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NOTE 29. Official Protests

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Volume 3, Chapter 29, Official Protest

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By November 1765, the stamped distributors and the stamped paper had been put out of

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action by the direct revolutionary mass action of the people, who increasingly formed themselves

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into sons of liberty in the separate colonies. Even if the various colonial assemblies had

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had not been so timorous and conservative. There was little that they could have done.

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To nullify the Stamp Act, the first essential step was to put the stamp masters out of commission.

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This was a revolutionary act that the assemblies could hardly have done openly, especially

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since they were in most cases subject to the veto of a royal governor. But one function

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Not much importance should be laid on these official resolves, which could only play a

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minor supplementary role in the great American struggle against the stamp tax. The exception

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to the minor importance of official resolutions was, of course, Patrick Henry's Virginia

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Resolves, which, helped by the shrewd publication of the final resolutions, ignited the spark

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of the whole resistance struggle.

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The first colony to imitate Virginia's example of official protest was, not surprisingly,

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Rhode Island, where the Assembly adopted the call to disobedience that everyone believed

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the Virginia Assembly had passed.

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The resolution also denied Parliament's authority to tax the colonies at all, although it modified

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the disobedience clause to include only an internal tax, such as the stamp tax.

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Moreover, the Rhode Island Assembly went further, directing all officers of the colony to proceed

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as if the stamp tax did not exist, the Assembly promising to indemnify them for any penalties

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on this question of the Ward and Hopkins factions in Rhode Island.

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None of the other colonial assemblies, however,

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had the courage to go as far as little self-governing Rhode Island.

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None dared either to call for disobedience

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or to order officials to disregard the Stamp Act.

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Almost all the assemblies, however, issued resolves during the last third of 1765,

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Most of them denied the authority of parliament to levy taxes, internal or external, upon

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the colonies, and most of them denied the authority of parliament to extend the domain

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of the hated admulty courts. Colonies such as Rhode Island, Connecticut and Massachusetts,

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which had not in the previous year strongly challenged the parliamentary authority to

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Tax, now took steps to correct their former hesitation. The only colonial assemblies that

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did not issue such resolves were Georgia, Delaware, New Hampshire, and North Carolina,

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and the last was not allowed to meet by edict of the royal governor.