The Stamp Act of 1765 required the use of stamped paper on legal documents, newspapers, and playing cards to indicate payment of a tax. American colonists protested “no taxation without representation” and the act sowed the seeds of discontent that led to the American Revolution. The act was repealed after colonial resistance.
The Stamp Act of 1765 will forever be associated with the colonial rallying cry of “no taxation without representation.” The use of stamped and embossed paper on legal documents, newspapers, and even playing cards was required by law provisions. Postage stamps did not refer to the postage stamps we know today, but rather, in colonial times, they were used in an embossing process. Pressure is applied to the stamp, leaving an imprint of a raised design on different materials. In colonial times, a postage stamp was used on paper, metal or fabric.
The presence of the stamp indicated the payment of the imposed tax. The use of stamped paper for legal documents had been an established practice in England for years, but American colonists had never been subject to the same restrictions. They were outraged and responded violently.
The British Parliament passed the Stamp Act in a direct attempt to raise funds for the British Army defending the borders of the American colonies. Violators of the law were brought to trial in the Vice-Admiralty Courts. The concept was alien to the early settlers, who had hitherto experienced only external and indirect taxes. The Sugar Act of 1764 was a tax on trade, but it didn’t directly affect their lives in the same way. The turmoil caused by the passage of the Stamp Act can be said to have sowed the seeds of discontent that a decade later erupted in the conflict known as the American Revolution.
The Stamp Act was not intended or considered an act of oppression by many of the luminaries of the time. Benjamin Franklin also gave his assent to the tax, though not without considerable hesitation. Despite the intentions of the mother country, the colonial reaction was intense, adverse and immediate. One of the unintended effects of the passage of the act was the unification of some of the most powerful factions of colonial society, namely lawyers, clergy, businessmen and journalists.
The American colonists did not feel fairly represented in the British government and their protest of “no taxation without representation” was never legally addressed. The Stamp Act angered them because they saw no need for the Army that the proceeds would have to support. The colonists resisted and, unable to enforce the law, the English Parliament was forced to repeal it the following spring. Taxes and discontent mounted until colonial America went to war with the mother country, exercising its need for independence in the American Revolution.
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