Hello, History Friends!!
As we welcome you to 1773 (the Year We Finally Talk About the Tea), I wanted to let you know of a couple things that happened in the beginning of the year that maybe ya'll didn't know about before. At least, I didn't.
First up, on Jan 6, enslaved people of Massachusetts petition legislature for freedom. Side note, I had been wondering how to honestly word some of the rough stuff that happened in this time period where humans had the audacity to own other humans, and I noticed in the book I'm reading (The one about being descended from Jefferson), she always uses the term enslaved people. She only mentioned it as the word slaves once and that was in quotation marks, as in, that's what their owners called them. I appreciated her doing that because it helps me learn how to be more respectful about a part of our past that I am genuinely sad happened.
Like so many things in this time period- this event simply got the ball rolling. It didn't immediately end slavery in Massachusetts, but it set things in motion. January 6th is a day when a man named Felix, that's all we really know about him, turned in a petition asking for different rights. He pointed out that because of slavery, these people weren't allowed to have families or property of their own" In essence, they wanted what we were getting ready to fight for- freedom. Several more of these petitions on behalf of many, many more people would be submitted in the next few years, but slavery would not end in Massachusetts for real until 1783.
On Feb 9, William Henry Harrison (who would eventually be the 9th President of the United States- you know, the one who died a couple of months after being in office? ) was born in Virginia. His dad signed the Declaration of Independence, but it's not time to talk about that yet.
On Feb 26, the State of Pennsylvania approved the construction of a place called Walnut Street Jail. This was a fun one to learn about! Aside from classroom lectures that my kids wouldn't leave me alone long enough to watch, I couldn't even find YouTube videos about it (except for the mention of Walnut Street Jail in videos about Eastern State Penitentiary).
Walnut Street Jail is considered the first penitentiary in the world because it will become the first to experiment with the practice of solitary confinement in the United States. Jails were certainly not new, most counties had them, but a big chunk of crimes were punishable by death or lashings or brandings, so nobody was like, holed up in a jail cell for 20 years. Jails were mostly places for awaiting trial.
But the Quakers were not cool with the amount of deaths happening in relevance to the crimes that were committed and decided instead to build a jail like WE think about a jail. A penitentiary where the prisoners would actually STAY to pay their debts to society. I'm not sure where people went when they went to debtor's prison, so I don't know how similar they were. But I'm talking about criminals here.
Death sentences were still given for murderers and rapists, but the Quakers wanted a more humane way to handle, well, everything else. Considering that there used to be 14 different crimes punishable by death, this seems to make sense.
One thing that makes this a penitentiary instead of just a run of the mill jail is that there were rooms for solitary confinement. Also, the goal of these prisons was to help reform the convict. Church services were held, they had food, jobs to do..... much like now.
Anyway- Feb 1773 is when it was APPROVED. It got a lot more complicated as time went on and then eventually other prisons and penitentiaries were built. If you're into haunted places- rumor has it that Eastern State Penitentiary (that replaced Walnut Street Jail) is the place to go!
Moving along, though, on Mar 12, a man named Jeanne Baptiste Pointe de Sable found settlement now known as Chicago. Jeanne was from Haiti and pretty young- less than 30 anyway. He seems like an interesting man- His father was French, allowing him to attend school in France, but his mother was an enslaved woman. He was quite the linguist- English, French, Spanish, and multiple Native American dialects. This is another person who would be incredible to learn about, actually.
After going to school in France, he headed stateside. He may or may not have been in a shipwreck just outside of New Orleans, but he eventually headed north. He learned about several different Native American tribes and established a trading post in what is now Chicago. He married a woman named Kitihawa (who changed her name to Catherine for the wedding, as it was done by a Catholic priest). She was from Potawatomi tribe.
What does that have to do with us? Well, aside from the fact that Chicago would one day be such a big part of the nation that was just beginning, in 1778, Jeanne was imprisoned by the British. They assumed that he was a French spy. He wasn't. Luckily, he was released. Mostly because there was no evidence.
He's definitely going on my "To Learn List."
Refocusing on our colonies again, remember how we talked about the Townshend Acts way back in 1767? Well, due mostly because of the events of the next few years, those acts were repealed in 1770. All of them. Except one. The tax on tea. We talked about a lot of that part, but here's what happened. Even though we threw a big kink in England's plan when they tried to pass the Sugar Act and an even BIGGER wrench in their gears when tried to pass the Stamp Act, they figured they'd try again and on May 10 (hey, that's my Daddy's birthday! But, obvi, a century and a half before he was born), 1773, Parliament passed.... The Tea Act.
Now, let's hold up a second. This Act did NOT add any taxes. The tea tax had been there since 1767. All that changed was that now the East India Company would have a monopoly on tea in the colonies.
Now, I'm going to be 100% honest with you. I have read, watched, and listened to the explanation of the Tea Act SO many times. I am pretty sure I have an understanding of what was happening physically, but I'm still not sure that I get it completely.
