In short, the ministry may rely on it, that Americans will never be taxed without their own consent.

That the cause of Boston, the despotic measures in respect to it, I mean now is and ever will be considered as

the cause of America.

And we shall not suffer ourselves to be sacrificed by piecemeal, though God only knows what is to become of us,

threatened as we are with so many hovering evils as hang over us at present.

On June 10, 1774, George Washington wrote these lines in a letter to his friend George William Fairfax.

Six months after the destruction of the tea at Boston Harbor,

he detailed the increasing frictions in the colonies

and their growing solidarity in supporting the cause of Boston.

The Tea Party was considered by many as an unsavory crime, not approved of by

Washington or other prominent officials. Nonetheless, Boston had now emerged as an urgent point of unification for the colonists in their dangerous

run-up to revolution. Hello hello and welcome to another hit of history here at American History

Hit. I'm Don Wildman. In the sweeping timeline of this great nation, there are any

number of instances when American citizens have

gotten wild and crazy in acts of political protest. We're kind of known for this. Maybe not as

routinely as say the French, but we can do a pretty good job of rattling our cages.

Rallying to the cause or more properly the right of the people peaceably to

assemble is inscribed in our Constitution but the patriotic event we discussed today happened well before there was a nation and certainly a Constitution, and it was not at all peaceful.

Indeed, according to British authorities at the time, this Assembly qualified as a good old-fashioned treasonous

riot. Something else we're pretty well known for these days. It's the Boston Tea

Party 250 years ago this month, one of the first headline anniversaries of the looming

U.S. semi-Quincontennial celebration.

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