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The Navigation Acts of the 1650’s made it illegal for Americans to trade or export their goods with other nations without first shipping those goods to England.  This made it really expensive for American business owners to sell their goods abroad & restricted American free trade.

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1756-1763: French and Indian War/Seven Years War

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1756-1763: French and Indian War/Seven Years War

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What Was Being Taxed ?
- All white sugar, or molasses, indigo, coffee, foreign produced or manufactured goods, all wines, all wrought silks, bengals, and stuffs, mixed with silk or herbs of the manufacture of Persia, China, or East India, calico painted, dyed, printed, or stained there; and for and upon all foreign linen cloth.

Colonial Reactions
- The Americans were upset that they were being taxed because only Great Britain was gaining from it and now they would have to pay more for their products. (document 2)

Types of Sources
Document 1 - (primary source)legal document

Document 2 -(primary source) memoir or journal

Document 3- (primary source) Excerpt; journal entry

Takadi C, Bianca J, Mariame K, Jessey E

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What was taxed? Provisions and barracks for the army(document 1)
What were the colonial reactions? The Revolt: For the Seeds of Liberty(Document 3) Near what was known as the Liberty Tree near Boston Common, a mob of several thousand people (protesters) attacked Oliver’s office and his home, and the effigy was stomped, decapitated and burned. This was also influenced because of the stamp act.
The types of sources and media: News article(document 1), letter(document 3), and Map(document 2)

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Commonwealth of Virginia Links

The Virginia Freedom of Information Act

The Virginia Freedom of Information Act ( FOIA), located § 2.2-3700 et. seq. of the Code of Virginia, guarantees citizens of the Commonwealth and representatives of the media access to public records held by public bodies, public officials, and public employees. Please access the Freedom of Information Act page for additional information.

Mailing Address

Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation
P.O. Box 1607
Williamsburg
Virginia 23187-1607

Phone: (757) 253-4838
Fax: (757) 253-5299

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Contact Us - History is Fun, Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation

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Commonwealth of Virginia Links The Virginia Freedom of Information Act The Virginia Freedom of Information Act ( FOIA), located § 2.2-3700 et. seq. of the Code of Virginia, guarantees citizens of the Commonwealth and representatives of the media access to public records held by public bodies, public officials, and public employees.

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The Stamp Act taxed paper, vellum, and parchment throughout the colonies - which meant that any document from a marriage license to a calendar had an extra tax associated with it.

Many riots begin to break out across the United States in response to the Stamp Act

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The Stamp Act of 1765 was the first internal tax levied directly on American colonists by the British Parliament. The act, which imposed a tax on all paper documents in the colonies, came at a time when the British Empire was deep in debt from the Seven Years' War (1756-63) and looking to its North American colonies as a revenue source.

Arguing that only their own representative assemblies could tax them, the colonists insisted that the act was unconstitutional, and they resorted to mob violence to intimidate stamp collectors into resigning. Parliament passed the Stamp Act on March 22, 1765 and repealed it in 1766, but issued a Declaratory Act at the same time to reaffirm its authority to pass any colonial legislation it saw fit. The issues of taxation and representation raised by the Stamp Act strained relations with the colonies to the point that, 10 years later, the colonists rose in armed rebellion against the British.

Why The Stamp Act Was Passed

British Parliament passed the Stamp Act to help replenish their finances after the costly Seven Years' War with France. Part of the revenue from the Stamp Act would be used to maintain several regiments of British soldiers in North America to maintain peace between Native Americans and the colonists. Moreover, since colonial juries had proven notoriously reluctant to find smugglers guilty of their crimes, violators of the Stamp Act could be tried and convicted without juries in the vice-admiralty courts.

Raising Revenue

The Seven Years' War (1756-63) ended the long rivalry between France and Britain for control of North America, leaving Britain in possession of Canada and France without a footing on the continent. Victory in the war, however, had saddled the British Empire with a tremendous debt. Since the war benefited the American colonists (who had suffered 80 years of intermittent warfare with their French neighbors) as much as anyone else in the British Empire, the British government decided that those colonists should shoulder part of the war's cost.

Britain had long regulated colonial trade through a system of restrictions and duties on imports and exports. In the first half of the 18th century, however, British enforcement of this system had been lax. Starting with the Sugar Act of 1764, which imposed new duties on sugar and other goods, the British government began to tighten its reins on the colonies. Shortly thereafter, George Grenville (1712-70), the British first lord of the treasury and prime minister, proposed the Stamp Act; Parliament passed the act without debate in 1765.

Stamp Act opponent Patrick Henry is known for his "Give me liberty, or give me death!" speech, delivered before a meeting of Virginia's colonial leaders in 1775 in an effort to mobilize a militia against a possible attack by the British. He later served as Virginia's governor (1776-79, 1784-86).

Instead of levying a duty on trade goods, the Stamp Act imposed a direct tax on the colonists. Specifically, the act required that, starting in the fall of 1765, legal documents and printed materials must bear a tax stamp provided by commissioned distributors who would collect the tax in exchange for the stamp. The law applied to wills, deeds, newspapers, pamphlets and even playing cards and dice.

