The Stamp Act placed stiff excise taxes on all kinds of printed matter. No one could sell newspapers or pamphlets, or convey licenses, diplomas, or legal papers without first buying special stamps and affixing them to the printed matter. Stamp duties were intended to be relatively painless to pay and cheap to collect; in England similar taxes brought in about ?100,000 annually. Grenville hoped the Stamp Act would produce ?60,000 a year in
Outraged at the Stamp Act of 1765, which implemented a direct tax on printed matter, an angry mob burned the stamps in protest. Note the enthusiastic participation of women and a young black man; that they are not wearing shoes indicates that they were of working-class background.
America, and the law provided that all revenue should be applied to “defraying the necessary expenses of defending, protecting, and securing, the. . . colonies.”
Hardly a farthing was collected. As the Boston clergyman Jonathan Mayhew explained, “Almost every British American. . . considered it as an infraction of their rights, or their dearly purchased privileges.” The Sugar Act had been related to Parliament’s uncontested power to control colonial trade, but the Stamp Act was a direct tax. When Parliament ignored the politely phrased petitions of the colonial assemblies, more vigorous protests swiftly followed.
Virginia took the lead. In late May 1765 Patrick Henry introduced resolutions asserting that the Burgesses possessed “the only and sole and exclusive right and power to lay taxes” on Virginians and suggesting that Parliament had no legal authority to tax the colonies at all. Henry spoke for what the royal governor called the “Young, hot and Giddy Members” of the legislature (most of whom, incidentally, had absented themselves from the meeting). The more extreme
In 1765 Bostonians, protesting the Stamp Tax, chase Lieutenant-Governor Thomas Hutchinson. His humiliation is symbolized by the loss of his wig.
Of Henry’s resolutions were defeated, but the debate they occasioned attracted wide and favorable attention. On June 6 the Massachusetts assembly proposed an intercolonial Stamp Act Congress, which, when it met in New York City in October, passed another series of resolutions of protest. The Stamp Act and other recent acts of Parliament were “burthensome and grievous,” the delegates declared. “It is unquestionably essential to the freedom of a people. . . that no taxes be imposed on them but with their own consent.”
During the summer irregular organizations known as Sons of Liberty began to agitate against the act. Far more than anyone realized, this marked the start of the revolution. For the first time extralegal organized resistance was taking place, distinct from protest and argument conducted by constituted organs of government like the House of Burgesses and the Massachusetts General Court.
Although led by men of character and position, the “Liberty Boys” frequently resorted to violence to achieve their aims. In Boston they staged vicious riots, looting and vandalizing the houses of the stamp master and his brother-in-law, Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson. In Connecticut, stamp master Jared Ingersoll, a man of great courage and dignity, faced an angry mob demanding his resignation. When threatened with death if he refused, he coolly replied that he was prepared to die “perhaps as well now as another Time.” Probably his life was not really in danger, but the size and determination of the crowd convinced him that resistance was useless, and he capitulated.
The stamps were printed in England and shipped to stamp masters (all Americans) in the colonies well in advance of November 1, 1765, the date the law was to go into effect. The New York stamp master had resigned, but the stamps were stored in the city under military guard. Radicals distributed placards reading, “The first Man that either distributes or makes use of Stampt Paper let him take care of his House, Person, and Effects. We dare.” When Major Thomas James, the British officer who had charge of the stamps, promised that “the stamps would be crammed down New Yorkers’ throats,” a mob responded by breaking into his house, drinking all his wine, and smashing his furniture and china.
In some colonies the stamps were snatched by mobs and put to the torch amid rejoicing. Elsewhere they were locked up in secret by British officials or held on shipboard. For a time no business requiring stamped paper was transacted; then, gradually, people began to defy the law by issuing and accepting unstamped documents. Threatened by mob action should they resist, British officials stood by helplessly. The law was a dead letter.
The looting associated with this crisis alarmed many colonists, including some prominent opponents of the Stamp Act. “When the pot is set to boil,” the lawyer John Adams remarked sadly, “the scum rises to the top.” Another Bostonian called the vandalizing of Thomas Hutchinson’s house a “flagrant instance of to what a pitch of infatuation an incensed populace can rise.” Such people worried that the protests might be aimed at the wealthy and powerful in America as well as at British tyranny.
This does not mean that they disapproved of crowd protests, or even the destruction of property during such protests, as distinct from stealing. Many such people took part in the rioting. “State-quakes,” John Adams also said, this time complacently, were comparable to “earth-quakes” and other kinds of natural violence.
The Image Stamp Act Stamps at myhistorylab. com
•••-[Read the Document Franklin, Testimony Against the Stamp Act at myhistorylab. com
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