As Time reports, The Boston Tea Party was a cause championed by many, but it also proved very controversial with others. In his book “American Tempest: How the Boston Tea Party Sparked a Revolution,” Harlow Unger writes that the event drew the ire of many elites and those with a vested interest in business. For such people, according to Unger, private property was “sacrosanct” and its flagrant destruction condemned. With the value of the discarded tea estimated at about $1.7 million in today’s money (according to the Boston Tea Party Ships and Museum), it’s little wonder that staunch patriots such as Benjamin Franklin were against it.

In a letter from London, England, where Franklin was staying at the time, he wrote to those who had been instrumental in the event (per Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum). “It is yet unknown what Measures will be taken here on the Occasion; but the Clamour against the Proceedings is high and general. I am truly concern’d… that there should seem to any a Necessity for carrying Matters to such Extremity, as… to destroy private Property.”

George Washington echoed this view. Ever the patriot, ever the do-gooder, he wrote to George William Fairfax in 1774 (via Mount Vernon), expressing his view that “the cause of Boston … is and ever will be considerd as the cause of America (not that we approve their cond[uc]t in destroyg the Tea).”