At the Edenton Tea Party, fifty-one women, largely of North Carolinian, upper-class backgrounds, signed a declaration supporting the non-importation of tea. The Edenton women attempted to replicate the 1773 Boston Tea Party, but were largely ignored or not taken seriously, partially because of their gender and social class. Regardless, news of the Tea Party quickly spread to Britain. Dawe's cartoon ridicules the Tea Party, depicting the women as ugly, neglecting their domestic and maternal responsibilities, and frivolous. Also significant is his decision to include a black servant or slave in the background, tacitly pointing to the hypocrisy and inefficacy of the Tea Party in a colony with an agrarian, slave-dependent economy.
