Stamp Act

Source

New Tax. While New England merchants protested the Sugar Act, news arrived in April 1765 that Parliament had passed the Stamp Act. This act imposed an excise tax on all newspapers and pamphlets, legal documents, leases, deeds, licenses, playing cards, diplomas, broadsides, and other paper products. Once the tax had been paid (in gold or silver coin), a revenue officer would affix a stamp on the paper. The act would take effect on 1 November 1765.

Predictions of Reaction. The Stamp Act passed Parliament easily although the American colonies had warned that though they were loyal subjects of the king, they could be taxed only by their own assemblies. Col. Isaac Barre, a member of Parliament, warned that this revenue measure would cause “the blood of these sons of liberty to recoil within them.” Massachusetts lieutenant governor Thomas Hutchinson wrote that “There is not a family between Canada and Pensacola that has not heard the name of the Stamp Act and but very few... but what have some formidable apprehensions of it.” Hutchinson, who opposed the Stamp Act but believed Parliament had a right to levy it, told of a farmer whose servant was suddenly afraid to go to the barn at night. “Afraid of what?” the farmer asked. “Of the Stamp Act,” the servant replied.

Sons of Liberty. Reaction to the Stamp Act was violent and widespread. Taking their name from Barre’s speech, groups of colonists formed the Sons of Liberty, political action groups that channeled resistance to the Stamp Act. In Boston, Andrew Oliver, Hutchinson’s brother-in-law, had been appointed stamp agent. On the night of 15 August a mob led by the Sons of Liberty attacked Oliver’s office, where he stored the hated stamps. After destroying the office and stamps, they marched to his home, which they nearly completely destroyed. Two weeks later the mob descended on Hutchinson’s home, regarding his moderate response as a sign of duplicity: James Otis charged Hutchinson with creating the idea of the Stamp Act. The mob destroyed Hutchinson’s home and his papers, including documents Hutchinson was collecting for his history of Massachusetts. Similar violence in other colonies greeted the arrival of stamps and the appointment of stamp agents as the Sons of Liberty and an active press whipped the people into a frenzy.

Stamp Act Congress. Colonial leaders opposed the Stamp Act, but most also deplored the kind of violent action taken by the Sons of Liberty. To avoid tyranny and anarchy they called for a general meeting of delegates from all the colonies to make a united stand against the Stamp Act. In October 1765 delegates from nine colonies (Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and South Carolina) met in New York to draw up a unified response. The Stamp Act Congress affirmed their loyalty to the king but insisted that they could be taxed only by their own representatives. They would gladly support the British government financially, but these levies could ony be made by their own assemblies.

Actual versus Virtual Representation. The colonists and the British government had different ideas about the nature of representation. Members of Parliament did not represent specific locations or constituents. Members did not have to live in the boroughs they represented, and since most of the boroughs had been created centuries earlier, some of England’s largest cities, such as Manchester, Birmingham, and Liverpool, were not represented at all. For the Americans to claim that because they had not voted for members of Parliament that Parliament could not tax them, was ridiculous. People in Manchester, Birmingham, and Liverpool had not voted for members of Parliament either. Parliament’s job was to take care of the welfare of the whole realm, not to represent the interests of each locale. Members of Parliament were supposed to represent the good of the nation, not the interests of local constituency. In the American colonies, however, members of the colonial assemblies were chosen by towns or counties and were specifically chosen to represent their constituents. The Stamp Act, and England’s attempt to tax the colonists, brought to light this fundamentally different approach to representation. Though the American colonists were asserting a fundamental right of English people, not to be taxed without their own consent, their experience as colonists had given them a different idea of the role of representatives and how consent was to be given.

Repeal. The British government would not accept the notion that the American colonists could be taxed only by their own representatives. The government insisted that because the Americans were British subjects, their interests were represented by Parliament. However, the British government recognized that enforcement of the Stamp Act would provoke continued violence in the American colonies. Opposition made the Stamp Act nearly impossible to enforce. Gov. Francis Bernard of Massachusetts wrote in December that “all real power in this town is in the hands of the people,” and the Sons of Liberty threatened violence against any officials who dared use the stamps. “The time is come,” Bernard wrote, “when even a nominal governor, though without authority or pretending to any, will not be allowed to reside here.” In 1766 Parliament voted to rescind the act if the loyal colonial assemblies would raise money to meet royal requisitions, would volunteer to support British troops sent to protect the colonists, and would compensate those whose property had been destroyed by the mobs. At the same time Parliament passed the Declaratory Act, insisting that it had the power to tax the colonists for all purposes.

Aftermath. Parliament believed it had struck a bargain with the colonists, giving up a tax the colonists did not like in order to affirm the principle that Parliament could tax them. The colonists who had resisted the Stamp Act, however, interpreted the result differently. They had not wavered from the idea that only their own assemblies could tax them, and they had also learned that loud and sometimes violent opposition could force Parliament to back down. They also resisted the idea of paying the victims of the riots. In addition, the colonial assemblies and the Sons of Liberty had begun to learn the benefit of cooperation, seeing that the colonists had common interests that benefited from working together.

Source

Edmund S. Morgan and Helen M. Morgan, The Stamp Act Crisis: Prologue to Revolution (Chapel Hill: Published for the Institute of Early American History and Culture by the University of North Carolina Press, 1953).