Quick phrase association game-
When I say Tea Party, what do you think of?
Let me guess, you thought Boston and the beginning of the American Revolution. Right?
You may have also thought of the current political craze/party as well, but forget that for this exercise.
The Tea Party that rocked the world didn’t happen in a vacuum, it was actually a catalyst for many other tea parties all over the colonies. Towns up and down the Atlantic reacted to the passage of the Tea Act in 1773, sometimes with simple angry editorials or boycotts and other times by going so far as destroying tea and the ships that carried it.
We learned about the kerfuffle in Boston when we were in school, but most K-12 history books fail to mention that there were protests in many other places as well. For example, did you know that women for the first time, protested for rights in America?
The women of Edenton, North Carolina sent a letter to be published in the Morning Chronicle and the London Advertiser.
“We the ladies of Edenton do hereby solemnly engage not to conform to ye pernicious Custom of Drinking Tea or that we, the aforesaid Ladies, will not promote ye wear of any manufacture from England, until such time that all Acts which tend to enslave this our Native Country shall be repealed.”
The Colonists as a whole, male and female, Bostonian or Philadelphian, were mad as hell and not going to take it anymore. They reacted, in a multitude of ways.
By choosing to highlight just ten cities, Joseph Cummins makes it clear that no longer were the colonies just scattered, selfish, and independent of each other. They were ready to band together and fight the oppression in a way that the English never saw coming. The book itself is easy to chew and digest for just about any reader because he gives enough detail to paint the differences of each city, but doesn’t go on and on like a more scholarly book might. That makes it a quick and enjoyable read. It is also great to learn that women took a more prominent role than what we have been led to believe from those musty old American history textbooks.
Ten Tea Parties: Patriotic Protests That History Forgot by Joseph Cummins
- Hardcover: 224 pages
- Publisher: Quirk Books; 1 edition (January 17, 2012)
- ISBN-10: 1594745609
- ISBN-13: 978-1594745607