John Adams once stated that “the Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people” long before the start of the Revolutionary War. Years before British soldiers fired on the townspeople in the first battle of the war, Lexington was fighting with economics rather than weapons.

The Seven Years’ War in the 1760s had left Britain with a crisis of national debt. Raising taxes on prosperous North America seemed the solution, but there was one problem: a century of benign neglect from the Crown had fostered fierce independence among the colonists. Massachusetts was accustomed to elected governance and town meetings. Taxes did not come from on high; they were voted for.

Thus began a cycle of taxation and protest that continued for years. Britain tried taxing a variety of goods, from necessities to luxuries. The goods were irrelevant, however: Americans bristled at being tasked to solve someone else’s problem without their consent. With each tax, locals organized boycotts and harassed government officials. By 1773, most new taxes were repealed, save one: tea. A new law tried to woo the populace by lowering the price of tea, while asserting the government’s right to levy taxes, and granting a monopoly to bail out the struggling East India Company.

The plan backfired. When the first tea ships landed in Boston Harbor, Lexington seethed, emboldened by their minister, Jonas Clarke. A cousin to John Hancock, a key opponent of the tea law, Clarke turned his fire and brimstone speeches from religion to politics. At a town meeting, Lexingtonians gathered to debate whether they should stand in solidarity with Boston’s Patriots. At the meeting’s conclusion, on December 13, 1773, they crafted a declaration stating the injustice of the tax and corruption of the government. It concluded with the following resolution:  

“That if…any person, from this time forward…purchase any tea, or use or consume any tea…such person shall be looked upon as an enemy to this town and to this country.” 

The townspeople then did something far more radical: they proceeded onto the common to publicly burn their tea in a bonfire. Lexington was no stranger to protest; their first tea boycott had been in 1767. But on this day, citizens were emboldened enough to take a drastic action that would be seen by all. And seen it was: just two days later, Charlestown voted to burn their tea following Lexington’s example. One day after that, on December 16, Boston’s Patriot newspaper, The Massachusetts Spy, reported on both motions. 

That evening, Boston was in an uproar. Its own town meeting struggled to decide what to do with the shipment of tea, sitting in the harbor with an unloading deadline looming. One wonders if any in attendance had read the morning’s paper and been inspired by the actions of their suburban counterparts. With negotiations at an impasse, Patriots stormed the wharf and destroyed the tea in the protest known as the Boston Tea Party. This event has gone down in history, but it was far from the only political action taken that December, as Lexington will never forget.