The Boston Tea Party In 1773, the East India Company was dying. The American and Dutch smuggling business were slowly killing the company. The British had to do something fast, before the company collapsed entirely. This was known as the Tea Act of 1773. The Tea Act was basically a government bailout that reduced that amount of taxes the Company had to pay, thus in theory saving the company. This was a major blow to the American and Dutch smugglers, who depended on the high prices of the East India Company to sell their smuggled tea and make their living. Therefore, in protest, hundreds of Boston citizens boarded the ships Eleanor, the Beaver and the Dartmouth on December 16, 1773, and dumped 45 tons of tea into Boston Harbor. This event was later known 50 years later as the Boston Tea Party. …show more content…
To this day, we still don’t know many of the names of the protesters. However, we do know that David Kinnigon was the last known survivor to have been photographed. He lived for 115 years. During the actual event, all but one of the participants wore disguises in an attempt to pass off as Mohawk Indians. The one participant that was not wearing a disguise was a young man named Thomas Young. He was later singled out by the british and beaten nearly to death. Shortly afterwards, George Washington condemned the actions of the protesters, saying that the hundreds of thousands of dollars of tea dumped during the protests needed to be repaid to the British immediately. Several of the richer families of Boston attempted to repay the debt of what today is worth over one million dollars, but all offers were denied by the British