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    The Stamp Act of 1765 was the first direct tax imposed by Britain on the American colonies and required tax stamps on all legal documents and printed materials. This caused major uproar in the colonies as colonists believed only their own assemblies had the right to tax them. Widespread protests and mob violence forced stamp distributors to resign, making the act impossible to enforce. While Parliament repealed the Stamp Act in 1766, tensions remained over Parliament's claimed power to tax the colonies, laying the groundwork for the American Revolution a decade later.

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    The Stamp Act of 1765 was the first direct tax imposed by Britain on the American colonies and required tax stamps on all legal documents and printed materials. This caused major uproar in the colonies as colonists believed only their own assemblies had the right to tax them. Widespread protests and mob violence forced stamp distributors to resign, making the act impossible to enforce. While Parliament repealed the Stamp Act in 1766, tensions remained over Parliament's claimed power to tax the colonies, laying the groundwork for the American Revolution a decade later.

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    48 views3 pages

    Thestampact

    Uploaded by

    api-355864571
    The Stamp Act of 1765 was the first direct tax imposed by Britain on the American colonies and required tax stamps on all legal documents and printed materials. This caused major uproar in the colonies as colonists believed only their own assemblies had the right to tax them. Widespread protests and mob violence forced stamp distributors to resign, making the act impossible to enforce. While Parliament repealed the Stamp Act in 1766, tensions remained over Parliament's claimed power to tax the colonies, laying the groundwork for the American Revolution a decade later.

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    American Revolution

    1765

    The Stamp Act


    The Stamp Act of 1765 was the first internal tax levied directly on American colonists by
    the British government. The act, which imposed a tax on all paper documents in the
    colonies, came at a time when the British Empire was deep in debt from the Seven Years
    War (1756-63) and looking to its North American colonies as a revenue source. Arguing
    that only their own representative assemblies could tax them, the colonists insisted that
    the act was unconstitutional, and they resorted to mob violence to intimidate stamp
    collectors into resigning. Parliament repealed the Stamp Act in 1766, but issued a
    Declaratory Act at the same time to reaffirm its authority to pass any colonial legislation it
    saw fit. The issues of taxation and representation raised by the Stamp Act strained
    relations with the colonies to the point that, 10 years later, the colonists rose in armed
    rebellion against the British.

    Instead of imposing a duty on trade goods, the Stamp Act imposed a direct tax on the
    colonists. Specifically, the act required that, starting in the fall of 1765, legal documents
    and printed materials must bear a tax stamp provided by commissioned distributors who
    would collect the tax in exchange for the stamp. The law applied to wills, deeds,
    newspapers, pamphlets and even playing cards and dice. Part of the revenue from the
    Stamp Act would be used to maintain several regiments of British soldiers in North
    America to maintain peace between Native Americans and the colonists. Moreover, since
    colonial juries had proven notoriously reluctant to find smugglers guilty of their crimes,
    violators of the Stamp Act could be tried and convicted without juries in the vice-admiralty
    courts.
    UPROAR IN THE COLONIES

    Parliament pushed forward with the Stamp Act in spite of the colonists objections.
    Colonial resistance to the act mounted slowly at first, but gained momentum as the
    planned date of its implementation drew near. In Virginia, Patrick Henry (1736-99), whose
    fiery orations against British tyranny would soon make him famous, submitted a series of
    resolutions to his colonys assembly, the House of Burgesses. These resolutions denied
    Parliaments right to tax the colonies and called on the colonists to resist the Stamp Act.
    Newspapers throughout the colonies reprinted the resolutions, spreading their radical
    message to a broad audience. The resolutions provided the tenor for the proclamations of
    the Stamp Act Congress, an extralegal convention composed of delegates from nine
    colonies that met in October 1765. The Stamp Act Congress wrote petitions to the king
    affirming both their loyalty and the conviction that only the colonial assemblies had the
    constitutional authority to tax the colonists.

    While the Congress and the colonial assemblies passed resolutions and issued petitions
    against the Stamp Act, the colonists took matters into their own hands. The most famous
    popular resistance took place in Boston, where opponents of the Stamp Act, calling
    themselves the Sons of Liberty, enlisted the rabble of Boston in opposition to the new law.
    This mob paraded through the streets with an effigy of Andrew Oliver, Bostons stamp
    distributor, which they hanged from the Liberty Tree and beheaded before ransacking
    Olivers home. Oliver agreed to resign his commission as stamp distributor.

    Similar events transpired in other colonial towns, as crowds mobbed the stamp distributors
    and threatened their physical well-being and their property. By the beginning of 1766,
    most of the stamp distributors had resigned their commissions, many of them under
    duress. Mobs in seaport towns turned away ships carrying the stamp papers from England
    without allowing them to discharge their cargoes. Determined colonial resistance made it
    impossible for the British government to bring the Stamp Act into effect. In 1766,
    Parliament repealed it.

    UNRESOLVED ISSUES

    The end of the Stamp Act did not end Parliaments conviction that it had the authority to
    impose taxes on the colonists. The British government coupled the repeal of the Stamp
    Act with the Declaratory Act, a reaffirmation of its power to pass any laws over the
    colonists that it saw fit. However, the colonists held firm to their view that Parliament could
    not tax them. The issues raised by the Stamp Act festered for 10 years before giving rise
    to the Revolutionary War and, ultimately, American independence.

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