One of these imposed a tax on tea.

The Colonists not only refused to buy it, but to have it landed.

In Boston a large crowd gathered and listened to much fiery speech-making.
Suddenly, a body of fifty men disguised as Mohawk Indians rushed down to the wharves, rowed out to the three vessels in which a large consignment of tea had been sent across the ocean, hoisted it out of the holds to the decks and scattered the contents of three hundred and forty chests in Boston Harbor.
[Footnote 1: _John Adams's Diary_, August 31, 1774, quoting Lynch.] The Boston Tea Party was as sensational as if it had sprang from the brain of a Paris Jacobin in the French Revolution.

It created excitement among the American Colonists from Portsmouth to Charleston.
Six more of the Colonies enrolled Committees of Correspondence, Pennsylvania alone refusing to join.

In every quarter American patriots felt exalted.