in North America, and that company could select just a handful of merchants in each major port as its agents, what would stop Parliament from other ways of restricting how colonists did business? However, American activists also knew that once tea arrived in shops, it was very difficult to keep up a boycott against it.

In Massachusetts, complaints about the new Tea Act were especially strong because the colony’s legislature already distrusted the royal governor, Thomas Hutchinson. The year before, some private letters that Hutchinson and his political allies had sent to England had been leaked to the Massachusetts legislature. As Samuel Adams and other activists interpreted those letters, they showed Hutchinson and his friends conspiring to change the colony’s constitution and take away people’s political rights. Now the Tea Act appeared to benefit Hutchinson in two ways. First, some revenue from the tariff would go to him as a salary. Second, Hutchinson’s sons were among the handful of merchants appointed to sell the East India Company’s tea in Boston.

The Boston activists’ first tactic was to put pressure on the East India Company’s agents, demanding they meet under Liberty Tree and promise not to accept the tea. Those men ignored the summons (Source 2). On November 3, a crowd, riled up by fervent leaders like the merchant William Molineux, attacked the warehouse of the Clarke family, one of the firms designated to handle the tea. No one was hurt, but both sides saw the possibility of more violence.

Town leaders, wanting to appear to be the more reasonable side, started to rein in the crowd. On November 5, Boston had a town meeting to formally object to the Tea Act with John Hancock presiding. More meetings followed, so large that they moved from Faneuil Hall to the Old South Meetinghouse, the town’s largest church. Those “Meetings of the Body of the People” were open to anyone regardless of whether they owned enough property to vote or even lived in Boston. (Almost all of the attendees were still probably white men, though.)

Meanwhile, most of the tea agents and customs house officers moved for safety to Castle William, a fortified island in Boston harbor guarded by the British army. Governor Hutchinson retreated to his country house in Milton. The painter John Singleton Copley tried to be an intermediary between the meetings and his new in-laws, the Clarke family, but got nowhere.

The East India Company had divided its shipment of tea to Boston among four ships: the Dartmouth, Eleanor, William, and Beaver. On November 28, the Dartmouth entered Boston harbor.

Once a ship had officially arrived in a harbor of the British Empire, its captain had twenty days to unload. If the crew did not follow that rule, the customs service could confiscate both the cargo and the ship. Another rule forbade ships from leaving a harbor without unloading; if a captain tried to leave that way, the customs service and the Royal Navy could seize his ship. In Boston harbor, the soldiers at Castle William might even fire cannons at a ship trying to leave. Either way, the ship owners could lose valuable property.

On November 29, the “Body of the People” took action to keep the tea on the Dartmouth from being landed, thus preventing the government from collecting the tariff. Men volunteered to patrol the wharf where the tea ships were moored, both to make sure nobody unloaded the tea and to protect those ships from unauthorized damage. They allowed other cargo to be taken off those ships. Among those goods from the Dartmouth were copies of Phillis Wheatley’s Poems on Various Subjects, printed in London.

The tea ship London reached Charleston, South Carolina, on December 1. The people there also opposed the landing of the tea. In response, the East India Company’s local agents declined to accept the cargo. Royal officials at that port decided to let that tea be locked in a warehouse, bending the law to say those chests had not legally arrived.

The tea ship Eleanor arrived in Boston on December 2 and was moored beside the Dartmouth near Griffin’s Wharf.

The men who owned those tea ships were anxious to preserve their vessels from being destroyed by the people or confiscated by the royal government. Possibly trying to win over the crowd in Old South, ship owner John Rowe asked aloud “whether a little salt water would not do it [the tea] good.” Eventually one owner, Francis Rotch of Dartmouth (now New Bedford), became the principal go-between, trying to negotiate an end to the stand-off that would preserve his property.

On December 10, the tea ship William wrecked on Cape Cod. Some of its tea chests were salvaged and moved to Castle William. On December 13, the people of rural Lexington burned their supplies of tea in a bonfire to show solidarity with the boycott.

The customs office’s twenty-day clock kept ticking. Bostonians and visitors from neighboring towns continued to hold large meetings in the Old South Meeting House, demanding that the ships leave without unloading any tea.

The Beaver arrived in Boston on December 15.

