the of wisconsin madison professor jennifer rove and .agan -- rosen hagan she talks about authors herman margo and work products of 19th century moral code. her class is a little over an hour. ourhank you and welcome to lecture. nature as we know her is no saint. trial and to molt in melville's america. to put some that we give our papers. that is because a title announces what is at stake for a what hopefully announces

is at stake. saint, isnature as a that kind of title. you may think because the lecture is about melville, that it is a melville quote, but it walt emerson quote. someone who was addressing some of the same kind of questions and concerns that melville was. though nature as we know it is drawn rum ralph waldo emerson's experience in 1884. he is trying to say what would our lives we like. how would we make sense of ourselves. how would we make sense of our world world. say, we did not have

our inherited elysian telling us how to make sense of our religion. we didn't have europe saying to the new world here is how to make sense of yourself and your new world. what would it be like if we took our experience as, in fact, the indication of what and right -- of what right and wrong is. and then he goes on to show us why that is so hard to do. yes, experience is a thorny thing. he wrestles with it in the piece. what i love about this piece is why --y the title, which i'll explain in a little bit, but the way he opens up the essay. call me ishmael is one of the great opening lines. us one of the

great opening lines of a modern essay. he opens up asking where do we find ourselves? -- s a very arresting emersont you hear trying to question himself. where is he morally speaking? the rest of the essay is trying to a right himself. i think it is a nice way of taking stock of where we find ourselves in this class. we find ourselves in the educational science building, not the educational building where we started out. on october 5.ves six of ourselves on week the course, the seddon -- seven deadly sins of american history. you know what we are doing.

we are using the seven deadly sins as a way of understanding american history on the early contact up to our own day. what are the seven deadly sins? we struggle with those a little on the first day. wrath, lust, pride, sloth, utne -- gluttony, greed. there is no send without context. the seven deadly sins in 2010, there is no send without history. it does not make sense to talk about sins without talking about a historical moment in which it is articulated or expressed and punished. another way of putting it is

that since have a history and that is what we are trying to figure out. what kind of history does pride, sloth havetony, rap, in america? how do they open up something about a particular. in life? we start with the colonial. and we go up to our own day and we are seeing how these sins get made and remade into american intellectual and cultural life. one of the things we are seeing, even in the early weeks of our course, is that ideas about then have a racial component -- about sin have a result component -- racial component. one is not necessarily a sin for another.

with lust and colonial america, -- based onual gender. once considered to be aow it goes on cultural virtue. a great example where going to see -- we are going to see as gluttony. we are learning not only good and evil has a history, but we're also paying attention as historians, how we use sources to try to access those moral world. and to try to listen to what the motivations are of different

historical actors. for the last couple of weeks, we export colonial america. now we are moving forward. we are in the early republic. the. we are looking at the next couple of weeks, is up to the civil war. we call it antebellum america. the sin we are now exploring is wrath. source becausee if i added another one, you would kill me. so, just one. it is a big one. what source only using? moby dick. wonderful, yes. why moby dick? i have to say -- whold a colleague of mine

is an american renaissance expert that i was teaching the seven deadly sins class and that i was teaching moby dick. he said, wonderful -- pride. [laughter] i think there is some pride going on here. some dangerous, reckless pride. there are other sense going on sins going on like lust. i don't want to insist that it is the only thing we're going to hear, but for now i am doing the heavy lifting on wrath. i think i'm in at least good -- a french philosopher

from the 20th century thought an --moby dick as stacy, the mind? there is an idea of gladness and of the whale hunt. >> this is a novel of hatred. things.ny other it is not only that, but it is also that. i -- why i chose moby dick. i just wanted to make sure you read moby dick. it will be a book that you take with you for the rest of your life. if not, you can come back and we can talk about it.

