Stamp Act Congress

STAMP ACT CONGRESS

STAMP ACT CONGRESS was the first official intercolonial gathering of the revolutionary era. The Stamp Act Congress met in New York City between 7 October and 24 October 1765. Much more than the Albany Congress of 1754, it pointed toward union among white colonial people in the face of external threat, portending the First Continental Congress (1774), the Second Continental Congress (1775–1781), the Articles of Confederation (1781–1789), and debates about the U.S. Constitution (1787–1788).

New Hampshire and Georgia sent no delegates to the Stamp Act Congress. Connecticut, the host province of New York, and South Carolina gave their delegates no power to act. Virginia already was on record against the Stamp Act in the resolutions of its House of Burgesses. At first glance then the records of the Congress might seem to be a minority report. But in fact the Congress's members laid out a tenable position regarding the Stamp Act and by extension the emerging crisis in colonial relations. They pointed toward coalescence among the separate elites they represented into a coherent leadership. And with their silence on some issues, they addressed the problem of relations among different sorts of colonials who were becoming Americans.

The Congress produced four documents: a general declaration intended for both colonial and British readers, a petition to the king, a memorial to the House of Lords, and a petition to the House of Commons. Each term, declaration, petition, and memorial bespoke a different understanding of the Congress's relationship to the intended readers, but all four documents made the same essential points. (White) colonial Americans were Britons. They had abandoned none of their traditional "Rights and Liberties" by living outside the "Realm" that comprised England, Scotland, and Wales. Self-taxation through representatives was among such rights, because it meant a free gift of the subject's property to the Crown. That right could not be exercised through supposed representatives in the House of Commons, and other British rights, particularly the right to trial by jury, could not be negated. The effect of the Stamp Act would be to stifle the colonial economy, weaken colonial trade with Britain, indirectly harm the British economy itself, and poison relations between the colonies and the metropolis. Colonials were loyal, but they had a duty to seek the Stamp Act's repeal.

The Congress followed Virginia's lead taken in June with resolutions against the Stamp Act by the Virginia House of Burgesses. By the time the Congress met, several colonies had experienced both verbal and violent resistance to the Stamp Act, and it was increasingly clear that the act never would take force. In New York City preparations were under way for the uprising of 31 October 1765 that rendered the act unenforceable there.

The Congress did not address such problems. But both in what it said and what it chose not to say, it did address the complex coalition politics of the revolutionary era. Like the Virginia House of Burgesses, the Congress told discontented colonials that resistance was entirely correct.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Morgan, Edmund S., and Helen M. Morgan. The Stamp Act Crisis: Prologue to Revolution. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1953.

Morgan, Edmund Sears, ed. Prologue to Revolution: Sources and Documents on the Stamp Act Crisis, 1764–1766. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1959.

Edward Countryman

See also Revolution, American: Political History .