"Boston Harbor a tea-pot tonight"

To mark the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party, some related highlights from the MHS collections:

The Boston Tea Party page from our Coming of the American Revolution site. Read broadsides, diary accounts, and reactions to the dumping of the tea.

Manuscript minutes of the meetings held 14-16 December 1773, during the run-up to the Tea Party.

Our bottle of tea leaves gathered from the shore of Dorchester Neck on the morning after.

From the Adams Papers, John Adams' 17 December 1773 letter to James Warren, with its wonderful opening line: "The Dye is cast: The People have passed the River and cutt away the Bridge: last Night Three Cargoes of Tea, were emptied into the Harbour. This is the grandest, Event, which has ever yet happened Since, the Controversy, with Britain, opened!"