The Charleston Tea Parties
Two weeks before the better known Boston Tea Party, Charleston, South Carolina, held its own act of civil disobedience protest against tea import duties. As in Boston, tea arrived in East India Company ships, and people were adamant that it not be unloaded in their port. On December 3rd, 1773, in what came to be known as “The First Charleston Tea Party“, the locals seized 200 tea chests. They lacked the Bostonians’ pizazz, however, and did not don costumes and dump it in the harbor, but simply confiscated and warehoused it without paying import duties. That was perhaps more pragmatic, but it did not make for great propaganda. That explains why the Boston Tea Party is known to this day, while relatively few have heard of Charleston’s.
The Second Charleston Tea Party occurred nearly a year later. In early November 1774, the ship Britannia docked in the city’s harbor, with seven chests of East India Company tea in its hold. Its captain admitted that he had the “mischievous drug” aboard his ship, but swore that it had been loaded without his knowledge or consent. He was thus spared punishment by the angry locals. However, the three merchants who had ordered the tea were forced to walk to Charleston’s harbor on November 3rd, 1774, and personally dump the tea chests overboard into the water.