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However, if the colonies paid the duty tax on the imported tea they would be acknowledging Parliament's right to tax them.

In Charleston the tea-laden ships were permitted to dock but their cargo was consigned to a warehouse w

ere it remained for three years until it was sold by patriots in order to help finance the revolution.

The Boston Tea Party of December 16, 1773, took place when a group of Massachusetts Patriots, protesting the monopoly on American tea importation recently granted by Parliament to the East India Company, seized 342 chests of tea in a midnight raid on three tea ships and threw them into the harbor.

The Boston Tea Party of December 16, 1773, took place when a group of Massachusetts Patriots, protesting the monopoly on American tea importation recently granted by Parliament to the East India Company, seized 342 chests of tea in a midnight raid on three tea ships and threw them into the harbor.

It took nearly three hours for more than 100 colonists to empty the tea into Boston Harbor.  The chests held more than 90,000 lbs. (45 tons) of tea, which would cost nearly $1,000,000 dollars today.  

If Parliament expected that the lowered cost of tea would mollify the colonists into acquiescing to the Tea Act, it was gravely mistaken. By allowing the East India Company to sell tea directly in the American colonies, the Tea Act cut out colonial merchants, and the prominent and influential colonial merchants reacted with anger.