On the evening of December 16, 1773 Bostonians rushed to fill the Old South Meetinghouse. They gathered to protest the arrival of the ships Eleanor, Beaver and Dartmouth bearing taxed tea. It was a raucous meeting. When Samuel Adams rose in the pulpit and declared, “there is nothing more we can do for our country,” the crowd marched from the meetinghouse towards the waterfront chanting “how might tea mix with salt water?” They boarded the ships and dumped more than 300 chests of tea into Boston Harbor. The reaction in London was harsh and quick. Parliament closed the port of Boston, demanded Bostonians pay for the tea and revoked the colony’s cherished charter. News of events in Boston spread quickly. Other American colonists, fearing that their own liberties were at risk, rallied to Boston’s defense and in solidarity with the town agreed to meet in Philadelphia. The First Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia at Carpenters’ Hall on September 5, 1774. The American Revolution had begun.

William M. Fowler, Jr. is Distinguished Professor of History Emeritus at Northeastern University in Boston, and also the former Director of the Massachusetts Historical Society, President of the New England Historic Genealogical Society, and President of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts. He is co-author of America and the Sea: A Maritime History as well as several other books, including: Rebels Under Sail: The Navy in the Revolution; Jack Tars and Commodores: The American Navy, 1783-1815; Samuel Adams: Radical Puritan; Empires at War: The French and Indian War and the Struggle for North America; Under Two Flags: The American Navy in the Civil War; and American Crisis: George Washington and the Dangerous Two Years after Yorktown, 1781-1783. His most recent book is Steam Titans: Cunard, Collins, and the Epic Battle for Commerce on the North Atlantic.