Stamp Act 1765 Totally Explained

Everything about Stamp Act 1765 totally explained

The Stamp Act of 1765 (short title Duties in American Colonies Act 1765; 5 George III, c. 12) was the fourth Stamp Act to be passed by the Parliament of Great Britain but the first attempt to impose such a direct tax on its American colonies. The act required all legal documents, permits, commercial contracts, newspapers, wills, pamphlets, and playing cards in the colonies to carry a tax stamp. It was part of an economic program directly affecting colonial policy that was initiated in response to Britain’s greatly increased national debt incurred during the British victory in the Seven Years War (the North American theater of the war was referred to as the French and Indian War).
   Britain decided to maintain a significant military presence in North America due to the added defense requirements resulting from the vast new territories acquired during the war and conflict with American Indians in the western frontier exemplified by the outbreak of Pontiac's Rebellion in 1763. The British felt that the colonies were the primary beneficiaries of these military preparations, and should pay for at least a portion of the current and future expenses directly incurred in North America. None of the revenue from the Stamp Act was targeted at reducing the national debt. The less controversial (from a colonial standpoint) Sugar Act of 1764 and the Stamp Act were the initial attempts to raise these funds from the colonists. Parliament announced in April of 1764 when the Sugar Act was passed that they'd also consider a stamp tax in the colonies. Stamp taxes had been effective and easy ways to administer a source of revenue within Great Britain for years. Although opposition to this possible tax from the colonies was soon forthcoming, there was little expectation in Britain, either by members of Parliament or American agents in Great Britain such as Benjamin Franklin, of the intensity of the protest that the tax would generate. The Stamp Act was passed by a large majority on March 22, 1765, and went into effect later that year on November 1.
   Once in effect, the tax met with great resistance in the colonies. For over a century the colonists had insisted on their Rights of Englishmen to be taxed only with their consent – consent which could only be granted through their colonial legislatures. All colonial assemblies sent petitions of protests and the Stamp Act Congress, reflecting the first significant joint colonial response to any British measure, also petitioned Parliament and the King. Local protest groups, led by colonial merchants and landowners, established connections through correspondence that created a loose coalition that extended from New England to Georgia. Protests and demonstrations initiated by these groups often turned violent and destructive as the masses became involved. Very soon all stamp tax distributors were intimidated into resigning their commissions, and the tax was never effectively collected.
   Opposition to the Stamp Act wasn't limited to the colonies. British merchants and manufacturers, whose exports to the colonies were threatened by colonial economic problems exacerbated by the tax, also pressured Parliament. The Act was repealed on March 18, 1766 as a matter of expedience, but Parliament affirmed its power to tax the colonies “in all cases whatsoever” by also passing the Declaratory Act. This incident increased the colonists' concerns about the intent of the British Parliament and added fuel to the growing movement that became the American Revolution.

