Stamp Act notes AN Book.docx

THE STAMP ACT As prime minister, George Grenville excelled at doing the wrong thing—repeatedly. The Sugar Act, for example, did not produce additional net revenue for Great Britain. Its administrative costs were four times greater than the additional revenue it generated. Yet Grenville compounded the problem by pushing through an even more provocative measure to raise money in America: a stamp tax. On February 13, 1765, Parliament passed the Stamp Act, which created revenue stamps to be purchased and affixed to every form of printed matter used in the colonies: newspapers, pamphlets, bonds, leases, deeds, licenses, insurance policies, college diplomas, even playing cards. The requirement was to go into effect November 1, nine months later. The Stamp Act affected all the colonists, not just New England merchants, and it was the first outright effort by Parliament to place a direct—or “internal”—tax specifically on American goods and services rather than an “external” tax on imports and exports—all for the purpose of generating revenue for the British treasury rather than regulating trade. That same year, Grenville completed his new system of colonial regulations when he persuaded Parliament to pass the Quartering Act. In effect was yet another tax. The Quartering Act required the colonies to feed and house British troops. It applied to all colonies but affected mainly New York City, the headquarters of the British forces. The new act raised troubling questions in the colonies. Why was it necessary for British soldiers to be stationed in colonial cities in peacetime? Was not the Quartering Act another example of taxation without representation, as the colonies had neither requested the troops nor been asked their opinion on the matter? Some colonists decided that the Quartering Act was an effort to use British soldiers to tyrannize the Americans.

THE IDEOLOGICAL RESPONSE Grenville’s revenue measures outraged Americans. Unwittingly, he had stirred up a storm of protest and set in motion a profound exploration of colonial rights and imperial relations. From the start of English settlement in America, free colonists had come to take for granted certain essential principles and practices: self-government, religious freedom, economic opportunity, and territorial expansion. All of those deeply embedded values seemed threatened by Britain’s efforts to tighten its control over the colonies after 1763. The tensions between the colonies and mother country began to take on moral and spiritual overtones associated with the old Whig principle that no Englishman could be taxed without his consent through representative government. Americans opposed to English policies began to call themselves true Whigs and label the king and his “corrupt” ministers as “Tories.” In 1764 and 1765, American Whigs decided that Grenville was imposing upon them the very chains of tyranny from which Parliament had rescued England in the seventeenth century. A standing army—rather than a militia— was the historic ally of despots, yet now with the French defeated and Canada under English control, thousands of British soldiers remained in the colonies. For what purpose—to protect the colonists or to subdue them? Other factors heightened colonial anxiety. Among the fundamental rights of English people were trial by jury and the presumption of innocence, but the new admiralty court in Halifax excluded juries and put the burden of proof on the defendant. Most important, English citizens had the right to be taxed only by their elected representatives. Now, however, Parliament was usurping the colonial assemblies’ power of the purse strings. This could lead only to tyranny and enslavement, critics argued. Sir Francis Bernard, the royal governor of Massachusetts, correctly predicted that the new stamp tax “would cause a great Alarm & meet much Opposition” in the colonies. Indeed, the seed of American independence was planted by the fiery debates over the stamp tax.

PROTEST IN THE COLONIES The Stamp Act aroused a ferocious response among the colonists. In a flood of pamphlets, speeches, and resolutions, critics repeated a slogan familiar to all Americans: “no taxation without representation.” A Connecticut minister attributed the Stamp Act to a “selfish and venal spirit of corruption” that required more revenue solely “to add fuel to ungodly lusts . . . all manner of unrighteousness and oppression, debauchery and wickedness.” Through the spring and summer of 1765, resentment boiled over at meetings, parades, bonfires, and other demonstrations. The protesters, calling themselves Sons of Liberty, met underneath “liberty trees”—in Boston a great elm; in Charleston, South Carolina, a live oak. In mid-August 1765, nearly three months before the Stamp Act was to take effect, a Boston mob sacked the homes of the lieutenant governor and the local customs officer in charge of enforcing the stamp tax. Thoroughly shaken, the Boston stamp agent resigned, and stamp agents throughout the colonies were hounded out of office. By November 1, its effective date, the Stamp Act was a dead letter. Colonists by the thousands signed nonimportation agreements, promising not to buy imported British goods as a means of exerting leverage in London. The widespread protests involved courageous women as well as men, and the boycotts of British goods encouraged colonial unity as Americans discovered that they had more in common with each other than with London. The Virginia House of Burgesses struck the first blow against the Stamp Act with the Virginia Resolves, a series of resolutions inspired by the ardent young Patrick Henry. Virginians, the burgesses declared, were entitled to all the rights of Englishmen, and Englishmen could be taxed only by their own elected representatives. Virginians, moreover, had always been governed by laws passed with their own consent. Newspapers spread the Virginia Resolves throughout the colonies, and other assemblies hastened to copy Virginia’s example. In 1765 the Massachusetts House of Representatives invited the other colonial assemblies to send delegates to confer in New York about their opposition to the Stamp Act. Nine responded, and from October 7 to 25, 1765, the Stamp Act Congress formulated a Declaration of the Rights and Grievances of the Colonies. The delegates acknowledged that the colonies owed a “due subordination” to Parliament and recognized its right to regulate colonial trade, but they insisted “that no taxes should be imposed on them, but with their own consent, given personally, or by their representatives.” Parliament, in other words, had no right to levy taxes on people who were unrepresented in that body. The bonds connecting colonies and Mother Country were splaying. “The boldness of the minister [Grenville] amazes our people,” wrote a New Yorker. “This single stroke has lost Great Britain the affection of all of her Colonies.” Grenville responded by denouncing colonial critics as “ungrateful.”

REPEAL OF THE STAMP ACT The storm had scarcely broken before Grenville’s ministry was out of office and the Stamp Act was repealed. For reasons unrelated to his colonial policies, Grenville had lost the confidence of the king, who replaced Grenville with Lord Rockingham, a leader of a Whig faction critical of Grenville’s colonial policies. Pressure from British merchants who feared the economic consequences of the colonial non - importation movement convinced the Rockingham-led government that the Stamp Act was a mistake. The prime minister asked Parliament to rescind the Stamp Act. In 1766, Parliament repealed the Stamp Tax but at the same time passed the Declaratory Act, which asserted the power of Parliament to make laws binding the colonies “in all cases whatsoever.” It was a cunning evasion that made no concession with regard to taxes but made no mention of them either. For the moment, however, the Declaratory Act was a face-saving gesture. News of the repeal of the Stamp Act set off excited demonstrations throughout the colonies. Amid the rejoicing and relief on both sides of the Atlantic, few expected that the quarrel between Britain and its American colonies would be reopened within a year.