Joshua Wyeth had just confessed to participating in the Boston Tea Party, which no more than four or five people had previously acknowledged. The “destructors” initially feared arrest for treason, and even after the war, they worried about being sued for damage to property. Wyeth finally felt safe to tell his story almost a half century later. He went on to describe his participation in the battles of Bunker Hill, Brooklyn, Harlem Heights, and White Plains. He was attempting to gain a pension from the United States government, which had never adequately rewarded many of its Revolutionary soldiers for their service.
When Wyeth told his story in detail, he talked of the indignation that he and his associates felt about British policies in Boston. Legal tea bore a tax or duty imposed by Parliament in the Townshend Acts in 1767. To protest these acts, many American merchants had agreed with one another not to import British goods, so as to put pressure on British merchants. The challenge was that the agreements had to be universal in order to be effective.
By 1770, New York City and Philadelphia had reduced their legal tea imports to nearly zero. Colonists still drank tea, but they switched to smuggled tea from continental Europe. However, in Boston, while smugglers were doing some of the importing, plenty of legal tea was still entering the New England market. When the non-importation agreements among colonial merchants collapsed in the summer of 1770, many of the radical patriots in the middle colonies blamed Boston for failing to keep up its end of the bargain. These resentments were still lingering in 1773.
Under the new Tea Act of 1773, the East India Company received a tax break on tea shipped to America, and was given permission to ship tea directly to America, rather than go through a British or American merchant house. The tax that American colonists paid for their tea remained on the books, but they’d be facing an East India Company monopoly, as well as the tax.
Joshua Wyeth remembered the turning point in November 1773: “Our indignation was increased” by the arrival of three merchant ships bearing 340 chests of tea belonging to the East India Company and designated for sale in Boston and throughout New England. A fourth ship was on its way to Boston, but it ran ashore on Cape Cod. Three more ships headed to New York City, Philadelphia, and Charleston.