Impact Without Limits

S5 E7: Spill the Tea

• Dale and Brian Karmie / Adkins Media Co.

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In this episode of Impact Without Limits, Dale and Brian explore the Boston Massacre and the Boston Tea Party—two pivotal moments that intensified the growing divide between the Colonies and British rule. What started as tension over taxes and military presence quickly escalated, shaping public opinion and stirring a movement toward independence.

But these events weren’t isolated—they were the result of mounting frustration and a series of decisions that led to a turning point. This episode invites you to see how history is often built in layers, and how defining moments are shaped long before they unfold.


Episode Highlights: 

  • Tensions rising in Boston.
  • The Boston Massacre.
  • The battle of public opinion.
  • The Tea Act.
  • A bold act in the Boston Harbor.


Links Mentioned in Episode/Find More on ForeverLawn:

This show has been produced by Adkins Media Co.

SPEAKER_01

The events today are a culmination of all of these events that led up to this point. And the freedoms that we have today, we can trace back to moments like this where people were willing to do brave things and stand up to tyranny and to be willing to fight and to be willing to do whatever it took to create what we know is the greatest country in the history of the world. Absolutely. So why would two guys make comfortable jobs, move across the country, and start a business in an industry they don't know, a place they don't know, could it be successful? We're Dale and Brennan Corn.

SPEAKER_02

Join us as we share our story and inspire you to become people of impact.

SPEAKER_01

Welcome to the Impact Without Limits Podcast.

SPEAKER_02

What do kids these days mean when they say spill the tea? Welcome back to the Impact Without Limits Podcast. This is Dale Kerm here with my patriotic brother Brian. Hey everybody. Alright, so um I don't know. What do they mean when they say spill the tea?

SPEAKER_01

Well, I think it's kind of like sharing the deets on a situation, maybe even a little bit of gossip or what's going on. But when we're talking about spill the tea, we're gonna talk about the Boston Tea Party. Amen, brother. And you participated in the Boston Tea. I did. And we'll get into that too. And no, I didn't time travel. But let's let's kind of go through uh, you know, we kind of last episode did a flyover of the timeline of the American Revolution. We're gonna dive into the Boston Massacre in 1770 and then the Boston Tea Party in 1773. We're gonna touch on those two today. So let's start with the Boston Massacre. So this is a situation. So we talked about the Stamp Act and the all these acts that were the towns index oppressing the the colonists. And we have troops living in Boston, and Boston kind of becomes a center point.

SPEAKER_02

So so I mean you talk about probably not the right move. George shouldn't have been sending the troops over. King George. You know what I'm saying? Washington yet. No, you thank you for clarifying King George.

SPEAKER_01

I was trying to not give him the honor of calling him King. Which, by the way, we we were down in DC and they had that the two Georges exhibit, which was okay. But the amazing thing was like how close they were in age. Like I picture King George being this old guy. He wasn't, he was actually a few years younger than Washington.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, he hadn't been on the throne too long before all this started happening. But but so the the the colonists are pushing back against these acts, against the what they felt was the tyranny and they're they're um smuggling goods and they're finding ways around getting paying the taxes, and so Britain sends in troops. And in Boston, they send a thousand troops into Boston. And so again, just imagine you're living here in Canton, Ohio, or a smaller town, Hartville, Ohio, Louisville, Ohio, and a thousand troops come in and take up residence right in among you, around you, and in some of your homes and buildings, right? Because that was a quartering act.

SPEAKER_01

You can't there, they aren't there. They're not friends as they're there to keep you in check. Because there was this spirit of patriotism, they called it, spreading across the colonies, and King George didn't like that. And so these troops are just like standing guard places, just trying to kind of quell any patriotic celebrations or speeches, or just kind of have a presence to scare people.

SPEAKER_02

There's there's automatic tensions. Absolutely, right? So you have that that happening in Boston, and you have this group, the Sons of Liberty. I don't know how much we want to dive into that right now, but yeah.

