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The Old South Meeting House was built in 1729 as a Puritan house of worship and was the largest building in colonial Boston. It is best known as the site of where the Boston Tea Party began. In the winter of 1773, more than 5,000 colonists gathered at Old South in a meeting to protest the tax on tea. After many hours of debate, Samuel Adams announced, "This meeting can do nothing more to save the country!" Protestors stormed out of the Old South Meeting House to the waterfront where they dumped three shiploads of tea into the Boston harbour. This changed American history forever. Today, the Old South Meeting House is a museum where the tea party debates are recreated.
Sludge's answer doesn't quite give the whole story. The myth is that the Bostonians protested against the high taxes on their tea by dumping it in the sea. It's the complete reverse of what actually happened: the British tea was cheaper than American tea as it was being supplied direct to Boston by the East India Company without going through expensive middlemen. The Boston Tea Party was the brainchild of American's merchants who were worried about their profits being undercut. By some fantastic bit of spin, it was presented as an example of the 'No taxation without representation' mantra, when, in fact, it was a prime example of capitalism protecting the interests of the moneyed by ensuring consumers paid top whack.
Quite right. Must do better. When the British repealed the Townsend Act they removed all taxes and duties on goods, except for tea. This became the focal point of the colonists anger. The British East India Company had controlled all tea trading between India and the British colonies. As a result of the tea tax, the colonies refused to buy the British tea. Instead, they smuggled tea in from Holland. This left the British East India Company with warehouses full of unsold tea, and the company was in danger of going out of business.The British government was determined to prevent the British East India Company from going out of business. It was going to force the colonists to buy their tea. In May 1773, Prime Minister North and the British parliament passed the Tea Act. The Tea Act allowed the British East India Company to sell tea directly to the colonists, bypassing the colonial wholesale merchants. This allowed the company to sell their tea cheaper than the colonial merchants who were selling smuggled tea from Holland. This act revived the colonial issue of taxation without representation. The colonies once again demanded that the British government remove the tax on tea. In addition, the dockworkers began refusing to unload the tea from ships.The Governor of Massachusetts demanded that the tea be unloaded. He also demanded that the people pay the taxes and duty on tea. On the evening of December 16, 1773, a group of men calling themselves the "Sons of Liberty" went to the Boston Harbour. The men were dressed as Mohawk Indians. They boarded three British ships, the Beaver, the Eleanor and the Dartmouth, and dumped forty-five tons of tea into the Boston Harbour.
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