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CHAPTER 3: THE ROAD TO INDEPENDENCEOUTLINE OF U.S. HISTORYcolonies to provide royal troops withprovisions and barracks.THE STAMP ACTA general tax measure sparkedthe greatest organized resistance.Known as the “Stamp Act,” it requiredall newspapers, broadsides,pamphlets, licenses, leases, and otherlegal documents to bear revenuestamps. The proceeds, collected byAmerican customs agents, would beused for “defending, protecting, andsecuring” the colonies.Bearing equally on people whodid any kind of business, the StampAct aroused the hostility of the mostpowerful and articulate groups inthe American population: journalists,lawyers, clergymen, merchantsand businessmen, North and South,East and West. Leading merchantsorganized for resistance and formednonimportation associations.Trade with the mother countryfell off sharply in the summer of1765, as prominent men organizedthemselves into the “Sons of Liberty”— secret organizations formedto protest the Stamp Act, oftenthrough violent means. From Massachusettsto South Carolina, mobs,forcing luckless customs agents toresign their offices, destroyed thehated stamps. Militant resistance effectivelynullified the Act.Spurred by delegate Patrick Henry,the Virginia House of Burgessespassed a set of resolutions in Maydenouncing taxation without representationas a threat to colonialliberties. It asserted that Virginians,enjoying the rights of Englishmen,could be taxed only by their ownrepresentatives. The MassachusettsAssembly invited all the colonies toappoint delegates to a “Stamp ActCongress” in New York, held in October1765, to consider appeals forrelief to the Crown and Parliament.Twenty-seven representatives fromnine colonies seized the opportunityto mobilize colonial opinion. Aftermuch debate, the congress adopted aset of resolutions asserting that “notaxes ever have been or can be constitutionallyimposed on them, butby their respective legislatures,” andthat the Stamp Act had a “manifesttendency to subvert the rights andliberties of the colonists.”TAXATION WITHOUTREPRESENTATIONThe issue thus drawn centered onthe question of representation. Thecolonists believed they could notbe represented unless they actuallyelected members to the House ofCommons. But this idea conflictedwith the English principle of “virtualrepresentation,” according to whicheach member of Parliament representedthe interests of the wholecountry and the empire — even ifhis electoral base consisted of onlya tiny minority of property ownersfrom a given district. This theoryassumed that all British subjectsshared the same interests as theproperty owners who elected membersof Parliament.The American leaders arguedthat their only legal relations werewith the Crown. It was the king whohad agreed to establish colonies beyondthe sea and the king who providedthem with governments. Theyasserted that he was equally a king ofEngland and a king of the colonies,but they insisted that the EnglishParliament had no more right topass laws for the colonies than anycolonial legislature had the right topass laws for England. In fact, however,their struggle was equally withKing George III and Parliament.Factions aligned with the Crowngenerally controlled Parliament andreflected the king’s determination tobe a strong monarch.The British Parliament rejectedthe colonial contentions. Britishmerchants, however, feeling the effectsof the American boycott, threwtheir weight behind a repeal movement.In 1766 Parliament yielded,repealing the Stamp Act and modifyingthe Sugar Act. However, tomollify the supporters of centralcontrol over the colonies, Parliamentfollowed these actions with passageof the Declaratory Act, which assertedthe authority of Parliament tomake laws binding the colonies “inall cases whatsoever.” The colonistshad won only a temporary respitefrom an impending crisis.THE TOWNSHEND ACTSThe year 1767 brought anotherseries of measures that stirred anewall the elements of discord. CharlesTownshend, British chancellor of theexchequer, attempted a new fiscalprogram in the face of continueddiscontent over high taxes at home.Intent upon reducing British taxesby making more efficient the collectionof duties levied on Americantrade, he tightened customs administrationand enacted duties on colonialimports of paper, glass, lead, andtea from Britain. The “TownshendActs” were based on the premise thattaxes imposed on goods imported bythe colonies were legal while internaltaxes (like the Stamp Act) were not.The Townshend Acts were designedto raise revenue that wouldbe used in part to support colonialofficials and maintain the Britisharmy in America. In response,Philadelphia lawyer John Dickinson,in Letters of a Pennsylvania Farmer,argued that Parliament had theright to control imperial commercebut did not have the right to tax thecolonies, whether the duties wereexternal or internal.The agitation following enactmentof the Townshend duties wasless violent than that stirred by theStamp Act, but it was neverthelessstrong, particularly in the cities ofthe Eastern seaboard. Merchantsonce again resorted to non-importationagreements, and people madedo with local products. Colonists,for example, dressed in homespunclothing and found substitutes fortea. They used homemade paperand their houses went unpainted.In Boston, enforcement of thenew regulations provoked violence.5455