October 7 - Stamp Act Congress

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On this day, in 1765, the Continental Congress of 1765, also known as the Stamp Act Congress, opened its first day of deliberations. Any government will tell you that keeping military troops in faraway lands is expensive. That is true today and was no less true 250 years ago, when Great Britain spent a good deal of its time, energy and money trying to hold on to plots of land that circled the globe. The British crown had just spent nine years pouring vast amounts of its treasury into a war in its American colonies, ostensibly to keep them from being overrun by French settlers. It becomes hard to justify the French and Indian War in that manner, however, when you consider that it pitted 2,000,000 British subjects against an “invasion” of just 60,000 French, most of whom, like their British counterparts, didn’t care to leave their newly adopted homes, much less start shooting at someone about it.

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The feeling among the settlers was that the war was used as an excuse to keep the ranks of an already bloated military full and therefore wasn’t all that necessary. The crown’s position was not only was it necessary, but the colonists should be paying for privilege of having wars fought on their behalf. British parliament passed two acts in 1764 to increase the revenue it got from its colonies and therefore pay for the troops: the Sugar Act and the Currency Act. Colonists began to grumble about both new taxes, especially since the provincial governments didn’t get to vote on them. This was the beginning of the phrase “no taxation without representation.” Parliament (knowing full well that colonial legislatures would never allow any new taxes) countered by saying they weren’t taxes, they were trade duties, so don’t worry about it. Apparently, though, the new regulations on sweetener and paper money didn’t raise enough cash because in less than a year, parliament gave the people something to worry about.

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In March 1765, Parliament passed the Stamp Act, set to take effect the following November. It required that the paper used for any legal document (as well as many other applications like newspapers, books and playing cards) bear a stamp showing that the new tax had been paid. And no one was trying to mask the fact that it was indeed a tax. The grumbles quickly turned into organized protests. By June, the Massachusetts Assembly sent a letter to the governing bodies of the other colonies on the continent, urging them to come together to discuss the England problem. In spite of every effort of the crown’s official Governors to quash even discussion of such a meeting, nine colonies sent delegates to New York City for the congress. By various means (some of them deliberately illegal in the eyes of Parliament) Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and South Carolina elected men to represent them. New Hampshire declined to send anyone because of financial reasons and later changed their minds, but it was too late to get there. The other colonies were unable to get around their governors.

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Delegates to the Stamp Act Congress began arriving in New York City in late September 1765. They probably immediately began discussing what their course of action was going to be with whomever happened to be there, but the first official session didn’t convene until October 7 at New York’s City Hall. A journal of the congress exists, but it isn’t all that helpful in shedding light on what was debated or who was talking at the time. That was a deliberate move on the part of the members. By only noting down as little as possible about official decisions, they were protecting themselves from later prosecution from the crown. No one even dared to keep a personal journal and the little we do know about what went on behind those closed doors comes from snippets of personal letters that have survived.

The Lieutenant Governor of New York called the meeting dangerous to the Empire. One delegate retorted that if the congress wanted American independence, they would be making sure the Stamp Act got paid, not fighting against it. Over the next two weeks, a Declaration of Rights and Grievances was hammered out. It stated that taxes imposed on colonists without their consent were unconstitutional and since colonists lacked voting rights, parliament couldn’t represent them. All told, fourteen separate points were made in the Declaration, not all of them dealing exclusively with the Stamp Act. The Declaration was adopted on October 19, with the intent to send copies of it to all the colonial assemblies for discussion. Three different petitions were then drafted to be presented to the King, the House of Lords and the House of Commons, basically outlining the same grievances as the Declaration. The letters were fairly flattering in their language, assuring everyone that the colonists remained loyal and hoping that this matter could be resolved quickly and to everyone’s satisfaction. On October 25, the Congress met for the last time to sign the letters and arrange for their delivery (only delegates from six of the nine colonies ended up signing as the other three had been expressly forbidden from putting their names on any document). What many consider to be the first act of the American Revolution was now finished.

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To say that Parliament reacted badly to the petitions is an understatement. Not only did both houses refuse to acknowledge receiving them, the House of Commons would then pass the Declaratory Act asserting that yes they did have the right to levy taxes without representation (which means they at least read the petition they refused to accept). The Stamp Act itself would be repealed in March 1766 (less than a year after being passed and less than five months after being put into actual action) but only for economic reasons put forth by a faction of Parliament trying to make a power grab, not because anyone cared about what the colonists thought. Outrage would simmer for several more years on the western shore of the Atlantic, as the American subjects of the British crown suffered what they felt was indignity after indignity. Things finally came to a boil at the Boston Tea Party in 1773. The slope from there to war and independence may have been slippery and fairly fast, but you can be sure that those who rode that slide took a number of lessons with them from the Stamp Act Congress into the First Continental Congress, among them the fact that trying to be nice to Parliament clearly wasn’t the way to go.

Also on this day, in Disney history: Bedknobs and Broomsticks