Volume 3, Chapter 24, Response in New York
The people of Massachusetts and Rhode Island had now set the example. The other colonies
were not slow to follow. Neither was the lesson lost on the appointed stamp distributors in
the remaining colonies. As early as August 26, New York's stamp master, James McEvers,
Threatened with the same fate as Oliver, hastily resigned his post before mob action surfaced.
On September 2, the frightened William Cox, stamp distributor for New Jersey, hastily
resigned his post even though he had received no threats from the populace. In Maryland,
stamp master Zachariah Hood refused to resign, even after a mob raised his house on September
2, an act that followed the whipping, pilloring, hanging and burning of his effigy. The people
of Maryland saw that more drastic measures were necessary. They set upon Hood and forced
him to flee for his life to New York City. There he was driven from an inn by New York
radicals but found congenial refuge at Fort George run by Lieutenant Governor Cadwallader
Here, Colden. Hood had not yet resigned, but he was no longer a present danger to Marylanders.
New York might be free of its stamped distributor, but the potential menace of the stamped paper
remained. The paper arrived from England toward the end of October, but it found the people
of New York ready to meet it, headed by the Sons of Liberty of New York, formed a few
The Suns organized a crowd of some 2,000 New Yorkers to prevent the landing of the stamped paper, but the implacable Tory Codwallader Colden arranged for a British warship to stand watch while the paper was unloaded at night at his fortress on Fort George. That night, October 26, the following warnings were posted throughout New York City.
Pro patria, the first man that either distributes or makes use of stamped paper, let him take care of his house, person, and effects, vox populi, we dare.
The evening before the Stamp Act was to take effect, a public meeting warned that the Stamp Act would be disobeyed.
A crowd paraded through the city shouting liberty and threatening to bury alive Major Thomas James.
James, commander of the troops at Fort George, had boasted that he would cram the stamps down the New Yorker's throats with the end of his sword.
The following night, November 1, a mob of about two thousand New Yorkers,
soldiers, many of them former soldiers and privateersmen as well as seamen, carpenters
and rural folk, marched to the house of the hated Colden, carrying and then hanging and
burning effigies of Colden and of the devil.
The crowd, defying efforts of the mayor and council to disperse it, broke into Colden's
coach house and paraded around the coach, later hanging the two effigies on a public
Give It, and then burning them along with the coach and other Colton carriages.
The mob then broke into Major James's home, smashed the interior, and leveled the house.
The people had not yet attacked Fort George to seize the stamps.
At this point, conservative opponents of the stamp tax bitterly tried to dissuade the people
from such a bold course.
Directed by Robert R. Livingston and James Duane, the conservatives gained the concession
from Colden that he would not issue the stamps. But the radical liberal leaders would not
be put off by this tactical retreat. The stamped papers themselves must be destroyed. Armed
New Yorkers pass into the city to support an attack on the fort and posters signed by
by such Sons of Liberty names as Sons of Neptune, an organization of semen, and Free Sons of
New York threatened an all-out assault on the fort on the night of November 5, unless
the stamped papers were surrendered. Under this threat, Governor Colden, on the advice
of the British General Thomas Gage and the New York Council, finally capitulated and
and turned the paper over to the municipal authorities. In mid-November, a second shipment
of stamps was again turned over to the municipal corporation.
The Sons of Liberty, the indomitable leaders of the radical resistance in New York City,
were unsurprisingly led by wealthy merchants and lawyers, and rested on a mass base of
of Artisans, Small Businessmen, and Laborers. Its original leaders had been the liberal
lawyers William Livingston and John Moran Scott, but they were soon replaced by better
and more radical organizers who were also wealthy merchants. Isaac Sears, a privateer,
John Lamb, a manufacturer of mathematical instruments, and Joseph Alacocque.