The American Encyclopedia of History, Biography and Travel / Comprising Ancient and Modern History: the Biography of Eminent Men of Europe and America, and the Lives of Distinguished Travelers.

by Thomas H. Prescott

AMERICAN STAMP ACT.

The administration of Mr. Grenville is memorable for the first attempt to tax the American colonies. An act passed under his influence (March 1765) for imposing stamps on those countries, appeared to the colonists as a step extremely dangerous to their liberties, considering that they had no share in the representation. They therefore combined almost universally to resist the introduction of the stamped paper by which the tax was to be raised. Resolutions were passed in the various assemblies of the States, protesting against the assumed right of the British legislature to tax them. Partly by popular violence, and partly by the declarations issued by the local legislative assemblies, the object of the act was completely defeated.

The home government were then induced to agree to the repeal of the act, but with the reservation of a right to impose taxes on the colonies. Between the Stamp Act and its repeal, a change had taken place in the administration: the latter measure was the act of a Whig ministry under the Marquis of Rockingham, which, however, did not long continue in power, being supplanted by one in which Mr. Pitt, now created Earl of Chatham, held a conspicuous place. The second Pitt administration was less popular than the first: the Earl of Chesterfield, reflecting on the title conferred on the minister, at the same time that he sunk in general esteem, called his rise a fall up stairs. All the ministries of this period labored under a popular suspicion, probably not well founded, that they only obeyed the will of the sovereign, while the obnoxious Earl of Bute, as a secret adviser behind the throne, was the real, though irresponsible minister.

At the suggestion of Mr. Charles Townshend, a member of the Earl of Chatham’s cabinet, it was resolved, in 1767, to impose taxes on the Americans in a new shape; namely, upon British goods imported into the colonies, for which there was some show of precedent. An act for imposing duties on tea, glass, and colors, was accordingly passed with little opposition. Soon after this, Mr. Townshend died, and the Earl of Chatham, who had been prevented by illness from taking any share in the business, resigned. The Americans met the new burdens with the same violent opposition as formerly.

In 1770, the Duke of Grafton retired from the cabinet, and his place was supplied by Lord North, son of the Earl of Guilford. The new ministry was the tenth which had existed during as many years, but the first in which the king might be considered as completely free of the great Whig families, who, by their parliamentary influence, had possessed the chief power since the Revolution. This was the beginning of a series of Tory administrations, which, with few and short intervals, conducted the affairs of the nation down to the close of the reign of George IV.

THE AMERICAN WAR OF INDEPENDENCE.

Meanwhile the remonstrances of the American colonists had induced the ministry to give up all the new taxes, with the exception of that on tea, which it was determined to keep up, as an assertion of the right of Parliament to tax the colonies. In America, this remaining tax continued to excite as much discontent as the whole had formerly done, for it was the principle of a right to impose taxes which they found fault with, and not the amount of the tax itself. Their discontent with the mother country was found to affect trade considerably, and the British merchants were anxious to bring the dispute to a close. The government was then induced to grant such a drawback from the British duty on tea, as enabled the East India Company to offer the article in America at a lower rate than formerly, so that the American duty, which was only three pence per pound, did not affect the price. It was never doubted that this expedient would satisfy the colonists, and large shipments of tea were accordingly sent out from the British ports. The principle of the right to tax still lurked, however under the concession, and the result only showed how little the sentiments of the Americans were understood at home.

The approach of the tea cargoes excited them in a manner totally unlooked-for in Britain. At New York and Philadelphia, the cargoes were forbidden to land; in Charleston, where they were permitted to land, they were put into stores, and were prohibited from being sold. In Boston harbor, a ship-load was seized and tossed into the sea. This last act was resented by the passing of a bill in Parliament for interdicting all commercial intercourse with the port of Boston, and another for taking away the legislative assembly of the state of Massachusetts. The former measure was easily obviated by local arrangements; and in reference to the latter, a Congress of representatives from the various States met at Philadelphia, in September 1774, when it was asserted that the exclusive power of legislation, in all cases of taxation and internal policy, resided in the provincial legislatures. The same assembly denounced other grievances, which have not here been particularly adverted to, especially an act of the British legislature for trying Americans, for treasonable practices, in England. The Congress also framed a covenant of non-intercourse, by which the whole utility of the colonies to the mother country, as objects of trading speculation, was at once laid prostrate. The colonists still avowed a desire to be reconciled, on the condition of a repeal of the obnoxious statutes. But the government had now resolved to attempt the reduction of the colonists by force of arms. Henceforth, every proposal from America was treated with a haughty silence on the part of the British monarch and his advisers.

The war opened in the summer of 1775, by skirmishes between the British troops and armed provincials, for the possession of certain magazines. At the beginning there seemed no hope of the contest being protracted beyond one campaign. The population of the colonies was at this time under three millions, and they were greatly inferior in discipline and appointments to the British troops. They possessed, however, an indomitable zeal in the cause they had agreed to defend, and fought with the advantage of being in the country of their friends. At Bunker’s Hill, near Boston (June 17, 1775), they had the superiority in a well-contested fight with the British troops, of whom between two and three hundred were killed. At the end of one year, the British government was surprised to find that no progress had been made towards a reduction of the Americans, and sent out an offer of pardon to the colonists, on condition that they would lay down their arms. This proposal only met with ridicule.

On the 4th of July 1776, the American Congress took the decisive step of a declaration of their independence, embodying their sentiment in a document remarkable for its pathos and solemnity. During the next two campaigns, the slender forces of the new republic were hardly able anywhere to face the large and well-appointed armies of Great Britain. Much misery was endured by this hardy people in resisting the British arms. Notwithstanding every disadvantage and many defeats, America remained unsubdued.