The Old South Church, also know as the Old South Meeting House, was constructed in Boston in 1729 as a place of worship for the Congregational Church. Since it was the largest building in the city in the 1760s and 1770s, it was used repeatedly for public meetings to discuss the issues of the imperial crisis and the resistance movement (1764-75). Men such as Samuel Adams and Dr. Joseph Warren often spoke within its walls to large numbers of Bostonians decrying British imperial regulation. The Old South Church is most noted as the location of the meeting immediately preceding the Boston Tea Party (December 16, 1773). On that occasion some 5,000 people packed the meetinghouse and listened to orators discuss the Tea Act (1773). When Samuel Adams proclaimed that he did not see what else could be done to save the country, which may have been a prearranged signal, several in the crowd let out a whoop and began to march to Griffin’s Wharf where the “Mohawks” dumped tea into the harbor.
In subsequent months, as hostilities broke out into the Revolutionary War (1775-83), the British troops that occupied Boston tore out the pews and made the church into a riding school. After the war, the building returned to its previous function as a religious meeting house. It was turned into a museum celebrating the independence of the United States in 1877 and remains a highly visited historical landmark and museum today.
World History
