I was sitting at the dinner table, trying to force the last carrot into my mouth. I despise carrots with all my heart and soul. Hezekiah and Thomas, two of my brothers, were sitting across from me, vying for the last orange root. I wondered at how they could actually fight over such a disgusting vegetable. Mother absentmindedly reprimanded them; she being busy trying to get baby William to eat his mush. Whilst he was sparring with Hezekiah, Thomas accidentally jabbed my little sister Miriam with his elbow. She let up a piercing wail. My father sighed deeply, and I expected to hear him scold the younger boys soundly, but that was not what was troubling him.
“These radicals really are too incorrigible,” he complained.
“Do you know what they have done? A band of the dirty rascals, dressed up as savages, with ace paint and all, boarded three ships of the East India Company, and dumped at least three hundred boxes of tea into the Boston Harbor. It is an outrage!”
“Horrible,” my mother shuddered. Then my elder brother, Hosiah, who had kept quiet until now, spoke.
“I do not think it was such a terrible thing to do.”

It was as if Hosiah had stopped time by doing so. We, the Whitman family, have always been faithful subjects of the king. It shocked me to my core to hear Hosiah say these words, even though his tone was calm enough. Mother held the spoon midway to the baby William’s mouth, and mush was dripping of the utensil onto the floor. Thomas and Hezekiah each paused with a hand on the last carrot, and even Miriam’s wailing was reduced to a whimper. Father looked very serious.
“What did you say?”
“I meant that the men only wished to protest the king’s unjust tax,” answered Hezekiah.
“My dear son, it is not unjust. The King aided us in the French and Indian War, and so we must rightly pay. Those horrible rebels are greedy tax evaders. Surely you understand that?”
“I understand that the King enforces cruel laws upon us, and that when we send him a perfectly reasonable law, he refuses to pass it.”
“Those laws were harmful to England, which is why he could not pass them! Besides, the men who organized and carried out the “Boston tea party” as they call their act of vandalism, broke their solemn oath of loyalty to King George III!”

My brother was not fazed by this.” King George is miles and miles away, across an entire ocean.”
“An oath is an oath, no distance can dissolve it.”
“Of course, but is an oath to a greedy, pompous old tyrant binding?”
My father stared at Hosiah in dismay.
“ I cannot believe what you say. You must have been listening to the rebels talk. King George is a strong leader, a man fit for the throne of England.
Hosiah did not agree, and said so.
“The King sent soldiers over here without need, where they sleep in our beds and eat us out of house and home! They have actually killed eight innocent people, in the Boston Massacre!”
“Those soldiers were provoked!” Father’s voice was raised now.
I felt a bit nervous. Hezekiah and Thomas were quietly slinking out of the room, and I considered following them, but I was too curious about the ongoing conversation. Hosiah was trying very hard not to shout. I could see that without difficulty by the way he gripped the table. “Aye, perhaps they were provoked, but the soldiers had no right to fire. What are a few snowballs?”
“Some threw stones,” Father said gravely.
“Innocent people were killed.” Hosiah was persistent in his view.
“Hosiah, this must end. I will hear no more of it.”
“But, Father-“
“No more!”
Hosiah stepped out, obedient, but I could see the fire in his eyes. My father stood still, staring at his dinner plate. I heard Hosiah chopping wood angrily outside. My father sighed, sank into a chair, and held his head in his hands. I felt a cold feeling in my stomach, and I began clearing the dishes away from the table, for no one was hungry now.
“Dear Martha,” said Father to my mother. “I cannot but see that this shall all end in war.”