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| 1765 One Penny Stamp |
George Grenville, First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer under King George III from 1763 until 1765, called for its enactment as part of a larger plan for more effectively managing Great Britain’s North American territories.
Grenville announced his intention to levy a stamp tax on the American colonies in March 1764 and indicated that they had one year to post their objections. Although some opposed the measure, Grenville did not expect any sort of widespread opposition to the tax.
Consequently, Parliament passed the measure with little debate or opposition on 22 March 1765, but the measure did not go into effect until 1 November 1765. Yet, from this innocuous beginning, the American colonists quickly interpreted Grenville’s call for a stamp tax as part of a vast conspiracy to deny the colonists their basic rights as Englishmen and to economically enslave them.
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Two events led to the passage of the Stamp Act: the debt crisis caused by the Seven Years’ War and a Native American uprising in the Great Lakes region and Ohio River Valley led by an Ottawa chieftain named Pontiac.
The Seven Years’ War (1756–1763) was fought between Great Britain and France for control of North America; this war led to British domination in North America with the exception of New Spain—the territory west of the Mississippi River. The war left Britain with a large debt and a new North American empire to manage—both of which required additional revenues. After waging a long war against the French for control of the Ohio and Mississippi River valleys, Britain had to face another crisis.
Chief Pontiac and his followers launched a series of strikes that led to the loss of almost every fort west of Niagara within a few weeks. The systematic Native American effort targeting British forts began tapering off in 1764, and hostilities formally ceased when Pontiac surrendered to the British in July 1766.
Pontiac’s rebellion highlighted the need for more effective management of the colonial settlements in America as well as the need to bolster colonial defense; the uprising also gave an added sense of urgency to Parliament’s need to secure additional revenue through the Stamp Act.
Grenville started to implement a comprehensive plan to address the emerging imperial crisis developing in America. To prevent future Native American uprisings, Grenville sought to adjust colonial boundaries in North America, which basically meant to separate the English colonists from Native American tribal lands.
In pursuit of this goal, the Grenville ministry implemented the Proclamation of 1763 and set the Appalachian Mountains as the western border of American settlement; the proclamation reserved the bulk of the Ohio and Mississippi River valleys as tribal lands for the Native Americans who inhabited the region.
Once the new borders were set, they would be enforced by the construction of a string of frontier forts that would house British troops, should there be another Indian uprising. The implementation of the Proclamation of 1763 necessitated the collection of additional revenues to pay for colonial defense. In the quest of such revenue, Grenville secured passage of the Sugar Act and the Stamp Act.
Many American colonists, however, did not regard Grenville’s agenda as an attempt to manage more effectively Britain’s new transatlantic empire; they viewed his efforts as part of a vast conspiracy to redefine the relationship between crown and colony to their disadvantage, by stripping away their basic rights as Englishmen.
The logic behind this fear of conspiracy stemmed from the simple reality that the taxes would have to be paid in specie (i.e., gold and silver coin). The problem for the colonists who had to pay the taxes related to the absence of specie in America—they did not have the means to pay the tax.
Yet, if they did not pay, they would be in violation of the law. Grenville made it clear he intended to enforce these measures and that all infractions would be tried in the vice-admiralty courts—a move that effectively denied those who violated the law a jury trial.
The simultaneous passage of a fourth measure, the Currency Act of 1764, fanned American fears of conspiracy because it mandated that private debts could no longer be paid with paper currency; such debts would also have to be paid in specie. The American colonists did not have enough coin to pay their taxes, let alone their private debts as well.
The combined effects of the Proclamation of 1763, the Sugar Act, the Currency Act, and the Stamp Act led many prominent American colonists to the conclusion that Grenville’s ministry sought to enslave them economically.
Grenville’s reliance on the vice-admiralty courts to prosecute violators convinced many Americans that they did not have any legal recourse to combat these measures; consequently, those who were adamantly opposed to Grenville’s agenda took extralegal (or illegal) action. In many respects, the Stamp Act represented the final straw, and widespread protests against the Stamp Act ensued.
In cities throughout the colonies, radical groups, led by men such as Samuel Adams of Massachusetts and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia, organized mob activity that, through violence and intimidation, forced the appointed stamp distributors to resign before the 1 November 1765 enactment date. More moderate groups in America voiced their opposition in a more staid manner.
In October 1765, a group of colonists convened the Stamp Act Congress, which met in New York. Those who attended the congress sought to achieve the same goals as Adams and Lee, but without the threat of violence. The congress lasted just over two weeks and presented a list of fourteen grievances justifying the repeal of the Stamp Act.
The ninth grievance summed up the sentiments shared by both radicals and moderates: “That the Duties imposed by several late Acts of Parliament, from the peculiar Circumstances of these Colonies, will be extremely Burthensome and Grievous; and from the scarcity of Specie, the Payment of them absolutely impracticable.”
The widespread colonial protests against the Stamp Act that forced the stamp distributors to resign nullified the measure before it actually went into effect. On 18 March 1766, Parliament repealed the Stamp Act, essentially acknowledging the state of affairs in America.
The damage, however, was already done: the Stamp Act protests set the tone for the relationship between crown and colony until the beginning of the War for American Independence, as radical groups intensified their opposition toward Parliament and moderates sought to heal the widening rift.
