Friday, December 27, 2013

December 27th 1773


Background

Both the Boston Tea Party and the Philadelphia incident were the result of Americans being upset about Great Britain's decision to tax the American colonies despite a lack of representation in Parliament. The tax on tea particularly angered the colonists, so they boycotted English tea for several years, during which time merchants in several colonial cities resorted to smuggling tea from The Netherlands. It was generally known that Philadelphia merchants were greater smugglers of tea than their Boston counterparts.
As a result, the East India Company appealed for financial relief to the British government, which passed the Tea Act on May 10, 1773. This Act of Parliament allowed the East India Company to sell tea to the colonies directly and without "payment of any customs or duties whatsoever" in England, instead paying the much lower American duty. The resulting tax break allowed East India to sell tea for half the old price and cheaper than the price of tea in Great Britain, enabling the firm to undercut prices offered by colonial merchants and smugglers.
The Tea Act infuriated colonials precisely because it was designed to lower the price of tea without officially repealing the tea tax of the Revenue Act of 1767. And colonial leaders thought the British were trying to use cheap tea to "overcome all the patriotism of an American," in the words of Benjamin Franklin.

Prelude

Word was received in North America by September, 1773, that East India Company tea shipments were on their way. Philadelphians held a town meeting on October 16 at the Pennsylvania State House (now known as Independence Hall).[2] This meeting was organized by Dr. Benjamin Rush, Colonel William Bradford, Thomas Mifflin, Dr. Thomas Cadwalader, and other local leaders and members of the Philadelphia Sons of Liberty. They adopted eight resolutions, one of which stated: "That the duty imposed by Parliament upon tea landed in America is a tax on the Americans, or levying contributions on them without their consent." The most important one read:
That the resolution lately entered into by the East India Company, to send out their tea to America subject to the payment of duties on its being landed here, is an open attempt to enforce the ministerial plan, and a violent attack upon the liberties of America.
Printed in the Pennsylvania Gazette, these declarations comprised the first public protest against the importation of taxed tea from England.
In Boston three weeks later, a town meeting at Faneuil Hall declared "That the sense of this town cannot be better expressed than in the words of certain judicious resolves, lately entered into by our worthy brethren, the citizens of Philadelphia." Indeed, Bostonians adopted the same resolutions that Philadelphians had promulgated earlier. The Boston Tea Party followed just a few weeks later, on December 16, 1773.

Event

On December 25, the British tea ship Polly sailed up the Delaware River and reached Chester, Pennsylvania. Commanded by one Captain Ayres, the ship carried 697 chests of tea consigned to the Philadelphia Quaker firm of James & Drinker. Several Philadelphia gentlemen proceeded to intercept the Polly and escorted Ayres to the city. Two days later, there was a mass meeting of 8,000 Philadelphians in the State House yard to address the situation. This was the largest crowd assembled in the American colonies up to that point. A number of resolutions were adopted, the first one being "that the tea... shall not be landed." It was further determined that the tea should be refused and that the vessel should make its way down the Delaware River and out of the Delaware Bay as soon as possible.
Captain Ayres was probably influenced by a broadside issued by the self-constituted "Committee for Tarring and Feathering" that plainly warned him of his fate should he attempt to unload his ship's cargo. Dated November 27, the handbill read, in part:
You are sent out on a diabolical Service; and if you are so foolish and obstinate as to complete your Voyage, by bringing your Ship to Anchor in this Port, you may run such a Gauntlet as will induce you, in your last Moments, most heartily to curse those who have made you the Dupe of their Avarice and Ambition. What think you, Captain, of a Halter around your Neck—ten Gallons of liquid Tar decanted on your Pate—with the Feathers of a dozen wild Geese laid over that to enliven your Appearance? Only think seriously of this—and fly to the Place from whence you came—fly without Hesitation—without the Formality of a Protest—and above all, Captain Ayres, let us advise you to fly without the wild Geese Feathers.
The flyer also warned river pilots that they would receive the same treatment if they tried to bring in the Polly. (Another such broadside specifically warning river pilots was later issued on December 7.) Consignees of the tea would also suffer dire consequences if they accepted shipment. Captain Ayres was ushered to the Arch Street Wharf and from there returned to his ship. He then refitted the Polly with food and water and sailed it back to Britain, still laden with its cargo of tea.
Perhaps due to the Quaker influence in Philadelphia, the "Philadelphia Tea Party" was relatively nonviolent and did not cause loss to any innocent merchants, since no tea was destroyed. In fact, local merchants may have even helped Captain Ayres with his expenses in returning to England.

Influence

Restrained as it was compared to Boston's, the Philadelphia Tea Party was one of the incidents that led to the calling of the Continental Congress at Carpenters' Hall in Philadelphia the following September. Furthermore, in 1809, Dr. Benjamin Rush wrote to John Adams:
I once heard you say [that] the active business of the American Revolution began in Philadelphia in the act of her citizens in sending back the tea ship, and that Massachusetts would have received her portion of the tea had not our example encouraged her to expect union and support in destroying it... The flame kindled on that day [October 16, 1773] soon extended to Boston and gradually spread throughout the whole continent. It was the first throe of that convulsion which delivered Great Britain of the United States.
Both Pennsylvania and Philadelphia were regarded as having been far more conservative before and during the Revolutionary War than the New England colonies and most of the Southern colonies—and this historic reputation persists to this day. But the Philadelphia Tea Party highlights that the radicals of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania played a much more active role in the American Revolution than generally acknowledged.

wiki

13 comments:

  1. "Perhaps due to the Quaker influence in Philadelphia, the "Philadelphia Tea Party" was relatively nonviolent and did not cause loss to any innocent merchants, since no tea was destroyed. In fact, local merchants may have even helped Captain Ayres with his expenses in returning to England."

