You're listening to an Airwave Media podcast.

Ben Franklin's World is a production of Colonial Williamsburg Innovation Studios.

The Boston Tea Party was a crime. And if you were a witness and testified to the grand jury

that you saw Liz Cobart at the Boston Tea Party, well then Liz, your friends on the grand jury

would go tell your other friends in

the Sons of Liberty who would go knock that guy's teeth in the next day. Not a single witness to the

Boston Tea Party was ever found. So this sort of two-step of a paramilitary wing in the Sons of Liberty

and a polite political leadership wing is really what the Boston Patriots

are doing. The polite wing is the one that engages with the people in Philadelphia, and the

rude ring is the one that engages with conservatives in Boston.

Hello, and welcome to episode 401 of Ben Franklin's World, the podcast dedicated to helping you learn more about how the people and events of our early American past have shaped the present

day world we live in. And I'm your host, Liz Kovart. During the early days of the American

Revolution, British American colonists attempted to sway their fellow Britons in Parliament with

consumer politics. In 1768 and 1769, British Americans banded together to enact a general

boycott of British goods to protest the Townsend duties, which were a set of

taxes placed on specific or enumerated goods such as paint, lead, glass, paper, and tea.

Now, the boycott originated in the town of Boston, where Bostonians struggled to get the

rest of the Bay colony involved, but they did successfully persuade merchants in New York City,

Philadelphia,

and other ports of trade to participate in their boycott. This boycott expired on January 1, 1770,

and Parliament repealed the Townsend duties in April 1770. Now, although this general boycott is

portrayed as a success in our history books about the American Revolution,

...