This fight to prevent McCarthy for Speakership of the House is a second Boston Tea Party. Its been a 100 years since a fight for Speaker has happened like this
Boston Massacre Enrages Colonists
On March 5, 1770, a street brawl happened in Boston between American colonists and British soldiers. Later known as the Boston Massacre, the fight began after an unruly group of colonists—frustrated with the presence of British soldiers in their streets—flung snowballs, ice and oyster shells at a British sentinel guarding the Boston Customs House.
Reinforcements arrived and opened fire on the mob, killing five colonists and wounding six. The Boston Massacre and its fallout further incited the colonists’ rage towards Britain.
Sons of Liberty
The Sons of Liberty were a group of colonial merchants and tradesmen founded to protest the Stamp Act and other forms of taxation. The group of revolutionists included prominent patriots such as Benedict Arnold, Patrick Henry and Paul Revere, as well as Adams and Hancock.
Led by Adams, the Sons of Liberty held meetings rallying against British Parliament and protested the Griffin’s Wharf arrival of Dartmouth, a British East India Company ship carrying tea. By December 16, 1773, Dartmouth had been joined by her sister ships, Beaver and Eleanor; all three ships loaded with tea from China.
That morning, as thousands of colonists convened at the wharf and its surrounding streets, a meeting was held at the Old South Meeting House where a large group of colonists voted to refuse to pay taxes on the tea or allow the tea to be unloaded, stored, sold or used. (Ironically, the ships were built in America and owned by Americans.)
Governor Thomas Hutchison refused to allow the ships to return to Britain and ordered the tea tariff be paid and the tea unloaded. The colonists refused, and Hutchison never offered a satisfactory compromise.
What Happened at the Boston Tea Party?
That night, a large group of men—many reportedly members of the Sons of Liberty— disguised themselves in Native American garb, boarded the docked ships and threw 342 chests of tea into the water.
Said participant George Hewes, “We then were ordered by our commander to open the hatches and take out all the chests of tea and throw them overboard, and we immediately proceeded to execute his orders, first cutting and splitting the chests with our tomahawks, so as thoroughly to expose them to the effects of the water.”
Hewes also noted that “We were surrounded by British armed ships, but no attempt was made to resist us.”
Did you know? It took nearly three hours for more than 100 colonists to empty the tea into Boston Harbor. The chests held more than 90,000 lbs. (45 tons) of tea, which would cost nearly $1,000,000 dollars today.
Boston Tea Party Aftermath
While some important colonist leaders such as John Adams were thrilled to learn Boston Harbor was covered in tea leaves, others were not.
In June of 1774, George Washington wrote: “the cause of Boston…ever will be considered as the cause of America.” But his personal views of the event were far different. He voiced strong disapproval of “their conduct in destroying the Tea” and claimed Bostonians “were mad.” Washington, like many other elites, held private property to be sacrosanct…
No one was hurt, and aside from the destruction of the tea and a padlock, no property was damaged or looted during the Boston Tea Party. The participants reportedly swept the ships’ decks clean before they left.
Who Organized the Boston Tea Party?
Though led by Samuel Adams and his Sons of Liberty and organized by John Hancock, the names of many of those involved in the Boston Tea Party remain unknown. Thanks to their Native American costumes, only one of the tea party culprits, Francis Akeley, was arrested and imprisoned.
Even after American independence, participants refused to reveal their identities, fearing they could still face civil and criminal charges as well as condemnation from elites for the destruction of private property.Most participants in the Boston Tea Party were under the age of 40 and 16 of them were teenagers.
https://www.history.com/topics/american-revolution/boston-tea-party#sons-of-liberty