Background

During the Seven Years War, known in America as the French and Indian War, the British government had substantially increased its national debt to pay for the war, and the acquisition of vast new territories in Canada and Louisiana all the way to the Mississippi opened up new administrative challenges. The ministry headed by John Stuart, the Earl of Bute, had, by February 1763, made the decision that continuing Indian problems necessitated the maintenance of a standing army of ten thousand British regular troops in the American colonies. Shortly thereafter George Grenville replaced Bute, and the outbreak of Pontiac’s Rebellion in May 1763 forced Grenville to adopt an Indian policy that dealt with the new realities. Grenville was faced not only with the problem of paying for the new troops, but doing so while servicing the national debt that had stood at £75,000 before the war, £122,600,000 in January 1763, and over £800,000,000 by the beginning of 1764. Grenville didn't expect the colonies to contribute to the interest or the retirement of the debt, but he did expect a portion of the expenses for colonial defense to be paid by the Americans. Estimating that the expenses of defending the continental colonies and the West Indies to be approximately £200,000 annually, Grenville’s goal was that the colonies would be taxed for £78,000 of this needed amount.
   Prior to the Seven Years War, British colonial policy had largely been determined by informal negotiations between the British Board of Trade and American lobbyists and agents. By 1764 Parliament, aware of the increasing importance of the colonies, began to exercise its previously dormant power to more directly govern the colonies, and the colonists found that they lacked an effective method to influence Parliament's decisions.
   A key Parliamentary initiative in America was to avoid conflict between the colonists and the Indians in the West. To this end, the Proclamation of 1763 put an end to white migration beyond the Appalachian Ridge, while stationing 7,500 British troops in the West to both regulate commerce with the Indians and keep settlers out. To protect British creditors from being repaid in inflated colonial currency, Parliament passed the Currency Act of 1764 which required that all American money had to be based on gold and silver with a one to one ratio with the value of British currency. The Sugar Act of 1764 was enacted as both a revenue measure and an effort to restrict colonial trade and reduce smuggling. While all of these acts drew protests from the colonists, it was the Stamp Act that drew the most ire in America.
   Historian Theodore Draper wrote:
British decision-making (April 1764 - April 1765) A stamp tax had been a very successful method of taxation within Great Britain. It generated over one hundred thousand pounds in tax revenue with very little in collection expenses. By requiring an official stamp on most legal documents, the system was almost self-regulating – a document without the required stamp would be null and void under British law. Imposition of such a tax on the colonies had been considered twice before the Seven Years War and once again in 1761. Grenville had actually been presented with drafts of colonial stamp acts in September and October 1763, but the proposals lacked the specific knowledge of colonial affairs to describe adequately the documents subject to the stamp. At the time of the passage of the Sugar Act in April 1764, Grenville had made it clear that the right to tax the colonies wasn't in question, and that additional taxes, including a stamp tax, might follow.
   The Glorious Revolution had established the principle of parliamentary supremacy. Control of colonial trade and manufactures extended this principle across the ocean. Although this belief had never been tested on the issue of colonial taxation, the British assumed that the interests of the thirteen colonies were too disparate to make joint colonial action against such a tax likely – an assumption that had its genesis in the failure of the Albany Conference in 1754. By the end of December 1764 the arrival from the colonies of pamphlets and petitions protesting both the Sugar Act and the proposed stamp tax provided the first warnings of serious colonial opposition.
   For Grenville, the first issue was the amount of the tax. Soon after his announcement of the possibility of a tax, he'd told American agents that he wasn't opposed to the Americans suggesting an alternative way of raising the money themselves. However the only other alternative would be to requisition each colony and allow them to determine how to raise their share. This had never worked before, even during the French and Indian War, and there was no political mechanism in place that would have insured the success of such cooperation. On February 2, 1765 Grenville met with Benjamin Franklin, Jared Ingersoll from Philadelphia, Richard Jackson the agent for Connecticut, and Charles Garth the agent for South Carolina (Jackson and Garth were also members of Parliament) to discuss the tax. These colonial representatives had no specific alternative to present; they simply suggested that the determination be left to the colonies. Grenville replied that he wanted to raise the money "by means the most easy and least objectionable to the Colonies" and Thomas Whately, who had drafted the Stamp Act, said the delay in implementation had been "out of Tenderness to the colonies" and the tax was judged as "the easiest, the most equal and the most certain."
   The debate in Parliament began soon after this meeting. Petitions submitted by the colonies were officially ignored by Parliament. In the debate Charles Townshend had said, "and now will these Americans, children planted by our care, nourished up by our Indulgence until they're grown to a degree of strength and opulence, and protected by our arms, will they grudge to contribute their mite to relieve us from heavy weight of the burden which we lie under?" This led to Colonel Isaac Barré’s response:
   The Act also, following the example established by the Sugar Act, allowed admiralty courts to have jurisdiction for trying violators. However admiralty courts had traditionally been limited to cases involved with the high seas . While the Sugar Act seemed to fall within this precedent, the Stamp Act did not, and the colonists saw this as a further attempt to replace their local courts with courts controlled by England.

