'Sons of Liberty': The Perfect Song to Remember the Boston Tea Party

Today, December 16, is the 249th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party. While the tea-dumping protest of the Massachusetts colonists might have seemed less than inspiring to some in the moment, the splash of the tea into Boston Harbor started a tidal wave of Revolution that eventually swept in the freest country on earth, America.

“[History.com] The Boston Tea Party was a political protest that occurred on December 16, 1773, at Griffin’s Wharf in Boston, Massachusetts. American colonists, frustrated and angry at Britain for imposing ‘taxation without representation,’ dumped 342 chests of tea, imported by the British East India Company into the harbor. The event was the first major act of defiance to British rule over the colonists. It showed Great Britain that Americans wouldn’t take taxation and tyranny sitting down, and rallied American patriots across the 13 colonies to fight for independence.”

In honor of this important anniversary, I would like to share one of the sadly under-appreciated and largely forgotten Disney songs, a song written specifically to celebrate the Boston Tea Party: Johnny Tremain’s “Sons of Liberty.”

Johnny Tremain is a 1957 Disney movie based on the 1943 book by Esther Forbes, a historical novel that combines fictional and historical heroes of the tumultuous years leading up to the start of the American Revolution in Boston. Young silversmith’s apprentice Johnny Tremain’s life changes forever when he accidently cripples his one hand while attempting to make a silver pitcher, and one of the few places he finds acceptance is with the strange group of enthusiastic, “treasonous” Patriots calling themselves the “Sons of Liberty.” The story ends with the beginning of the Revolution and the conflict at Lexington and Concord. I have two favorite scenes in the Disney movie. One is James Otis’s speech, where he ultimately sums up the motivations for the Revolution in a single sentence. “We give all we have—we fight, we die—for a simple thing: only that a man can stand.” The second is the scene following the Boston Tea Party, where the excited Patriots, led by Sam Adams and Paul Revere, march through Boston still in their Indian disguises and hang lanterns on the Liberty Tree while a crowd of Bostonians cheer.

Some might say Walt Disney didn’t capture the full gravity of the situation, but his song certainly embodies the irrepressible optimism and fighting spirit of the American character. As we face our own internal tyrants now, it’s a good time to remember that the Patriots of the Boston Tea Party were willing to sacrifice everything to safeguard the “Liberty Tree.”