Stamp Distributors Scorned and Badly Treated

These resolutions, so full of bold, revolutionary force, were first published in Boston as the actual resolves of the Virginia legislature on the 29th of May, 1765. They flew upon the wings of the press and the letters of committees of correspondence all over the provinces, and gave the first decisive impulse toward united resistance. Within a fortnight after they were published, Massachusetts, on the recommendation of Otis, sent out an invitation to all the colonies to meet her by delegates in a general Congress in New York the following autumn. In the beautiful month of June, the Virginia resolves and the Massachusetts circular reached all the colonies, and everywhere they met a hearty response. The Sons of Liberty were very active; and yet there were many wise and patriotic men, knowing that Great Britain had made provision for enforcing the stamp act by quartering troops on the colonists, if necessary, prepared not only to submit, but to profit by the measures. Richard Henry Lee of Virginia, whose patriotism no man ever doubted, perceiving that the office would be very lucrative, applied for the appointment of stamp-distributor; and even Dr. Franklin, considering the colonies too weak in numbers then to resist the arms of Great Britain, advised Ingersoll, the agent for Connecticut then in England, to accept the same office, and added:"Go home and tell your countrymen to get children as fast as they can," so intimating that by increase in population the Americans might secure their liberties. It was a cunning scheme of Grenville to appoint Americans to the office of stamp-distributors. He thought they would be more acceptable to their countrymen than foreigners. He was mistaken. They were regarded as accomplices in the plot against liberty. "If the ruin of your country is decreed, are you free from blame for taking part in the plunder?" indignantly exclaimed Daggett, of New Haven; and he spurned Jared Ingersoll as a public enemy.

The stamp act was to go into effect in the colonies on the first day of November, 1765. Ingersoll arrived at Boston at the beginning of August, bearing commissions for stamp-distributors, and on the 8th of that month their names were published. They immediately became objects of public resentment and scorn. There was a general determination not to allow them to exercise the functions of their office. Manifestations of hostility to them instantly appeared. Andrew Oliver, secretary of the province of Massachusetts, who had been appointed "stamp-master" for Boston, was the first to feel resentment. A large elm tree, standing at the edge of the town, had been a shelter for the Sons of Liberty at their out-of-town meetings during the summer. It was called "Liberty Tree," and the ground under it, "Liberty Hall." At dawn on the morning of the 14th of August, an effigy of Oliver, with emblems of Bute and Grenville, was seen hanging upon that tree. Crowds went to view it. Hutchinson, chief justice of the province, ordered the sheriff to take it down. "We will remove it ourselves at evening," quickly said the populace, and the sheriff to take it down. "We will remove it ourselves at evening," quickly said the populace, and the sheriff kept his hands off the effigy.

At twilight a great multitude gathered around Liberty Tree. The effigy was taken down, laid on a bier, and was borne by the populace through the old State House directly under the Council Chamber, shouting "Liberty, Property, and no Stamps!" That multitude, at first orderly, now became a riotous mob. They tore down a building which Oliver was erecting for a stamp office, and made a bonfire of it. They shouted, "Death to the man who offers a piece of stamped paper to sell!" and rushing toward Oliver's house, they there beheaded the effigy, and would doubtless have killed him if they could have caught him. He had escaped by a back way. They broke into his house, and in brutal wantonness destroyed his furniture, trees, fences and garden; and after saluting the governor with three cheers, they dispersed. Believing his life to be in danger, Oliver resigned his office the following morning, and the town was quieted. The cowardly Bernard, after ordering a proclamation for the discovery and arrest of the rioters, fled to the castle on an island in Boston harbor. "The prisons would not hold them long," said the Rev. Jonathan Mahew of the West Church, whose voice had been heard in favor of the people more than a dozen years before. "We have sixty thousand fighting men in this colony alone," he said. Twelve days afterward, at night, another mob burned all the records of the admiralty court, ravaged the house of the comptroller of the customs, and splitting open the doors of Chief-Justice Hutchinson, whom they regarded as a secret public enemy, they broke his furniture, scattered his plate and the contents of his valuable library, and left his house a wreck. He and his family had barely time to escape. The better class of citizens frowned upon these proceedings, and the officers of the crown, terror-stricken, were very quiet.