i think there is hatred, anger, what we call seething in particular characters, moments. that is why it i think it is a terrific source for the sin of wrath. emerson.back to have any of you ever read any emerson? stacy, it is a -- is it a name that is familiar? have you read thoreau? moreoad tends to be read -- thoreau tends to be read more. if you'd know emerson, you

probably think of him as an on and talkingcoming to us about wrath because his reputation is of a sweetie pie. a positive thinker. thetivational speaker with attitude of just go for it. this is the emerson we get, not the emerson who cuts with a knife. thent to introduce you to emerson who topples our equilibrium. so why pick emerson here to help us listen into wrath at this

moment? i think he is in conversation with melville. they are contemporaries. they are seem the same problems of 19th century america. they are in conversation. reasono, if for no other than to remind us what we already know, which is no one text is representative of any text. we saw that looking at different sources. any source you are going to pick as a historical source is blinkered, is limited in some way. -- a particularly articulate commentator. the only way to make sense of

melville's to put him in the dialogue with other thinkers from his day. one of those is emerson. right now, i want emerson to do a little work for us. issues thatthe melville is wrestling with an moby dick. dick.moby i'm going to read this. i think that is the intensity of this quote. he writes, nature as we know her is no saint. he likes of the church. statics, the graham writes, -- she does not this and wish by any favor. she comes eating. not come out of a sunday commitmentsep their

-- amendments. -- commandments. it, emersonr put worked with lightning strikes that even at the level of singular, he is telling us something. nature as we know her is no saint. church, thef the aesthetics, the gin choose, the graham-ites. she does not the fingers by any favor. --distinguished by any favor distinguish by any favor. [inaudible]

kyle, you had your hand up too? >> it doesn't have a sense of what is right and what is wrong. --i guess. it will just come and destroy. not also have favorites. get the christian, the , nonetics, the gentoo's of them have a lock on knowing the truth. she does not have any favorites. she does not the fingers. --e is a prolific mood perllistic mood.

he wants a first-hand relationship with the universe. he says guess what i'm not going to think that the church or sexism or the graham might performers, any one of them will help me understand nature better. i don't want that relationship and that nature isn't a saint. she comes eating, and drinking, and sending -- sinning. her darling, the great, the strong the beautiful, are not children of our law. what does that mean? >> sunday school and commitments

, not weighing your food -- >> it is not something that nature thinks about. respect our little codes of ethics. it does not respect our sense of propriety. does not respect our ends of right and wrong. -- so if youo come want to come with a right relationship with the universe, at least forgetting, or criticizing these religions that think they have a lock on code that we think is going to help us, that is not put us into that delusional -- original relationship. see an melville, is

not -- and melville is not inays a happy one -- melville is not always a happy one. hear melville getting upset. he does not need emerson. and yet we hear him saying something. it's not the exact same thing, but it is in conversation with emerson. this is a next her from a letter he writes to a your friend daniel hawthorne. a popular, very accomplished author and his own day. herman melville was very good friends with him and in the letter of 1851, which is the year moby dick was published, melville was praising hawthorne or his literary field of genius. to be unafraid of

the darkness and the universe. what he is praising hawthorne an doing is saying this is excludable universe, but you have the courage to say no. is him confessing about something and himself. and i'm going to have someone read this. that?t, you want to do >> perhaps, after all, there is no secret. we are inclined to think that god cannot explain his own secret. that he would like a little information. we mortals astonish him as much. really chokes ourselves. as soon as you say me, a god, and nature, that's when you jump off from your stool. yes, that word is the hangman.

take god out of the dictionary and you will have him in the street. >> i find that last line confusing so i had to read it and reread it and reread it. let's just hold off on the last line, but is as important -- it is important. can someone put this in terms termsre more resonant in of how we talk in 2015. take it line by line. so, he is talking here about the universe. the world. isn he says, perhaps there no secret and then go on. someone do a guess. there are many of you that i know are good at this. kyle?

>> i'm not 100% sure. >> of course you're not. kind of sounds like leaving in god holds us back from the truth. like he's saying there is no secret. -- god cannot when his own secrets because there is none. there is nothing that he has that we don't. >> he says we are inclined that god cannot explain his secrets. and he would like a little information upon certain points himself. what?

god needs a little points of help? we have an omission of an all-knowing god. we mortals astonish him as he astonishes us. that is not saying there is a god. that is a saying if there is a mutually -- mystified in both directions. that gets in the way of a god that is all-knowing. it goes on, but it is this being of the matter with which we choke ourselves. as soon as you say me, god, there, so soon you jump off stool. what? me,oon as you say the word god, nature, yourself, you die?

what? or otherou are social universal idea, or you are putting someone -- something so far above you, you could just kill yourself. >> you kick the stool out from under year. you don't get from any closer to this question of being. he says that word is a hangman. dictionaryt of the and you would have him in the street. i'm not going to subject the last line to exit jesus. just keep in mind as you read moby dick, think about the populate -- the people that populate that vote. -- that boat. i don't want to insist on this because there are a million interpretations, but what if you

think about that line -- take god out of the dictionary and think about god as the man in the street. i think that is a helpful way to at least listen into who are these characters that populate the peak on -- peacod. -- ould be dishonest historically inaccurate, but also true, that he would say the same thing about the words in. -- about the word sin. -- sin is a hangman word.