With one day left before the customs house deadline, Francis Rotch pleaded with those officials to bend their rules and extend the deadline for unloading his ship. They refused. Rotch traveled out to Governor Hutchinson’s house in Milton and asked him to let the ship sail back to Britain. The governor insisted he had to follow the laws to the letter. Rotch came back to the Old South Meeting House and reported that he had failed to get special permission to sail away.

Samuel Adams then announced, “This meeting can do nothing more to save the country.” A preselected group of activists moved to plan B: destroying the tea on all three ships to ensure it could never be officially landed. Adams and almost all the town’s political leaders stayed in Old South, listening to Dr. Thomas Young lecture on the unhealthy effects of drinking tea. (William Molineux was conspicuously absent.) Meanwhile, several dozen men moved to Griffin’s Wharf.

The identities of those men were kept secret at the time and for decades afterward. They must have included the town’s most committed activists, men who could be relied on to carry out risky actions and keep secrets. Because of the physical labor involved in moving and destroying the chests of tea, most were “mechanics,” or men who worked with their hands; only a few were merchants and professionals. With the law requiring most men to train regularly in militia companies, they were used to working together with military discipline.

Knowing they were about to do something illegal, those men had disguised their faces with paint and soot. At the wharf, they met a squad from the town’s militia artillery company, that night’s patrol. Those artillerists joined the activists. Those men split into three groups, one for each ship. Methodically they hoisted out the large wooden chests, most wrapped in canvas and lined with lead to be waterproof. They chopped open those crates and dumped the loose leaves of black and green tea overboard.

Hundreds of witnesses gathered along the waterfront to watch the destruction of the tea. Both the men and the crowd were remarkably silent, people recalled. Occasionally an exuberant apprentice pushed onto one of the ships and insisted on helping. The leaders had those teenagers climb overboard onto the mounds of loose tea piling up in the shallow water and make sure it was all stamped down into the sea.

The men carrying out this operation understood that they had to focus on the tea, doing minimal damage to anything else. They ordered the sailors and customs officers aboard the ships below decks but did not harm them. To get into one of the holds, the party broke open a padlock; the next day, a replacement lock was delivered to that ship. The activists also chased away one man detected sneaking tea away for himself. Newspapers reported those details, emphasizing how the operation had destroyed nothing but the taxable tea for the good of the community.

There were Royal Navy ships in the harbor and an army contingent in the fort on Castle Island, but their commanders did not have the orders or the opportunity to intervene. The operation went smoothly and was over before midnight.

Within days, Bostonians began to speak of all the men who destroyed the tea as "Indians from Narragansett” or “Mohawks,” finding a way to discuss the event without admitting local responsibility or knowledge. Gradually those disguises grew in the public memory of the event until artists in the mid-1900s drew men dressed completely as “Indians” with the large feathered headdresses of Plains peoples, bare-chested on a December night in New England.

Governor Hutchinson tried to supply the London government with evidence of who was responsible. None of the witnesses he named turned out to have anything useful to say. The East India Company petitioned the government to be compensated for its loss, amounting to over £9,000.

Meanwhile, the tea ship Polly arrived in the Delaware River below Philadelphia on December 25. Its captain was greeted with printed broadsides warning that he would be tarred and feathered if he did not turn around. Instead of sailing upriver and officially entering the Philadelphia harbor, he took that tea back to Britain.

Lord North and his colleagues decided they had to be stricter. Parliament passed the Boston Port Bill, barring merchant ships from Britain or any other British colony from unloading in Boston harbor until the town repaid the cost of the tea. With trade diverted to other New England ports such as Salem and Newport, the government thought, Bostonians would realize the economic cost of their action.

In order to strengthen the royal government inside Massachusetts, Lord North replaced Governor Hutchinson with General Thomas Gage, already commander of all the British troops in North America. The army moved several regiments back into Boston for the first time since the Massacre of 1770. Parliament strengthened the Quartering Act to make the town provide barracks for those troops. It passed the Administration of Justice in Massachusetts Act to ensure that royal officials carrying out their duties would not be tried in biased local courts. Together these laws were called the Coercive Acts. Americans responded by organizing a gathering of politicians from several colonies, the First Continental Congress. 

