Tag: Stamp Act

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Cruel Bedlam: Bankruptcies and the Break with Britain

America will celebrate the Semiquincentennial anniversary of its independence from Great Britain in 2026. The causes of that world-changing event were many and complexly intertwined, so new conjectures unsurprisingly continue to emerge from the archival mists. Because disputed taxes were objectively light, the current consensus stresses a narrative rooted in ideas to explain why many […]

by Robert E. Wright
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Parliament’s Stamp Act Dilemma

In 1763, the powers of Europe signed the Peace of Paris bringing an end to the French and Indian War. The Kingdom of Great Britain emerged victorious, seizing from France several new territories throughout Canada and east of the Mississippi. But victory came at tremendous cost. The war debt incurred over the last seven years […]

by Rex Payne
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The Pre-Revolutionary Writings of James Otis, Jr.

John Clark Ridpath wrote in 1898, The pre-revolutionists are the Titans of human history; the revolutionists proper are only heroes; and the post revolutionists are too frequently dwarfs and weaklings. This signifies that civilization advances by revolutionary stages, and that history sends out her tallest and best sons to explore the line of march and […]

by James M. Smith
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John Dickinson and His Letters

On December 2, 1767, there appeared in the Pennsylvania Chronicle the first letter in a series collectively called “Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania.” The anonymous first letter came at a critical time in the growing debate between Britain and her colonies over colonial policy. By late 1767, when the first of the letters appeared, […]

by Jude M. Pfister
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Thomas Hutchinson and His Letters

We often remember the controversy surrounding the Hutchinson Letters, which inspired many colonists to oppose the provincial government in Massachusetts, by talking about Benjamin Franklin (who found and sent the letters) and Samuel Adams (who helped publish them). Our memory of the letters’ author, Thomas Hutchinson, is often colored by a 1774 print by Paul Revere, […]

by Will Monk
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How America Declared its Rights

During the seventeenth century and into the eighteenth century the political philosophers of Europe were writing and discussing some new and radical ideas on what a government should look like and how it should function. They would reshape the political landscape in the late eighteenth century and well into the twentieth. One of the most […]

by James M. Smith
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Election Sermons and Collective Identity in Massachusetts, 1760–1775

“It is Hoped that this People will Unitedly Exert Themselves:”[1] In August 1765, crowds gathered on the streets of Boston protesting Parliament’s Stamp Act, which they deemed a tyrannical effort to tax them against their consent. Eventually, protests turned destructive as rioters ransacked the home of Lt. Gov. Thomas Hutchinson. The violent outburst posed a […]

by Christopher Walton
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The Latest in the JAR Book Series is Now Available

“The sad story of colonial oppression commenced in the year 1764. Great Britain then adopted new regulations respecting her colonies, which, after disturbing the ancient harmony of the two countries for about twelve years, terminated in a dismemberment of the empire.”—David Ramsay, 1789 JAR contributor Ken Shumate’s new book, 1764: The First Year of the […]

by Editors
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James Lovell: Schoolteacher, Prisoner, Patriot

James Lovell, delegate from Massachusetts to the Second Continental Congress and the Confederation Congress from 1777 to 1782, the only member of Congress to be continuously present during those years,[1] is known for being the Secretary for the Committee for Foreign Affairs; for his expertise in cryptography, earning him Edmund Burnett’s description of “decipherer extraordinary to […]

by Jean C. O'Connor
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This Week on Dispatches: Dean Caivano on American Colonists’ Growing Resistance to Tyranny

On this week’s Dispatches host Brady Crytzer interviews Dean Caivano, Lecturer of Political Science at California State University, Stanislaus, on the growing resistance to tyranny as colonists reacted to the prospects of their lives being reduced to a state of political and economic domination by Parliament and the Crown. Thousands of readers like you enjoy the articles published […]

by Editors
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The Fear of Domination: Resistance Against Tyranny

The threat of continued oppression and an encroaching condition of slavery was central to the American colonists’ call for separation from Great Britain and the corresponding shift to direct resistance. While the lack of effective political representation was crucial, importantly the colonists held other more acute concerns than the issue of representation in Parliament. Crucially, […]

by Dean Caivano
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Revolutionary Networks: The Business and Politics of Printing the News, 1763–1789

Revolutionary Networks: The Business and Politics of Printing the News, 1763-1789  by Joseph M. Adelman (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019) An explosion of new media! News editors and writers under attack for their views! Increasing media polarization along partisan lines. Readers expecting the news to be free. Newspapers teetering on the edge of profitability. A […]

by Gene Procknow
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How Magna Carta Influenced the American Revolution

In 1984, Ross Perot purchased a copy of the 1297 reissuance of the Magna Carta from the Brudenell family who had held the document for centuries. In 1988, it became a permanent fixture of the National Archives Museum where it stayed in the rotunda along with the American charters of freedom for several years. Nearly […]

by Jason Yonce
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The Exception to “No Taxation Without Representation”

“I know not why we should blush to confess that molasses was an essential ingredient in American independence.”— John Adams[1] A one penny per gallon import duty on molasses was the only important exception to the American demand for “no taxation without representation.” The duty was a tax, levied by Parliament in 1766, and collected […]

by Ken Shumate