3 JULY 1774, FREDERICKSBURG, VIRGINIA: “The Newspapers abound with the heroic behaviour of ye Females,” merchant William Wiatt writes, who are giving up “the only Liberty which they are posses’d of (Drinking Tea).”
Wiatt expresses doubt, though, about the ethics of the destruction of the tea; he would rather Boston had done what Charleston did, allowed the tea to land and then “let it lie in the publick Warehouses & Rott.” Main source: Mary Beth Norton, 1774
