by Allen Frederick

Created on: April 30, 2010   Last Updated: May 03, 2010

The question is posed, are the tea parties good or bad for America? They are America!

From the founding of this great nation it has been our heritage to stand for and protect our freedoms, ordained under God, and preserved through the blood of those who fought and died for that freedom.

The original Tea Party took place in Boston, Dec. 16, 1773, when American Colonists dumped 342 containers of tea into the Boston harbor. Opposition to that Tea Party arose from the ruling political class much like it is today.

The British Parliament retaliated by enacting a series of Intolerable Acts, these punitive acts where meant to force the colonists to acquiesce to British rule. Instead it only steeled the colonists in their resistance.

Economic and military tensions between the colonists and the British escalated when in February of 1775, a provincial congress was held in Massachusetts and began defensive preparations for a state of war.

The colonists where not just going to lie down and acquiesce. This riled the English Parliament and they declared Massachusetts in a state of rebellion.

On March 23, 1775, a meeting of the colony's delegates was held in St. John's church in Richmond, Virginia. Resolutions were presented by Patrick Henry putting the colony of Virginia "into a posture of defense...embodying, arming, and disciplining such a number of men as may be sufficient for that purpose." Before the vote was taken on his resolutions, Henry delivered his now famous speech imploring the delegates to vote in favor of the resolutions.

He spoke without any notes in a voice that became louder and louder, climaxing with the now famous ending. "Give me liberty or give me death." The resolution passed and Virginia joined in the American Revolution.

Our own Declaration of Independence outlines the thought processes that led up to this American Revolution. It was the position of our founding fathers that America was going to be a free self-governing republic.

"When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation."

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain

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