| Subject Areas |
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History and Social Studies
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U.S. History - Colonial America and the New Nation |
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| Time Required |
| | Three or four 45-minute classes, assuming extensive review of the
Boston Tea Party
is unnecessary.
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| Skills |
| | Understanding cause and effect
Interpreting archival documents
Collaboration |
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| Additional Data |
| | Date Created: 06/24/02 |
| |
| Date Posted |
| | 6/24/2002 |
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Revolutionary Tea Parties and the Reasons for Revolution
IntroductionBostonian's SONS keep up
your Courage good, And sink all Tyrants in their GUILTY BLOOD.
—From
the broadside Tea
destroyed by Indians (1773) "Ironically, the Tea Act had nothing to
do with the American colonies but everything to do with rescuing the East India
Company from bankruptcy: the result of the legislation was the loss of the American
colonies."
—From
Marjie Bloy
The Boston Tea Party
was the inspiration for a number of similar events that occurred throughout the
American colonies. Some colonists were very angry. One broadside poem describing
the original tea party ended with the charge that all good sons of Boston should
"sink all Tyrants in their GUILTY BLOOD!" Why all this rebellious fervor about
tea? Did Britain's Tea Act and the resulting controversy in the colonies lead
to the American Revolution? Note: For
activities specifically related to events surrounding the Boston Tea Party, see
the complementary EDSITEment lesson, The
Boston Tea Party: Costume Optional? Guiding Question:Why
did some colonists react so intensely to the Tea Act? Did the Tea Act lead to
the American Revolution? Learning ObjectivesAfter
completing the lessons in this unit, students will be able to: - List
some tea party protests other than the Boston Tea Party.
- State some possible
reasons behind the tea protests.
- Explain the connection between the Boston
Tea Party, other tea parties, and events that preceded and followed them.
Preparing
to Teach this Lesson- Review the lesson plan. Locate and bookmark suggested
materials and other useful websites. Download and print out selected documents
and duplicate copies as necessary for student viewing.
- This lesson works
best if students are already familiar with the Boston Tea Party, which is covered
in The Boston
Tea Party: Costume Optional?. If the Boston Tea Party is a new concept for
students, you can select some of the first-hand accounts used in the other lesson
plan, and assign the Boston Tea Party to one student group in Part 2, below. If your class has completed The Boston Tea Party: Costume Optional?,
proceed directly to Part 2.
- In Part
4, below, one student group will look at the response of the Continental Congress
to Lord North's Conciliatory Proposals, described here in a recent journal article:
Lord North's conciliatory proposal was the linchpin of the government's
attempt to resolve the conflict during the final peacetime months. This proposal
was presented to the House of Commons on February 20, shortly after the Commons
had agreed to an address to the crown describing Massachusetts as in a state of
rebellion. North's bill provided that any colony that would make a contribution
to the common defense of the empire and support its own government (subject to
the approval of king and Parliament) would not be taxed for as long as it continued
its contribution. The amount contributed by the colony for defense would be subject
to the disposal of Parliament. In presenting his proposal, North made very clear
that the government would not deal directly with the congress; responses would
have to come from the colonial assemblies. By the end of March, the conciliatory
bill had passed, together with the New England Restraining Act.
The timing
of North's proposal, offered as it was in the midst of further punitive measures
and at a juncture when government had withdrawn from any idea of an initiative
toward provincial leaders in congress, has led many commentators, then and now,
to question its sincerity. North's motives in making his offer have been variously
interpreted. At best, his proposal has been seen as an effort to mollify British
public opinion or as an inadequate, last-ditch effort to detach moderate elements
in the colonies from the widening rebellion. At worst, it has been seen as a cynical
attempt to divide the colonies in order to augment a general strategy of coercion.
—Flavell, Julie M. "Government
Interception of Letters from America and the Quest for Colonial Opinion in 1775."
The William and Mary Quarterly. 58.2 (2001): 57 pars. 31 May 2002.
Suggested
Activities 1 If
your class did not complete The
Boston Tea Party: Costume Optional?, and students are unfamiliar with the
Boston Tea Party, conduct a brief review of the events surrounding the historical
incident. If students are familiar with the events, make a list of what they already
know. If desired, consult An Outline of American History (1994), Chapter
Three: Boston "Tea Party", on From
Revolution to Reconstruction, a link from the EDSITEment-reviewed website
History Matters. (NOTE: The section
on the Tea Party begins on page 6 and continues through Page 8. Click on "Next
Page" or "Previous Page" to navigate as desired.)
2
Tell students that a number of colonial cities,
including New York, Charlestown, Md., and Greenwich, N.J., staged "tea parties"
as protests in the months preceding the American Revolution. In what ways were
these protests similar to the Boston Tea Party? In what ways were they different?
Students will try to answer these questions in this lesson. Break the class into
six groups and assign each group one of the three locations (two groups for each
location). Download, copy, and distribute to each group a
Venn Diagram. Using the documents listed
below, available through EDSITEment resources, students should attempt to discover
(1) what events preceded the protest, (2) how the protest was conducted, and (3)
what reasons for the protest, if any, were given. - New York
Tea Party
- From
Independence and its Enemies in New York,, an exhibit of the New
York Historical Society, a link from American
Memory:
- To
the Public, the Sense of The City, a broadside announcing the celebration
to be held upon the departure of one of the detested tea ships. Accompanying the
digitized image of the original broadside is a brief explanation of the events
surrounding the New York Tea Party.
- A
letter, from Tom Bowline, to his worthy messmates, the renowned Sons of Neptune,
belonging to the Port of New-York, a digitized copy of an earlier broadside calling
for unity among sailors in protesting tea accompanied by a brief explanation.