Colonial Opposition (June 1764 - March 1766)

Political responses

Grenville started appointing Stamp Distributors almost immediately after the Act passed Parliament. Applicants were not hard to come by because of the anticipated income that the positions promised, and he appointed Americans in each of the thirteen colonies. Ben Franklin even suggested the appointment of John Hughes as the agent for Pennsylvania, indicating that even Franklin wasn't aware of the turmoil and impact on American-British relations that the tax was going to generate or that these distributors would become the focus of colonial resistance.
   Debate in the colonies over the Stamp Act had actually begun in the spring of 1764 when Parliament passed a resolution that contained the assertion, "That, towards further defraying the said Expences, it may be proper to charge certain Stamp Duties in the said Colonies and Plantations." Both the Sugar Act and the proposed Stamp Act were designed principally to raise revenue from the colonists. The Sugar Act was to a large extent a continuation of past legislation related primarily to the regulation of trade (termed an external tax), but its stated purpose to collect revenue directly from the colonists for a specific purpose was entirely new. The novelty of the Stamp Act was that it was the first internal tax (a tax based entirely on activities within the colonies) levied directly on the colonies by Parliament. Because of its potential wide application to the colonial economy, the Stamp Act was judged by the colonists to be the most dangerous.
   The theoretical issue that would soon hold center stage was the matter of taxation without representation. Benjamin Franklin had raised this as far back as 1754 at the Albany Congress when he wrote, "That it's suppos’d an undoubted Right of Englishmen not to be taxed but by their own Consent given thro’ their Representatives. That the Colonies have no Representatives in Parliament." The counter to this argument was the theory of virtual representation. Thomas Whately enunciated this theory in a pamphlet that readily acknowledged that there could be no taxation without consent, but the facts were that at least 75% of British adult males were not represented in Parliament because of property qualifications or other factors. Since members of Parliament were bound to represent the interests of all British citizens and subjects, colonists, like those disenfranchised subjects in the British Isles, were the recipients of virtual representation in Parliament. This theory, however, ignored a crucial difference between the unrepresented in Britain and the colonists. The colonists enjoyed actual representation in their own legislative assemblies, and the issue was whether these legislatures, rather than Parliament, were in fact the sole recipients of the colonists consent with regard to taxation.
   In May 1764 Samuel Adams of Boston drafted the following that stated the common American position:
Committee of Correspondence in June 1764 to coordinate action and exchange information regarding the Sugar Act, and in October 1764 Rhode Island formed a similar committee. This attempt at unified action represented a significant step forward in colonial unity and cooperation. The Virginia House of Burgesses in December 1764 sent a protest of the taxes to London, arguing that they didn't have the specie required to pay the tax. Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Connecticut also sent protest to England in 1764. While the content of the messages varied, they all emphasized that taxation of the colonies without colonial assent was a violation of their rights. By the end of 1765 all of the colonies except Georgia and North Carolina had sent some sort of protest passed by colonial legislative assemblies.
   The Virginia House of Burgesses reconvened in early May 1765 after news of the passage of the Act was received. By the end of May it appeared they wouldn't consider the tax and many legislators, including George Washington, went home. Only 30 out of 116 Burgesses remained, but one of those remaining was Patrick Henry who was attending his first session. Henry led the opposition to the Stamp Act and his resolutions, proposed May 30, 1765, were passed in the form of the Virginia Resolves. The Resolves stated:
Protests in the streets While the colonial legislatures were acting, the ordinary citizens of the colonies were also voicing their concerns outside of this formal political process. Historian Gary B. Nash wrote:
Massachusetts Early street protests were most notable in Boston. On August 14, 1765 Andrew Oliver, distributor of stamps for Massachusetts, was hung in effigy "from a giant elm tree at the crossing of Essex and Orange Streets in the city’s South End." Also hung was a Jack boot painted green on the bottom ("a Green-ville sole") – a pun on both Grenville and the Earl of Bute, the two persons most blamed by the colonists. The sheriff, Stephen Greenleaf, was ordered by Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson to take the effigy down, but was opposed by a large crowd. All day the crowd detoured merchants on Orange Street to have their goods symbolically stamped under the elm (the elm tree later became known as the "Liberty Tree"). At night a crowd, led by Ebenezer MacIntosh, a Seven Years’ War veteran and current shoemaker, cut down the mock Oliver and took it in a funeral procession to the Town House where the legislature met. From there they went to Oliver’s office, tore it down, symbolically stamped the timbers, and took the effigy to Oliver’s home at the foot of Fort Hill where they beheaded and burned the effigy along with Oliver’s stable house and coach and chaise. Greenleaf and Hutchinson were stoned when they tried to stop the mob which then proceeded to loot and destroy the contents of Oliver’s house. Oliver asked to be relieved of his duties the next day. This resignation however wasn't enough. Oliver was ultimately forced by MacIntosh to be paraded through the streets and publicly resign under the Liberty Tree.
   On August 26, MacIntosh led an attack on Hutchinson’s house. The mob evicted the family, destroyed the furniture, tore down the interior walls, and emptied the wine cellar. Hutchinson, who had been in public office for three decades estimated his loss at 2,218 pounds (in today’s money, at nearly $250,000). Nash concludes that this attack was more than just a reaction to the Stamp Act:
   The street demonstrations originated from the leadership of respectable public leaders such as James Otis who commanded the Boston Gazette and Samuel Adams of the "Loyal Nine" of the Boston Caucus, an organization of Boston merchants. They made efforts to control the folks below them on the economic and social scale, but they were often unsuccessful in maintaining a delicate balance between mass demonstrations and riots. These men needed the support of the working class, but also had to establish the legitimacy of their actions to have their protests to England taken seriously. The Loyal Nine, in the autumn, was more of a social club with political interests than anything else. Only in December 1765 did they begin issuing statements as the Sons of Liberty.

