Re: Quarterman Dates

["John S. Quarterman" <jsq@quarterman.org>]

Susan,

>       Thank you for sending me the websites about the tea parties in the 
>United States during the Revolutionary War.  I just read a fictional account 
>of the tea party in Greenwich, New Jersey.  The British ship offloaded the 
>tea in Greenwich and left.  On December 22, 1773 (The Boston Tea Party was on 
>December 16, 1773.) young men dressed as Indians entered the basement of the 
>home of the Tory (British sympathizer) colonist Dan Bowen in Greenwich, New 
>Jersey and took out the chests of tea from his basement.  The tea was dumped 
>in the market square in Greenwich and burned.  This account also says that 
>after the Boston Tea Party, but before the Greenwich Tea Party, British tea 
>was burned by the colonists in Annapolis, Maryland.

Lots of interesting detail there.

I guess the Boston one got more press because of the reaction it provoked.
Also, Paul Revere was a pretty good publicist.

>       My husband, who was a history professor at a university, told me that 
>the real reason for the tea parties was that certain colonists were smuggling 
>tea into the Thirteen Colonies and they wanted the colonists to buy their 
>smuggled tea.  The smuggled tea cost more than the tea brought in by the 
>British East India Company!

I imagine there were a number of real reasons; wouldn't be surprised
if that were one of them.

Here's a comment from the principal instigator of the BTP:

"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better
than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not
your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May
your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our
countrymen." - Samuel Adams, speech at the Philadelphia State House, August
1, 1776.

>Sincerely,
>
>Susan Sinclair Grady 

John S. Quarterman <jsq@quarterman.org>
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