According to Gelb, those most "disconcerted" by the Stamp Act were "lawyers, merchants, shipowners, newspaper publishers...and others most directly affected by it." Howard Zinn, author of the popular and controversial A People's History of the United States agrees, focusing his analysis on the economic impact that the Stamp Act was to have on the upper class of American colonial society. In his book, Zinn refers to Gary B. Nash's study of the Boston tax lists which show that the top 5 percent of Boston's citizens controlled close to half the city's wealth. (Nash is the author of Red, Black, and White). According to Zinn and Nash, this statistic demonstrates a common economic demographic throughout the American colonies. And it was this upper echelon of society, argues Zinn, most critically impacted by the Stamp Act.
If true that the Stamp Act primarily impacted the rich, they were certainly aware that their voices alone were not sufficient to achieve any change in British tax policy. They needed the masses. Thus, according to Nash, it fell to leaders like James Otis and Samuel Adams to "mold laboring class opinion" and unite North America against Britain.
To meet this challenge, Gelb writes in Less Than Glory that "complex arguments were devised by learned American jurists who pointed out in great detail how [the Stamp Tax] was both improper and unsound under English law." Fortunately for the colonial "upper class," Gelb writes that "economic conditions helped fuel the bitter reaction to the Stamp Tax" amongst the masses. The French and Indian War, while draining England's treasury, had spelled somewhat of a boom for the colonies. Now, in the aftermath of war, the colonies were in an economic slump - one that had been accentuated by large numbers of British troops being transferred to the West Indies, the printing of less paper money, stepped-up enforcement of tariffs on trade, and the Sugar Act. Circumstances were therefore in place for what Zinn, Nash and Gelb contend was the manipulation of the masses by the upper class of society for their own purposes.
Were the British justified in levying taxes on North America? Were the British taxes unduly burdensome to American colonists, especially in comparison to local taxes levied by their local governments? Was the upper class of North America spreading unrest and discontent amongst the masses for its own nefarious purposes? Was there any merit to the American argument that taxation of the colonies by Parliament was "unsound" under British law or were such arguments merely propaganda? Was the American Revolution primarily about greed? These are important questions, for they strike at the very heart of how the United States of America came about. Since the answers to these questions say much about our origins, they also impact our national identity.