Rhode Island

The street violence spread. In Newport, Rhode Island, on August 27, a crowd built a gallows near the Town House where they carried effigies of Augustus Johnson, the Rhode Island stamp distributor and two other conservative local figures, Dr. Thomas Moffat and lawyer Martin Howard Jr. The crowd was originally led by three merchants, William Ellery, Samuel Vernon, and Robert Crook, but they soon lost control. That night the crowd, led by a poor man, John Weber, attacked the houses of Moffat and Howard – destroying walls, fences, art, furniture and wine. When Weber was arrested, the local Sons of Liberty, publicly opposed to violence, refused at first to support him until they were persuaded to come to his assistance when retaliation was threatened against their own homes. Weber was released and faded into obscurity.

New York

In New York, James McEvers resigned his distributorship four days after the attack on Hutchinson’s house. The stamps for several of the northern colonies arrived in New York Harbor on October 24. Placards appeared throughout the city warning, "the first man that either distributes or makes use of stamped paper let him take care of his house, person, and effects." New York merchants met on October 31 and agreed not to sell any English goods until the Act was repealed. Crowds of people, uncontrolled by the local leaders, took to the streets for four days of demonstrations, culminating in an attack by two thousand people on Governor Cadwallader Colden’s home and the burning of two sleighs and a coach. Unrest in New York City continued through the end of the year, and the Sons of Liberty had difficulty in controlling them.

Other Colonies

Other popular demonstrations occurred in Portsmouth NH; Annapolis; Wilmington and New Bern in North Carolina; and Charleston, South Carolina. In Philadelphia, demonstrations were subdued but even targeted Benjamin Franklin's home, although it wasn't vandalized. By November 16, twelve of the stamp distributors had resigned. The Georgia distributor didn't arrive in America until January, but his first action was to resign.