SPEAKER_01

I mean, they're incredibly important. They're they're kind of the guys that are the other side. They're what the British are wanting to quell. They're saying, we need freedom, we need uh our rights are being trampled, and so they were fighting for this liberty, and famous ones Paul or I'm sorry, Sam Adams. Um I think Paul Revere did join them. John Hancock who was different.

SPEAKER_02

He was more of a wealthy guy that founded it. He didn't start out as one of the Sons of Liberty, but kind of as he saw the tyranny of Britain grow, he kind of pulled into it. Um there was um Dr. Joseph Warren, uh just uh uh but but there's this group uh they they became known as the Sons of Liberty, and they were fighting against the tyranny of the uh of the the soldiers in Britain. So in Boston in March March 5th, March 5th, 17th, 1770, and there there are different you know, and I was reading through different actual eyewitness accounts, yeah. In and I don't know, read maybe eight or nine eyewitness accounts. They were all a little bit different. This tends to happen because people remember things differently. But there was a soldier, a couple soldiers standing guard outside of the uh the house that I think housed the governor of uh of you know from Britain, appointed by Britain. And some of these, I don't know if it's the Sons of Liberty, but colonists, people who were maybe not too happy about the the soldiers being there, start heckling them.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. So one account I read, and I it I'm not positive it's exactly right, but this 13-year-old kid works in this wig maker shop across the street, and he comes out and starts heckling one of the the commanders saying, Hey, you didn't pay your bill to the my boss, and he's like, heckling him, and then this other soldier is like, Hey, you don't talk to my commander that way, and they just start jawing. And then the Sons of Liberty are coming around like, Hey, you're not picking on our kids. Right.

SPEAKER_02

It starts escalating because in the streets and it's at night. I mean, it was I think it was nine o'clock at night, maybe when all this starts breaking out. Um, but one of the one of the British soldiers takes the butt of his gun and and racks a gun in the head in the head, and he goes down. And now they start ringing the bells in the town, the you know, the uh the colonists, and that is a sign that there's either a fire in the streets and people come out or something going on. So now you have the people coming out of their houses, coming out of the pubs, wherever they are, into the streets, and you have a small group of soldiers.

SPEAKER_01

I think there were only I I don't know, six eight, eight, and up, eight, and a a commander end up getting charged.

SPEAKER_02

I don't know if there were others there. I think that was I think that was all of them. Um, and so they're being like threatened and surrounded and shouted at. I mean, stuff's getting thrown at them, but right? I mean snowballs.

SPEAKER_01

If you take it to today's world, right, you have ice agents, right, trying to carry it out, and people start peppering them with stuff. I know it's a bad thing.

SPEAKER_02

I was exactly that is not a great but the point is they these I mean they started throwing stuff at them. There if you're if you're the soldier, you're like you feel like your life is being threatened. Have all these people crowding in on you, shouting at you. Now, are the people justified? Well, well, yeah. I mean, if the guy gets cracked in the head with the butt of a gun and they're they're hassling a little kid, so tensions are rising, and then a shot is fired. A shot is fired into the crowd by one of the soldiers, and a man is killed. And the first man to be killed, his name was Crispus Addocks, and he was a black man of black and Indian Native American descent. Uh and after that shot was fired, I think there was a little bit of a pause, and then more shots were more shots. I think he ended up, I don't know, half a dozen shots were fired into the crowd.

SPEAKER_01

I think they end up injuring eleven, killing five, right? So five people died.

SPEAKER_02

What I had was six wounded, five killed. So there'd be eleven hitting eleven, five. Yeah, that's right.

SPEAKER_01

Six, that's correct, eleven total.

SPEAKER_02

And uh that was I mean, this this is you could you could say this is the beginning of the war. I mean, it isn't. But what is spilled?

unknown

Yep.

SPEAKER_02

People are injured, and um, it's an unfortunate event, and it it still wasn't clearly defined whether the captain, I don't know if it's captain, corporal, whatever.

