On this day in 1773, a group of American colonists boarded three ships in Boston Harbor and threw 46 tons of tea overboard.

These colonists were protesting the Tea Act of 1773, enacted by Britain earlier that year. The Tea Act did not raise taxes on the colonists. Americans had been paying taxes on tea since 1767, when the infamous Townshend Acts were enacted. At the time, there had been so much furor over the Townshend Acts that most of its taxes—taxes on glass, lead, oil, paint, and paper—were repealed. Yet even after all those repeals, the tea tax remained. Britain wanted to prove that it had a right to tax the colonists. The colonists, of course, disagreed. “No taxation without representation” was their belief.

And today, Bostonians celebrated.  According to The Boston Herald:

For the first time since 1773, Bostonians will be dumping tea from the East India Company into Boston Harbor as the anniversary and annual reenactment of the event will take place tonight at the Tea Party Ships and Museum on Congress Street in Boston.

“The Boston Tea Party was the single most important event that led to the Revolution,” said Shawn Ford, the museum’s vice president and executive director. “If it wasn’t for Bostonians who stood up … we could still be British today.”
Ford told Boston Herald Radio as many as 3,000 people are expected to attend tonight’s festivities, which begin with a reenactment of a meeting of the Sons of Liberty at the Old South Meeting House. Sam Adams will cry the famous line, “this meeting can do no more to save the country,” a signal for the more than 150 actors recreating the event to lead a fife and drum march to the waterfront. There they will dump the tea into the harbor in front of more than 600 spectators in the bleachers set up along the water and a couple thousand more who are expected at the free event.

If those original Bostonians could see what has happened to this country, I am sure they would be shaking their heads.  Now we have representatives, but they don’t listen to us, and we are taxed on everything.