The Boston Tea Party was a colonial revolt against exploiting laws imposed by the British in 1773. The colonists believed that Britain had no right to virtually represent them and tax them without full representation. The American colonists embodied the transcendentalist ideas of writer Henry David Thoreau in the belief that a law that is not just should be violated. Through civil disobedience, the colonists brought a greater awareness to their displeasure with British taxes, and inadvertently helped to separate from Britain to form the United States. In the early 17th century, thousands of British natives sailed across the Atlantic ocean and landed in various places throughout the Eastern coastline of America. Men were given charters of …show more content…
Colonists in other cities followed suit of the Tea Party. In Philadelphia, New York, and Charleston, colonists boarded boats filled with tea shipments and tossed them overboard, having their own Tea Parties. News of the colonists’ civil disobedience reached the King and Parliament, who were both enraged. “In retaliation, the British government enacted a series of punitive acts, together with a separate act dealing with French Canada,” (AMSCO 75). Britain closed the Port of Boston until it paid for the damaged tea and reduced the power of the Massachusetts colony government. British officials accused of crimes were to be tried in Britain, and British troops were able to quarter in private homes. These Coercive Acts, known to the colonists as the Intolerable Acts, directly prompted movements to secession from Britain, leading to The American War for …show more content…
This tactic is prominent in Henry David Thoreau’s writings. Thoreau believed in nonviolent protests, and he himself refused to pay taxes to fund a war he did not support. Although Thoreau’s work was not published until nearly a century following the Boston Tea Party, the colonists upheld some of his finest arguments: “Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once?” (Thoreau 1). Wielding violence against British soldiers would risk the life of every colonist in North America because the British would implement harsher policies and dispatch more soldiers in the Americas. Colonists in the Boston area could have rioted against the British tea, but instead chose to take direct action towards freedom from tea taxes. The Boston Tea Party was a way in which the colonists could battle British government and ignite change in the colonies. When the British would turn away from the colonists’ pleas, non-violent protests became bloodied. The colonists resisted the British just as Thoreau resisted funding for the Mexican-American War: “All men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to, and to resist, the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable,” (Thoreau 1). Colonies had protested peacefully until relations