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Painting of the Boston Tea Party.

“Boston Harbor a Tea-pot This Night!” 

The dumping of tons of tea in protest set the stage for the American Revolution and was a window on the culture and attitudes of the time.
by Benjamin L. Carp via American Heritage on March 19, 2024
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The Boston Tea Party, Top to Bottom

A historian attends the 250th anniversary of the Tea Party, and reflects on the ways Americans remember one of the Revolution's main set pieces.
by Benjamin L. Carp via HNN on December 27, 2023
Destruction of tea in the harbor and text protesting the Tea Act.

The Many Myths of the Boston Tea Party

Contrary to popular belief, the 1773 protest opposed a tax break, not a tax hike. And it didn't immediately unify the colonies against the British.
by Meilan Solly via Smithsonian on December 15, 2023
Costumed re-enactors at the Boston Tea Party Ships and Museum in Boston.

The Boston Tea Party Turns 250

How does the most famous act of politically motivated property destruction in American history speak to our own polarized moment?
by Jennifer Schuessler via New York Times on December 15, 2023
Students on a field trip threw boxes of mock tea overboard at the Boston Tea Party Museum in Boston.

The Boston Tea Party Was a Crime

Opposition to British policy was justified. Destroying 342 crates of tea worth nearly $2 million in today’s money wasn’t.
by Jeff Jacoby via Boston Globe Magazine on December 14, 2023
Colonists boarding the ships and dumping the tea chests.

How the Boston Tea Party's 'Destruction of the Tea' Changed American History

Attacks on private property enraged Colonial leaders and the British public, hardening positions and ruling out compromise.
by Eliga Gould via The Conversation on December 13, 2023
The Boston Tea Party.

Why Some Founding Fathers Disapproved of the Boston Tea Party

While many Americans gushed about the effectiveness of the ‘Destruction of the Tea,’ others thought it went too far.
by Dave Roos via HISTORY on December 11, 2023
A man at a Tea Party rally in 2010, dressed in colonial clothes and standing in front of a Don't Treat On Me flag with his fist raised.
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Teed Off

Did the 2010 Tea Party Movement really have anything in common with 1773? What did the history of populism suggest about the Tea Party's future?
via BackStory on May 21, 2010

Mohawks, Mohocks, Hawkubites, Whatever

Down and dirty in eighteenth-century London and Boston.
by Roger D. Abrahams via Commonplace on January 1, 2008
Left: cover of "The New Yorkers," a book by Sam Roberts, featuring a collage of black and white photographs of different people. Right: 1884 illustration of British soldiers in long coats fighting with New York men
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Isaac Sears and the Roots of America in New York

Like so many other reluctant revolutionaries in New York, he seemed the antithesis of the rabble in arms that the British identified with the mobocracy.
by Sam Roberts via HNN on October 23, 2022
A cartoon of Boston colonists in a cage.

How Did the Colonies Unite?

The drive for American independence coalesced in only a few years of rapidly accelerating political change.
by T. H. Breen via New York Review of Books on March 1, 2021
Painting of Troops, an American Flag and Eagle.

Echoes of Lexington and Concord

The 250th anniversary of "the shot heard round the world" is a reminder of the rights the Patriots fought for.
by Richard Alan Ryerson via Law & Liberty on April 1, 2025
Painting titled "Repulse of Leslie at the North Bridge".

Was This Little-Known Standoff the Real Start of the American Revolution?

On February 26, 1775, residents of Salem, Massachusetts, banded together to force the British to withdraw from their town in Leslie’s Retreat.
by Robert Pushkar via Smithsonian on February 26, 2025
Protesters storming the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

What’s the Difference Between a Rampaging Mob and a Righteous Protest?

From the French Revolution to January 6th, crowds have been heroized and vilified. Now they’re a field of study.
by Adam Gopnik via The New Yorker on November 18, 2024
Colonists in front of the Old State House in Boston.