SPEAKER_01

Captain Preston.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, if he gave the order to fire, or if the soldier fired on his own out of fear, it sounds like it's more likely the soldier fired on his own, but there were definitely some accounts that said they heard the captain shot fire. It also sounded like there was an agitator who was like a loyalist and wasn't part of the British Army, but was aching them on, telling them to shoot, just shoot, just fire. Uh, and and so this happens. But what came out of it was not only were five innocent to to whatever level you want to consider that people killed and six wounded, but two weeks following, Paul Revere, interesting enough, makes an engraving of the event, right?

SPEAKER_01

Which is he was a silversmith or a black silversmith.

SPEAKER_02

He makes this engraving that becomes this photograph or picture of the event that depicts the British soldier standing up, uh, the the the captain, or it was captain, right? Preston. Captain Preston, yep. Um, holding up his hand as if to give the order of fire and the guns going off into the crowd and the people dying. And that became just this image that ignited the passions and the frustrations and the the um pent-up angers of the uh of the colonists of the American people.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, so this happens March 5th, March 27th. Eight soldiers, Captain Preston, get uh charged with murder. But there's so much going on that they decide to delay this trial till later in the year. Yeah, it doesn't happen until November. Yeah, so this is the there's this huge kind of uh public opinion battle going on where the Patriots are trying to claim hey, the the British are attacking us, right? They're they're the aggressor, and the loyalists are saying, hey, this is a crazy rebel crowd that deserved what happened, and there's this public opinion. There's articles and papers on both sides, and and you you talked about Paul Revere creating this engraving, right? And everybody's trying to paint the picture of what happened. And so you get to the point of this trial, and they're like, We need to represent the these um defendants, these British soldiers, and who's gonna do that? Because if you have a loyalist do it, that's gonna be a mess. Patriots don't want to touch it, and they eventually convince John Adams, who becomes the the second president of America to defend them. And John Adams, um, again, another side note, we've talked about different things. The John Adams series that was on H it was an HBO series. I I I don't even know where you watch it now, but great series, and it does a great job depicting this event. Um, but John Adams ends up, he's a patriot, he's cousin of Sons of Adams. And he ends up defending these British soldiers, and pretty successfully. Absolutely. He they six of them end up acquitted, including the captain. Two are found guilty of manslaughter, but they end up getting they plead down to a lesser sentence. And yeah, so there's no huge uh fence. But here's here's just a quote. I I have I'm not gonna read the whole thing, but there's John Adams has a a quote like on a three-year anniversary of this event where he talks about it, and he says, I I the part I took in defense of Captain Preston and the soldiers procured me anxiety. I don't know that word, but essentially he's saying this was difficult. He said, However, it was one of the most gallant, generous, manly, disinterested actions of my whole life, and one of the best pieces of service I've ever rendered my country. Judgment of death against these soldiers would have been as foul of a stain upon this country as execution of Quakers. And he and he says the verdict of the jury was exactly right. So here you have a man who's um a devout Christian, strong patriot, you know, ends up becoming a huge part of the American Revolution. But he's like, listen, we have to stand on principle, we have to operate with integrity, we have to do what's right. And defending these guys, I'm gonna lose maybe a little credibility with some of my patrons.

SPEAKER_02

He was not very popular on the I mean I bet Sam had some crowd.

SPEAKER_01

I bet they had some conversations. Yeah. But at the end of the day, the right thing happened, right? Uh the the they they come out of this, they have a fair trial.

SPEAKER_02

Look, I I don't I don't want those people in the crowd dying, and and I hate the Tories, but these soldiers were in fear of their lives.

SPEAKER_01

But so this becomes a huge event that draws people to the the Patriot cause, right? People are now looking at that saying, we can't trust King George, we can't trust this British military.

SPEAKER_02

And we need to get soldiers because now anytime they're soldiers, there's a possibility this is gonna happen. They're gonna fire, they're gonna kill us, what have you. Yeah. Uh and and let's not forget that the the soldiers don't have to be tried in front of a jury because that was revoked in that earlier act.

