How Did The Tea Act Contribute To The American Revolution

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During the early 1700s, the protests in the colonies against British policies quieted down, but that does not mean that the colonists were satisfied with the British government. The Tea Act was intended to help the British East India Company. Everyone that had been drinking tea was paying taxes that Parliament had placed on them without their consent. The Tea Act however, lowered the price to the tea by allowing the East India Company to ship tea directly to the colonies. Lots of Colonial leaders argued that even though the price of tea was lowered, colonists still had to pay the tax on the tea. In 1773, the British Parliament passed the Tea Act and the colonists were not very pleased with it being passed. Governor Thomas Hutchinson decided to make sure that the tea would be …show more content…

On December 16, 1773, a large group of men disguised as Native Americans bordered the tea ship and they threw 342 cases of tea into the harbor that lasted for 3 hours. Parliament passed 4 laws because the British government were outraged with what they did with the tea. These laws were so harsh that the colonists called them the Intolerable Acts. One law was that they closed the port to Boston. Two others increased the powers of the royal governor, abolished the upper house of the Massachusetts legislature, and cut the powers of town meetings. The fourth law strengthened the 1765 Quartering Act. The colonists were furious with these laws. The First Continental Congress demanded the repeal of the Intolerable acts and declared that the colonies had a right to tax