‘King Hancock’ Review: The Biggest Name in Boston

More than an artful calligrapher, John Hancock forswore the austerity of his fellow Bostonians, and their extremism.
by William Anthony Hay via The Wall Street Journal on October 6, 2023
Drawing of people gathered around a speaker at the liberty tree.

The Letter That Helped Start a Revolution

The Town of Boston’s invention of the standing committee 250 years ago provided a means for building consensus during America’s nascent independence movement.
by Livia Gershon, William B. Warner via JSTOR Daily on November 2, 2022

American Revolutionary Geographies Online

Discover the stories, spaces, and people of the American Revolutionary War era through maps, interpretive essays, and interactives.
via American Revolutionary Geographies Online on February 8, 2022
‘Flight of Lord Dunmore’; postcard, 1907.

The Paradox of the American Revolution

Recent books by Woody Holton and Alan Taylor offer fresh perspectives on early US history but overstate the importance of white supremacy as its driving force.
by Sean Wilentz via New York Review of Books on December 24, 2021
A cracked picture of Washington crossing the Delaware River.

The Incoherence of American History

We ascribe too much meaning to the early years of the republic.
by Osita Nwanevu via The New Republic on August 11, 2021
An effigy of Richard Nixon with a distorted papier-mache head.

The People’s Bicentennial Commission and the Spirit of (19)76

The Left once tried to own the legacy of America’s Bicentennial, but ran into ideological and structural roadblocks all too familiar today.
by Jason Tebbe via Tropics of Meta on July 26, 2021
An illustration of two men in 1770s clothing fighting in a river.

Has the World Gone Mad? An Interview with Sarah Swedberg

Swedberg's new book shows how prevalent concerns about mental illness were to the people of the early American republic.
by Sarah Swedberg, Rebecca Brannon via Nursing Clio on March 25, 2021
Jacob Lawrence.

Jacob Lawrence Went Beyond the Constraints of a Segregated Art World

Jacob Lawrence was one of twentieth-century America’s most celebrated black artists.
by Rachel Himes via Jacobin on February 4, 2021
Massacre in Boston

Knives Out

‘Struggle: From the History of the American People’ charts the strife of early US history in a fierce Cubist/Expressionist style.
by Sanford Schwartz via New York Review of Books on November 5, 2020
French military marching in practice for the Bastille Day Parade.
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The American Founders Celebrated the Storming of the Bastille

They understood that revolution means dismantling old power structures, violently if necessary.
by Zara Anishanslin via Made By History on July 14, 2020
A man walking by graffiti on a white wall that reads "Why do we have to keep telling you black lives matter?"

What the Protesters Tagging Historic Sites Get Right About the Past

Places of memory up and down the East Coast also witnessed acts of resistance and oppression.
by Lindsay M. Chervinsky via Smithsonian on June 26, 2020

America Begins to See More Clearly Now What Its Black Citizens Always Knew

The present round of protest is different. The participants are people of every race, ethnicity, sex, age, and religion.
by Theodore R. Johnson III via National Review on June 11, 2020
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Governors Must Hold Firm on Stay-at-Home Orders

Weariness of strong government is a key American tradition. But equally important is the revolutionary idea that national governance should come from the states.
by Liz Covart via Made By History on April 20, 2020
Painting of George Washington, altered to show him holding a stack of cash.

The Founding Generation Showed Their Patriotism With Their Money

History suggests the value of a broader understanding of patriotism, one that goes beyond saluting-the-flag loyalty and battlefield bravery.
by Tom Shachtman via The Atlantic on February 7, 2020

How Tea Helped Women Sell Suffrage

Private-labeled teas helped fund success during the suffragist movement. Today’s activists might learn from their model.
by Janelle Peters via The Atlantic on September 30, 2018
The port of Canton

China and the American Revolution

Explaining the global impact of British-Chinese relations during the colonial period.
by Simon Hill via Journal of the American Revolution on December 7, 2017
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