The Origins of a Free Press in Prerevolutionary ... - Web Publishing

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among the printers and between the separate colonies, increasing printed
dissidence. 7
Reaction from the colonies was sharply negative, as Adams observed:
In every colony, from Georgia to New Hampshire inclusively, the
stamp distributors and inspectors have been compelled by the
unconquerable rage of the people to renounce their offices … Our
presses have groaned, our pulpits have thundered, our towns have
voted; the crown officers have everywhere trembled … 8
There were no stamps or stamped paper available as popular pressure had forced the
resignation of the stamp officials and prevented importation of stamped paper. 9
The Annapolis printing partners initially wrote that they were being forced to stop
publishing because of the uncertainty of the cost of stamped paper, and asked
subscribers to pay more before printing could resume: “But even that advanced
Price cannot yet be known, as the Paper, the —— Stamped Paper, Must be
Bought of the —— Stamp Master, but what Sort or Size of Paper, or at what
Price, it is impossible yet to tell.” 10 Printers would be forced to pay not just for
stamps, but also for imported paper instead of using cheaper paper made in the
colonies. Jonas Green and his partner William Rind filled their Maryland Gazette
with comments sharply critical of the tax and notices that because of it, the
newspaper would no longer be published. The last regular issue had a new
masthead, “The Maryland Gazette, Expiring: In Uncertain Hopes of a Resurrection
to Life again.” The newspaper referred to the stamp deadline as, “That Dooms
7 Morgan, Stamp Act Crisis.
8 John Adams, Diary entry, Dec. 18, 1765, Works of John Adams, quoted in Schlesinger,
Prelude to Independence, 20-21.
9 Schlesinger, Prelude, 76, Schlesinger, “The Colonial Newspapers and the Stamp Act.” New
England Quarterly 8 (March, 1935), 1:63-83. See also Maryland Gazette (Annapolis: Jonas Green,
Oct. 31, 1765), 1, and Virginia Gazette (Williamsburg: Royle, Oct. 25, 1765), 3.
10 Maryland Gazette (Annapolis: Jonas Green and William Rind, August 22, 1765), 2.