Artifacts

On December 16, 1773, the event now referred to as the Boston Tea Party took place when men dressed as Mohawk Indians destroyed several hundred cartons of tea belonging to the East India Company. In response to this, the British Parliament passed a series of laws called the Coercive Acts (dubbed the Intolerable Acts by the colonists) in order to punish the colony of Massachusetts. When news of the retaliation by Great Britain made its way through the colonies, sympathy and support for the cause of colonial representation in Parliament steadily grew and gained momentum, and in Philadelphia at Carpenters’ Hall on September 5th, 1774, the Continental Congress met for the first time.

One of their resolutions was in the form of this handbill, or broadside, which was printed during the First Continental Congress and intended for mass circulation to communicate a request to all local merchants, urging them not to place further orders with England or to take delivery of goods already on order. It is signed by Charles Thomson, Secretary of the Continental Congress, 1774 to 1788. The broadside was printed by W. and T. Bradford of Philadelphia who also printed Thomas Paine’s Common Sense.

To date this is one of only two known copies to have survived this historic event in American history; the other is located at the Library of Congress.