Riots happened when most colonists, and groups of people including merchants, lawyers, and newspaper editors, could not afford the cost of stamped paper and the associated taxes related to their professions. They began operating without stamped paper, and several newspapers continued publication without stamps, even with anonymous publishers actively resisting the Stamp Act, despite regulations that defined a double penalty: £20 for failing to include a name and publication details, and £10 for using unstamped paper. In 1765, during the Stamp Act Congress in New York, delegates from nine colonies – Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and South Carolina – denied Parliament’s power to tax the colonies and argued that “self-taxation was a right” and that they must “tax themselves via their own representatives.”

Colonial resistance manifested in protests, boycotts of British goods, and local groups such as the Sons of Liberty, using riots and forceful coercion to prevent stamp commissioners from collecting taxes and compelling officials who supported the act to resign from their positions. Although the colonists achieved the repeal of the Stamp Act in 1766, the British imposed the Declaratory Act, which asserted Parliament’s full legislative authority over the colonies, and a variety of taxes on colonies again. However, the Stamp Act highlighted the power of colonial resistance and unity, and revealed their increasing awareness of their rights and liberty, as well as the limits of Parliament’s authority.