SPEAKER_01

So we're gonna fast forward, right? And so obviously, it the the troops are still there, there's still stuff going on. There, there's there's still this, you know, and and it's different, right? They didn't have social media, they didn't have the internet, but people would print pamphlets, people would print papers, and you have the Sons of Liberty distributing stuff and giving speeches in town halls or in city squares and trying to even in pubs, you're just saying, hey, let's let's you know, we need to fight for our freedom, we need to protect ourselves. And you've got British loyalists saying this is you you're being rebellious. You're you're you're you're not respecting your authority, you know, you're not respecting the crown. And so this debate is going on for years, right? So we're gonna fast forward three years into December of 1773, and you have one of those events where the the Sons of Liberty are hosting an event in a bar, and Sam Adams is giving a speech about fighting for our freedom and and representing.

SPEAKER_02

Do you want to back up before you go into that and talk about May 10th when the Tea Act you want to talk about the T Act? Go right ahead. Yep. So uh in the beginning of '73, uh it's May 10th, 1773, the Tea Act was published. And this uh the uh I'll I'll give my little piece and you can chime in. But this gave favor to an English company called the East India Company, I believe it was called, um, to allow them to sell tea into the U.S. And they were named as the only acceptable provider of tea to the U.S. So tea couldn't come from other places, other nations, other directions. It could only come from this one company that was being propped up by the English government. And it was actually brought in at a cheaper price. They had they had dropped the taxes that were being levied on that company, right? The the the the government saying, okay, we're not going to charge you tax, we're going to lower your cost of operations so you can send this tea over and make it less expensive. And they may have dropped even the rate of taxes on that tea. I think I read the T was still being taxed, but it was three cents a pound, is what the tax on the T was. But um, they were doing this trying uh well, a couple things. One, they were trying to prop up a company. Yes, uh a government was trying to prop up a private entity in business because they were struggling. But two, they were trying to placate the colonists saying, look, we're gonna give you cheap tea. Yes. But the colonists are responding saying that's not the issue. The issue isn't that we want to buy cheap tea, the issue is you're taxing us unfairly, you're restricting our trade, you're not letting us do business and and and commerce the way we want to do it. Um so this I'm sure England was thinking they were going to reduce the yes, and they actually increased they inflamed it.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. So this goes back to 1767 is the Revenue Act, and that's you know, you you hear taxation without representation, right? I mean, that's a lot of the rally and cry. It was an uh a taxation that was passed on the American colonies that they didn't have any ability to to participate in and or to say whether that's right, fair, good, bad, whatever. And the colonists get angry about this. And there's this company, the East India Tea Company you were talking about.

SPEAKER_02

Oh, it is the tea companies in there. I call it a East India Company. I think I left out the word tea.

SPEAKER_01

It's probably the East India Company, but the primarily tea. But they are the largest company in the world, and and possibly I read some people saying the largest company in human history. So that's bizarre. This company in today's dollars would be about the size of Apple, Google, and Tesla combined, right? They they're huge, right? Enormous. They're given governance over parts of India with over 300 or I'm sorry, over 30 million people. So they have they're like the government of this part of India that Britain has has occupied, and they're using that to produce tea and to produce spices that they then sell around the world. They have an army. This company has an army of 260,000 people. Like they're just this massive company. But because of the French and Indian War and because of some of the things going on, they're losing some money and they're struggling a little bit. Then the colonists are saying, we don't want English tea because you've taxed it. So they're kind of protesting, right? And so what the king does is two things. One, he's trying to placate the colonists to say, okay, I'll give you cheap tea. And two, he's trying to give this East India tea company the ability, the market in, you know, there's millions of people in the colonies now that they could sell tea to. So he does this, just what you said, creates this monopoly saying, you can bring your tea in, it won't be taxed or be taxed very lightly. The Americans were actually getting tea cheaper than they were getting it in Britain. So the king's thinking, hey, I'm doing a good thing, they're going to be happy with me. And the colonists are like, you don't placate us by giving us some cheap tea, but you still leave all these taxes. We still have taxation without representation from this revenue act. This is this is garbage.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, and and I think it restricted their commerce because I'm sure there were a lot of people in the colonies that made their money by trading and by bringing in goods and selling goods and moving them. And all of a sudden, that right and ability is taken away from them, and they have to start smuggling tea to continue the commerce that they were doing.

