In the spring of 1765, the British Parliament passed a new tax law – The Stamp Act, which was to be introduced in the thirteen colonies of North America. The reason was that the British state needed money to finance the detention of a large British army in North America. This despite the fact that the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763) was now over and the French no longer posed a threat on the other side of the Atlantic. But the troops would still be kept, and it was the American colonists who would have to pay for the whole party. They had no action in the British Parliament and were therefore not allowed to take part in the decision. However, it would soon prove to be a fatal mistake that had far-reaching historical consequences.
An American mob dismisses a British official
In 1765 the inhabitants of Boston were the first to take to the streets. On the night of August 14, 1765, shoemaker Ebenezer MacIntosh had made a doll depicting taxman Andrew Oliver. At dawn the execution was carried out; the doll was hung in the large elm at the corner of Essex Street and Orange Street.
When evening came, they cut down “Oliver” and carried him through town in a symbolic funeral procession. Sheriff Stephen Greenleaf tried to stop the train, but was met by a shower of rocks and forced to retreat. When they got to the real Andrew Oliver’s office, they broke open the door, smashed the interior and threw his hateful stamps in the dirt. Then they went on to Oliver’s home at Fort Hill, where they burned the doll.
The next morning, Royal Tax Collector Andrew Oliver resigned. Ebenezer MacIntosh forced him to sign his resignation under the Elm, already known as the Liberty Tree.
An American mob had ousted a British official. Nowhere in the thirteen North American colonies had anything like this been experienced. When the news reached London, the former Prime Minister William Pitt could not hide his joy of injury. He had always said that it was a big mistake to try to introduce a tax in America. Now he was right – even more right than he realized. The anger over the 1765 stamp duty was the beginning of a process that ended with the British colonies in North America liberating themselves from the mother country and forming the United States of America, the United States .
The British had introduced a special stamp duty in the colonies
It was the idea of the new Prime Minister George Grenville to introduce a tax that would only be levied in America, not at home in Britain . Grenville also had the post of finance minister and needed the tax revenue to solve a defense economic problem. By the end of the Seven Years’ War , the British had defeated the French in Canada and finally taken control of the eastern parts of North America. There was no longer any military threat against the thirteen British colonies and really no reason to keep a British army in America.
At the same time, George Grenville did not want to disband the army. A demobilization would make fifteen hundred English officers unemployed, soldiers who, almost without exception, had a father, brother or cousin in parliament and thus could face political difficulties. Therefore, Grenville decided to keep the troops in America.
The only question was who would pay for them. The American colonies, of course, decided Grenville. The troops are there to defend the Americans, and then it is no more than right that they stand for the bill, said the Prime Minister in Parliament and most agreed with him. In the spring of 1765, the lower house passed The Stamp Act , the law on stamp duty, with 205 votes against 49. The upper house voted unanimously yes.
The law taxed all paper used in the thirteen American colonies. For postcards the tax rate was one shilling per bundle, for newspapers one penny per sheet and so on. The stamp duty was and is an effective form of tax, as it is cheap to administer and compliance is easy to control. Official documents are simply invalid if they do not bear a stamp certifying that the tax has been paid.
Loud American protests
But the wrath of the American colonists was not about the money, but about the principle. The thirteen colonies in North America had no representatives in the British Parliament. Therefore, they refused to be taxed by decision from there. This was a matter of civil liberties and it was not intended to be shaken by American politicians.
The Americans had never had a common parliament. But in the fall of 1765, twenty-seven delegates from nine colonies gathered for a meeting, which took place in New York and was called the “Stamp Act Congress.” On 19 October, they completed a thirteen-point resolution, which contained the core message of Article Five:
The only ones who can represent the people of these colonies are people elected there, by themselves; no taxes have ever been imposed on them, or can be imposed on them according to the constitution, other than through their respective legislative assemblies.
The resolution was the first of its kind and became historic as a political document, but it was the anger of the people in the streets that in practice cracked the stamp duty. The “stamp collectors” that George Grenville had recruited were simply not given a chance to do their job.
Two weeks after the Boston riots, protests were repeated in Newport, Rhode Island. An enraged crowd erected a gallows in front of City Hall where they hung a doll depicting the colony’s tax collector Augustus Johnson. A couple of protesters were arrested but Johnson chose to withdraw. A few weeks later, colleague James McEvers in New York followed his example after similar scenes. And so on; on November 16, twelve of the thirteen royal tax collectors had resigned.
The stamp duty had far-reaching historical consequences
By then, most Members of Parliament had realized that the stamp duty was a mistake. Proposals were made to abolish it. When the lower house debated the issue, political veteran William Pitt, who has been against the tax all along, gave one of his most notorious speeches:
Gentlemen, Sir, I have been accused of causing incitement in America. They have freely expressed their feelings before this unfortunate law, and this freedom has become their crime. It pains me to hear freedom of speech portrayed as a crime in this House.
On March 18, 1766, the lower house abolished the stamp duty and declared that all its “provisions, intentions and purposes” now belonged to history.
But it was too late. A month earlier, some of the most committed American resistance fighters had formed a group called the “Sons of Liberty”, the sons of freedom. This was the first intercolonial political organization in America and it became the basis for the resistance that would lead to the American Revolution and the Declaration of Independence in 1776. The stamp duty became a mistake with decisive and far-reaching historical consequences.
When William Pitt’s speech was printed and distributed in the thirteen colonies, he was hailed as a hero. Five cities in the United States bear his name, four warships have fought for the United States under the name USS Pittsburgh.