What caused the American Revolution, anyway? Well, there were a lot of things, but one of the major dominoes in the chain was the Boston Tea Party in December 1773. Not that destroying a bunch of tea was really important, but it set off a chain of events that escalated to armed warfare about a year and a half later.
When England heard of the Tea Party, the King and Parliament were furious. This was the last straw: for years they had been patient with the Americans and tried to work things out with them; they had bent farther than they wanted to; but they were not going to give in any more. In the spring and early summer of 1774, they set about punishing Boston (and Massachusetts in general) and putting the colonies in their place.
One member of Parliament put it this way: “The town of Boston ought to be knocked about their ears and destroyed. Delenda est Carthago*…I am of opinion you will never meet with that proper obedience to the laws of this country until you have destroyed that nest of locusts.” Note that he didn’t say “obedience to the laws of their country,” but to the laws of this country — England. The majority of Parliament viewed themselves as the supreme legislative authority for the colonies — and to be fair, the colonies were just that: colonies. But colonies never seem to like the authority of their “mother country” once they start growing up and think they can stand on their own. Kind of like kids…
The punishment of Boston was known as the Boston Port Act. No ships could enter or leave Boston until the Bostonians had paid for the tea. (It’s strange to think that tea was on center stage in the struggle for American liberty!) The Royal Navy enforced this law. Boston depended on ships for much of its food and other supplies, and many of its citizens were merchants who made their living from importing or exporting goods by ship. Many were dockhands or sailors; many ran businesses that bought or sold the goods that came and went by ship. With no ships allowed to come or go, Boston would starve.
At least, that was the idea. But people all over Massachusetts — New England — all of the colonies rallied to support Boston. One town sent wagonloads of corn; another sent barrels of dried fish; another sent sheep. In August 1774, for example, the people of Baltimore, Maryland, wrote to the revolutionary leaders in Boston that they had chipped in and sent “three thousand bushels of corn, twenty barrels of rye flour, two barrels of pork and twenty barrels of bread, for the relief of our brethren, the distressed inhabitants of your Town,” along with another thousand bushels of corn from Annapolis. The ship that took this cargo to New England — there to be unloaded and taken to Boston by land — was appropriately named the America.
This one law, which was a direct result of the Boston Tea Party, went a long way toward uniting the colonies and stirring up resistance to British authority. There were more laws to follow, however; together they became known as the “Intolerable Acts.”
*Delenda est Carthago is Latin for “Carthage must be destroyed.” This is a reference to the time (in ancient history) when Rome and Carthage were constant rivals and enemies; some Roman leaders argued that it wasn’t enough to simply defeat Carthage: they needed to destroy it and so eliminate the Carthaginian threat forever. Eventually, that’s just what happened.
Sources
The Spirit of ‘Seventy-Six: The Story of the American Revolution as Told by Participants. Bicentennial Edition. Pages 12, 32.