416 Ch. 1 1 • Dynastic Rivalries and Politics

Paul Revere’s depiction of the Boston Massacre.

ship a surplus of tea to the colonies, with the British government collecting

its tariff when the tea arrived in American ports. The move would reduce

the price colonists paid for tea but would maintain the British govern­

ment’s assertion that it could tax goods imported into the colonies. It

would also threaten the interests of American smuggling, a widespread

money-making operation.

On December 16, 1773, colonists dressed as Native Americans forced

their way aboard British merchant ships docked in Boston and dumped the

cargo of tea into the harbor. Parliament responded to the Boston Tea Party

by passing the “Intolerable Acts,” which announced that the port of Boston

be blocked until the colonists had reimbursed the merchants and govern­

ment for the tea dumped into the harbor. In September 1774, representa­

tives from the colonies met in the First Continental Congress. Benjamin

Franklin drew a distinction between “uncorrupted new states,” by which

he meant the colonies, and “corrupted old ones,” one of which seemed to

be waging war on liberty. More troops arrived from England. In April 1775,

in the first open fighting between colonists and British regulars, the colo­

nial militia held its own against British troops searching for weapons at

Concord and Lexington, Massachusetts, and then in the pitched battle at

Bunker Hill near Boston.