The House of Commons passes the Tea Act by Jack Manning On this day in history, April 27, 1773, the House of Commons passes the Tea Act, an act which would lead to the Boston Tea Party and plunge Great Britain and her American colonies into war. The colonists in America had complained about taxes before. They did not mind paying taxes. Rather, their disagreement was with who had the authority to tax them. Since they had no representatives in Parliament, they believed it was unjust for Parliament to tax them. Instead, the proper bodies to tax them should be their own elected assemblies. When the Stamp Act was passed in 1765, the colonists protested its taxes to the point of violence. When Parliament finally repealed the Act, it passed along with it an act called the Declaratory Act, which reaffirmed Parliament’s right to tax the colonies in whatever way it saw fit. While most celebrated the repeal of the Stamp Act, some saw an ominous sign in the Declaratory Act of more taxes to come. More taxes did indeed come with the Townshend Acts of 1767, which levied taxes on paper, lead, glass painters’ colors and tea. The colonists responded by protesting and boycotting British goods as usual, forcing Parliament to repeal all of the Townshend Acts’ taxes in 1770, except for the tax on tea, which the colonists continued to boycott. The boycott especially affected the British East India Company, which shipped tea from India to Britain and her colonies. British policy forced the East India Company to ship tea to England first where it was taxed upon import. Then the tea had to be sold in London markets to merchants who shipped it to America where it was taxed again. The multiple taxes and the middlemen merchants caused the price of tea to be very high by the time it reached consumers in America. This opened up a large market for smuggled Dutch tea, which was much cheaper. By the early 1770s, the East India Company was struggling to survive, with warehouses full of tea it couldn’t sell because its price was undercut in the colonies by Dutch tea. In order to prevent the East India Company from going bankrupt, Parliament came up with a scheme called the Tea Act, first passed by the House of Commons on April 27, 1773 and passed into law with King George’s signature on May 10. The Tea Act allowed the Company to ship tea directly to the colonies, bypassing the London middlemen and the London duties. The only tax that remained was on the colonies’ end and that tax was quite small. This new scheme greatly reduced the price of British tea. If the colonists bought the lower priced tea, they would also be tacitly agreeing to the notion that Parliament did indeed have the right to tax them. The colonists, however, no matter how small the tax, had no intention of paying unjust taxes to Britain. They recognized the scheme immediately as an attempt to bribe them into giving Parliament authority to tax them in exchange for cheap goods. The colonists responded by forbidding tea ships from entering their harbors, culminating with the Boston Tea Party, during which 42 tons of tea were dumped into Boston Harbor in protest. Britain responded in force by passing the Coercive Acts, which closed Boston Harbor and shut down the Massachusetts government, until the tea was paid for. Known as the Intolerable Acts in the colonies, these Acts led directly to the formation of the First Continental Congress to plan a joint colonial response. The American Revolution broke out in full fury shortly afterwards. On this day in history, April 26, 1777, British forces raid Danbury, Connecticut and destroy a large American supply depot. Western Connecticut was a staging ground for patriot activities against the British in New York. When former New York governor, William Tryon learned the Continental Congress had located a supply depot in Danbury, it gave him the perfect excuse for an attack into the region. Danbury was strategically located about 20 miles from the Long Island Sound and about 35 miles east of the Hudson River, making it a perfect supply location for the Hudson River Valley, but sufficiently far inland to be safe from attack by sea. On April 22, Tryon left New York with about 1,800 soldiers on 16 ships. They landed between Norwalk and Fairfield, Connecticut on the 25th, in present day Westport. They camped for the night and resumed their march to Danbury in the morning. As soon as the British were in site, word spread through the countryside that an invasion was under way. Locals began hiding valuables, dispersing their livestock into the woods and even hiding their young boys because Tryon was known for taking them as slaves to work in New York’s "sugar houses." Local militia leaders began rounding up their troops and Generals David Wooster, Benedict Arnold and Gold Silliman took charge of repelling the invasion. The supply depot in Danbury was guarded by Colonel Joseph Platt Cooke with about 150 men. Unfortunately, General Silliman instructed Cooke to send many of his men to Fairfield, believing the attack would come there. Others from Cooke’s unit went west to the Hudson because Tryon had sent a diversionary fleet up the Hudson to confuse the rebels, leaving Cooke with only a small contingent to guard the supply depot. On the evening of April 26, Tryon’s force marched into Danbury and quickly drove off Col. Cooke’s small force. During the night and the next morning, British soldiers got drunk on local rum, pillaged the town, burned down buildings and homes owned by “rebels” and destroyed a vast supply of the patriots’ stores, including 5,000 barrels of pork, molasses, flour and beef, 2,000 bushels of rice, 1,600 tents and more than 5,000 pairs of shoes. The next day, as they marched back to the coast, the British were harassed by the militia in the same fashion the British were chased back to Boston after the Battle of Concord. Many of the militia were from Dutchess County, New York and had been rallied by the Paul Revere-esque midnight ride of 16 year old Sybil Ludington. General Wooster was mortally wounded during these skirmishes. The major fight occurred at Ridgefield, where Benedict Arnold’s men were scattered in a fight down the town’s main street and Arnold himself was injured when his horse was shot from underneath him. The British finally reached the coast to return to New York, but with a heavy cost of nearly 200 killed, captured or wounded. The Americans had only 20 killed and 40-80 wounded. The Raid on Danbury and the Battle of Ridgefield would be tactical British victories, but the fierceness of the American response would prevent the British from attempting such inland raids with a landing force by sea again. In addition, the British incursion into their territory turned the hearts of many in Connecticut squarely against the British. Within a short time after the raid, nearly 3,000 Connecticut men joined the Connecticut Army and served in numerous battles of the Revolution to come. Jack Manning President General (2019-2020) National Society Sons of the American Revolution “Would it not be better to simplify the system of taxation rather than to spread it over such a variety of subjects and pass through so many new hands.” ~ Thomas Jefferson (1784)