FTCE Subject Area K-6 Practice Exam

The main event that prompted the Sons of Liberty to organize a demonstration was the Tea Act. This act, passed by the British Parliament in 1773, granted the British East India Company the right to sell tea to the American colonies free of the usual colonial taxes. This effectively allowed the company to undersell colonial merchants, which angered many colonists who saw this as another example of British overreach and taxation without representation.

The Sons of Liberty, who were a group formed to resist British policies and taxes, seized this opportunity to mobilize public outrage. Their most famous protest against the Tea Act was the Boston Tea Party, where they boarded ships and dumped an entire shipment of tea into Boston Harbor as a demonstration against what they viewed as unjust taxation. This event significantly escalated tensions between the colonies and Britain, further solidifying the revolutionary sentiment among the colonists.