For America250, which 1773 protest involved the destruction of tea in Boston Harbor?

For America250, the 1773 protest involving tea destroyed in Boston Harbor was the Boston Tea Party.

On December 16, 1773, colonists in Boston boarded ships and threw 342 chests of tea into the harbor. The protest opposed Parliament’s Tea Act and the broader principle that Britain could tax colonists who lacked elected representatives in Parliament. Participants often disguised themselves, and the destruction was deliberately aimed at the tea cargo rather than the ships.

The protest did not immediately declare American independence. Britain responded with the Coercive Acts, called the Intolerable Acts by many colonists, which punished Massachusetts and restricted local self-government. Those measures helped prompt the First Continental Congress in 1774 and intensified cooperation among the colonies.

The Boston Tea Party is therefore a pre-independence event, not an action taken by the Continental Congress in 1776. It belongs to the chain of disputes that led to the Revolutionary War and ultimately to the Declaration commemorated by America250.