On this Independence Day 2026, I’m wondering if there was a backlash against tea-drinkers, even more so after July 2-4. I assume there was still tea available either at home or stores, but wouldn’t they be shunned for being unpatriotic? Of course, I also wonder where all the coffee came from if the US was primarily tea-drinkers. Any thoughts?
Turned out that nobody in America could make a decent cup of tea, so they all moved over to coffee 
Many people continued to drink tea, as not everyone supported the revolutionary cause.
Real revolutionaries drank beer or ale in taverns.
The historical nuance is lost on me, but I think the Boston Tea Party had to do with cheap (and legal) British tea undercutting the price of the more expensive, contraband (Dutch, I think) tea, and would cut into the profits of Colonial tea merchants. Or something very close to that. So long story short, the Boston Tea Party wasn’t a rebellion against tea per se, it was a rebellion against cheap tea stained with the taint of monarchy and oppression. Or something.
It wasn’t just Boston where Americans didn’t allow the East India Company tea to be landed. It was every port in the 13 colonies; just not in such a dramatic fashion. The objectionable tea to be taxed under the Tea Act never made it to shops, so a tea boycott made no sense.
[Moderating]
Please save the jokes in FQ until after the factual question has been addressed.
Exactly; the end user price was never an issue. The colonists were already effectively paying the tax when the cost was passed on to them by London tea merchants. The colonists understood that the Tea Act taxing tea shipped directly to the colonies established a precedent for parliament (where they had no representation) to impose whatever taxes and laws on the colonies they liked unilaterally.
There were many Liberty teas that were popular substitutes. They included teas made from sassafras, herbs and “New Jersey tea”, made from the leaves of Ceanothus americanus, which also is a nice ornamental.
How about yerba mate? Too Spanish?
Probably completely unknown in North America at the time.
People kept drinking tea, why shouldnt they? The protest wasnt about tea- just tea from one source.
The source of the protestors’ anger was the passage of the Tea Act by the Parliament of Great Britain on May 10, 1773, which allowed the East India Company (EIC) to sell Chinese tea in the colonies without paying taxes apart from those imposed by the Townshend Acts. The Sons of Liberty strongly opposed both the Tea Act and Townshend Acts, which they saw as a violation of their “rights as Englishmen” to no taxation without representation.[2]