The tea ship Nancy had run into storms and did not arrive at New York until April 22. Then locals followed Boston’s example: they boarded the ship and dumped its cargo into the harbor. 

Immediately after the first tea destruction, Bostonians had begun to worry about a royal  government crackdown, which they called “ministerial vengeance.” However, that did not stop them from destroying another set of tea chests that arrived in March 1774. In fact, this time local newspapers called in advance for “the Sachems [Indian leaders]…to extricate us out of this fresh Difficulty.” Lord North cited that event as proof that the Bostonians were incorrigible.

In May, Parliament passed the Massachusetts Government Act. Unlike the Boston Port Bill, which was to be reversed as soon as the town paid for the tea, this law made permanent changes to the colony’s constitution. The upper house of the Massachusetts legislature would no longer be elected; instead, the government in London appointed all its members, choosing gentlemen for their loyalty. Towns were barred from having more than one town meeting per year without prior permission from the governor. That law thus severely limited the colony’s long tradition of self-government.

Soon after news of the Massachusetts Government Act arrived in August 1774, people in rural counties rose up in protest. They demanded that local men appointed to the new upper house resign, or chased them out of their homes into Boston. On court days, crowds surrounded the county courthouses and refused to let the magistrates hold sessions. These protests, starting at the western end of the province, effectively shut down the royal government. Governor Gage moved to strengthen his position by consolidating militia gunpowder under his control. That military action, and a wildly exaggerated rumor about it, prompted thousands of Massachusetts men to mobilize in their militia companies on September 2. Gage realized that his power to enforce Parliament’s laws now stopped at the gates of Boston.

In September 1774, both the Massachusetts resistance leaders and Gage began to seize cannons and other military supplies in case of war. Gage ordered troops in New York and Québec to come to Boston. In October, resistance leaders convened their own legislature, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, meeting outside Boston. Soon local militia companies were volunteering for extra training. By the end of the year, the province was moving toward war.

1. What are the items women are being asked to give up and/or replace in this poem?
2. How is the author trying to make patriotism more appealing to readers?
3. Do you think efforts of nonconsumption, like those referenced in the poem, would be hard or easy for American colonists to engage in? Why?
4. The Boston Tea Party occurred about six years after this was published. How does this poem show the growing economic, social, and/or political tensions that contributed to that event?

View newspaper source.

1. What are the arguments this broadside makes against the “tea meetings?”
2. What phrases from this broadside do you think would best catch the attention of their desired audience?
3. How would you describe the tone of this broadside?
4. The Boston Tea Party occurred just over a month after this was published. How does this broadside show the growing economic, social, and/or political tensions that contributed to that event?

Read an excerpt.

View broadside.

1. Tea and tea culture were clearly important to colonial Americans. Do you think an event like the Boston Tea Party would still have occurred with a different item that was being taxed, like glass or paper which had also been taxed under the previous Townshend Acts?

   Note: This graph, showing revenue under the Townshend Acts (1768-1770), may help students answer this question.

2. What reasons are there for collecting and saving a souvenir? What does that tell us about how colonial Bostonians viewed the Boston Tea Party even in its immediate aftermath?

3. How does the significance of tea culture connect to the economic and social tensions that contributed to the Boston Tea Party?

View tea leaves.

View punch bowl.

View artifacts of the Boston Tea Party.

1. How might Rowe’s personal connection to the ships have affected his private and public words on the Boston Tea Party differently?
2. Why is it important for us to look at both the diary entry of Rowe and read his quote from Old South Meeting House in order to effectively evaluate the credibility and purposes of these two different sources?

View Rowe’s diary entry.

1. John Adams asked and then answered the following question in his diary: “The Question is whether the Destruction of this Tea was necessary?” How would you summarize his answer?
2. How did Adams view colonial government officials and others who supported the British policies (Governor Hutchinson, the Consignees, Collector and Comptroller, etc)?

View Adams’s diary entry.

1. How did the people in Marshfield view the protest that occurred in Boston? Is this similar or different from other sources and why might that be?
2. Why would the Massachusetts Gazette choose to highlight this Marshfield Town Meeting in the wake of the Boston Tea Party?
3. A note printed immediately after the article said, "Marshfield is in the Country of Plimouth. . . and according to an Account taken in 1764, contains upwards of Fifteen Hundred Inhabitants ; many of whom are said to be very wealthy.” How might the composition of the town have influenced their political leanings?

