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Show Stamp Act Of 1765 One of the most significant dates in American history was Nov. 23, 1765. On this day, more than two hundred years ago, the Frederick County, Maryland, court ordered its regular business carried on without the use of stamped paper--as required by the famous Stamp Act. AT THIS time the states were still English colonies. In March of that year Parliament had passed the Stamp Act, recommended re-commended by Sir William Keith, a former royal Governor Gov-ernor of Pennsylvania. The act levied a stamp tax of three pence to ten shillings on legal papers, two pounds on college diplomas, four pounds on licenses to sell wine, two to six shillings on deeds, ten shillings shill-ings on a pair of dice, a shilling on a pack of playing cards, a shilling for every advertisement advertise-ment in a newspaper, etc. THE TAX outraged many '' . Americans, who felt that only ' . their ow'n state assemblies had ' the taxing authority over them. : Patrick Henry, in Virginia, '' managed to get a defiant re-. re-. solution adopted by the Virginia Virgi-nia General Assembly, so much so that it was expunged . from the record the day after it ' . ' was passed, v ' . Aroused citizens in many . . states destroyed the stamped paper: which had been sent V . . from England. THE BITTER reaction was . so widespread wiser heads in - .London favored repeal of the '. -law. Benjamin Franklin, the . r . '" American agent in London, Was summoned before the House of Commons and wisely warned members that if the act were enforced with arms the enforcers would not find rebellion rebel-lion but "may make one." The act was repealed four months after the Maryland court's defiance. But it had sparked such resentment and such a surge of nationalism, many historians believe it helped appreciably to bring about ab-out the Declaration of Independence Inde-pendence a decade later in 1776. |
