Old South Meeting House

This guide to the Old South Meeting House in Boston centers on December 16, 1773, when more than five thousand colonists, over a third of Boston's population, crowded into this room to argue one last time over a tax on tea while ships waited in the harbor. It follows Samuel Adams rising to speak as midnight approached, and the war whoop that sent hundreds pouring out toward Griffin's Wharf. You'll also hear how British soldiers later stripped the pews for firewood and turned the building into a stable, and how a group of Boston women led by Mary Hemenway saved it from demolition a century after that.