View newspaper article.

*Trigger Warning: In this cartoon, the behavior of all three British government officials implies violence and sexual assault on 'America,' portrayed as an Indigenous woman. 

1. What message is the artist trying to say about Britain’s reaction to the Boston Tea Party and how do you know that from the image?
2. How would you summarize the tone or mood of this political cartoon?
3. Britannia, the white female figure who often represents Britain, is depicted behind “America” and is looking away from what is happening.  By including this element of the cartoon, what is the artist adding to the overall message of the cartoon?
4. Why do you think political cartoons chose to represent the American colonies as an Indigenous woman? In what ways might that be connected to the colonists' decision to costume themselves as Native Americans during the destruction of the tea?

View and zoom in on the political cartoon.

1. One aspect of the new acts ordered that more positions in colonial governments be appointed by the King (or, by people appointed by the King) rather than be elected by the colonists. Why would this have further upset the colonists and possibly led more colonists to support the Sons of Liberty?
2. The Administration of Justice Act called for British soldiers and officials who were charged with crimes while attempting to maintain order in the colonies to be sent to Great Britain for trial rather than being tried in the colony where the crime was committed. This meant they would be far less likely to be found guilty, or would face a milder punishment. Why did colonists give this act the nickname the “Murder Act?”

View Port Bill.

View Administration of Justice Act and MA Government Act printed on a broadside.

View excerpts of these Coercive Acts.

Materials:

• Boston Tea Party Hook Activities

Overview: Three different warm-up activities relate to different aspects of the Tea Party and specific activities suggested below to teach alongside the primary sources in this source set.

Materials:

• “Designing a Tea Set” Google Slides

Activity Overview: After reading the historical context essay and exploring the primary sources in this set, students demonstrate their understanding of the social, political, and economic factors contributing to the tea crisis by designing a tea set to commemorate the protest. Designs include images, symbols, and patterns, and can be done by hand or on the computer.

Hook:

• “Who is impacted?” warm-up activity
• exemplar Google slide

Prior knowledge:

• Historical Context essay
• Selection of sources in the “Destruction of the Tea” source set (teacher’s choice)

Materials:

• “Interested Parties in the Boston Tea Party” worksheet

Activity Overview: In this 2-part activity, students analyze the range of economic and political interests various groups had in the tea crisis, and the multiple perspectives of individual Bostonians to the Tea Party. After students have read the historical context and spent time analyzing and discussing the primary sources in this set, they will create a web diagram to show the range of economic and political interests different groups of people had in Boston’s tea crisis. Then, to analyze the multiple perspectives of individuals, students will read a series of quotes and contextual information about the historical figures who said them to better understand how a diverse array of people thought about the tea crisis.

Materials:

• John Rowe diary entry, 16 December 1773
• John Adams diary entry, 17 December 1773
• Diary Entry Analysis Worksheet

Activity Overview: Working independently or in small groups, students answer critical thinking questions about two diary entries on the Boston Tea Party, and then respond to a series of additional questions to compare the two documents.

Materials: 

• Marshfield townspeople condemn the destruction of the tea (excerpt)

            OR

• Marshfield townspeople condemn the destruction of the tea (full transcript)
• Letter to the Editor Worksheet

Activity Overview: Newspapers were partisan in the revolutionary era. The Massachusetts Gazette was a Loyalist newspaper and the Boston-Gazette and Country-Journal was a Patriot newspaper. In fact, the Boston-Gazette was published by Benjamin Edes, a member of the Sons of Liberty and organizer of the Boston Tea Party. A number of the protestors gathered at Edes’ house drinking a strong punch before heading to the ships anchored at Griffin’s Wharf.

In this creative writing activity, students will take on the perspective of either a Patriot or Loyalist, and write a letter to the editor to the Loyalist Massachusetts Gazette, in response to the article on the Marshfield townspeople’s condemnation of the destruction of the tea.

Extension: Students can browse newspapers from 1773 and 1774 in The Annotated Newspapers of Harbottle Dorr (masshist.org), which is a digital collection of Revolutionary Era newspapers, including the Loyalist Massachusetts Gazette and the Patriot Boston-Gazette. What similarities and differences do students notice between the two newspapers?

