Connecticut Centinal
How did the king respond to the Boston Tea Party 249 years ago on December 16, 1773?
Tea-Stained Harbor, adapted from Stories of Faith and Courage from the Revolutionary War.
John Andrews nearly spilled his tea over the commotion outside his Boston home.
“Such prodigious shouts were made, that induc’d me, while drinking tea at home, to go out and know the cause of it,” Selectman Andrews wrote his brother about the night of December 16, 1773. The shouts stoked his fears that the pot had boiled over.
Andrews had kept his eye on the brewing situation since ten o’clock that morning, when thousands of Bostonians assembled at the Old South Meeting House. They unanimously demanded that the ships carrying the tea should immediately leave Boston Harbor. Until the ship owners paid the tea tax, the customs officers refused to give the ships a pass to leave. The assembly waited all day to hear from the governor.
When Andrews heard those loud shouts that evening, he raced to the meeting house. There he learned that Governor Hutchinson had rejected the town’s request to get the ships and their chests of tea out of the harbor.
Caravan to Midnight
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