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.

On December 16, 1773, after officials in Boston refused to return three shiploads of taxed tea to Britain, a group of colonists boarded the ships and destroyed the tea by throwing it into Boston Harbor.