Materials:

• “Destruction of the Tea” source set (teacher chooses which sources to analyze with class)
• Standing Rock Sioux and Dakota Access Pipeline | Teacher Resource
• American Activism: From the Boston Tea Party to the Dakota Access Pipeline Worksheet

Activity Overview: Students consider the role of activism and protest throughout American history by comparing the 1773 Boston Tea Party to the 2015 Dakota Access Pipeline protests. First, as a whole class or in smaller groups, students define activism and protest. Then, students think critically about these terms as they connect to the Boston Tea Party and sources from the text set. Next, students read about the Standing Rock Sioux protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline (using resources from the National Museum of the American Indian) and consider how the #NODAPL protests connect to other, modern activism and protest in the United States. Finally, students will compare and contrast these two events and how they connect to American principles around the participatory role of citizens.

Context: Both the Boston Tea Party and #NODAPL protests focused on property owned by private companies (tea owned by the British East India Company and a pipeline owned by Energy Transfer Properties). The British government also had a vested interested in collecting revenue from the tea and the U.S. government is tasked with authorizing pipelines. Colonial protestors were angry over the concept of taxation without representation, whereas modern pipeline protestors argue oil spills harm the environment and health of their communities, and violate treaties between the United States and Indigenous nations. The Sons of Liberty – an all-white group of adult men – organized the Boston Tea Party, disguising their identities. Members of the Standing Rock Sioux –of all ages – and allies publicly organized the #NODAPL protests.

Materials:

• Excerpts of the Coercive Acts (Port Bill, Administration of Justice Act, MA Government Act)

• Jigsaw: Understanding the Coercive Acts Teacher Directions and Student Handout

Activity Overview: In groups of three, each group member becomes the expert for one of the Coercive Acts that Parliament issued in retaliation for the Boston Tea Party. Students read their assigned Act, meet with other classmates who have read the same Act to discuss the close reading questions, and then return to their groups to teach their group mates about their assigned Act. The worksheet has space for students to take notes on all three Acts.

Materials:

• Boston Tea Party Elementary Grades Source Set 
• Boston Tea Party Timeline (Google Slides)
• Boston Tea Party Damages (Google Slides)

Overview:
Although the Boston Tea Party was a single event, there was a long buildup that led to it and the entire colony of Massachusetts (along with the other 12 colonies) faced significant consequences as a result! (Note: In the 1770s, everyone referred to this event as “The Destruction of the Tea.” The term “tea party” did not come into play for more than 50 years after the protest!)

• The timeline gives a detailed account of the events leading up to the Tea Party; the act of protest on 16 December 1773; and, the results of the protest, including the first Coercive Acts Parliament issued to punish MA and the meeting of the First Continental Congress in Philadelphia.
• The source set includes essential questions, background teacher reading, primary sources and context, teacher directions for all of the activities and student handouts related to this set, and a list of picture books related to the Boston Tea Party – all aimed at grade 3-5 students. Teachers can choose which sources, activities, and books they want to use in their classrooms.
• The Boston Tea Party Damages slides focus on the consequences of the Boston Tea Party to help students understand how much damage the protestors did that night, how different people thought about and responded to the tea party, and summarizes the Coercive Acts the King and Parliament issued as punishment for the Tea Party. This slide deck is recommended to be used with the Multiple Perspectives Gallery Walk activity.

Materials:

• Boston Tea Party Close Reading and Sequencing Student Handout

Activity Overview: Students read an informational text to learn what happened at the protest known as the Boston Tea Party, and why the protest occurred. Then, students sequence 4 main events related to the Boston Tea Party, by writing or drawing pictures.

Materials:

• Boston Tea Party: An Eyewitness Account Handout
• 3-2-1 Handout
• Optional: Slides 6 and 7 in Tea Party Damages Google Slides

Activity Overview: Show students the image on Slide 7 of the Google slides, which is also at the top of the handout. Students analyze an image with a 3-2-1. Then, they read a quote from a 17-year-old witness to the Tea Party and discuss the ways in which the image (made many years after the protest in 1836) supports and/or differs from the first-person account.

