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The Stamp Act - Page 2

© Brian Tubbs

Disagreement with Townshend, at the moment, was scarce. But one man, a veteran of the French and Indian War, gave voice to a rising tide of dissent in North America. “They planted by your care,” asked Isaac Barre in response to Townshend’s declarations. “No! Your oppressions planted them in America….They nourished by your indulgence? They grew by your neglect of them….They protected by your arms? They have nobly taken up arms in your defence, have exerted a valour amidst their constant and laborious industry for the defence of a country whose frontier, while drenched in blood, its interior parts have yielded all its little savings to your emolument.”

Barre was decisively in the minority. In Parliament’s view, it was time to change the relationship between England and her colonies. The colonies would need to support the Empire overall, and not selfishly content themselves with their own affairs. Most especially, they would need to help cover the costs that the Empire endured on their behalf, and would be accountable to Parliament to insure such obligations were met. The Stamp Act passed overwhelmingly (245-49) on February 27, 1765, and received the assent of King George III on March 22. By April, the news had reached the colonies.

Samuel Adams biographer Paul Lewis writes: “The passage of the Stamp Act and the Quartering Act by Parliament early in 1765 created an unprecedented uproar in the colonies, but the reaction was not spontaneous.” Indeed. Adams had already laid the groundwork in his fierce opposition to the Sugar Act. When the Massachusetts Assembly approved the instructions he had drafted from the Boston Caucus Club, Adams made sure that copies were sent to the legislatures in each of the other North American colonies. In addition, he sent copies to individual colonial leaders in Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Virginia.

Massachusetts Governor Francis Bernard expressed concern over the relationships Adams was beginning to establish with political leaders in the other colonies, as well as the committee authorized (with Adams as the chairman) by the Massachusetts Assembly to coordinate official protests of the Sugar Act with other colonial legislatures. With good reason, he regarded such developments as a “foundation for connecting the demagogues of the several governments in America to join together in opposition to all orders from Great Britain which don’t square with their notions of the rights of the people.”

The Stamp Act was perfect for such “demagogues” as it would be visible for all Americans in their everyday lives, and would especially impact the most prosperous and best educated of the colonists, who naturally gravitated to such fields as law, printing, commerce, and the ministry. As knowledge of Grenville’s new tax scheme spread, voices of protest from all over America, particularly from the upper class, rallied together and rose in volume.

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