next week we are going to bear down any text. we're going to really work with this as a primary source for into mid-19th century america. we're going to subject whole chapters into interpretation. even the resonant phrase. we're going to see if we can hear what melville is trying to tell us that separates him from the america of 1851 and our america of 2015 about what he means by god. what he thinks about individual sin, or in this case, social send -- sin. sin of the singular figure, but -- ort week is about zooming in

bearing down, but for today, we are zooming out. taking a panoramic view. we want to take a more broad look about america and the mid-19th century to see what he is eating. what moral problems does he think he is confronting in the text. atwant to look a little bit the context of moby dick and what it tells us about melville's mind. his view of the world. so, remember, his mind and you of the world are a product of his own time and place. he is a commentator, but he is living it too. he does not have any special perks in which he can comment on . he himself is shaped by those ideas. we don't want to just use his as just looking at america.

if moby dick is a novel of hatred, let us not forget it is also a novel of lying. there is not just hating going on, there is desiring, and wanting. every sin has its counterpart. every negative emotion has its positive side. as thist you to listen book is a confession. -- as if this book is a confession, but also a commentary on social criticism. at lease what or issues are -- at least what issues are pressing on his moral

imagination? i'm going to press on at least three. not getting indeed, but just to alert you that might be sources of things being commented on any text. this, then come back in about 10 minutes -- context, if you will, of melville's midcentury america is that he is writing this at a time of intense fervor and liberalization. staggering growth and

diverse a vacation. movements, all aimed at reforming american society and bringing it closer in line with their interpretation of the bible and the word of god. it is a time of intense and fervor.uralism , i don't like the other word we use, secularization. it is ridiculous to talk about comingntury america as increasingly secular if i secular we mean nonreligious. worldly, then yes. that is people are not becoming less religious, they are just

trying to bring their religious thoughts more line with the time. i think the better word is liberalization. that is religion as a gets press through red nationally -- rationality and reason. that goes on to be what we call liberal product is him. he is living in it, but he is critical of it. -- anne put it, moby dick was critical of liberal product is him.

will we see in moby dick, is that melville craves some view of the world that is sublime. not beautiful. that is mysterious, nonsensical. a god who is inscrutable and not what we would later here and the 19th century -- in the 19th century. doesn't want his got to be his friend. if there is going to be a god, it is going to be a god worthy of all and admiration and terror. -- of all -- awe and admiration and terror. needed calvinism for his moral imagination. does that make sense? so it's like someone who is

catholic, but does not actually believe in all the stuff. but loves the bells in the literacy. you might not believe in the tenants come at the worldview, but there may be something about it. the ritual, the architecture of the church, the smells of the .hurch, the holidays i think that is a good way of talking about melville. he did not believe it, but he needed it. and yet on the other hand, we also see in moby dick, and appreciation or differences and diversity. he is very time, much in his day and that he is looking around and seem somewhat open to an appreciative of diversity.

certainly to the idea that no one group has a lock on moral truth. so i think we can look at the novel and see his wrestling with that. is wrestling with that. i think it does not pick up to degreed degree -- to the of his american life. i say this is the. when we witnessed the democratization of democracy. democracy became more inclusive, at least among white males. theee impulses captured by rise and presidency of andrew 1829-n who served from

1837. theoes on to be one of great dictators come about later in american history. politics helped crystallize nagging doubts of the time and outset are still with us today. -- doubts that are still with us today. how easy is it to pull off democracy, equality? was, doesof the day democracy somehow create a craving for the strong leader? counteract its leveling forces? these are the crucial questions of the day. what kind of leader does a democracy produce?

what kind of leader is appropriate for democracy? about in astion horizontal society without loyalty, are -- because human beings don't do well with a flattened moral landscape. we hear these questions answered .nd moby dick, as in the text like the writer margaret fuller. many have argued persuasively that melville draws his inspiration from jackson. this figure from -- within iran will. run -- iron will.

