This Day in History: <br />The Boston Tea Party.<br />December 16, 1773.<br />A group of Massachusetts <br />colonists disguised as members <br />of the Mohawk tribe boarded <br />three British tea ships in Boston Harbor.<br />They dumped 342 chests <br />of tea — valued at $18,000 — <br />into the harbor in protest of the <br />British Parliament’s Tea Act of 1773.<br />Colonists viewed the act <br />as another example of <br />British taxation tyranny.<br />Outraged, British Parliament <br />enacted the Coercive Acts, <br />also known as the Intolerable Acts in 1774.<br />Boston was closed to merchant <br />shipping, and a formal British military <br />rule was established in Massachusetts.<br />British officials were deemed <br />immune to criminal prosecution <br />in America, and colonists were <br />required to quarter British troops.<br />In response, the colonists called <br />the first Continental Congress to <br />consider a united American <br />resistance to the British
