My First Boston Tea Party Sestercentennial Symposium

On Saturday, 15 December, I’ll be one of the speakers participating in Stephen Ambrose Historical Tours’ “Boston Tea Party Symposium.”

This isn’t a standalone event but part of a four-day tour of Revolutionary Boston timed to coincide with the Sestercentennial of the Tea Party. The tour includes visits to the Museum of Fine Arts, the Massachusetts Historical Society, and the reenactments at the Old South Meeting House and Boston Tea Party Ships.

Among the historians scheduled to talk to tour participants on Saturday and Sunday are:

• Rick Beyer, host, creator of Lexington’s “First Shot!: The Day the Revolution Began” movie and author of Rivals Unto Death, about Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr.
• Edward G. Lengel, host, Chief Historian at the National Medal of Honor Museum. While overseeing the George Washington Papers, Lengel wrote Inventing George Washington, General George Washington: A Military Life, This Glorious Struggle, and other fine books.
• Robert J. Allison, professor at Suffolk University and author of The Boston Tea Party, among other reviews of Boston history.
• Benjamin L. Carp, professor at Brooklyn College and author of Defiance of the Patriots: The Boston Tea Party and the Making of America and most recently The Great New York Fire of 1776: A Lost Story of the American Revolution.
• Christopher Sherwood Davis, speech and accent coach for historical performers, such as those on the recreated tea ships, and Tea Party researcher who spoke at History Camp Boston 2023 and started the @TeaCrisis1773 feed.
• Kristin Harris, research coordinator at the Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum for its Descendent and Grave Marker Program.
• J. L. Bell, proprietor of this Boston 1775 blog and author of The Road to Concord.

I’ll speak on Saturday about why Boston, Massachusetts, and New England were so troublesome for the British imperial government in the 1760s and 1770s.

Stephen Ambrose Historical Tours started by offering North Americans trips to the World War II battlefields of Europe. It then expanded a bit to other periods and conflicts. Rick Beyer has led a ten-day tour from Boston to Québec and a nine-day tour from Charleston to Yorktown, for instance.

Four days in Boston is therefore on the low end of the company’s offerings. Nonetheless, this event is designed for people coming from out of town and seeking hotel accommodations, meals, and guides. It’s not just a series of talks with a boxed lunch, and the price of $1,790 reflects that model.