Sons of Liberty

It was during this time of street demonstrations that locally organized groups started to merge into an inter-colonial organization of a type not previously seen in the colonies. Although the term "sons of liberty" had been used in a generic fashion well before 1765, it was only around February 1766 that its influence as an organized group, using the formal name "Sons of Liberty", extended throughout the colonies, leading to the development of a pattern for future resistance to the British that would carry the colonies towards 1776. Historian John C. Miller noted that the name was adopted as a result of Barre's use of the term in his February 1765 speech.
The organization spread month by month after independent starts in several different colonies. By November 6, a committee was set up in New York to correspond with other colonies, and in December an alliance was formed between groups in New York and Connecticut. In January, there was established a correspondence link between Boston and Manhattan, and by March, Providence had initiated connections with New York, New Hampshire, and Newport, Rhode Island. Also, by March, Sons of Liberty organizations had been established in New Jersey, Maryland, and Norfolk, Virginia, and a local group established in North Carolina was attracting interest in South Carolina and Georgia.
While the officers and leaders of the Sons of Liberty “were drawn almost entirely from the middle and upper ranks of colonial society,” they recognized the need to expand their power base to include "the whole of political society, involving all of its social or economic subdivisions." In order to do this, the Sons of Liberty relied on large public demonstrations to expand their base. They learned early on that controlling such crowds was problematical, although they strived to control "the possible violence of extra-legal gatherings." While the organization professed its loyalty to both local and British established government, possible military action as a defensive measure was always part of their considerations. Throughout the Stamp Act Crisis, the Sons of Liberty professed continued loyalty to the King because they maintained a "fundamental confidence" in the expectation that Parliament would do the right thing and repeal the tax.

Stamp Act Congress

The first Stamp Act Congress was held in New York in October 1765. Historian John C. Miller noted:
John Rutledge of South Carolina, and the oldest was 65 year old Hendrick Fisher of New Jersey. Ten of the delegates were lawyers, ten were merchants, and seven were planters or land owning farmers; all had served in some type of elective office and all but three were born in the colonies. Four would die before the colonies declared independence, and four would sign the Declaration of Independence; nine would attend the first and second Continental Congresses, and three would be loyalists during the Revolution. New Hampshire declined to send any delegates, and North Carolina, Georgia, and Virginia were not represented because their governors didn't call the legislatures into session in order to decide whether to attend. Eventually every colony affirmed the decisions of the Congress. Six of the nine colonies represented at the Congress agreed to sign the petitions to the king and parliament produced by the Congress. The delegations from New York, Connecticut, and South Carolina were prohibited from signing any documents without first receiving approval from the colonal assemblies that had appointed them.
Massachusetts governor Francis Bernard believed that his colony’s delegates to the Congress would be supportive of Parliament. Timothy Ruggles was especially Bernard’s man and was elected chairman of the Congress. Ruggles' instructions from Bernard were to "recommend submission to the Stamp Act until Parliament could be persuaded to repeal it." Many delegates felt that a final resolution of the Stamp Act would actually bring Britain and the colonies closer together. Robert Livingston of New York, stressing the importance of removing the Stamp Act from the public debate, wrote to his colony’s agent in England, "If I really wished to see America in a state of independence I should desire as one of the most effectual means to that end that the stamp act should be enforced."
The congress met for 12 days including Sundays. There was no audience at the meetings, and no information about the deliberations was released during or after the congress. Their final product was called "The Declaration of Rights and Grievances", and was drawn up by delegate John Dickinson of Pennsylvania. This Declaration raised fourteen points of colonial protest. In addition to the specifics of the Stamp Act taxes, it asserted that colonists rightfully possessed all the rights of Englishmen and but that without voting rights, Parliament couldn't represent the colonists; only the colonial assemblies had a right to tax the colonies; that trial by jury was a right which the recent use of Admiralty Courts abused. It is significant that in addition to simply arguing for their rights as Englishmen, they also asserted that they'd certain natural rights solely because they were human beings. Resolution 3 stated, "That it's inseparably essential to the freedom of a people, and the undoubted right of Englishmen, that no taxes be imposed on them, but with their own consent, given personally, or by their representatives." Both Massachusetts and Pennsylvania in separate resolutions would bring forth the issue even more directly when they referred, respectively, to "the Natural rights of Mankind" and "the common rights of mankind". Christopher Gadsden of South Carolina had proposed that since the rights of the colonies didn't originate with Parliament that the Congress’ petition should go only to the King. This radical proposal went too far for most delegates and was rejected. The "Declaration of Rights and Grievances" was duly sent to the king, and petitions were also sent to both Houses of Parliament.

