Gyroscopic Investing

The sudden manifestation of an organization like the Sons of Liberty reflected the particularly intense urban resistance to the Stamp Act. Recent British policies embodied in the Sugar Act, Currency Act, and Stamp Act targeted city-based products, industry, trade, and financial activity. Middling artisans and wealthy merchants alike had experienced economic dislocations that stemmed from recession and an influx of cheap British goods and foreign labor. The combination of British governmental regulation and business competition had begun to undermine loyalty to empire.

1773 In an effort to prop up the financially troubled East India Company, Parliament passed the Tea Act, granting it a virtual monopoly over the British tea market and allowing direct sales access to the colonies (colonial merchants were cut out of the loop entirely). As a consequence, East India Company tea cost the least of any available tea, foreign or domestic. Following the retention of the 3 pence Townshend duty on tea in 1770, colonists had generally boycotted British brands, turning instead to contraband Dutch brews. An estimated 90 percent of all tea consumed in the colonies was of the Dutch variety, so patriots could sip cheaply while avoiding the despised revenue duty altogether. Now, even with the Townshend duty added, East India tea remained the least expensive. Because the tax seemed "hidden" in this manner, colonists viewed the Tea Act as an underhanded way to foist the tax, and Parliamentary taxation power, onto the colonies. Lord North fundamentally miscalculated the unity and magnitude of the colonial response.

On the night of December 16, Massachusetts Patriots disguised as Indians illegally boarded the Dartmouth, a cargo ship bearing 342 chests of East India Tea valued at about �10,000. In defiance of Governor Thomas Hutchinson and British tax authority in general, the intruders dumped the entire shipment into Boston Harbor, precipitating a crisis that would lead to revolution.