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Who Is The Boston Tea Party?

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Due to disagreements with the taxes on tea from the Townsend Acts, Sam Adams lead a group of protestors to dump tea from a ship in the Boston harbor. As Jack Rakove says in his book, Revolutionaries, “Had the value of the tea not been so dear, the Boston Tea Party might be remembered, if at all, as a minor piece of political theater” (Rakove 30). The British were dealing with debt from the seven years’ war and saw this attack on their property a direct insult to their sovereignty. Unlike many Loyalist, the Patriots supported and respected the attack, as can be seen in an article by the Boston Gazette, where they say, “A number of brave & resolute men, determined to do all in their power to save their country from the ruin which their enemies …show more content…

Eventually the colonists decided that they no longer wanted to be under British rule. Rakove quotes John Adams when he says, “One of the happiest days in my life ,that America will support Massachusetts or perish with her” (Rakove 57). The rebels of the mother country would rather unite and fight for their freedom from England or die trying.

As the American Revolutionary War waged on and Patriots fought for their freedom from the mother country, the question of whether to free the slaves came into question. While there were many slave owners that opposed the idea, revolutionaries such as, John Laurens and Alexander Hamilton, supported the cause.
Before the fighting of the revolution started, Lord Mansfield of Great Britain had already ruled that slaves would be free if they lived on the British mainland. While this didn’t free slaves in any of the British colonies, its shows the British were supporters of ending slavery. Later, Lord Dunmore proclaimed that runaway slaves from the colonies would be free if they sided with the British and many eventually would join the “Ethiopian Regiment”. As stated in the American Yawp “thousands more flocked to the British later in the war, risking capture and punishment for a chance at freedom” (American Yawp, Chapter …show more content…

In talking about Henry Lauren’s view of slavery, Rakove talks about Lauren’s regret in the participating in the slave trade but states, “Henry could not imagine how the southern economy could survive without it” (Rakove 200). Many of the Southern plantations would not have been able to continue producing their crops without their large slave workforce. Having a damaged economy could have hurt the growth of the early American country once it gained its independence. Colonists that were beginning to become opposed to slavery, such as Henry Laurens, did not want to abolish it, for fear of a crumbling economy and country. Many of the people feared freeing the slaves but colonies soon began to abolish slavery, with Pennsylvania being the first of the original colonies to abolish slavery in

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