But the most stirring event took place at Boston. There one night, while the tea-ship lay at a wharf in the harbor, a number of young men dressed like Indians rushed on board with a loud war-whoop and began to break open the tea-chests with their hatchets and pour the tea into the harbor. This was the famous "Boston tea-party."
Americans liked tea, but not tea with an English tax on it. They boiled leaves and roots and made some sort of tea out of them. It was poor stuff, but they did not pay any tax. And they would not buy any cloth or other goods brought from England. If the king was angry and stubborn they were angry and stubborn, too, and every day they grew more angry, until many of them began to think that they would be better off without a king. They were not the kind of people to be made slaves of easily by King George or any other king.
When the king heard of the "Boston tea-party" he was in a fury. He would make Boston pay well for its tea, he said. So he sent soldiers there, and he gave orders that no ships should go into or out of Boston harbor. This stopped most of the business of the town, and soon the poor people had no work to do and very little to eat. But they had crowded meetings at Faneuil Hall, where Samuel Adams and John Hancock and other patriots talked to them of their rights and wrongs. It began to look as if war would soon come.
The time had come at last for a union of the colonies. What Franklin had failed to do at Albany in 1754 was done at Philadelphia in 1774. A meeting was held there which was called a Congress, and was made up of some of the best men of the country sent from the colonies. One of these was George Washington, who had lived on his farm at Mount Vernon since the end of the French War.
Congress sent a letter to the king, asking him to give the people of this country the same rights that the people of England had. There was no harm in this, I am sure, but it made the king more obstinate still. I have said he was not a wise man. Most people say he was a very foolish one, or he would have known that the people of the colonies would fight for their rights if they could not get them in peace.
All around Boston the farmers and villagers began to collect guns and powder and to drill men into soldiers. These were called "minute men," which meant that they would be ready to fight at a minute's notice, if they were asked to. When people begin to get ready in this way, war is usually not far off.