How the Stamp Act was Received in America: Sons and Colden
Throughout the Northern colonies, associations on the basis of forcible resistance to the Stamp Act, under the name of "Sons of Liberty," sprang suddenly into existence. Persons of influence and consideration, though they might favor the object, kept aloof, however, from so dangerous a combination, which consisted of the young, the ardent, those who loved excitement and had nothing to lose. The history of these "Sons of Liberty" is very obscure; but they seem to have spread rapidly from Connecticut and New York into Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, and to have taken up as their special business the intimidation of the stamp officers. In all the colonies these officers were persuaded or compelled to resign; and such stamps as arrived either remained unpacked, or else were seized and burned. The Assembly of Pennsylvania unanimously adopted a series of resolutions denouncing the Stamp Act as "unconstitutional, and subversive of their dearest rights." Public meetings to protest against it were held throughout the colonies. The holding of such meetings was quite a new incident, and formed a new era in colonial history.
On the day appointed by Massachusetts for the meeting of the First Colonial Congress, committees from nine colonies met in New York. Various reasons prevented the others from joining.
In the course of a three weeks' session, a Declaration of the Rights and Grievances of the Colonies was agreed to. All the privileges of Englishmen were claimed by this declaration as the birthright of the colonists,--among the rest, the right of being taxed only by their own consent. Since distance and local circumstances made a representation in the British Parliament impossible, these representatives, it was maintained, could be no other than the several colonial Legislatures. Thus was given a flat negative to a scheme lately broached in England by Pownall and others for allowing to the colonies a representation in Parliament, a project to which both Otis and Franklin seem at first to have leaned.
A petition to the king and memorials to each House of Parliament were also prepared, in which the cause of the colonies was eloquently pleaded. . . . The several colonial Assemblies, at their earliest sessions, gave to the proceedings a cordial approval. .
The first day of November, appointed for the Stamp Act to go into operation, came and went, but not a stamp was anywhere to be seen. Two companies of rioters paraded that evening the streets of New York, demanding the delivery of the stamps, which Colden, on the resignation of the stamp-distributor and his refusal to receive them, had taken into the fort. Colden was hung in effigy. His carriage was seized, and made a bonfire of under the muzzles of the guns; after which the mob proceeded to a house in the outskirts, then occupied by Major James, of the Royal Artillery, who had made himself obnoxious by his free comments on the conduct of the colonists. James's furniture and property were destroyed, as Hutchinson's had been. General Gage, the commander-in-chief of the British forces in America, was at New York, but the regular garrison in the fort was very small. Alarmed for the safety of the city, and not willing to take any responsibility, as Sir Henry Moore, the recently-appointed governor, was every day expected, Colden agreed, by Gage's advice, the captain of a British ship of war in the harbor having refused to receive them, to give up the stamps to the mayor and corporation. They were accordingly deposited in the City Hall, under a receipt given by the mayor.
A committee was next day appointed which] soon brought forward an agreement to import no more goods from Great Britain till the Stamp Act was repealed,--the commencement of a system of retaliation on the mother-country repeatedly resorted to in the course of the struggle. This non-importation agreement, to which a non-consumption agreement was presently added, besides being extensively signed in New York, was adopted also in Philadelphia and Boston. At the same time, and as part of the same plan, a combination was entered into for the support of American manufactures, the wearing of American cloths, and the increase of sheep by ceasing to eat lamb or mutton.
Business, suspended for a while, was presently resumed. Stamped papers were required in judicial proceedings, but by continuing the cases before them, or going on without notice of the deficiency, even the judges, after some hesitation, concurred in nullifying the act.
A change in the English ministry, news of which now reached America, encouraged the colonists in their policy of resistance. Grenville, the promoter of the Stamp Act, had been succeeded by the Marquis of Rockingham.
In the address from the throne at the opening of the session, the new ministry brought the state of colonial affairs before Parliament. They produced the correspondence of the colonial governors and other papers relating to the late disturbance. Numerous petitions from British merchants for the repeal of the Stamp Act were also presented to the two Houses.