Evening star., 1938-12-16
Boston Tea Pariy's
165th Anniversary
Observed Today
Act of Pointed indians
Preeipitoted War
With Great Britoin
By the Associated Press.

By the Associated Press.
BOSTON, Dec. 16.-A party OF
painted Indians" dumped 342
chests of tea into Boston Harbor
165 years ago tonight, thereby start
ing a ruckus with world wide roper
cussions.
The late Sir Thomas Upton once
said the tea probably wasn't very
good quality, anyway, but the mere
process of tossing those chests of
tea into the briny made December
is, 1773, a date for all school chill
dren to remember on examination
day.
The evidence indicates pretty
strongly that the Boston Tea
Party" was more than just rash,
impetuous act by hasty patriots.
Thoughtful historians feel that
the Colonists staged the party as
a carefully considered act of ag-
gression to symbolic their resent
ment of Englands continued affir-
nation Of the right to tax American
Colonies without representation.
The stamp taxes of 1765 aroused
such furor in the new country
that they were repealed in 1855,
only to be followed a year later by
the cordially hated Townshend Acts.
Drew Fire Of Colonists.
Those. too. drew the fire of the
free-spirited Colonists and were re-
pealed, with the exception of a s.
pence-per-pound levy on tea. re-
tained as gesture to indicate Eng
lands affirmation of belief in the
principle of taxation without rep
resentations'
But Colonists refused to drink the
taxed tea, Harvard students re-
solved Ito use no more of that per-
nicious herb" and Dutch smugglers
brought in boatload after boatload
The East India Co. hated to watch
all this good export business trickle
away and won Parliament's permis-
sion to haul the tea in at a price
which was in effect duty-free.
This step enraged the Bostonians,
but in November and December of
1773, three shiploadS of tea sidled
into the harbor and lay at anchor
waiting for some one to take off the
cargo.
Meetings were held and resolu-
tions passed commanding the ship
captains to take the tea back to
England. The captains refused and
on the night of December 16 a
meeting was held in Old South |
Meeting House in final attempt to
iron out the trouble.
The efforts collapsed and John
Rowe, a leader of the day, shouted:
who knows how tea will mix with
salt water?" The galleries answered
with roar and chanted Boston
Harbor's teapot for tonight"
Outside, band of more than 100
Bostonians, garbed as Indians,
whooped in the street and the throng
took up the cry: ITO Griffin's Wharf,
to Griff1n's Wharf"
AS hundreds of persons watched,
the Indians" went in leisurely fash
ion from ship to ship, cracking the
342 tea chests open with tomahawks
and dumping the contents into the
sea. The procedure required about |
three hours.
England took the affair with bad |
grace and one member of Parlia-
ment declared: They ought to have
their town knocked about their ears
and destroyed.
Accordingly, Parliament closed the
Port of Boston, the other Colonies
came to the rescue of the beleaguered
city and the series of events that led
up to Revolutionary War had begun.
The names of 113 men have come
down as participants in the party,
including Paul Revere and an early
Coolidge. The last of them to die
was David Kennison, in Chicago, on
February "a, 1852
A bronze tablet on the harbor's
edge, commemorating the party,
bears these words:
mo! Ne'er was mingled such
draught in palace, hall or arbor
"As freemen brewed and tyrants
quaffed that night in Boston Har-
bor."