    1773-2009 Roots of our present day Tea Party. Non violent revolutionary's.

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  2. And your point? America didn't even exist as an independent nation in 1773. And as for taxation without representation, it does not exist today. Because your favorite conservative tea partier doesn't hold a seat in the house or senate or isn't the President doesn't mean you are unrepresented. Whomever your current representatives are, they are seated by an election of the people as was determined by the constitution. Grin and bear it like everyone else.

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  3. As for Pennsylvania in general and Philly specifically, Philly is one of America's democratic strongholds and has been for at least 2 decades if not longer. Pennsylvania has gone democratic in every election since 1992. The Pennsylvania republican party is, are you ready for it?, Centrist just like New Jersey's. Someday you guys will get it.

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    1. As a short retort Rick... Show me a Democratic centrist and I will show you a hypocrite. So me a republican centrist and I will show you a republican who as been subverted by the notion that the state knows best or knows where the votes are to keep him/her in Washington.

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  4. Now here we possibly have a genuinely worthwhile topic for consideration. Well done to William for providing the topic and to Rick for his initial response. For those of us foreigners with a genuine interest in your history, we can sit back and watch the debate grow. My only qualification to the above is to check the facts and to ascertain if this post is a lift from previously published material. I wish also to see if Samuel Adams can be linked to this story.

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  5. Ok King you got it. Samuel Adams was one of the leading proponents in the colonies of Taxation without representation. Did he organized or participate in the Boston Tea Party? Probably not in fact he was holding a meeting on that evening and as the crowd began to disperse he tried to hold them there as he was not finished speaking. Some say that in his words there was a signal to pour the tea into the harbor although as we find more and more out about those times through research and discoveries of unknown documents it is becoming more doubtful that he signaled anything in his talk. Samuel Adams was a rabble rouser and just his words inflaming the population of Boston may have been the difference between the violence of the Boston Tea Party and the more subdued way that the Philadelphians handled the tea imports in their harbor.

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  6. Also king I will assure you my post is entirely original.

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  7. rick0427
    My thanks but my interest in the involvement of Samuel Adams is in ascertaining if he was influential in the Philadelphia tea Party? A far less well known event outside the shores of the US, and probably the area of Philadelphia, Boston etc. Was the old agitator involved in this? It almost seems too quiet for him but the handbill to Ayres has a ring of Adamsonian prose to it.

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    1. Famous colonial Pennsylvanians[edit]

      Benjamin Franklin moved to Philadelphia at age 17 in 1723; during his later years he was Pennsylvania's most famous citizen. Among his accomplishments was founding in 1751 The Academy and College of Philadelphia, the predecessor to the private University of Pennsylvania. Franklin was also a strong advocate for a state militia, creating his own extra-legal militia when the state assembly would not during King George's War.[3]
      Thomas McKean was born in New London, Pennsylvania. He was an officer in the Continental Army during the American Revolution, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, the second President of the U.S. Congress under the Articles of Confederation, Acting President of Delaware, and Chief Justice and Governor of Pennsylvania.
      Gouverneur Morris, one of the leading minds of the American Revolution, lived in New York City during most of the colonial period, but moved to Philadelphia to work as a lawyer and merchant during the Revolution.
      Robert Morris, moved to Philadelphia around 1749 at about age 14. He was known as the Financier of the Revolution, because of his role in securing financial assistance for the American Colonial side in the Revolutionary War. In 1921, Robert Morris University was founded and named after him.
      Thomas Paine emigrated to Philadelphia in 1774 at Benjamin Franklin's urging. His tract, Common Sense, published in 1776, was arguably the most famous and influential argument for the Revolution. He was also the first to publicly champion the phrase "United States of America."
      William Penn, the colony's founder and son of naval Admiral Sir William Penn
      Arthur St. Clair moved to Ligonier Valley, Pennsylvania in 1764. He served as a judge in colonial Pennsylvania, a general in the Continental Army, and a President under the Articles of Confederation.
      James Wilson moved to Philadelphia in 1765 and became a lawyer; he signed the Declaration of Independence and wrote or worked on many of the most difficult compromises in the U.S. Constitution, including the Three-Fifths Compromise, which defined slaves as three-fifths of a person for purposes of census-taking, number of members to be elected to U. S. House of Representatives, and government appropriations.
      Peggy Shippen, daughter of prominent Philadelphia merchant Edward Shippen and wife of Benedict Arnold.
      See also[edit]

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    2. By the 1750s, Philadelphia had surpassed Boston to become the largest city and busiest port in British America, and second in the British Empire, behind London.[6][7] During the American Revolution, Philadelphia played an instrumental role as a meeting place for the Founding Fathers of the United States, who signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and the Constitution in 1787. Philadelphia was one of the nation's capitals during the Revolutionary War, and the city served as the temporary U.S. capital while Washington, D.C., was under construction.

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  8. No Samuel Adams was not involved in the Philly tea party.

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  9. LOL! You think $50 million from a RINO support group is going to make Tea Party supporters sit at home? If it was that easy, the Koch brothers would have swept Dems under the rug a long time ago.

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  10. The founders gave us the concept of divided government. We should use it as a long term tool to tame both big spending sides.

    Selectively voting for those who share our ideals. Sitting on our hands for the Boehner and McConnell types.

    1773-2009

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