1774: Exploring Events of 250 Years Ago
Including Notes on my Visit to Philadelphia
Having missed being in Boston for the 250th Anniversary of the Boston Tea Party, and being the absolute Revolutionary War history nerd that I am, I got to thinking about what happened in the aftermath of the tea dumping. 1774 would change a lot of things, especially in Massachusetts, but also up and down the colonies. It’s the year that Governor Thomas Hutchinson is taken out of power in Massachusetts and General Gage is put in charge of the colony. Boston becomes overrun with British troops. All of the events of 1774 will lead into 19 April 1775. So it’s a very important year.
Another trigger to me thinking about this now is my recent trip the Museum of the American Revolution. It is interesting because living in Boston, you get a very specific view of how things happened. But Philadelphia definitely has a little bit of a different spin on the story. Especially when you consider one pretty important fact.
“[T]he publications by Mifflin and Rush and [Philadelphia’s] resolutions galvanized opposition to East India Company tea. Later that same month, a Philadelphian accurately anticipated a negative response, which he attributed to the ‘communication of sentiments’ between New Yorkers and Philadelphians. […] In Boston, by contrast, resistance lagged.”1
Mary Beth Norton is not the only historian to point out that Boston was behind the curve. However, one also has to note that while Boston may have been behind the mark in their protestations, they were certainly the worst punished after taking the violent step of full destruction of the tea that landed.
On the 7 February 1774, two chests of East India Company tea, purchased by a man from Wellfleet, were burned when discovered. The tea chests had been from a fourth ship, bound for Boston, that ran aground in Cape Cod. Then on 17 March 1774, General Gage lands at Long Wharf to be the new governor of Massachusetts, bringing along with him the orders for the blockade of Boston Harbor, to begin on 1 June. Not only this, but the charter for Massachusetts is suspended.2
Today is the 21 February 2024, meaning that if we were 250 years in the past, the Wellfleet burning of tea may have been very recent news for us. General Gage has not yet landed, but he will soon. It is, I think, really quite important to understand how slowly news traveled at the time. Would the news of the destruction of the tea have had more or less impact if news traveled faster? But if news traveled faster, so too would the tea itself. It was a different time.
I did find it interesting that Philadelphia, while there was some vague signage indicating that a major 250th anniversary was approaching, didn’t seem quite as keen on it as Boston has been. There will be two commemorations coming up this year in Boston: the closure of Boston’s port and the meeting of the provincial congress. Both of these events can be found at Boston’s Rev250 homepage. (Note: Details have yet to be published, though if you go through the Boston Tea Party page, there are significantly more small events in Massachusetts you can look at.) Meanwhile, it took some digging on the Museum of the American Revolution website to finally find that they are looking ahead to 2026 for the signing and reading of the Declaration of Independence.
That being said, I’m in Philadelphia just in time for the new exhibit on the history of George Washington’s tent called “Witness to a Revolution” at the Museum of the American Revolution. Very interesting exhibit with a number of George Washington’s things on display. I would have loved to spend more time both there and in their main gallery, but I had a toddler in tow. He was less excited about the movies in dark spaces than I was, though their Revolution Place - specifically designed for kids - he loved. Sadly, according to their website, Revolution Place is typically only open on weekends. We got very lucky with the Monday holiday. Overall, they did a pretty good job of making the museum family friendly, with plenty of opportunity to play dress-up and interact. But not quite enough for a toddler. I ended up resorting to using the tablet to distract him while I took in as much as I could.
Also, this might be just me, but - I feel like there are less reenactors in Philadelphia? Is this true? Maybe I just worked at the Old State House in Boston too long, but I feel like seeing reenactors around every corner… or lined up at the coffee shop… is just par for the course, and I’m not seeing anything similar here… Or maybe it’s just too cold, being February?
Mary Beth Norton, 1774: The Long Year of the Revolution (New York: Vintage Press, 2021), 14.
“Road to Revolution Timeline”, https://www.revolution250.org/education/road-to-revolution-timeline/