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Opposition to the Tea Act developed first in Philadelphia and New York, where merchants, who had become dependent upon smuggled tea, faced a significant loss of business. Best places in US to vacation They argued that the legislation creating a monopoly for the East India Company represented a precedent that would destroy all foreign trade. Others worried that the British were engaging in a cynical ploy to deceive the colonists, with cheap tea, into relinquishing their principled opposition to taxation without representation. Tea consignees in New York City, Philadelphia, and Charles Town, South Carolina resigned in response to threats from mass meetings. The most notable resistance to the act occurred in Boston, where activists tossed the cargo from three tea ships into the harbor on December 16, 1773. In response, the British government, early the following year, passed a series of measures to punish Boston and the Massachusetts Bay colony. Besides closing the port of Boston, these Coercive Acts limited town meetings, provided for the quartering of British troops in empty public buildings, and gave the Crown the power to select members to the provincial council. Called the Intolerable Acts by colonists, the punitive legislation persuaded twelve colonies to send delegates to a Continental Congress in Philadelphia in 1774, a step that eventually led to the Revolution. Larry Gragg See also: Boston Tea Party; East India Company; Revolutionary War; Tea; Trade. Bibliography Labaree, Benjamin Woods. The Boston Tea Party. New York: Oxford University Press, 1964. Thomas, Peter D. G. Tea Party to Independence: The Third Phase of the Country Revolution, 17731776. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1991.
