What was stamp act congress

While we do not know for sure what was said during the deliberations because no journals were kept, we do know that none of the delegates there were advocating for American independence. In fact, they were specifically arguing that in order to remain loyal, obedient subjects, Parliament had to understand that taxing them in this matter would actually create more issues for both sides.

The final version of what became known as the Declaration of Rights and Grievances, a series of fourteen points that went beyond addressing the Stamp Act, laid out that while intending to remain subordinate to Parliamentary authority, the colonies expected the liberties understood within the English Constitution to be afforded to them too.

With this, the colonial body agreed to remain subordinate to Parliament in all legislative matters but addressed the discontent with the Stamp Act by separating taxation between internal and external taxes. The Sugar Act of established the confusion with new taxation within the colonies, and the Stamp Act further muddied the waters by wording the legislation in a way that allowed colonial assemblies to frame the argument between these two distinct forms of taxation.

How it was argued is an understanding of internal vs. The colonists viewed external taxation as necessary regulation, such as the regulation of British trade with other kingdoms and nations.

Internal taxes were not viewed as regulatory because colonists were British subjects, and in this case, internal taxes that affected the colonies could only be levied by colonial assemblies and governing bodies if they were solely enacted by Parliament.

This is why colonists who framed the new taxes as internal taxes vehemently opposed them. Because these new acts to raise revenue specifically targeted goods and trade between British subjects, i.

Even Benjamin Franklin , an agent of the colonies in London and the most famous American in the world at the time, was steadfastly rebuffed for his desire to become a member of the House of Commons. The resolutions were adopted on October 14 but quickly floundered as a handful of leading delegates refused to sign them, fearing they were committing treason, and should instead be sent off to the individual colonial assemblies for consideration.

Copies were eventually put on ships sailing for London. The Congress dissolved on October 24, and on November 1 when the Stamp Act was to become law, several bands of Sons of Liberty throughout port towns staged mock funerals showcasing liberty being extinguished by the new taxes. With such visible agitation across the eastern seaboard, arriving British stamps were roundly seized by local authorities and kept under safeguard from mobs or were indeed stolen and destroyed by unruly citizens.

The response by His Majesty and Parliament was one of shock, bewilderment, and anxiety. Grenville, above all, had tried to mend the warring forces by reassuring the king that the colonies were not coordinating to act against his authority.

But the damage had been done. Grenville, never popular with the king, was replaced with Lord Rockingham. On his way out, Grenville stubbornly reaffirmed that the colonists must obey Parliamentary authority or else. New Hampshire did not attend but approved the resolutions once Congress was over. Click on image to enlarge. Congress approved thirteen resolutions in the Declaration of Rights and Grievances. It is important to note that colonists, at that point in time, were not intending on a separation from the crown.

In the first resolution they stated their allegiance to the king and its Parliament. It was called the Stamp Act Congress. It was created by the Virginia General Assembly, the legislative body of the Commonwealth of Virginia. The colonies or the Stamp Act Congress questioned whether it was right for Parliament to tax the colonies.

The Stamp Act of was the first internal tax levied directly on American colonists by the British Parliament. The colonists were represented in Parliament even though they did not vote for anyone. This act stated that Parliament could not make laws that applied to the American colonies. The colonists felt that they needed to have a say in the British governmental affairs if they were being forced to pay taxes to support those affairs.

Members of the Virginia's legislative body, the House of Burgesses, gathered together to protest the Act and to figure out what to do next. Soon after, colonial assemblies would meet to sign petitions and protest. Twenty seven delegates from nine of the colonies attended the Stamp Act Congress. Over 10 years later four … The Sons of Liberty, an inter-colonial organization, allowed colonies an easier access to communication and coordination of activities.

Since they had no representation in parliament they had no right to tax its colonial residents. On the 19th, the Congress produced a resolution called the Declaration of Rights and Grievances , a fourteen point list of the colonists positions, that was written by John Dickinson of Pennsylvania.

It was attended by twenty-seven representatives from what has been known throughout American history as the thirteen colonies. These two groups were made up of tradesmen, skilled and unskilled workers, lawyers, printers and others who put aside their differences, together they became known as the Sons of Liberty.

This was known as the Stamp Act Congress, and nine of the thirteen colonies were in attendance. It was also passed to help keep troops on America.

Up until this point, the British had primarily left the colonists to govern themselves and had only imposed non-direct taxes.

Dickinson, with his strong, measured voice, was chosen to represent Pennsylvania at the Stamp Act Congress in , where he drafted the body's anti—Stamp Act … - War of Independence. It led to some of the first protests by American colonists against the British government. Steven Puro. It said they had to pay a tax on all sorts of printed materials such as newspapers, magazines and legal documents.

This congress was quick to talk about the problem of "taxation without representation," which would become one of the cornerstones of the American Revolutionary War. These troops had been dispatched to defend the colonies from French aggression. In the first half of the 18th century, however, British enforcement of this system had been lax. Starting with the Sugar Act of , which imposed new duties on sugar and other goods, the British government began to tighten its reins on the colonies.

Shortly thereafter, George Grenville , the British first lord of the treasury and prime minister, proposed the Stamp Act; Parliament passed the act without debate in Instead of levying a duty on trade goods, the Stamp Act imposed a direct tax on the colonists. Specifically, the act required that, starting in the fall of , legal documents and printed materials must bear a tax stamp provided by commissioned distributors who would collect the tax in exchange for the stamp.

The law applied to wills, deeds, newspapers, pamphlets and even playing cards and dice. Coming in the midst of economic hardship in the colonies, the Stamp Act aroused vehement resistance. The colonists also took exception with the provision denying offenders trials by jury. A vocal minority hinted at dark designs behind the Stamp Act. These radical voices warned that the tax was part of a gradual plot to deprive the colonists of their freedoms and to enslave them beneath a tyrannical regime.

Playing off traditional fears of peacetime armies, they wondered aloud why Parliament saw fit to garrison troops in North America only after the threat from the French had been removed.

These concerns provided an ideological basis that intensified colonial resistance. Colonial resistance to the act mounted slowly at first, but gained momentum as the planned date of its implementation drew near. Newspapers throughout the colonies reprinted the resolutions, spreading their radical message to a broad audience. The resolutions provided the tenor for the proclamations of the Stamp Act Congress, an extralegal convention composed of delegates from nine colonies that met in October The Stamp Act Congress wrote petitions to the king affirming both their loyalty and the conviction that only the colonial assemblies had the constitutional authority to tax the colonists.