Today, students are told with great animation the story of the Boston Tea Party. Younger children may even make Indian masks to act out the riot. But before we can understand all of the hype and glamour about the party's grand finale, we need to know the rational behind the rebellion. Why commit such an expensive and destructive act? What lead up to the event? And what was the straw that broke the colonists' backs?
             The year was 1773. British Parliament had imposed a series of laws and acts that not only were trivial in importance but also wearisome and expensive to live by. The most recent of all the resented acts had just been passed 7 months prior. This was the fateful
             Tea act of May 1773, which gave monopolization to the floundering British East India Tea Company.
             When colonists resisted this new act, Thomas Hutchinson, the royal governor of Massachusetts, gave orders that the British East India Company's ships were not to sail back to England until all of the tea had been sold. This was the straw that broke the proverbial camel's back. Not only was a monopoly being put on the colonists' tea supply, but now they were being ordered to purchase the company's goods!
             On a crisp, mid-december night, a group of poorly disguised "Indian" rebels, lead by Samuel Adams, overtook three ships belonging to the British East India company. Within hours, participants had managed to dump 342 chests of tea into the Boston Harbor. The damage was estimated to be L9,000 (British Pounds Sterling)! In American terms, the destruction was worth over $13,000.
             History credits Samuel Adams as being the mastermind behind this perfect retaliation. But when and where the actual idea popped into his mind is a question the rest of us Americans-- 228 years later-- can only ponder. All we have left of that fateful night is a wistful pondering of what the reality must have been like and a name that we pass down in
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