Materials:

• Tea Party Crisis: Multiple Perspectives Google Slides
  • Simplified Language Google Slides
• Multiple Perspectives on the Tea Crisis Worksheet
  • If not using the Slides: Multiple Perspectives on the Tea Crisis with quotes worksheet
• Optional: Tea Party Damages Google Slides

Activity Overview: Teachers print out and place a selection of the posters (Multiple Perspectives slides 3-11)  around the classroom and students do a Gallery Walk where they read quotes from a variety of people who wrote about the Boston Tea Party at the time it happened. (If unable to print out the posters, use the worksheet that has quotes on it and students can work in small groups without moving around the classroom.) For each poster, they rank (on a scale of 1-10) each person’s opinion: 1 = a Loyalist who totally opposed the Tea Party and 10 = a Patriot who fully supported the Tea Party. Then, students use the context about and quote from each person to cite two pieces of evidence in support of their ranking.

Students can work independently or in small groups. Teachers may also choose to have students put their rankings on a sticky note at each poster so that students can see how their peers are ranking. An answer key / additional information for each person can be found on the Google Slides #12-14.

The Tea Party Damages google slides are a helpful frame for this activity, showing students tan eyewitness account of the protest, the extent of property damage the protest caused, and also briefly explain the Coercive Acts that Parliament issued as punishment for the Tea Party.

Teaching Strategy: Read more about facilitating a Gallery Walk.

Materials:

• Summarizing and Finding the Main Idea Worksheet
• Optional: The Letters of Hannah Winthrop and Mercy Otis Warren

Activity Overview: In the 1770s, friends communicated over distances by writing letters to one another, but today we are able to text our friends over the phone. In this activity, students bridge forms of communication, past and present! Students read quotes from letters between two female patriots between the fall of 1773 and the summer of 1774, in which the two women discuss the Tea Crisis and its consequences. Students put each quote into their own words, and then choose two emojis they would use today to indicate how the letter writer’s friend might have responded to the original quote.

Context: Mercy Otis Warren (a poet, playwright, and historian of the Revolutionary Era) and Hannah Winthrop were both married to men involved in the patriot cause, and in their letters they talk about their families, politics, and the role of women as political actors. Both women shared strong views in favor of the Boston Tea Party, and other protests against what they saw as the tyranny of the British government, and its unjust “taxation without representation.” The quotes from the letters begin with news of the tea as it set sail from London to Boston, include the Tea Party protest, and then discuss the announcement of the Coercive Acts, and growing militarization in Boston and unified action amongst the colonies in response to the Coercive Acts.

Skills Standards

• Demonstrate civic knowledge, skills, and dispositions.
• Organize information and data from multiple primary and secondary sources.
• Analyze the purpose and point of view of each source.
• Evaluate the credibility, accuracy, and relevance of each.
• Argue or explain conclusions, using valid reasoning and evidence.

Content Standards

Grade 3. Topic 6, Massachusetts in the 18th century through the American Revolution

Grade 5. Topic 1, Origins of the Revolution and the Constitution

USH1. Unit 1, Topic 1: Origins of the Revolution and the Constitution

ELA Core Reading Anchor Standards

• Read closely to determine what a text states explicitly and to make logical inferences from it; cite specific textual evidence when writing or speaking to support conclusions drawn from a text
• Integrate and evaluate content presented in diverse media and formats, including visually and quantitatively, as well as in words
• Analyze how two or more texts address similar themes or topics in order to build knowledge or to compare the approaches the authors take.

Grades 3-5

• D2.His.4.3-5. Explain why individuals and groups during the same historical period differed in their perspectives
• D2.His.10.3-5. Compare information provided by different historical sources about the past.
• D2.His.14.3-5. Explain probable causes and effects of events and developments.

Grades 9-12

• D2.His.1. 9-12. Evaluate how historical events and developments were shaped by unique circumstances of time and place as well as broader historical contexts.
• D2.His.4. 9-12. Analyze complex and interacting factors that influenced the perspectives of people during different historical eras.
• D2.His.5.9-12. Analyze how historical contexts shaped and continue to shape people’s perspectives.
• D2.His.11. 9-12. Critique the usefulness of historical sources for a specific historical inquiry based on their maker, date, place of origin, intended audience, and purpose.
• D2.His.14. 9-12. Analyze multiple and complex causes and effects of events in the past.