Tea Party

Examples of Tea Party in the following topics:

• Tax Protests

  • The Boston Tea Party of 1773, the most popular example, dumped British tea into Boston Harbor because it contained a hidden tax Americans refused to pay.
  • The Parliament attempted a series of taxes and punishments which met more and more resistance, namely the First Quartering Act (1765), the Declaratory Act (1766), the Townshend Revenue Act (1767), and the Tea Act (1773).
  • In response to the Boston Tea Party Parliament passed the Intolerable Acts: the Second Quartering Act (1774), the Quebec Act (1774), the Massachusetts Government Act (1774), the Administration of Justice Act (1774), the Boston Port Act (1774), and the Prohibitory Act (1775).
  • During the Boston Tea Party of 1773, Americans dumped British tea into Boston Harbor in protest of a hidden tax.

• The Boston Tea Party

  • In response to the British Tea Act of 1773, the Sons of Liberty took action in what would later be known as the Boston Tea Party.
  • The Boston Tea Party was the culmination of a resistance movement throughout British America against the Tea Act, which had been passed by the British Parliament in 1773.
  • Whether or not Samuel Adams helped plan the Boston Tea Party is disputed, but he immediately worked to publicize and defend it.
  • He argued that the Tea Party was not the act of a lawless mob, but was instead a principled protest and the only remaining option the people had to defend their constitutional rights.
  • In Britain, this act united all parties against the colonies.

• The Calm Before the Storm

  • The Tea Act of 1773, and the subsequent Boston Tea Party, arose from two issues confronting the British Empire in 1775: first, the financial problems of the British East India Company, and second, an ongoing dispute about the extent of Parliament's authority, if any, over the British American colonies without seating any elected representation.
  • Parliament attempted to resolve these issues through the Tea Act, which in turn set the stage for the Boston Tea Party and eventually the American Revolution.
  • The East India Company did not export tea to the colonies; by law, the company was required to sell its tea wholesale at auctions in England.
  • Parliament laid additional taxes on tea sold for consumption in Britain.
  • The Tea Act retained the three pence Townshend duty on tea imported to the colonies.

• Divided Government

  • It also helped spawn the Tea Party, a conservative movement that emerged from the right wing of the Republican Party and pulled the traditional conservative base further to the right.
  • The Tea Party, which was strongly opposed to abortion, gun control, and immigration, focused primarily on limiting government spending and the size of the federal government.
  • The tensions that would ultimately produce the 2013 shutdown began to take shape after Republicans, strengthened by the emergence of the Tea Party, won back a majority of the seats in the House of Representatives from the Democrats in 2010.
  • Even at that time, some conservative activists and Tea Party-affiliated politicians were already calling on congressional Republicans to be willing to shut down the government in order to force congressional Democrats and the President to agree to deep cuts in spending and the repeal of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (commonly known as "Obamacare"), which had been signed into law only a few months earlier.
  • The caucus is sympathetic to the Tea Party movement.

• The Patriots

  • They are best known for initiating the Boston Tea Party in 1773.
  • The Sons of Liberty were the earliest Patriots and incited the Boston Tea Party.

• Women in the Revolution

  • The tea boycott, for example, was a relatively mild way for a woman to identify herself and her household as part of the patriot war effort.
  • While the Boston Tea Party of 1773 is the most widely recognized manifestation of this boycott, it is important to note that for years previous to that explosive action, as a political statement, patriot women had refused to consume the very same British product.
  • The Edenton Tea Party represented one of the first coordinated and publicized political actions by women in the colonies.
  • A British cartoon satirizing the Edenton Tea Party participants.
  • The Edenton Tea Party was a women-led boycott of British products.

• Nonconsumption and the Daughters of Liberty

  • Proving their commitment to "the cause of liberty and industry" they openly opposed the Tea Act.
  • They experimented to find substitutes for taxed goods such as tea and sugar.
  • Discoveries like boiled basil leaves to make a tea-like drink, referred to as Liberty Tea, helped lift spirits and also allowed Colonials to keep traditions alive without the use of British taxed tea .
  • These duties taxed items that were frequently imported to the colonies from Britain, including tea, paint, paper, and glass.
  • These import duties were birthed from the Intolerable Acts that Britain passed in the wake of the Boston Tea Party the previous year, which protested high taxes against tea and other products.

• The Coercive Acts

  • Four of the acts were issued in direct response to the Boston Tea Party of December 1773.
  • The first of the acts passed in response to the Boston Tea Party was the Boston Port Act.
  • This law closed the port of Boston until the East India Company had been repaid for the destroyed tea and the king was satisfied that order had been restored.
  • Colonists objected that the Port Act punished all of Boston rather than just the individuals who had destroyed the tea.

• Conclusion: The Consequences of the British Parliamentary Acts

  • The Tea Act of 1773 triggered a reaction with far more significant consequences than either the 1765 Stamp Act or the 1767 Townshend Acts.
  • They understood that Parliament had again asserted its right to impose taxes without representation, and they feared the Tea Act was designed to seduce them into conceding this important principle by lowering the price of tea to the point that colonists might be satisfied.
  • They also deeply resented the East India Company’s monopoly on the sale of tea in the American colonies; this resentment sprang from the knowledge that some members of Parliament had invested heavily in the company.
  • The colonial rejection of the Tea Act culminated in an act of resistance known as the Boston Tea Party, in which a group of colonists from the Sons of Liberty threw $1 million (in today's dollars) worth of British tea into the Boston Harbor that was meant to be sold in the colonies.

• Conclusion: Populism Resurgent

  • Various third party and independent presidential candidates will also run in the election.
  • Two third party candidates have obtained enough ballot access to mathematically have a chance of winning the presidency and have been featured in major national polls: the Libertarian Party nominee, former Governor of New Mexico Gary Johnson, and the Green Party presumptive nominee Jill Stein.
  • Modern U.S. politics has seen a rise in populism in recent years in both the Democratic and Republican parties, as well as other political parties.
  • In the 1990s and 2000s, the presidential campaigns of third-party billionaire Ross Perot, Green Party and Independent Ralph Nader, and Democrat John Edwards have been identified by the media as running populist campaigns.
  • From its beginnings in early 2009, the Tea Party movement has used populist rhetoric, particularly in areas and states where Democrats are in power, for example, through its name (referencing the Boston Tea Party that led up to the American Revolution), large outdoor rallies, and use of patriotic slogans and symbols (such as the 'Don't Tread on Me' Gadsden Flag).