The British Parliament passed the Stamp Act, requiring colonists to pay a tax on virtually every piece of printed paper they used, from newspapers to playing cards. Colonists, who had no representation in Parliament, erupted in protest under the banner "no taxation without representation." The backlash forced repeal within a year but set the colonies on an irreversible path toward revolution.
The tax itself was modest, but the principle was explosive. Colonial assemblies had never been consulted, and colonists insisted that only their own elected representatives could tax them. Merchants organized boycotts, mobs intimidated stamp distributors into resigning, and delegates from nine colonies convened the Stamp Act Congress that autumn, one of the first coordinated intercolonial acts of defiance.
Patrick Henry thundered against the act in Virginia, while in Boston, the Sons of Liberty formed partly in response to it, hanging effigies of tax collectors from the Liberty Tree. Parliament repealed the act in March 1766, but paired the repeal with the Declaratory Act, asserting its right to tax the colonies whenever it wished.
The episode taught colonists that organized resistance could work, a lesson they would draw on again with the Townshend Acts and the Tea Act. Historians often point to the Stamp Act crisis as the true opening act of the American Revolution, a full decade before Lexington and Concord.
Key people: Patrick Henry, George Grenville