they said he would strike the sun if it ever insulted him. there is an interesting version ofthat where an admirer andrew jackson in 1840 does not say you actually strike the sun come up that likens him to the sun. that brilliant light was andrew jackson. so in addition to widespread political transformation, this is also a pyramid --. a period of market revolution. where receded transformation -- where we see the transformation of the

manufacturing industry. were -- where things moved to shops and factories. helps explain some of the transformation. thanks to industrialization and technological involvement, we not only get a greater distribution of goods, but we also get a greater division of workers. which means less independence and control over the labor process and its rewards. moby dick is very much caught in this moment. it is very caught in the questions of labor and independence and a mass labor force. you think a novel that takes place on the high seas would be a one of escape from industrialization. ishmael certainly takes from the seas to get away, but then what

does he do? right in the first chapter he realizes that a whaling ship may system.er exploited where workers are trapped with a andem that is just unjust economically punishing is the one on land. what does he say? i'm going to go ahead and read it because i can read fast. this is ishmael and he is making the decision if he should got to see. [text on screen]

>> i'm a slave so i'll just go get battered and bruised and that economic system. and 1850's, a question like that, who ain't a slave is not just a tossup question. what is free labor? ?hat constitutes free labor

ao ain't a slave is not just cast-off question, it is a question that announces a problem that he is going to try to figure out in the book. so it is a question of what is free labor and what is slave labor and his slave labor really is slavet's slave -- labor really free? it in 1790, there 690,000 slaves in america. eventually there were 4 million.

we are seeing the persistent growth in numbers of slaves so slavery is the defining moral problem of melvin's day. they -- day. i think this is a powerful quote from southern historical -- historian michael brian. forwardve the project while holding millions of bondage, produced anxiety. ande see that anxiety things like -- in things like these iron horns. can someone read what that says

here to give an indication as to what the artifact was? > to keep her from running away. >> remember when we look that advertisements last week? those were just a small number that were typically posted at this time. most were runaway slaves at this time. people trying to retrieve their property. making sure that runaway slaves would not run away again, was using this device which is called i record irene -- iron horn. of start proportions --

stark proportions. this is outside virginia which is outside the nation's capital. we can see it in slave advertisements in 1865. we see it in moby dick. we're going to move ahead to ideas about race. what other ideas that we see? to put it differently, what ?ontext do we see

discussion vibrant about race. this goes about discussion about slavery and using racial theory to justify why slavery was ok. they use the bible as well. melville was appalled by slavery and yet, i think as you read moby dick, you'll see that sometimes he is pushing against on other timesut it is not so clear. that is just what i want to alert you to. -- way he's i dressing addressing things about race.

at some time, so this is a page .ut of a very famous book -- is anexample example before darwin's origin of species. i don't want to overstate it. it is not like we get darwin and theworld breaks into and world gets into a big evolution. darwin'st to say that discovery or recognition for natural selection changes what people think about evolution. darwin, --

which is very racial hierarchies. very racial, sinful views about races. it is very categorical. we see sometimes melville a that language and i think other times was very critical of it. through ishmael, we have a little saying a man can be honest through any sort of skin. we see his friendship or what others have identified as love. melville himself before writing moby dick, actually wrote several popular novels on ships in the high seas. he himself had been a sailor and traveled around for three years.

time, many of the sailing ships -- bewailing sips ships came from different parts of society. we can see that melville makes the -- maybe picked up that sensibility of friday and different. difference.nd at the very least, i want to alert you to the fact, or to pay attention to who are the characters in this novel. attentiontart to pay to who the characters are, you realize race and racial difference is something that is interesting to him. there is a lot he is saying with the use of these different characters.

you've got to do -- dagu. you've got pip, the cabin boy. the noble tashdego, savage. or the native american who is respectable and refined. mysterious oriental .anilla .e have ishmael ishmaela picture of indie hebrew bible or the new testament. i don't think that is what ishmael looks like. he was gently over -- older.

his anyone member who ishmael was from the bible? where what muslims call their koran? >> son of abraham. yes and who was his mother? >> [no audio] >> the first son is ishmael, but then sarah gets jealous and so she makes abraham, takes them out of the -- takes them out of them out of kicks the house. we have the beginnings of a new

religious project three as many years later, mohammed would come to identify himself and his followers as an line with ishmael. so ishmael is one of the fathers of islam. all the religions that go back to abraham, judaism, christianity, and then islam. they all have the same origin. they are all genetically linked, but they all have different paths. it is not insignificant that ishmael is called ishmael, he is obviously alerting us to a different track. last, but not least we can't talk about race without talking about the white whale. the imposing, formidable,

all-powerful, or whitegly all-powerful, well. -- whale. 150 years that people the white knew what whale meant. -- dick is also a character in a story or at least a commentary on racial difference. melville -- this is what this means and it is usually never write.

