Philadelphia Tea Party

The Philadelphia Tea Party was an incident in late December 1773, shortly after the more famous Boston Tea Party, in which a British tea ship was intercepted by American colonists and forced to return its cargo to Great Britain.

Both the Boston Tea Party and the Philadelphia incident were the result of Americans being upset about Great Britain's decision to tax the American colonies despite a lack of representation in Parliament. The tax on tea particularly angered the colonists, so they boycotted English tea for several years, during which time merchants in several colonial cities resorted to smuggling tea from The Netherlands. It was generally known that Philadelphia merchants were greater smugglers of tea than their Boston counterparts.

As a result, the East India Company appealed for financial relief to the British government, which passed the Tea Act on May 10, 1773. This Act of Parliament allowed the East India Company to sell tea to the colonies directly and without "payment of any customs or duties whatsoever" in England, instead paying the much lower American duty. The resulting tax break allowed East India to sell tea for half the old price and cheaper than the price of tea in Great Britain, enabling the firm to undercut prices offered by colonial merchants and smugglers.

The Tea Act infuriated colonials precisely because it was designed to lower the price of tea without officially repealing the tea tax of the Revenue Act of 1767. And colonial leaders thought the British were trying to use cheap tea to "overcome all the patriotism of an American," in the words of Benjamin Franklin.

Word was received in North America by September, 1773, that East India Company tea shipments were on their way. Philadelphians held a town meeting on October 16 at the Pennsylvania State House (now known as Independence Hall). This meeting was organized by Dr. Benjamin Rush, Colonel William Bradford, Thomas Mifflin, Dr. Thomas Cadwalader, and other local leaders and members of the Philadelphia Sons of Liberty. They adopted eight resolutions, one of which stated: "That the duty imposed by Parliament upon tea landed in America is a tax on the Americans, or levying contributions on them without their consent." The most important one read:

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