Boston Tea Party 4.7.1973

This set of four stamps was the second time the post office used four separate designs to create one larger scene. These stamps depict the drama of that fateful night in US History in 1773, when enraged colonists, dressed as Mohawk Indians, dumped chests of tea into Boston Harbor in protest of an English-levied tax. The 8¢ setenant stamps were issued on the American Independence Day in 1973, namely on 4^th of July, and very appropriately released at Boston, MA.

The Boston Tea Party (initially referred to by John Adams as simply "the Destruction of the Tea in Boston") was a nonviolent political protest by the Sons of Liberty in Boston, on December 16, 1773. Disguised as Indians, the demonstrators destroyed the entire supply of tea sent by the East India Company in defiance of the American boycott of tea carrying a tax the Americans had not authorized. They boarded the ships and threw the chests of tea into Boston Harbour, ruining the tea. The British government responded harshly and the episode escalated into theAmerican Revolution. The Tea Party became an iconic event of American history, and other political protests often refer to it.

The Tea Party was the culmination of a resistance movement throughout British America against the Tea Act, which had been passed by the British Parliament in 1773. Colonists objected to the Tea Act because they believed that it violated their rights as Englishmen to "No taxation without representation," that is, be taxed only by their own elected representatives and not by a British parliament in which they were not represented. Protesters had successfully prevented the unloading of taxed tea in three other colonies, but in Boston, embattled Royal GovernorThomas Hutchinson refused to allow the tea to be returned to Britain.

The Boston Tea Party was a key event in the growth of the American Revolution. Parliament responded in 1774 with the Coercive Acts, or Intolerable Acts, which, among other provisions, ended local self-government in Massachusetts and closed Boston's commerce. Colonists up and down the Thirteen Colonies in turn responded to the Coercive Acts with additional acts of protest, and by convening the First Continental Congress, which petitioned the British monarch for repeal of the acts and coordinated colonial resistance to them. The crisis escalated, and theAmerican Revolutionary War began near Boston in 1775.

Thank you Very Much indeed Dear Merja for this important FDC’s.