i just want to give you an alert melvillends of things is working in and the kinds of things we can see in the text, among others. issues about political and economic transformation, democratization, and the rise of market capitalism and industrialization. the institution of slavery and the ideas of race. this should be an ideal primary source. this is like, perfect. is a tricky par with that and that is moby dick was a commercial flop. it was a disaster. readers were very disappointed because he had written these wonderful stories of the high seas and they were expecting more of that and instead what

they got, was an imposing monument. they did not want an imposing monument. when we think of melville as is great, towering, novelist for the ages, well he wasn't. financialht him near ruin. it brought him to like it ruin. intellectual, or his career, is a very sad one. though, he does manage to push out a few more books. -- at least in his own lifetime. moby dickelville's picks up many years later. actually in the 1920's and americans rediscover this book. it is in the 1940's that one of madison, commentators,

he was an enduring nature of our age. as a primaryk, source, is a little tricky. -- are anye andy indication of how much it spoke to readers of his day, it didn't. so we need to both listen and pushback from the text. at the very least, we need to be very cautious in the same way we should be cautious with any primary source. every primary source is blinkered, partial, gives us one perspective. again, to make moby dick as big as it is do all the heavy lifting for the ideas of sin for

in general, isth not a good idea. i just won a to pick up on this. melville gets rediscovered in that, its and its from is a pretty straight line for melville as one of the major authors of our american past. it goes from the 1920's from -- until today. -- or as he put it, the shoddy democracy of his time.

i'm going to show you some of the illustrations next week. best moby dick illustration from the 1930's. we look at them not only a comment of moby dick, but also america and the 1930's. right after the crash, america entering the great depression. he's reading moby dick in a particular way, because of the demands of his time. to remind you that there are other things going on in moby dick. it is not just wrath. where do we see the wrath? newton, a critic from the thought that melville was a story of lust and

homoerotic lust. [onscreen text] >> etc. etc. etc. where going to pull up -- we are going to pull up these quotes next week. he thinks what this story is about is lust. being choked down by eight it's up friday from the state. it is a beautiful meditation on lust. matheson who i quoted earlier, thanks that it is pride. extremethe tragedy of individuals and the tragedy of

self-will, it seems cut off on any possibility of elevation. the white well was so ambivalent, he found respected value shifting. his symbols were most comprehensive when they enable remainslicit what primeval and our formalized humanity. formalized humanity. this is a study of. it is a study pride. i won't read the quote, but the quote is the indication that said it is notve

only a novel of hate, but also of pride. one political thinker says basically, forget all of that. let me read to you what he says. he says the intellectuals of our time, and by that he is talking -- statre -- and , have put matheson their stamp on psychology. some of them are men with very great gifts. with all of them, human beings are the naked and the dead for whom there is nothing but here and it turned in the.

basically, he is saying all of these writers are putting their own interpretation on melville and thinking he he is sick, he is the range. he goes on to say, melville describes the same world in which they live, and ishmael is struck in with sickness. how light in this scale is the contemporary mountain of self-examination and self-pity against the warmth, the humor, the unflattering humanity of the renegades and savages of the picod, doing what they have to do, facing what they have to face. that was a lot of text to swallow. what do you hear the pivot? -- but do you hear the pivot? i will say this, all of you white interpreters are so caught

andn the drama of the self individualism. when we look at the humble virtues of all these colorful? sins, alienation, despair. look at the beauty and grandeur , yeah?k way look at the humble virtues of the workers on this ship. it as allt see sunshine and light, but he sees it as the argument for the very marxist perspective that he himself has. the grandeur and beauty of labor, of collaboration, of racial diversity. it is a lot to swallow. i will bring this back next week so we can work with it. else going onhing here. it is not just all the vice and chest thumping or whatever, it is also the humble virtues.

but i think that if we are going to talk about 19th century talkca, if we are going to about sin, if we are going to meaning in melville, we do well for him to get the last word. sin and other hangman words. what is melville doing in this book? what is he commenting on? i think we would do well to hear that he does want to tell us something about sin, whether it is individual sin or social sin. i think he wants to tell us something about the works in its self, like the word "god," and i think he would say it is a hangman word too, a word that punishment is -- that punishes, caps off, alienates, degrades. but what might be being of the matter just be?