The EIC would sell their tea to England, who would then resell to the colonies and wherever else. After the Tax Act, there was no more tax on EIC Tea..... in Britain. But it was still here in the colonies, causing an uproar because we were being taxed for something that England was not. The word unfair comes to mind.
People were NOT having it. New York and Philadelphia threw enough anger at the cause that EIC didn't even port there.
Let's pause for a second and talk about the Committee of Correspondence. These were individual "just in case" governments. Some were by town, some by county, some by colony. For so many years, the colonies had been able to run things the way they wanted that the threat of British government taking over was real. The committees themselves had been around for a while, but they were used extra during these trying times.
The Sons of Liberty used these committees to communicate organized events. This is how "whispers" of Congress and our own organized governments were shared, discussed, and spread.
In 1772, Samuel Adams and his colonial governmental friends got together to discuss how frustrating it was that the Crown was now going to be in charge of paying the civil servants. Why does it matter who's paying? Because that's where the power is. If England is paying, England is deciding- who gets to be the judge and jury, for example. That pretty much puts any Colonial person at an automatic disadvantage at court. So the Boston CoC asked other towns to set up their own Committees.
By mid-1773, 118 extra towns had listened.
After the Gaspee affair, British officials wanted to capture those who were responsible and take them back to England for trial. This was the last straw for the Committee of Correspondence.... in Virginia. The Virginia House of Burgess was willing to make a plan with the other colonies before this got too out of hand. 12 of the 13 colonies had their own Committee of Correspondence on a "state" level. Want to guess which one didn't? I'll give you like 5 seconds. It's not who you think. It's *drumroll* Pennsylvania. (Don't worry, they'll get one next year)
One thing the Committees did was to write their grievances to England and to have a legal backing of why the Crown's behavior was not ok.
So, while all the heavy hitters were doing their legal and maybe not so legal work of putting their heads together, a few things were happening in this future country. Benjamin Franklin (who I am DYING to watch the Ken Burns documentary about, but I still need to pick it up from the library), was creating a little panic in the people. He was responsible for a hoax letter called "An Edict by the King of Prussia." It was total satire. Pretty much, it said that England should belong to Prussia and gave a list of reasons that were stupid and pretty much the same reasons that England thought they should be king over the colonies. This was done in September of 1773.
Of unrelated matter, on Oct 12, in Williamsburg, Virginia, America's first mental hospital was opened It was called "The Public Hospital for Persons of Insane and Disordered Minds". I would LOVE to dive more into this right now, but there is just so much happening in this episode that I think it would be hard to fit it in and not be hours long. I'll make a mental note to have an episode about Mental Health in the United States and then I can tell you all about Patrick Henry's wife and Dr. Benjamin Rush's life. I just thought you'd appreciate the interesting note.
Let's get back to the tea talk, shall we?
On Nov 5, some political happenings helped move things along. John Hancock was elected as moderator at a Boston town meeting where it was said that anyone who unloaded tea from the ships that were getting ready to dock would be considered an "Enemy to America." Three tea ships were coming to Griffin's Wharf. The Dartmouth arrived first, on Nov 28. The Eleanor arrived Dec 2, and the Beaver came on Dec 15.
As we know, it wasn't that American's hated tea itself. It was the #1 beverage of the time. The issue on the table was actually the unfairness of where the money was going and who was and was not having to pay it. Bostonians wanted the ships sent away, tea included, as a way of saying, "Thanks, but no thanks."
Loyalists, British employees, and customs agents wanted the tea on the ships. Gov Hutchinson (who had some personal money to make when the tea came in) decided to make a law that said that all the ships at dock had to pay their customs duties by Dec 17 or be forcibly unloaded. So the ships themselves were stuck. They weren't allowed to go back to England, but the Angry Americans certainly wouldn't let them be unloaded.
Fast forward to December 16. A meeting was held in Old South Meeting House (which you can still visit!). Samuel Adams said their meetings, "can do nothing more to save the country." Then a group of well organized, predetermined folks who didn't want to be recognized dressed up, some as Natives from the Mohowk tribe and boarded the Eleanor, Dartmouth, and Beaver. They were very careful to not mess with any cargo besides the tea and did not hurt other people. However, they sure took care of that tea. 342 very heavy chests of tea were dropped into Boston Harbor. The tea was worth roughly 100,000 pounds THEN. The equivalent today, July 28, 2022, is $20,593,483.84. That's a lot of tea.
American's chucked their English tea and started making their own concoctions from fruits and herbs. Wanna know what they were called? LiberTEAS. Ok, they were Liberty Teas, but I think the other way is much punnier. There was a whole ladies group who signed petitions swearing to never buy or drink English tea again. Eventually we started moving towards coffee, but I am not sure if, how or when that took. And let's be honest, this episode took more research than I expected, so it would be cool if one of you knows the answers and shares it here. :D
Anyway, since the ships were relieved of their tea, they were eventually, the day after Christmas, sent away from port.
And thus ended a quite busy 1773!!
I'd love to know if you had ancestors who wrote about tea at all! Let me know here on the blog or on my Facebook page! Let's tell those stories!!
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