This June, a commemorative stamp by the U.S. Post Office celebrates “Repeal of the Stamp Act, 1766.” Two hundred fifty years ago, American colonists experienced a “rehearsal for revolution.”
Colonists’ resistance to Britain’s extreme efforts to tax and regulate them contributed to fundamental American values and practices that continue to inform our politics and democracy, down to the present day.
Some of the transformative results from that pivotal experience two and a half centuries ago include:
1. Having begun with a defense of every Englishman’s right to “No Taxation without Representation,” the colonists challenged the British view of “virtual” representation, whereby members of Parliament (which included no Americans) were said to speak for the entire Empire even though few people voted for them in England.
Colonists cited their own experience with a much more democratic system of “direct” representation, emphasizing that the representatives whom they elected to their colonial assemblies were the only ones who could tax them.
2. This was also a logical step toward the conclusion that only local representative bodies could legislate for them, not a Parliament 3,000 miles distant.
3. Initially proud to cite their rights as “Englishmen,” colonists proceeded to claim them as linked to “natural rights,” which they shared with “all mankind.”
This view was expressed by individual colonies and then in their “national” gathering at the New York Stamp Act Congress.
4. As the “contagion of liberty” spread from colony to colony (especially fostered by the newspapers and postal service that Franklin did so much to advance), the colonists, for the first time, began referring to themselves as “Americans,” not primarily New Yorkers, Virginians, or by parochial colony identities.
They were on their way toward the motto that Franklin and Jefferson would propose in 1776: E Pluribus Unum (Out of Many, One).
The process of protest and reform, central to American life over centuries, was both deliberative and inexorable.
Although more and more began seeing themselves as “Americans,” the colonists were reluctant revolutionaries.
Their “rehearsal” for independence spanned more than a decade, and the Stamp Act Repeal experiences set the tone and principles.
Compelling factors account for that measured process.
Because of “salutary neglect” (the Mother Country’s lack of attention and systematic rule), Britain had benefited with little investment and effort.
But the colonies benefited even more.
They became the most advanced societies in the world, with the highest standard of living for the majority (described by Franklin as “the happy mediocrity”), and they enjoyed the most extensive self-government of any people on the globe.
Seventy to 95 percent of white male adults were able to vote in the 1760s (varying among the 13 colonies), while no people voted in most nations, and only 10 percent of male adults could vote for Parliament.
This was accidental and circumstantial.
The voting laws in the colonies were the same ones that had been used in England since the 1400s.
In “Old World” Britain voting was based on land ownership because property was scarce; thus, only the privileged could vote.
Because land was abundant in the colonies — and people were scarce — the same laws had a diametrically opposite effect; even most white men who came to the colonies as indentured servants eventually qualified as voters.
We chose to highlight the outcomes of this “rehearsal for revolution” because much more space would be needed to detail the fascinating protest processes.
However, tied to the 200th anniversary of the Stamp Act saga, editors of The New-York Historical Society Quarterly agreed to publish a two-part analysis of our study: “The Role of New-York Newspapers in the Stamp Act Crisis” [Part I, July 1967; Part II, October 1967].
Our approach used the New-York newspapers to make comparative assessments of what was happening in the various colonies, and to track the mounting three-pronged protests.
1. Constitutional and legal arguments (including “natural rights”) were illustrated at the Stamp Act Congress in New York City, and by resolutions of individual colonies.
2. The use of economic sanctions led to pressure on Parliament by British businessmen (although the term “boycott” was not yet used).
One key petition by merchants to Parliament began: “We don’t pretend to understand your American matters, but our trade has been hurt.
Pray remedy it: and a plague on you if you won’t.”
3. Mass demonstrations by the Sons of Liberty (joined by the often neglected “Daughters of Liberty”) produced crowds in the thousands, unprecedented at any previous time in America. Numbers always count.
As the renowned historian Carl Becker showed, the process of protest and revolution had a dual dimension.
First, its goal was to secure the rights of Englishmen, as colonists understood them. Learning that the liberty that they had known could not be guaranteed by the Mother Country, they reluctantly struck for independence. Along the way, the three-pronged protests continued — and expanded — so Becker’s view of the second “Revolution” (beyond “Redcoats Go Home”) became a “Battle Over Who Should Rule at Home.”
Advanced as the colonists and their governments were in a comparative global context, Americans, affected by the 1760s Stamp Act Crisis, challenged the politics of deference and worked to replace them with more popular sovereignty at every level.
The Postal commemoration of 1766 Stamp Act Repeal is a reminder that Jefferson often referred to an expanding “Empire of Liberty,” and that Lincoln frequently cited Jefferson’s views as a continuing beacon for all who strive for inclusive democracy.
D’Innocenzo and Turner were Columbia classmates; their historical writing spans half a century. [Website cited in Mike’s previous column should be BillMoyers.com]