any questions? -- the being of the matter just be? any questions? i know you are probably at different places in the book. how is it going? thumbs-up! i got a thumbs up! can i get another thumbs-up? tough going? have you gotten past the categorization of the whale? ok, that was the worst? i will not talk in much more detail next week, and we will carry on the conversation as we move forward, but are we hearing echoes of anything from the class, the classes before? it's really interesting to read it with the perspective of the psychology class, because there is so much stuff going, facial expressions that they described, it is interesting. gwynethtner-rosenhagen:

reminds me that this is part of a fig, a freshman interest group, so you are all first-year students, and you are taking this class together with another class. how would you describe that class? to -- learning how student: [indiscernible] so howatner-rosenhagen: do you communicate information in a graphic form, right? and the information she is helping you think about are things like virtue and vice. you are also taking a wonderful psychology class called the psychology of emotion. the idea of your freshman interest group is to bring these three things together, a history class that looks at seven and emotion as it were a motivation from a historical perspective, from a psychological perspective , and another that is an artistic perspective. i am glad you said that, because i did not even think about that

as being so obvious as we were reading melville. it is a work of art. there, we are in conversation with professor barry. she works at the level of illustration, melville works but pros, but -- prose, they are both artists trying to do something with their art. and together with the class on the psychology of emotion, i many more put up quotes on melville as the great psychologist of his day, as a forerunner of freud, who understood the depths of conscious. freud, subconscious, it, and moby dick, and you will be bombarded. to melville as an early psychologist. that term did not exist in 1851, but he is trying to understand the inner workings of people's minds and their longings and

their drives. i am glad that you mentioned that. else, just a question or topic comes out of the top that helps either clarify something, or maybe get your ears pricked to something in the test -- text? about living vicariously through the main -- acter of ishmael [indiscernible] that'sprof. ratner-rosenhagen: a wonderful question. i am going to punt, but i will do so in the most heartfelt way, which depends on what interpreter you ask. forot mistake ishmael melville. melville is being a ventriloquist in using a lot of his characters to say things that he wants to say, articulate things he wants to articulate. i think probably one of the more

common readings, if not the most common reading, is melville and ishmael. i don't know the concrete answer identifybut i tend to ishmael as melville. i am not saying that is accurate or right, but that is worth asking. is it a spokesperson, or is it distributed? student: or is it none of them? prof. ratner-rosenhagen: is it none of them? quoteis another wonderful that said, if these people could just stop trying to crack the code! stop trying to do that! because there is so much symbolism. for all its rich symbolism, you can push past it, that's fine. there is no code cracking in this course, right? we are trying to just use this in to whatlisten

it can possibly tell us about the ways that some americans, and if not some americans, then at least melville, a great american, made sense of himself and his world. so thank you, thank you all. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2015] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] announcer: join us every saturday evening as we join students in college classrooms to hear lectures on topics ranging from the american revolution to 9/11. lectures in history are also available as podcasts. visit c-span.org/history/ podcasts, or download them from itunes. i have been watching the campaign this year, it is far more interesting to look at republicans than the democratic side. that may have something to do with why there is more interest in these candidates and their books.

announcer: sunday night on q&a, for thetion book critic washington post discusses books written by the 2016 presidential candidates. >> everyone of them, i think, has interesting stories in their lives, and politicians, who are so single-minded in this pursuit , couldr and ideology have particularly interesting ones, but when they put out these memoirs, they are sanitized. they are affected. -- vetted. they are there for minimum controversy. announcer: sunday night at 8:00 eastern on c-span's "q&a." on december 16, 1773, thousands of massachusetts colonists gathered in boston to discuss a shipment of teas that had recently arrived from britain.

the arrival of the tea escalated an already existing debate over a new tea tax. there was a protest over the king's new measure. after the debate, colonists marched to griffin's worth and dumped the tea -- griffin's wharf and dumped the tea in the boston harbor. the sceneeation of was hosted by old south meeting house and the boston tea party museum. >> and now, ladies and gentlemen, the 242nd anniversary celebration of the boston tea party. >> good evening. my name is gordon -- george shoes. perhaps you have heard of me. most ofeen a shoemaker my