The Roots of Colonial Resistance

Coming in the midst of economic hardship in the colonies, the Stamp Act aroused vehement resistance. Although most colonists continued to accept Parliament's authority to regulate their trade, they insisted that only their representative assemblies could levy direct, internal taxes, such as the one imposed by the Stamp Act. They rejected the British government's argument that all British subjects enjoyed virtual representation in Parliament, even if they could not vote for members of Parliament.

The colonists also took exception with the provision denying offenders trials by jury. A vocal minority hinted at dark designs behind the Stamp Act. These radical voices warned that the tax was part of a gradual plot to deprive the colonists of their freedoms and to enslave them beneath a tyrannical regime. Playing off traditional fears of peacetime armies, they wondered aloud why Parliament saw fit to garrison troops in North America only after the threat from the French had been removed. These concerns provided an ideological basis that intensified colonial resistance.

Colonists React to the Stamp Act

Parliament pushed forward with the Stamp Act in spite of the colonists' objections. Colonial resistance to the act mounted slowly at first, but gained momentum as the planned date of its implementation drew near. In Virginia, Patrick Henry (1736-99), whose fiery orations against British tyranny would soon make him famous, submitted a series of resolutions to his colony's assembly, the House of Burgesses. These resolutions denied Parliament's right to tax the colonies and called on the colonists to resist the Stamp Act.

Newspapers throughout the colonies reprinted the resolutions, spreading their radical message to a broad audience. The resolutions provided the tenor for the proclamations of the Stamp Act Congress, an extralegal convention composed of delegates from nine colonies that met in October 1765. The Stamp Act Congress wrote petitions to the king affirming both their loyalty and the conviction that only the colonial assemblies had the constitutional authority to tax the colonists.

While the Congress and the colonial assemblies passed resolutions and issued petitions against the Stamp Act, the colonists took matters into their own hands. The most famous popular resistance took place in Boston, where opponents of the Stamp Act, calling themselves the Sons of Liberty, enlisted the rabble of Boston in opposition to the new law. This mob paraded through the streets with an effigy of Andrew Oliver, Boston's stamp distributor, which they hanged from the Liberty Tree and beheaded before ransacking Oliver's home. Oliver agreed to resign his commission as stamp distributor.

Similar events transpired in other colonial towns, as crowds mobbed the stamp distributors and threatened their physical well-being and their property. By the beginning of 1766, most of the stamp distributors had resigned their commissions, many of them under duress. Mobs in seaport towns turned away ships carrying the stamp papers from England without allowing them to discharge their cargoes. Determined colonial resistance made it impossible for the British government to bring the Stamp Act into effect. In 1766, Parliament repealed it.

The Stamp Act's Legacy

The end of the Stamp Act did not end Parliament's conviction that it had the authority to impose taxes on the colonists. The British government coupled the repeal of the Stamp Act with the Declaratory Act, a reaffirmation of its power to pass any laws over the colonists that it saw fit. However, the colonists held firm to their view that Parliament could not tax them. The issues raised by the Stamp Act festered for 10 years before giving rise to the Revolutionary War and, ultimately, American independence.

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Stamp Act - Fact, Reaction & Legacy | HISTORY

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The Stamp Act of 1765 was the first internal tax levied directly on American colonists by the British Parliament. The issues raised by the Stamp Act festered for 10 years before giving rise to the Revolutionary War and, ultimately, American independence.

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Taxed: Every piece of printed paper they used was taxed by the stamp act!(Ships papers, legal documents, licenses, newspapers etc.. even playing cards were taxed!

Colonial Reactions: The colonial reaction to the Stamp Act differed from boycotts of British goods, then riots, and the attacks on the tax collectors.

Reaction: The colonists seemed to dislike the arrival of the stamp distributor because the image was taken down and carried through the townhouse to the governor and distributor of stamps as it may seem was a way to report the problem then later attacked Mr.Oliver(Stamp distributor)and destroyed his house as well for that poor choice! (Continue..not done)

Sources: Primary Sources

Briana, Chana ,Angela, Terrelle

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What was being taxed
- The expenses of defending, protecting, and securing, the said dominions
The Colonial Reactions
-The reactions of the colonists were one of anger for feeling like they were unfairly taxed
Types of Sources
primary sources
-1st document: memoir

2nd document: poem

3rd document source: letter

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Boston Massacre in response to more British soldiers arriving in Boston to help collect taxes

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Boston Tea Party in response to the Tea Act and other taxes

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Who Won the American Revolution?: Crash Course US History #7

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The Stamp Act taxed every piece of printed paper (ship papers, legal documents, licenses, calendars, journals, playing cards, etc.)

Colonial reaction: American colonists reacted to the Stamp Act with an organized protest, an angry mob protested the Stamp Act.  (Stamp Act - Document 3 line 7-10 “From thence the mob proceeded for Fort Hill, but Mr. Oliver's house being in the way, they endeavored to force themselves into it, and being opposed, broke the windows, beat down the doors, entered, and destroyed part of his furniture, and continued in riot until midnight, before they separated.”)

Stamp Act - document 1: Secondary Source (summary of the 1765 Stamp Act)

Stamp Act - document 2: Primary Source (newspaper)

Stamp Act - document 3: Primary Source (narrative)

1. Lois Anne Guillaume

2. Shadedra

3. Termia

4. Ny'aisa