The Boston Tea Party - A Myth that Haunts Us Still
All nations and religions have a myth of creation. Central to the creation myth of the United States is the Boston Tea Party. As with all such myths, this one is mostly theatre. Like many, this one was consciously molded from its inception. More than most, it haunts our nation now.
The myth stands as a bulwark of the harsh anti-tax anti-government attitude of the conservative political right and the Republican Party. It is a major cause of the massive deficits and growing federal debt in the United States. Cutting taxes (increasing the deficit and the federal debt) has become more important to the conservative right than managing the economy, funding necessary programs, or pursuing any of the fundamental societal functions of government. The tea party, in short, sits at the foundation of federal disfunction in the United States.
The Boston Tea Party was exceedingly well planned and orchestrated – perhaps a bit too much so to be considered a spontaneous reaction to taxation. Theatrically, at least, it was about the tea tax. In reality, it had little to do with taxes. It had to do with a small cadre of Bostonians amplifying a news cycle and utilizing the resulting hysteria to take advantage of the rest.
In fact, the Tea Act of 1773 lowered the taxes imposed on American tea consumption by removing export duties from England and allowing direct importation by the British East India Company. The intent of the act was to cheapen tea legally imported by the British East India Company and make it competitively priced with smuggled Dutch tea. The only tax that remained on Boston tea was a reduced Townsend Duty.
Overall, the Tea Act lowered tea taxes in Boston by about 50%. The Boston Tea Party was really not about the tea tax. It was about who made money on tea.
The Townsend duties, which had been in place since the late 1760s, generated revenue to fund smuggling interdiction and to pay for crown courts to enforce anti-smuggling laws in the colonies. Prior to the Townsend Duties, American smugglers were tried by colonial courts and never convicted.
The Townsend Acts were unpopular, but because smuggled Dutch tea was significantly cheaper than legal English tea, they made little difference. By lowering the tea tax, the Tea Act increased demand for legal English tea and reduced demand for smuggled Dutch tea. At the same time, the increased demand for legal tea increased the Townsend Act revenues used to impede and punish smugglers.
It just happens that leading instigators of the Boston Tea Party (John Hancock among them) made substantial portions of their income and wealth as smugglers. The tea thrown in the harbor was consigned to a consortium of rival Boston merchants, most of whom were not in favor of independence. After the activity on the boat, many of their houses were severely vandalized.
The Boston Tea Party directly benefited the smugglers by generating an immediate shortage of tea and by reducing the tax revenues earmarked towards controlling smuggling. It was horribly detrimental to their rival merchants, who were deprived of goods to sell and were still legally obligated to pay for the ruined tea.
The ensuing blockade also directly benefitted the smugglers, who became the only source of tea and many consumer goods in Boston. It was horribly detrimental to their rival merchants, who had no goods to sell, and to the general Boston population. When Britain offered to remove the blockade and garrison if the tea was paid for, the organizers of the Boston Tea Party refused to allow the population or victimized merchants to pay for the tea, as it would undercut their economic advantage and benefit their commercial rivals.
While taxes were a convenient and resonating cover for trampling on property rights, ruining competitors, and establishing monopoly rights over a captive population, taxes were never the real issue driving the Boston Tea Party. The Tax Act of 1773 actually lowered taxes. But the party was well orchestrated and promoted throughout the colonies, and a hatred for taxes became one of the founding myths of the United States.
That myth haunts us still.
Postscript One: Most of the rival merchants eventually fled to England. The tea party organizers promptly passed laws making it easier to expropriate their property – which they eventually did. One of those fleeing merchants, Richard Clarke, was father-in-law to John Singleton Copley, who also fled. Copley owned a good portion of Beacon Hill, which he was never able to return to. Realizing in the nineteenth century that Copley was among the greatest American painters, Boston rehabilitated him. He has a statue in Copley Square. His family was never fairly compensated for the expropriation of property.
Postscript Two: It was probably no accident that the tea partiers dressed as Native Americans. The tea party was theatre with a purpose. Boston organizers were very good at orchestrating things to solidify their support in the South. The three largest issues of interest to southern sympathizers were debts to English merchants (which the tea party directly addressed), Britain’s growing disillusionment with the practice of slavery (which the tea party did not address), and Britain’s continuing attempt to protect the Native Americans’ lands ceded from France after the Seven Year’s War from colonial encroachment. Nearly all the leading southern sympathizers to the Boston cause were major speculators in Native American lands that did not belong to them and major exterminators of the native Americans it did belong to.
Postscript Three: I am certain to be accused of rewriting history, but that has already been done. I would recommend:
A Revolution in Color by Jane Kamensky
American Revolutions by Alan Taylor
Peace Pact by David C. Hendrickson
Building a Revolutionary State by Howard Pashman