Colonial Campaigns Club (CCC)

November 1, 1765

In the face of widespread opposition in the American colonies,
Parliament enacts the Stamp Act, a taxation measure designed to raise
revenue for British military operations in America.

Defense of the American colonies in the French and Indian War
(1754-63) and Pontiac's Rebellion (1763-64) were costly affairs for
Great Britain, and Prime Minister George Grenville hoped to recover
some of these costs by taxing the colonists. In 1764, the Sugar Act
was enacted, putting a high duty on refined sugar. Although resented,
the Sugar Act tax was hidden in the cost of import duties, and most
colonists accepted it. The Stamp Act, however, was a direct tax on the
colonists and led to an uproar in America over an issue that was to be
a major cause of the Revolution: taxation without representation.

Passed without debate by Parliament in March 1765, the Stamp Act was
designed to force colonists to use special stamped paper in the
printing of newspapers, pamphlets, almanacs, and playing cards, and to
have a stamp embossed on all commercial and legal papers. The stamp
itself displayed an image of a Tudor rose framed by the word "America"
and the Latin phrase Honi soit qui mal y pense--"Shame to him who
thinks evil of it."

Outrage was immediate. Massachusetts politician Samuel Adams organized
the secret Sons of Liberty organization to plan protests against the
measure, and the Virginia legislature and other colonial assemblies
passed resolutions opposing the act. In October, nine colonies sent
representatives to New York to attend a Stamp Act Congress, where
resolutions of "rights and grievances" were framed and sent to
Parliament and King George III. Despite this opposition, the Stamp Act
was enacted on November 1, 1765.

The colonists greeted the arrival of the stamps with violence and
economic retaliation. A general boycott of British goods began, and
the Sons of Liberty staged attacks on the customhouses and homes of
tax collectors in Boston. After months of protest and economic
turmoil, and an appeal by Benjamin Franklin before the British House
of Commons, Parliament voted to repeal the Stamp Act in March 1766.
However, the same day, Parliament passed the Declaratory Acts,
asserting that the British government had free and total legislative
power over the colonies.

Parliament would again attempt to force unpopular taxation measures on
the American colonies in the late 1760s, leading to a steady
deterioration in British-American relations that culminated in the
outbreak of the American Revolution in 1775.