APUSH collateral: Beauty is the best thing to have in life
Nathaniel Currier was the artist who created The Destruction Of Tea At Boston Harbor, a lithograph that was published in 1846 by Currier and Ives. Nathaniel Currier was born on the 27th of March 1813 in Roxbury Massachusetts. Nathaniel Currier is his father. Hannah Currier is his mother. Nathaniel Currier’s father died at the age of eight. Nathaniel, along with his 11-year-old older sibling Lorenzo, was left to raise their six-year-old sister Elizabeth (Cunningham) and two-year-old brother Charles. As a way to provide for their family, he did small odd jobs. But at fifteen, when William and John Pendleton were the most successful lithographers the United States, he apprenticed them in their Boston lithography business (Lebeau). Currier created Currier & Ives in 1835, his lithography company. This is what made his legacy.
The Destruction of Tea, Boston Harbor is a painting depicting men dressed in Indian costumes dumping tea into water. Other colonists are also shown cheering on these men as they dump tea into the harbor. This work was created to illustrate the English colonists’ rebellion in the period before the American Revolution. Currier and Ives only chose this lithograph for the prewar Revolution (Lebeau 52). It is clear that his painting shows a favorable tone towards the colonists. This is because it portrays the colonists in a position of complete control. Currier’s painting portrays a positive attitude, as he depicts colonists cheering the destruction of tea in an organized manner. Even the people who are destroying all of the tea are calm and well-organized, as they dump entire chests into Boston Harbor. Currier portrays the Boston Tea Party with a positive attitude, implying that the rebels’ actions were justified. It is not surprising that his view on the Boston tea party was positive, given the fact that he worked as an apprentice for a Boston-based lithographer. Currier created this painting with the intention of selling it to Americans. This may have affected his optimistic portrayal. The painting does not include any British influence. However, George Robert Twelve Hewes from Boston, who was a participant in the Boston Tea Party and wrote, “We had British-armed ships surrounding us” (Young 30,) has a firsthand report. This work of art, which was very popular in its day, was sold for decades by the Currier & Ives New York City store and also by peddlers all over the country.
Boston Tea Party is the name of the event that the painting depicts. On 16th December 1773 Bostonians seized in a midnight raid 342 chests tea and dumped them at sea to protest the monopoly that the East India Company had been granted on American tea by Parliament. Nathaniel Currier’s Boston Tea Party-themed lithograph misstated the true events. The painting depicts only two ships. In fact, three ships were raided – the Dartmouth and Eleanor (Destruction British East India Company tea). Hewes said, “Our commander then ordered us to open the hatches in order to take out the tea chests and throw them into the sea. We immediately followed his orders and began to cut and split them with tomahawks. This was done to fully expose the tea chests to the water. The painting tells a different tale. It shows the rebels throwing whole chests of tea overboard, rather than cutting them open and emptying the contents, as Hewes claimed to have done. Hewes claimed in his account that people tried to escape with stolen goods. The painting, however, shows that everyone was in favor of destroying the tea. Currier’s Boston Tea Party lithograph is accurate in its portrayal of events, but it’s slightly distorted.
The Tea Party Movement has been a contemporary issue relating to the Boston Tea Party. The Tea Party Movement is an extreme right-wing party. The Tea Party movement is an extremist right wing party. The movement is a grass-roots one, meaning that “ordinary people” began it. However, now, billionaires are funding it. The Tea Party adheres to the acronym TEA – Taxed Already. They want all federal programs cut so there will be no money to pay. The Tea Party Movement opposes Obamacare, Medicare, Medicaid, DEP, social security and the DEP. The Tea Party Movement and the Boston Tea Party are similar in that both demand no taxes. However, the Tea Party Movement would hurt the country by eliminating the federal programs many citizens depend on to survive.
