In Boston Harbor, a group of Massachusetts colonists disguised as Mohawk Indians board three British tea ships and dump 342 chests of tea into the harbor.

The midnight raid, popularly known as the “Boston Tea Party,” was in protest of the British Parliament’s Tea Act of 1773, a bill designed to save the faltering East India Company by greatly lowering its tea tax and granting it a virtual monopoly on the American tea trade. The low tax allowed the East India Company to undercut even tea smuggled into America by Dutch traders, and many colonists viewed the act as another example of taxation tyranny.

When three tea ships, the Dartmouth, the Eleanor, and the Beaver, arrived in Boston Harbor, the colonists demanded that the tea be returned to England. After Massachusetts Governor Thomas Hutchinson refused, Patriot leader Samuel Adams organized the “tea party” with about 60 members of the Sons of Liberty, his underground resistance group. The British tea dumped in Boston Harbor on the night of December 16 was valued at some $18,000.

Parliament, outraged by the blatant destruction of British property, enacted the Coercive Acts, also known as the Intolerable Acts, in 1774. The Coercive Acts closed Boston to merchant shipping, established formal British military rule in Massachusetts, made British officials immune to criminal prosecution in America, and required colonists to quarter British troops. The colonists subsequently called the first Continental Congress to consider a united American resistance to the British.

HISTORY.COM
Date: 2008-12-16

It’s 11pm, do you know where your presidential candidate is? If you’re a Democrat in Florida, the answer is likely to be yes. Approximately 35,000 voters gathered at Osceola Heritage Park in Kissimmee on Wednesday night for a political rally featuring not only presidential hopeful, Barack Obama, but also former president Bill Clinton.

Despite previous transgressions, including Obama’s victory over Clinton’s wife for the candidacy, the former leader made it clear who his choice was come November 4. “I think it’s clear the next president of the United States should be, and with your help will be, Barack Obama,” he said.

Clinton said Obama has the right philosophy, the right policies and the intellectual heft to handle the job of president. Taking a jab at President Bush, he said the past eight years should have taught Americans “that we want a president who wants to understand and who can understand.”

Bill Clinton wasn’t the only one waving the Obama flag last night. Tens of thousands of hopefuls from across Florida came out for the event, some arriving hours beforehand in hopes of getting a good seat.

Robert Mason traveled from Atlanta to see the Democrats’ biggest stars. Mason became sold on Obama after watching him during the meltdown on Wall Street in late September. “To be that even-keel in a crisis spoke volumes,” he said. “He truly appeared presidential.”

It seems to be the general consensus of Obama supporters that “He’s someone we can believe in.”