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TIME History politics Then as Now, the Tea Party Proved Divisive Artist's rendering of the Boston Tea Party of Dec. 16, 1773. MPI / Getty Images Dec. 16, 1773: Colonial activists dump 45 tons of tea into Boston Harbor to protest the Tea Act

Members of todays Tea Party movement embrace as kindred spirits the colonists who turned Boston Harbor into a teapot 241 years ago. And while its true that both groups formed around a robust opposition to the government in power and an equally vigorous objection to the taxes it levied, it would be a mistake to say that the Boston Tea Party was triggered by a tax hike.

On this evening, Dec. 16, in 1773, dozens of colonists boarded three ships laden with East India Company tea and dumped the entire stock 45 tons of tea, worth roughly $1 million in todays economy into the harbor to protest Parliaments recent Tea Act. The act, however, didnt increase taxes: It lowered the price of tea by allowing the struggling East India Company to sell directly to colonists without first stopping in England. This cut out colonial middlemen and essentially gave the company a monopoly on tea sales.

So, although organizers of the original tea party echoed the popular refrain of No taxation without representation, many were motivated by a personal interest that continues to motivate 241 years later: profit. Bostons wealthy merchants, some of whom made a fortune smuggling Dutch tea, stood to lose big when the Tea Act was passed. John Hancock, one of the main agitators behind the tea party, was among them.

Ahough the Boston Tea Party has become synonymous with patriotism, not all of early Americas top patriots were on board. The protest appalled many colonists with its destructiveness and waste, according to Harlow Unger, the author of American Tempest: How the Boston Tea Party Sparked a Revolution. Far from uniting colonists, the Tea Party had alienated many property owners, who held private property to be sacrosanct and did not tolerate its destruction or violation, Unger wrote.

Ben Franklin suggested to Hancock and co-agitator Samuel Adams that they reimburse the East India Company for the lost tea. He wrote, in a letter from London shortly after the protest, I am truly concernd, as I believe all considerate Men are with you, that there should seem to any a Necessity for carrying Matters to such Extremity, as, in a Dispute about Publick Rights, to destroy private Property.

George Washington was similarly disapproving. His take on the Boston Tea Party clashes with the modern-day tea partys more reverent view and with their claim to channel the beliefs of the Founding Fathers.

When a contemporary Tea Partier, on a visit to Colonial Williamsburg, brought up the topic with a historical interpreter dressed as Washington, he was surprised by the answer, according to a 2010 Washington Post story. Asked whether the Boston Tea Party had helped rally the patriots, Washington disagreed with force, the Post reported. The tea party should never have occurred, he said. Its hurt our cause, sir.

Read more about the modern Tea Party here, in TIMEs archives: Why the Tea Party Movement Matters

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Boston Tea Party and Modern Tea Party: Not All About Taxes

TIME History politics Then as Now, the Tea Party Proved Divisive Artist's rendering of the Boston Tea Party of Dec. 16, 1773. MPI / Getty Images Dec. 16, 1773: Colonial activists dump 45 tons of tea into Boston Harbor to protest the Tea Act

Members of todays Tea Party movement embrace as kindred spirits the colonists who turned Boston Harbor into a teapot 241 years ago. And while its true that both groups formed around a robust opposition to the government in power and an equally vigorous objection to the taxes it levied, it would be a mistake to say that the Boston Tea Party was triggered by a tax hike.

On this evening, Dec. 16, in 1773, dozens of colonists boarded three ships laden with East India Company tea and dumped the entire stock 45 tons of tea, worth roughly $1 million in todays economy into the harbor to protest Parliaments recent Tea Act. The act, however, didnt increase taxes: It lowered the price of tea by allowing the struggling East India Company to sell directly to colonists without first stopping in England. This cut out colonial middlemen and essentially gave the company a monopoly on tea sales.

So, although organizers of the original tea party echoed the popular refrain of No taxation without representation, many were motivated by a personal interest that continues to motivate 241 years later: profit. Bostons wealthy merchants, some of whom made a fortune smuggling Dutch tea, stood to lose big when the Tea Act was passed. John Hancock, one of the main agitators behind the tea party, was among them.

Ahough the Boston Tea Party has become synonymous with patriotism, not all of early Americas top patriots were on board. The protest appalled many colonists with its destructiveness and waste, according to Harlow Unger, the author of American Tempest: How the Boston Tea Party Sparked a Revolution. Far from uniting colonists, the Tea Party had alienated many property owners, who held private property to be sacrosanct and did not tolerate its destruction or violation, Unger wrote.

Ben Franklin suggested to Hancock and co-agitator Samuel Adams that they reimburse the East India Company for the lost tea. He wrote, in a letter from London shortly after the protest, I am truly concernd, as I believe all considerate Men are with you, that there should seem to any a Necessity for carrying Matters to such Extremity, as, in a Dispute about Publick Rights, to destroy private Property.

George Washington was similarly disapproving. His take on the Boston Tea Party clashes with the modern-day tea partys more reverent view and with their claim to channel the beliefs of the Founding Fathers.

When a contemporary Tea Partier, on a visit to Colonial Williamsburg, brought up the topic with a historical interpreter dressed as Washington, he was surprised by the answer, according to a 2010 Washington Post story. Asked whether the Boston Tea Party had helped rally the patriots, Washington disagreed with force, the Post reported. The tea party should never have occurred, he said. Its hurt our cause, sir.

