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By 1773 the powerful British East India Company was almost bankrupt. Parliament passed the Tea Act of 1773. The law excised the company from paying certain duties and permitted it to bypass the wholesalers and sell tea directly to American agents. Most of the colonists, however, opposed the Tea Act and refused to buy the tea. The sons of Liberty in Philadelphia and New York threatened anyone who imported tea. But the most famous protest against the Tea Act occurred in Massachusetts. On December 16, 1773, after the governor refused demands to send three shiploads of tea back to England, colonists held a mass meeting at Boston’s Old South Church. Later that night, a well-organized group of colonists “dressed in an Indian manner” boarded the tea ships anchored in Boston Harbor and dumped 90,000 pounds of tea into the water. INTOLERABLE ACTS British Officials were furious.
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