This 1774 print shows Boston colonists pouring tea down the throat of a loyalist official whom they have tarred and feathered. Tax commissioners were commonly threatened with tarring and feathering when they tried to enforce the Stamp Act of 1765, which imposed a tax on all papers and official documents in the American colonies. The aftermath of the Stamp Act influenced constitutional safeguards and the First Amendment. [Print by Philip Dawe via Wikimedia Commons, public domain]
The Stamp Act of 1765 was ratified by the British parliament under King George III. It imposed a tax on all papers and official documents in the American colonies, though not in England.
King George III imposed a tax on official documents in American colonies
Included under the act were bonds, licenses, certificates, and other official documents as well as more mundane items such as plain parchment and playing cards. Parliament reasoned that the American colonies needed to offset the sums necessary for their maintenance. It intended to use the additional tax money to pay for war expenses incurred in Great Britain’s struggles with France and Spain.
Many American colonists refused to pay Stamp Act tax
The American colonists were angered by the Stamp Act and quickly acted to oppose it. Because of the colonies’ sheer distance from London, the epicenter of British politics, a direct appeal to Parliament was almost impossible. Instead, the colonists made clear their opposition by simply refusing to pay the tax.
Prominent individuals such as Benjamin Franklin and members of the independence-minded group known as the Sons of Liberty argued that the British parliament did not have the authority to impose an internal tax. Public protest flared and the ensuing violence attracted broad attention. Tax commissioners were threatened and quit their jobs out of fear; others simply did not succeed in collecting any money. As Franklin wrote in 1766, the “Stamp Act would have to be imposed by force.” Unable to do so, Parliament repealed the Stamp Act just one year later, on March 18, 1766.
American separatist movement grew during protest of Stamp Act
The colonists may well have accepted the stamp tax had it been imposed by their own representatives and with their consent. However, the colonists’ emerging sense of independence — nurtured by the mother country and justified by their multiple interactions with other trading nations — heightened the colonists’ sense of indignation and feelings of injustice. Even had they submitted to it, there is little doubt that many would have been troubled by the negative impact of a tax on the free press.
Scholars contend that the American separatist movement gained a great deal of influence as a result of its success in protesting the Stamp Act.
Stamp Act aftermath influenced constitutional safeguards, First Amendment
The act and the violence that erupted with its passage remained fresh in the young country’s memory. The crafters of the Constitution were careful to include safeguards against usurpations of freedom and the violence such acts could breed. Article 5 provides for a constitutional amending process, allowing for changes in the laws without resort to violent revolution.
The First Amendment secures freedom of speech, the right to peacefully assemble, and the right to petition government. It also protects the freedom of the press.
This article was originally written in 2009. Stefanie Kunze has a PhD in Political Science and is a Lecturer in the Department of Sociology at Northern Arizona University. Dr. Kunze specializes in perpetrators of ethnocide, and more specifically Native American experiences with settler colonialism.
The Stamp Act Congress met on this day in New York in 1765, a meeting that led nine Colonies to declare the English Crown had no right to tax Americans who lacked representation in British Parliament.
The Crown and British Parliament didn’t exactly agree with that idea, and within 10 years, the sides would be at war over some of the concepts endorsed by the 27 delegates in three documents sent by ship to England.
The turmoil started earlier in 1765, when Parliament approved a little-noticed measure in Britain called the Stamp Act. On March 22, 1765, Parliament required colonists to pay taxes on every page of printed paper they used. The tax also included fees for playing cards and dice.
The proceeds from the Act would “further defray… the expenses of defending, protecting, and securing” the Colonies from attacks; it was a measure to make the Colonies pay costs for hosting British troops on the continent.
The new tax amounted to a sales tax for the colonies, which didn’t sit well with many residents who considered themselves quite removed from such measures. The protests were based on a legal principle that the colonial legislatures only had the power to tax residents who had representatives in those legislatures. And even though some colonies had official agents to Parliament, like Benjamin Franklin, no colonies had sitting representatives in the British Parliament.
In May 1765, Virginia’s Patrick Henry wrote the Virginia Resolves, which clearly laid out the “taxation without representation” argument. The protests against the Stamp Act also were particularly strong in Massachusetts. That summer, Massachusetts called for a meeting of all the colonies – a Stamp Act Congress – to be held in New York in October 1765. Committees of Correspondence were also formed in the colonies to protest the Act.
On October 9, 1765, representatives from nine of the eighteen colonies showed up at New York City’s Federal Hall. The legislatures in Virginia and Georgia didn’t allow representatives to go to a meeting that some felt went against British constitutional law.
The 27 delegates included several men who would later sign the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, or play a role fighting for, or against, American independence. John Dickinson, William Samuel Johnson, and John Rutledge would have roles at the Constitutional Convention in 1787; Thomas McKean, Robert Livingston, Philip Livingston, Caesar Rodney, and John Morton were other prominent delegates.
But there was also conflict between two representatives from Massachusetts. James Otis, a firebrand lawyer, had popularized the phrase “taxation without representation is tyranny” in a series of public arguments. However, Timothy Ruggles, a moderate former Massachusetts House speaker, was chosen as Congress President, perceived by some delegates as a move intended to undermine the efficacy of the Congress.
In 1764, Otis wrote in “Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved” that “the very act of taxing, exercised over those who are not represented, appears to me to be depriving them of one of their most essential rights, as freemen; and if continued, seems to be in effect an entire disfranchisement of every civil right.”
The Stamp Act Congress met for 18 days. On October 19, the delegates approved the Declaration of Rights and Grievances, which stated the joint position of the delegates for other colonists to read.
Resolutions three, four and five made clear that while the delegates repeatedly stressed their loyalty to the Crown, the issue of taxes was at the forefront.
“That it is 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. That the people of these colonies are not, and from their local circumstances cannot be, represented in the House of Commons in Great-Britain. That the only representatives of the people of these colonies, are persons chosen therein by themselves, and that no taxes ever have been, or can be constitutionally imposed on them, but by their respective legislatures,” read the passage.
Another resolution complained about admiralty courts conducting direct trials. “Trial by jury is the inherent and invaluable right of every British subject in these colonies,” it read.
The Stamp Act Congress then ended on a controversial note, as the delegates drafted three petitions to send to the King, House of Lords and House of Commons. Ruggles opposed the petitions and left without signing them.
The petitions were ignored when they arrived in Britain, but boycotts and financial pressure exerted by the colonists led to the Stamp Act’s repeal the next year. Parliament then passed the Declaratory Act, which stated its right in principle to tax the colonies as it saw fit.
At that point, momentum had begun within the colonies for more economic independence, and many wanted guarantees from the Crown to protect colonists’ natural rights.