Repeal (December 1765 - March 1766)

Grenville was replaced as Prime Minister on July 10, 1765 by Lord Rockingham, the first lord of the treasury. News of the mob violence began to reach England in October. At the same time that resistance in America was building and accelerating, conflicting sentiments were taking hold in Britain. Some wanted to strictly enforce the Stamp Act over colonial resistance, wary of the precedent that would be set by backing down.
   Others, feeling the economic effects of reduced trade with America after the Sugar Act and an inability to collect debts while the colonial economy suffered, began to lobby for a repeal of the Stamp Act. A significant part of colonial protest had included various non-importation agreements among merchants who recognized that a significant portion of British industry and commerce was dependent on the colonial market. This movement had spread through the colonies with a significant base coming from New York City where 200 merchants had met and agreed to import nothing from England until the Stamp Act was repealed.
   When Parliament met in December 1765, it rejected a resolution offered by Grenville, who remained in Parliament, that would have condemned colonial resistance to the enforcement of the Act. Outside of Parliament Rockingham and his secretary and member of Parliament, Edmund Burke, organized London merchants who in turn started a committee of correspondence itself to support repeal of the Stamp Act by urging merchants throughout the country to contact their local representatives in Parliament concerning repeal. When Parliament reconvened on January 14, 1766, the Rockingham ministry formally proposed repeal. Amendments that would have lessened the financial impact on the colonies by allowing colonists to pay the tax in their own script were considered to be too little and too late. William Pitt, in the Parliamentary debate, stated that everything done by the Grenville ministry with respect to the colonies "has been entirely wrong." He further stated, "It is my opinion that this Kingdom has no right to lay a tax upon the colonies." While Pitt still maintained that "the authority of this kingdom over the colonies, to be sovereign and supreme, in every circumstance of government and legislature whatsoever," he made the distinction that taxes were not part of governing, but were "a voluntary gift and grant of the Commons alone." He rejected the notion of virtual representation, as "the most contemptible idea that ever entered into the head of man."
   Grenville responded to Pitt:
   Between January 17 and 27, Rockingham shifted the attention from constitutional arguments to economic by presenting petitions from all over the country complaining of the economic repercussions felt throughout the country. On February 7, the House of Commons rejected a resolution, saying it would back the King in enforcing the Act by 274-134. In an attempt to address both the constitutional and the economic issues, Secretary of State Henry Conway introduced the Declaratory Act which affirmed the right of Parliament to tax the colonies "in all cases whatsoever" while admitting the inexpediency of attempting to enforce the Stamp Act. Only Pitt and three or four others voted against it. Other resolutions did pass which condemned the riots and demanded compensation from the colonies for those who suffered losses because of the actions of the mobs.
   On February 21, a resolution to repeal the Stamp Act was introduced and passed by a vote of 276-168. The King agreed to the repeal on March 17, 1766.

Later effects

Some aspects of the resistance to the act provided a sort of rehearsal for the resistance to the Townshend Acts of 1767. In the American Revolution a decade later, the Committees of Correspondence reappeared on a more formal basis. The boycott also became more formalized, as the colonies entered into a Non Importation Agreement in 1774. While the Sons of Liberty faded after the repeal, they were never again entirely absent. The ability of the colonies to act in concert would also reappear in the Continental Congress.
The colonists also came to believe that they could nullify an Act of Parliament by generally peaceful means. The issue of no taxation without representation was raised, but not resolved. The constitutional stakes would soon be raised higher. Still, the determination of Parliament to tax the colonists persisted.

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