SPEAKER_01

So I again I just I pause for just a second. The thought of this, right? You we talk today, and we think we have these giant companies and they're controlling the world and they're influencing the government. This is nothing new. Like this company was so much bigger than anybody, any any company we have today, so much more powerful. And it was tea. That's what they did. Spices and tea, trade. Did you in your reading, did you find out what happened to them? I mean, at some point, yeah, they only make it, they only make it about another 20 years, and they end up in financial trouble and they have to be split apart. Discandidate. Yeah, it's crazy. I mean, absolutely amazing. Like Sears and Robock. But a lot of this is because of what happens here, right? So December 16th, Sons of Liberty, they're in this Boston pub and they're giving their speeches. And whether Samuel Adams gave a trigger to tell the people to go on the boat and do this, or whether it was just he inspired them with his words, there's some debate over that. But you get a group of the Sons of Liberty, a group of men who dress up as Indians, Native Americans, and they sneak onto this boat in the middle of the night. And they start dumping tea from these ships in from the East India Tea Company. They start dumping it into the harbor. And I hear that and I think, okay, they're throwing a few crates overboard or something like that. They dump ninety two thousand pounds of tea. That's enough for if you equate it to tea bags today, eighteen million bags of tea. Like I can't even comprehend how much tea these people were drinking, because there's only what what'd we decide? Three or four million people in America at the time. Eighteen million bags of tea over one point seven million dollars of today's money, and they just throw it into the harbor in a protest. Right? Now, they also did it in a orderly manner, controlled manner.

SPEAKER_02

It wasn't some crazy riot. They they they weren't injuring and attacking people, they weren't burning and destroying the ship. The only thing they did was dump the tea in the harbor. Like like you started saying, there were even reports that they swept the deck of the ship and cleaned it up when it was done. It wasn't to uh right, it was very intentionally controlled, and it was very intended to send a message take your tea and shove it, right? Get it out of here. We dumped it in the harbor. Just we we didn't kill people, we didn't burn and destroy, we we weren't out of control. But I think the message was sent.

SPEAKER_01

Right. And so what the effect that the Boston Massacre had to galvanize the Patriots, this actually had the opposite effect in Britain to galvanize people loyal to the British Crown in Britain to be angry against the colonists because they're like, this is this is absurd. And then the British politicians kind of band together and they start passing more laws, and now they're trying to punish the colonists. Yeah, it definitely increased the the level of oppression. And it it becomes, yeah, it wasn't at this point, it's not just money, it's spite, right? They're like, We're gonna we're gonna punish. King George is like, I'm gonna put my thumb on them and I'm gonna press them down. And this becomes known as the intolerable acts, these acts that again, just more oppressive, taking away more rights. Um, and it really, these two events really defined the sides. I mean, there's a lot more that goes into it, uh, but but these were galvanizing moments where you have the Patriots galvanized and the British loyalists galvanized, and there becomes this strong divide.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, do we want to talk about my participation in the uh Austin Tea Party? Well, well, yeah, I do.

SPEAKER_01

I didn't mean to get you off track. Keep going. I was just gonna say, I I I think an interesting side note on this is that the colonists boycott tea, like for the foreseeable future. They just stopped drinking tea. And John Adams actually never really drinks tea again the rest of his life. He switches to coffee. And there's a lot of reports that say this event is the reason that in America coffee is our preferred beverage, where in Great Britain they still drink tea, they still have afternoon tea. If you're one of those people that like your cafe and latte in the morning or in the afternoon, or whenever you drink it, you can look back at this moment and say, this is where it switched. It could have been tea, but instead, Americans switch to coffee.

