British colonists in North America were proud of their accomplishments during the French and Indian War. Colonial militias had fought bravely alongside British soldiers, and by the end of the war, the colonists gained confidence that could defend themselves if they needed to. However, Britain did not share the same view. The British believed that colonial militias were a poorly trained, disorganized rabble, and were unable to defend themselves. This was the beginning of many future disagreements between Britain and the colonists. Shortly after the war, the relationship between Britain and the colonists turned sour due to the colonists’ inability to understand British mentality, and Britain’s failure to understand the way that the colonists viewed themselves as citizens of the British Empire.
The French and Indian War was a costly but rewarding victory for the British. They were left with a large amount of debt, which they planned to repay by collecting taxes from the American colonists. Although Britain lost a lot of money from the war, they gained a lot of new territory. In the Treaty of Paris of 1763, France gave Britain all the land between the Mississippi River and the Appalachian Mountains. Britain had difficulty controlling all of it from their own country, so they sent soldiers over to North America. The goal was for British soldiers in North America to protect the colonists from some remaining Spanish and French who remained on the continent. Also, the soldiers were supposed to prevent conflicts between colonists and Amerindians. The colonists kept getting into fights with Amerindians while trying to take their land. In some areas, this had been a problem ever since the early 17th century. It had continued to be a problem about 150 years later, when in 1763, an Amerindian chief named Pontiac led several Amerindian tribes in an attack against colonists in the Great Lakes, the Ohio River Valley, and West Virginia (GWMV). Instead of depending on colonial militias to fight back, Britain sent soldiers to end the conflict. The colonists, who thought they could provide for their own defense, didn’t think that British soldiers were needed. When the soldiers weren’t on duty, they often took jobs that would have been occupied by colonists, like making barrels, rope, and working in shipyards.
The British soldiers in charge of defending the colonies weren’t doing it for free. Someone had to pay their salary, and from Parliament’s point of view, it should be the colonists, who were being defended by the soldiers. British Prime Minister George Grenville said to the king, "it is just and necessary, that a revenue be raised, in your Majesty's said dominions in America, for defraying the expences of defending, protecting, and securing the same.” In 1764, Parliament passed the Sugar Act, which was a tax on foreign molasses, sugar, indigo, coffee, and wine imported into any British colony.
Grenville realized that the Sugar Act wouldn’t make enough money. Even before the Sugar Act went into effect, Britain’s treasury office drafted a new law to increase revenue from the colonists. There was already a stamp tax on citizens living in England, and Grenville planned to implement one in the colonies too. However, judicial systems and government in North America were not the same as in England. In 1764, Grenville’s secretary, Thomas Whatley, sent a letter to John Temple, Surveyor General in Boston. The Massachusetts legislature had levied their own stamp tax on the colonists in 1755, and Whatley wanted to know about it. He asked Temple some questions, like what was the effect of the tax, what items were taxed, and what objections were made. Whatley’s intention was to create a tax “as little burdensome as possible.” Clearly, his intention was to create a tax that the colonists wouldn’t mind paying. In February of 1765, colonial agents spoke to Grenville about raising taxes in the colonies. They claimed to be loyal subjects who were willing to raise a tax, just as Grenville wanted, but through their own legislatures. However, Grenville paid no attention to this idea, and Parliament passed the Stamp Act in March.
Unlike the Sugar Act, the Stamp Act was a direct tax on the colonists, meaning that people who bought goods were paying extra money for it. This was different from the Sugar Act, which was a tax paid by merchants, not by people using the goods. The Stamp Act involved transactions happening within the colonies. These transactions had nothing to do with transatlantic trade, like previous taxes, such as the Molasses Act of 1733 and the Sugar Act of 1764, which were taxes on goods produced by Britain’s rival nations.
The Stamp Act required people who bought paper items, like newspapers and playing cards, to buy a stamp to put on it, showing that they paid the tax. Some other items that required a stamp included legal documents, pamphlets, advertisements, diplomas, bills, and ship’s papers (McCullough 61). Although Grenville’s secretary didn’t want the tax to be too much of a burden on the colonists, the taxes on some items were rather high. Some revenue stamps costed as much as ten pounds. However, the tax couldn’t be paid in colonial currency. It had to be paid in British sterling, which was hard to obtain. The British were making it difficult to buy simple, everyday items. Although Grenville’s secretary didn’t want the tax to be too much of a burden on the colonists, the tax was rather high. Some revenue stamps costed as much as ten pounds. It’s interesting that the British placed a tax on legal documents, which were often used by lawyers. Because lawyers are generally smart people, they knew how colonial government worked, and understood the peoples’ rights well, so they probably would have been among the first to realize that something wasn’t right when Britain started imposing the stamp tax.
The Stamp Act made the colonists angry because they felt that Britain had no right to tax them. For generations, the British practiced something called salutary neglect, meaning that they basically ignored the colonists. To prevent their enemies from making money from the colonists, Britain had imposed trade laws called the Navigation Acts on the colonists in the mid-1600s. However, the British didn’t enforce them, so the colonists didn’t follow them. Colonists smuggled goods from Britain’s rivals, like the French and Dutch. After a while, the colonists didn’t feel that British trade laws needed to be obeyed, because Britain didn’t do much when colonists violated these rules. When Britain started paying attention to the colonists in the mid 1700s, it had been several decades since Britain enforced laws that they made for the colonists. Britain had ignored the colonists for so long that the colonists didn’t see them as a government that had the right to tax them.
Because Britain was so far away, and didn’t pay much attention to the colonies, the colonists began to govern themselves. Unlike France and Spain, Britain didn’t finance its colonies, so the task was left to the colonists themselves. Each colony had their own two-house legislature, which taxed the colonists to pay for things like building roads and dredging harbors. The royal governor’s salary was also paid with tax money collected from the colonists (Berkin). The members of the lower house, who were elected by colonists, voted for new taxes. The legislature in each colony, according to the colonists, had the right to tax them because the colonists voted for them, and they represented the colonists and understood their needs.
Members of Parliament believed that they were “virtually” representing the colonists because they cared about the needs of British people everywhere. However, that didn’t make sense to the colonists, who believed that a government can only understand the needs of people who voted for them. The colonists never voted for Parliament, but they did vote for their own colonial legislatures (GLIAH). It didn’t make sense for the colonists to be paying taxes to a government three-thousand miles away, who they felt didn’t represent them, while they were paying taxes to a local government made up of fellow colonists, who understood their needs.
On May 30, 1765, the Virginia House of Burgesses passed the Virginia Resolves, which basically said that the Stamp Act passed by Parliament was invalid (GLIAH). It was “resolved” that the way to protect people from burdensome taxation was to only allow people to tax themselves, or to allow representatives elected by the people to impose taxes on the people. The representatives would know “what taxes the people are able to bear, or the easiest method of raising them.” Also, the representatives imposing taxes would be affected by the taxes themselves, which would help them think carefully about how high the taxes would be, and what kinds of things the colonists would pay taxes for. Allowing the colonists to only be taxed with their consent was “the distinguishing characteristic of British freedom.” (National Archives).
The Braintree Instructions, drafted by John Adams of Braintree, had similar statements to the Virginia Resolves. Adams’ work was a set of instructions about the Stamp Act, put together for the General Court (the legislative body in Massachusetts). One important statement was, “We have always understood it to be a grand and fundamental principle of the [