Expanding on the previous answer, remember that the Boston Tea
Party was carried out by a handful of people, members of the radical Sons of Liberty, which most
people in Boston disagreed with or at least dismissed. But instead of pursuing and punishing the
few radicals, King George III and Parliament overreacted and punished the entire colony of
Massachusetts.
The colonists at the time, both in Massachusetts and
surrounding colonies, did not react to the Tea Party itself, just as they had not reacted to the
Tea Act which supposedly motivated it, they remembered and hated the fact that the King was
punishing his own citizens, wrongfully and without cause, for a crime they did not commit. This
was what gained support for independence, and in a way the Sons of Liberty could not have dreamed
of.
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