Refuse to comply.
That’s exactly what the people did to nullify the Stamp Act, which took effect on November 1, 1765.
We’ve all heard about the fiery protests, the bold resistance, hanging in effigy of stamp distributors and the like, but there was so much more to the story.
In this episode of our Path to Liberty podcast we dive into the often-hidden strategies of defiance – the methods they used that government-run schools rarely – if ever – talk about.
Passed in March 1765, the Stamp Act required the people to use special stamped paper in the printing of pretty much anything and everything – including, but not limited to newspapers, pamphlets, almanacs, playing cards, and more. All commercial and legal papers were required to have a stamp embossed on them as well.
The official stamps were a design of a Tudor rose with the word AMERICA on them. It was also framed by a well-known French phrase of the time, which translated to “Shame to him who thinks evil of it.”
Well, in the colonies, a huge majority of the people thought evil of the Stamp Act. And that was the foundation that gave support to all the other strategies used to nullify it.
PATRICK HENRY’S RESOLUTIONS
In early May 1765, shortly after news the act was passed hit the colonies, the Virginia House of Burgesses reconvened.
On his 29th birthday – May 29, 1765 – just over a week after taking office for the first time, Patrick Henry introduced a series of resolutions against the Stamp Act. In a speech the following day to encourage passage of the resolutions, Henry made his famous “If this be treason…” statement.
A number of the resolutions passed, and even the ones that didn’t were widely published and helped spark the resistance from groups such as the Loyal Nine and the Sons of Liberty.
Henry made the case that the British Parliament only had power over general issues that affected everyone. Those that impacted the lives and liberties of the people could only be addressed by the local representatives of the people (or the people themselves, of course).
“Every Attempt to vest such Power in any other Person or Persons whatever, than the General Assembly aforesaid, is illegal, unconstitutional and unjust, and have a manifest Tendency to destroy British as well as American Liberty.”
And how are the people supposed to respond to illegal, unconstitutional and unjust acts of a far-off government? Henry had the answer here as well:
“The Inhabitants of this Colony, are not bound to yield Obedience to any Law or Ordinance whatever, designed to impose any Taxation whatsoever upon them, other than the Laws or Ordinances of the General Assembly aforesaid.”
DEFIANCE BY COURTS
Patrick Henry’s resolutions spread like wildfire throughout the colonies. Others, such as Rhode Island, passed similar resolutions. There, they even added a provision to indemnify all officials who ignored the Stamp Act:
“That all the officers in this colony appointed by the authority thereof be and they are hereby directed to proceed in the execution of their respective offices in the same manner as usual: and that this assembly will indemnify and save harmless all the said officers on account of their conduct agreeable to this Resolution.”
This gave the courts the backbone to continue business without stamped paper, defying Parliament’s orders.
Rhode Island was quickly joined by New Hampshire, Delaware and Maryland in opening courts without the required stamps, and other colonies eventually joined in the defiance as well. In Frederick County Maryland, twelve magistrates of the County court issued a formal unanimous ruling that the Stamp Act was to be ignored, effectively nullifying it in practice in the county.
Other colonies slowly, but surely took similar approaches.
PRESSURE ON STAMP DISTRIBUTORS
One of the reasons the Frederick County court gave for effectively nullifying the Stamp Act was the fact that no stamped paper was available to conduct business. But, as Ryan Bass and Pat Barron of the Sons of the American Revolution point out, that wasn’t for lack of trying by the British:
“By October 1765, the protests in Maryland reached a point where Gov. Horatio Sharpe was becoming concerned about the arrival of the stamped paper. He believed that the populace was not going to allow it to be offloaded, and if it was, they would destroy it. He requested the stamped paper remain on board ship until the situation calmed down. The effective date of the Stamp Act, Nov. 1, 1765, arrived and the stamped paper necessary to conduct almost all business in the Colony was still unavailable.”
The Sons of Liberty put heavy pressure on stamp distributors in every colony. The most famous being Andrew Oliver in Boston, who was forced to publicly resign not once, but twice! The first was in August, after they hung his likeness in effigy. But he hadn’t received his official appointment yet, so over 2000 people gathered (on notice of just a few hours) under the liberty tree on Dec. 17 – demanding that he do so under oath. Which, he noted, he absolutely complied with:
“I acquiesced, and then being accompanied by the said Gentlemen repaired to the House to which the Tree of Liberty (so-called) belong. There were I am imagine at least 2000 People present and would have been many more, had it not been a very rainy day.”
Pretty much all stamp tax distributors were intimidated into resigning their commissions, and the tax was never effectively collected. Only in Georgia was the stamp collector able to distribute the stamped papers, but he was forced to flee shortly afterwards.
SHIP CLEARANCES
As early as November 2, Peter Randolph, the surveyor general in Virginia advised all the customs collectors to clear all ships and let them unload without the required stamped paper. Governor Fauquier quickly seconded Randolph’s stand.
In Pennsylvania, Governor John Penn urged the collector to go along with allowing clearances to ships partially loaded before the effective date. But when a backlog of vessels filled the Philadelphia harbor in December – the local collectors started issuing ship clearances as well, likely due to fear over how the people would react should they try to enforce the Stamp Act.
In the next few days, under heavy pressure from the people, the surveyor general for customs for New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware authorized all local customs officials to defy the Stamp Act and issue ship clearances without stamps.
PRESS COURAGE
In what might be considered a brazen act of defiance, newspapers, which were under a direct threat of getting shut down without a stamp on their publications, kept printing in defiance of the law.
As Murray Rothbard points out, “The pattern of press courage was set on November 1, with the bold appearance of the New London Gazette and the Connecticut Gazette without stamps. The great radical organs of liberty, the Boston Gazette and the New York Gazette or Weekly Post-Boy, swiftly followed suit. John Holt, editor of the New York paper, emblazoned on his newspaper the motto “LIBERTY, PROPERTY AND no STAMPS,” which was soon picked up by other leading papers. Other northern newspapers continued to publish, first hedging with such partial disguises as changing their titles or leaving out the printers’ names, but soon they resumed publication full blast.”
THE ESSENTIAL FOUNDATION
Tying this all together – the most important piece of the puzzle was the widely-held attitude of the people that John Hancock summed up in an October letter to his London agent:
“The people of this country will never be made slaves of by a submission to the damned act.”
In the days after the Stamp Act went into effect, John Dickinson – the “Penman of the American Revolution” – published an influential broadside that explained the reasoning behind this mentality: Precedent.
“IF you comply with the Act by using Stamped Papers, you fix, you rivet perpetual Chains upon your unhappy Country. You unnecessarily, voluntarily establish the detestable Precedent, which those who have forged your Fetters ardently wish for, to varnish the future Exercise of this new claimed Authority.” [emphasis added]
The old revolutionaries understood that once government has a precedent to do one thing – no matter how small – it will always expand on that with more in the future.
Dickinson continued, with something that can be applied to every usurpation of power today.
“THE Stamp Act, therefore, is to be regarded only as an EXPERIMENT OF YOUR DISPOSITION. If you quietly bend your Necks to that Yoke, you prove yourselves ready to receive any Bondage to which your Lords and Masters shall please to subject you.”
