Volume 3, Chapter 29, Official Protest
By November 1765, the stamped distributors and the stamped paper had been put out of
action by the direct revolutionary mass action of the people, who increasingly formed themselves
into sons of liberty in the separate colonies. Even if the various colonial assemblies had
had not been so timorous and conservative. There was little that they could have done.
To nullify the Stamp Act, the first essential step was to put the stamp masters out of commission.
This was a revolutionary act that the assemblies could hardly have done openly, especially
since they were in most cases subject to the veto of a royal governor. But one function
Not much importance should be laid on these official resolves, which could only play a
minor supplementary role in the great American struggle against the stamp tax. The exception
to the minor importance of official resolutions was, of course, Patrick Henry's Virginia
Resolves, which, helped by the shrewd publication of the final resolutions, ignited the spark
of the whole resistance struggle.
The first colony to imitate Virginia's example of official protest was, not surprisingly,
Rhode Island, where the Assembly adopted the call to disobedience that everyone believed
the Virginia Assembly had passed.
The resolution also denied Parliament's authority to tax the colonies at all, although it modified
the disobedience clause to include only an internal tax, such as the stamp tax.
Moreover, the Rhode Island Assembly went further, directing all officers of the colony to proceed
as if the stamp tax did not exist, the Assembly promising to indemnify them for any penalties
on this question of the Ward and Hopkins factions in Rhode Island.
None of the other colonial assemblies, however,
had the courage to go as far as little self-governing Rhode Island.
None dared either to call for disobedience
or to order officials to disregard the Stamp Act.
Almost all the assemblies, however, issued resolves during the last third of 1765,
Most of them denied the authority of parliament to levy taxes, internal or external, upon
the colonies, and most of them denied the authority of parliament to extend the domain
of the hated admulty courts. Colonies such as Rhode Island, Connecticut and Massachusetts,
which had not in the previous year strongly challenged the parliamentary authority to
Tax, now took steps to correct their former hesitation. The only colonial assemblies that
did not issue such resolves were Georgia, Delaware, New Hampshire, and North Carolina,
and the last was not allowed to meet by edict of the royal governor.