On this day in 1765, The Stamp Act was imposed on the American colonies by the British. 

In order to raise funds to pay off debts and defend the vast new colonies, the British government passed the Stamp Act. The legislation put a direct tax on all materials printed for commercial and legal use in the colonies, from newspapers to pamphlets.

Though the Stamp Act employed a strategy that was a common fundraising vehicle in England, it stirred a storm of protest in the colonies. The colonists had already been affected by three other acts: the Sugar Act (1764), which made new duties on imports of coffee and sugar; the Currency Act (1764), which caused a huge decline in the value of money used by colonists; and the Quartering Act (1765), which required colonists to house British troops.

With the passing of the Stamp Act, the colonists’ angry responses finally got a response to what they saw as the mother country’s attempt to undermine their economic strength and independence. They raised the issue of taxation without representation and formed societies throughout the colonies to rally against the British government and nobles who sought to exploit the colonies as a source of revenue and raw materials. By October of that year, 9 of the 13 colonies sent representatives to the Stamp Act Congress, where the colonists drafted the “Declaration of Rights and Grievances,” a document that railed against the autocratic policies of the mercantile British empire.

Realizing that it actually cost more to enforce the Stamp Act in the protesting colonies than it did to abolish it, the British government repealed the tax the following year. The fracas over the Stamp Act, though, planted seeds for a far larger movement against the British government and the eventual battle for independence. Most important of these was the formation of the Sons of Liberty–a group of tradesmen who led anti-British protests in Boston and other seaboard cities–and other groups of wealthy landowners who came together from the across the colonies. Well after the Stamp Act was repealed, these societies continued to meet in opposition to what they saw as the abusive policies of the British empire. Out of their meetings, a growing nationalism emerged that would culminate in the fighting of the American Revolutionary War.

Citations:

Website Name- History.com

Year Published- 2009

Author- History.com staff