A full-text,
modern typeset version of the broadside is available on American
Memory.
- The broadside The
long expected tea ship has arrived, written days before the New York Tea party.
A
full-text, modern typeset version, of the broadside is available on American
Memory.
- Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919). New York. 1906:
IX. The Unrest Before the Revolution.
1764-1774, available via a link from Internet
Public Library. To locate the relevant passage, use the "Find" option under
"Edit" in the browser to search for "Tea Act." This brief secondary account is
of interest because the author was President of the United States at the time
of its publication and because Roosevelt credits the protests largely to the work
of radicals who "resisted simply to test the principle of taxation."
- Greenwich,
N.J., Tea Party
- Chestertown/Annapolis, Md., Tea Party
If
desired, use the Venn Diagram
as a model for constructing on the blackboard a large, composite diagram with
attributes every protest had in common in the intersection. Use the diagram to
compare the protests. As a class, discuss
why the Boston Tea Party inspired so many similar protests. Why were the colonists
so incensed about something as simple as tea, or was there more to the matter?
3 Share
with the class the information related to the Tea Act from A Survey of American
History (Alan Brinkley, et al. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1991.), available at Boston
Tea Party on From
Revolution to Reconstruction, a link from the EDSITEment resource History
Matters. Share also the information (including the cartoon) related to the
Boston Tea Party available at The
Boston Tea Party on
Liberty!, another link from History
Matters. Download, copy, and distribute
the handout Revolutionary
Tea Parties: Why Was Everyone So Angry?, available here as a PDF document.
Based on students' knowledge of the Boston Tea Party and their findings about
the other tea parties, students should complete the ratings and then share their
beliefs about the foremost reasons that many colonists became so passionate about
the tax on tea. 4
The tax on tea was the last remaining tax, and
as such, became symbolic of all attempts at taxing the colonists and, eventually,
of all of their grievances. Assign one of
the following documents related to the Boston Tea Party and taxation to each student
group (two groups can have the same document). Each group should scan the sections
of the document specified below, looking for any expression of reasons for objections
to British taxes. Download, copy, and distribute to the groups the chart Taxation
and Related Issues, available here as a PDF document. Students should use
this to note and document the issues in the specified selections; no document
is likely to address all the issues. Some documents will stress one or two issues,
while others will present a long list. After
reviewing these documents, would students now change their opinion of the most
significant reasons behind the protests? 5
Review the events on the
timeline America During the Age of Revolution, 1764-1775, on the EDSITEment-reviewed
website American
Memory, from 1773 to the battles of Lexington and Concord, with special focus
on the Coercive Acts. Do students agree that "the result of the legislation [the
Tea Act] was the loss of the American colonies?" (Marjie
Bloy, on the EDSITEment resource Victorian
Web)? Based on their knowledge of events,
students should now be able to create a cause-and-effect ladder, starting from
the initial passage of taxes on tea and other goods and ending with the American
Revolution. You can download a Sample
Cause-and-Effect Ladder. Also available is a version of the cause-and-effect
ladder as a Fill-in-the-Blanks
Exercise. Extending the Lesson- Students interested
in learning more about the events leading up to the Boston Tea Party can start
with these EDSITEment resources:
- Students can analyze political cartoons from the
years of protest that preceded the Revolutionary War, such as these from the Tax
History Project, a link from the EDSITEment-reviewed website History
Matters. If desired, use the Cartoon
Analysis Form available on the EDSITEment resource Digital
Classroom.
- Students can read the
following poems about the Boston Tea Party, written during the 19th century. How
accurate are the accounts? What attitudes about our nation's formative years do
they express?
- Students
can also read more by and about Ralph Waldo Emerson, who coined the phrase "The
shot heard 'round the world," and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. A
Biography of Emerson and Biography
of Holmes are available on From Revolution
to Reconstruction, a link from the EDSITEment resource History
Matters.
- The Boston Tea Party was a grand example of street theater
protest, something we often associate now with the 1960s. For more about that
era of protest, look at the online exhibit The
Psychedelic Sixties: Literary Tradition and Social Change from the Special
Collections Department of the University of Virginia Library, available through
a link from the EDSITEment-reviewed website Center
for the Liberal Arts. Students can expand their knowledge of the protest movements
of the sixties by interviewing eyewitnesses. They can also conduct a poll about
attitudes today toward those protests of the past. Students can conclude their
study by making comparisons between the two eras of protests.
- Consider
using two related EDSITEment lessons-Colonial Broadsides and the American Revolution
and Colonial Broadsides: A Student-Created Play.
Selected
EDSITEment Websites- American
Memory
- A
letter, from Tom Bowline, to his worthy messmates, the renowned Sons of Neptune,
belonging to the Port of New-York
- America
During the Age of Revolution, 1764-1775
- Annapolis
- Broadside:
Boston, December 1, 1773
- Broadside:
Boston, December 20, on Tuesday last
- Broadside:
Tea Destroyed by Indians
- The
long expected tea ship has arrived
- America's
Library
- Chestertown
Tea Party Festival: A Local Legacy
- Chestertown
Tea Party Festival (photo)
- "A
Ballad of the Boston Tea-Party" by Oliver Wendell Holmes
- The
Library of Congress
- Chestertown
Tea Party Festival
- The
New York Historical Society
- Independence
and its Enemies in New York
- A
letter, from Tom Bowline, to his worthy messmates, the renowned Sons of Neptune,
belonging to the Port of New-York
- The
long expected tea ship has arrived
- To
the Public, the Sense of The City
- The
American President
- The
American Verse Project
- The
Avalon Project at the Yale School of Law
- Center
for the Liberal Arts
- Digital
Classroom
- History
Matters
- Internet
Public Library
- Links
to the Past
- Victorian
Web
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