Read more about the modern Tea Party here, in TIMEs archives: Why the Tea Party Movement Matters

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Then as Now, the Tea Party Proved Divisive

The Boston Tea Party saw 600,000 pounds of tea thrown into the sea

Few people would have guessed that throwing crates of tea off a ship would lead to one of the biggest revolutions in history. Yet, on this day in 1773 a group calling itself the Sons of Liberty carried out the Boston Tea Party protest and paved the way for the American Revolution.

The group, dressed as Native Americans and led by Samuel Adams, an unsuccessful businessman and tax collector, boarded the ship and destroyed 2,000 chests, containing 600,000lbof tea, by throwing them into the sea. The tea belonged to the powerful and influential East India Company.

The spark for the protest was the Tea Act of May 1773. The new law forced the 13 American colonies to buy their tea from the East India Company. The Company was in dire financial straits and had much more tea stored in its British warehouses than it was able to sell.

Techincally, the Tea Actwas not a tax. But itdid give the East India Company such a total monopoly that many, including Adams and the Sons of Liberty, viewed it as one.

Their slogan was no taxation without representation.

The Tea Party was a spark for revolution, and the British provided most of the fuel. Their response was harsh. Parliament in London passed laws in 1774 known as the Coercive Acts that ended local self-rule in Massachusetts and entirely closed the Port of Boston.

As a result of the Coercive Acts, more and more acts of defiance sprang up across the 13 colonies. The cycle of escalation continued until both sides were at war. By 1778 the situation had got so out of hand that parliament passed the Taxation of the Colonies Act 1778, which repelled the Tea Tax as well as others.

Butit was all too little too late. Ten years after the Boston Tea Party protest, in 1783, the guns of war fell silent and the colonies becamefully independent. Samuel Adams became one of the Founding Fathers of the United States.

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16 December 1773: The Boston Tea Party protest

WASHINGTON - Like Tea Party Republicans on the opposite end of the political spectrum, progressive US Democrats are riding a populist anti-establishment wave, hoping their champion Elizabeth Warren challenges Hillary Clinton for the White House.

First-term US Senator Warren, a provocative anti-Wall-Street crusader, led a revolt last week against must-pass federal spending legislation weighed down with what she and other Democrats described as giveaways to big banks and wealthy political donors.

They bucked President Barack Obama, who backed the bill. They frustrated Democratic leaders, although the measure ultimately passed.

And they insisted their cause was one Americans would be eager to join.

One year before the 2016 presidential race kicks into full swing, this is Warren's moment.

But the question remained whether the 65-year-old can, or will, translate grassroots support for her positions into a viable presidential run against a woman widely seen as the Democratic frontrunner.

"I'm not running for president," Warren insisted to NPR in a radio interview Monday.

Pressed on how she routinely uses the present tense when describing her lack of White House ambition, Warren repeated: "I am not running for president. You want me to put an exclamation point at the end?"

A handful of grassroots Democratic groups are already hoping to prod her into a change of heart.

MoveOn.org announced last week it was launching a pre-campaign Warren-for-president movement. It has 10 full-time employees, and $1 million to spend to recruit staff in New Hampshire and Iowa, the states that vote earliest in the primary contests to decide the parties' nominees.

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Elizabeth Warren to challenge Hillary Clinton for White House?

US Senator Ted Cruz, the Texas Tea Party firebrand who nearly provoked the second government shutdown in a little over a year, on Tuesday apologised to his fellow Republicans for a strategy that backfired.

A Cruz spokeswoman said the senator apologised to colleagues "for inconveniencing their personal schedules" over the weekend. Cruz still believes, the spokeswoman said, that fighting to stop President Barack Obama's new programme easing deportations for millions of illegal immigrants "was critically important."

The apology to Republican senators came at a closed-door lunch when Cruz, a possible 2016 presidential candidate, "was contrite and made an effort to explain to people he wished he hadn't done it," said a source familiar with the meeting.

Cruz sparked a public rebuke by fellow Republican senators. They criticised the Texan for forcing the Senate to be in session Friday night and through Saturday because he refused to allow quick passage of a US$1.1 trillion (S$1.43 trillion) bill keeping the government running beyond midnight Saturday.

Cruz's actions inadvertently allowed Democratic leaders to advance nearly two dozen Obama nominees. These included Sarah Saldana, chosen to head the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. Republicans had been trying to block some of those nominations.

Some Republican senators had been privately talking up the need to punish Cruz, according to Senate Republican aides.

Among ideas were possibly denying Cruz committee assignments or "blocking him from being able to offer things," one aide said.

Senator John Cornyn, second-ranking Senate Republican and Cruz's fellow Texan, noted "persuasion," rather than punishment, was the coin of the realm.

"One of the good things about being a United States senator is that any individual senator can pursue any tactics that they choose to pursue and there's not much anybody else can do about it," Cornyn said.

Republicans won big in Nov. 4 elections, gaining control of the Senate and expanding their majority in the House of Representatives. The party appeared to be coming together after a series of election cycles pitting Tea Party activists against mainstream Republicans.

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Firebrand Senator Ted Cruz apologises for US spending bill ruckus