THE STAMP ACT

By Elise Clouser, Hunter Lewis, and Stacey Park

CAUSESThe British helped the colonists fight the French and Indian War/ protected the colonists by providing the American colonists with their experienced army.

Britain won the war, but accrued a debt of £140 million – the largest debt in the world.

Britain needed a way to pay off their debt, so George Grenville (the Whig Prime Minister) thought of the idea of a stamp tax to help pay off some of the expenses of the war – and thus the Stamp Act was imposed on the American colonists.

The British justified their actions by the fact that their own citizens in Great Britain had a stamp tax much stricter/heavier than the one imposed in the colonies. Furthermore, they believed that the colonists should pay their fair share of the costs for the defense that they had been provided.

FEATURES/FACTSMarch 22, 1765 – March 18, 1766

The Stamp Act granted and applied duties to printed items such as: newspapers, almanacs, pamphlets, broadsides, legal documents, dice, and playing cards. Stamps would be applied to the items in order to prove that the taxes were paid for.

Anyone who committed offenses against this act "shall and may be prosecuted, sued for, and recovered, in any court of record, or in any court of admiralty, in the respective colony or plantation where the offense shall be committed“.

The Stamp Act was issued in for “further defraying the Expenses of defending, protecting, and securing the same”. More specifically, it served to raise revenue to pay for the British army.

RESULTS/EFFECTS“No taxation without representation”

Stamp Act Congress of 1765: 27 delegates from 9 colonies met in New York and wrote the “Declaration of Rights and Grievances” which stated that Parliament did not represent the colonists and had no right to tax them – only colonial assemblies did – , that the colonists possessed all rights of Englishmen, and that admiralty courts were unfair.

Colonists adopted a nonimportation agreement/boycott of British goods (such as textiles, replacing it with homespun wool instead) and those who violated this agreement were tarred and feathered by Sons of Liberty and Daughters of Liberty.

Stamp agents’ homes were ransacked and destroyed and the agents were publicly humiliated.

Due to the colonists’ strong reaction, the British had no choice but to repeal the Stamp Act.