In May, 1773, Parliament gave money to the British East India Company so they could lower their tea prices. The Americans got mad because the British East India Company would trade only with pro-British merchants.

In September, 1773, the British East India Company put 500,000 pounds of tea on the market. They did this because they had so much extra tea on hand, and many of the members of Parliament were investors in the tea market. If there was too much tea for sale, tea would be cheaper and the members of Parliament would lose money.

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The Boston Tea Party took place on December 16, 1773, when colonists threw tea into the Boston Harbor. They did this because they didn't like the British tea taxes. Three ships had come from England and wanted to dock in Boston Harbor. Because the ships wouldn't go back to England, Samuel Adams, John Hancock and eighty other men disguised themselves as Natives Americans and threw all the tea into Boston Harbor. The Boston Tea Party was the idea of Samuel Adams. His cousin John Adams did not like mob action, but he wrote this about dumping the tea: "There is a dignity, a majesty, a sublimity, in this last effort of the patriots that I greatly admire."

The British people in Parliament did not admire this action. They got mad and passed the Intolerable Acts as punishment for the Boston Tea Party. The worst part of these acts was that they closed the Boston Harbor and said that the city had to pay for the tea that had been dumped into the harbor.

The colonists sang a song about the Boston Tea Party. It started like this:
"Rally, Mohawks! Bring out your axes,
And tell King George we'll pay no taxes
On his foreign tea."