SPEAKER_02

I'm not a big drinker of either. However, after my heart surgery, I have started drinking coffee. I don't know if that's good or bad. But I wanted something with flavor, and I really don't like it, but I do drink it. I like it. I think I like it better than tea. Well, they sweet tea's good, but I don't think the Brits get to claim sweet tea. No, sweet tea is definitely sitting there little cups of hot tea with their finger up, sitting it out of a little porcelain. Sweet tea comes from Dixie with their what what are they, scones or schwones or whatever they're dipping with it.

SPEAKER_01

So now it was 250 years later. It was, but you participated.

SPEAKER_02

I did. So we we were in Boston this fall. We're up there together. You know, unfortunately, we were there for a funeral. Uh the funeral of Brendan Cronin.

SPEAKER_01

It was no, it would have been it was 73, not 75. 252 years later. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Um, but we we spent like half a day. We went down to Boston. We said we want to go see where the tea party was. And so we walked along the harbor and and and we found the area, and there's a ship there, and there's a sign. These ships, I mean, there were multiple, but they aren't that big. They weren't that big.

SPEAKER_01

The thing that they had that much tea on there.

SPEAKER_02

But we we ate we were eaten lunch right before we we went and did this walk, and and we knew we were heading to the Boston Tea Party, so or to the site of the Boston Tea Party. So I asked the waiter, I'm like, hey, can I have a tea? And he goes, You want a cup of tea? And I said, No, I just want a bag of tea. So he brought me a bag of tea, and it was some English. He made sure he got me a big thing. It was like Earl Gray or something. Because he I think he knew, but he said, What do you? He said, You just want the bag of tea? He said, Yeah, I'm dumping it in the harbor. And so I take this little tea bag, and we walked down to the harbor, and I ripped that thing open, and I took it and I shook that tea into the harbor and I said, Take that, King George.

SPEAKER_01

I had video evidence. I have video evidence. It was such a moment that I had to record it. It was pretty huge. And that was right before Ken spit the gum onto the ship. We won't talk on the deck of the ship. But that was a great moment.

SPEAKER_02

It felt good.

SPEAKER_01

It felt good. So Dale is a son of Liberty and part of the Boston Tea Party. He was a little late. You didn't get the message right away. Yeah. So you were 252. I was looking for time travel, but couldn't find it. Um, but just amazing events. And and as we can look at these two events, again, neither event is a standalone, right? No event in history ever is their culmination and a response to all these events leading up. So the the stamp acts, the troops in town, the the you know Patriots starting to and Sons of Liberty starting to write.

SPEAKER_02

And I did look at while we were sitting there. The Sons of Liberty, they they were actually an official organization. I didn't know if they were a name they just adopted, but it was an official organization that was formed in uh 1765, and they they started, they rose up to oppose the Stamp Act. So again, like you said, everything's connected. So they passed the Stamp Act, you get the Sons of Liberty, and then the Sons of Liberty, what eight years later, are the ones dumping the dumping the tea, the tea in the harbor, and uh it just it builds.

SPEAKER_01

So again, neither event was the lone event, but they were these were kind of galvanizing events on both sides and drew the lines to where people are starting to have to choose sides. Are they a British loyalist? Are they a patriot? Whose side are you on?

SPEAKER_02

Well, uh, we want you to dive into history, we want you to learn it, then we want you to remember it so we can all preserve it. Uh hope you have a great week, and I hope that you enjoy these moments leading up to the celebration of the semi-quincentennial.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, and just realize that again, the events today are a culmination of all of these events that led up to this point. And the freedoms that we have today, we can trace back to moments like this where people were willing to do brave things and stand up to tyranny and to be willing to fight and to be willing to do whatever it took to create what we know is the greatest country in the history of the with that. God bless, God bless America. We'll see you next week.

SPEAKER_00

This is a thread called me reminding you that faith looks up, hope looks ahead, and love looks all around to see whom it can help. Good day.