Taxes, taxes, taxes

After the French and Indian War, what Europeans still call the Seven Years’ War, Great Britain faced enormous debt. Although not all of the recently acquired debt stemmed directly from British military campaigns in North America, - British expansion in India and its goals of expanding its empire all over the world all generated significant debt - the British colonies in North America represented the largest and swiftest approach to recoup some of these costs. With the need to generate greater tax revenue coinciding with desires to forestall burgeoning colonial demands for greater autonomy, the British government imposed a series of new taxes on its North American colonies while simultaneously striving to reduce smuggling and effectively enforce the Navigation Acts.

The British Parliament enacted the Sugar Act in 1764, imposing increased taxes on sugar and molasses, adversely impacting New England rum distillers. Furthermore, shipments of lumber from the colonies had to be transported on British ships, an important method of mercantilism and a further sign that the era of salutary neglect had ended. While the Sugar Act angered many colonists, particularly coming in the wake of the Proclamation Line of 1763 and a smallpox epidemic, colonial ire erupted with the implementation of the Stamp Act in 1765.

The Stamp Act

Probably no tax is more infamous in American history than the levy the British government attempted to impose through its passage of the Stamp Act. Requiring colonial merchants to purchase a specific stamp indicating that the tax on paper and related goods had been paid, for the colonists, the most reviled aspect of the Stamp Act was the British declaration that the tax was intended to raise revenue for the British government and not for funding colonial administration and improvements. Colonial condemnations of the Stamp Act were swift, with prominent colonists calling for boycotts of British goods and protests, some of which became violent, occurring in many of the colonies. Colonial opposition included letter writing campaigns, boycotts, and demonstrations, often associated with the Sons of Liberty, as well as the organization of the Stamp Act Congress which issued a formal petition calling for the repeal of the Stamp Act. The delegates rejected the British Parliament’s ability to levy taxes to which the colonists had not assented; the delegates also rejected the British Parliament’s assertion of virtual representation, the idea that Parliament automatically represented all British people, even those that were prohibited from selecting their representatives.

Resolutions of the Stamp Act Congress, October 19, 1765

2d. That His Majesty’s liege subjects in these colonies are entitled to all the inherent rights and privileges of his natural born subjects within the kingdom of Great Britain.

3d. That it is inseparably essential to the freedom of a people, and the undoubted rights of Englishmen, that no taxes should be imposed on them, but with their own consent, given personally, or by their representatives.

4th. That the people of these colonies are not, and from their local circumstances cannot be, represented in the House of Commons in Great Britain.

5th. That the only representatives of the people of these colonies are persons chosen therein, by themselves; and that no taxes ever have been or can be constitutionally imposed on them but by their respective legislatures.

While the breadth and depth of colonial resistance to the Stamp Act surprised the British government, the colonists likely underestimated the resolve of the British government to not only collect tax revenue, but more importantly, to exercise clear control over the colonies. When news reached the colonies that the British Parliament had announced in March 1766 that it was repealing the Stamp Act, many colonists rejoiced, believing that their resistance had demonstrated colonial will and power; unfortunately for the colonists, the British Parliament doubled down on its desire to exercise effective control over the colonies through the passage of the Declaratory Acts.

Quartering Act

Before we turn to the Declaratory Acts and the subsequent Townsend Acts, though, we need to review the Quartering Act. To defray the costs of maintaining larger numbers of soldiers in the colonies, the British Parliament required the colonial assemblies to pay for the housing and feeding of British soldiers. While this Quartering Act did not require individual colonists to house British soldiers, an extension, or abuse depending on one’s perspective, of British power that would later be banned in the United States in the Third Amendment to the Constitution, the New York colonial assembly initially refused to provide funding for the quartering of British troops; Parliament responded by suspending the New York colonial assembly until it relented and approved funding for quartering British soldiers.

Declaratory Act and Townshend Acts

Still stinging from the wave of resistance to the Stamp Act, and insistent on demonstrating British authority over the colonies, Parliament enacted the Declaratory Act on the same day that it officially repealed the Stamp Act. Parliament asserted its right to tax the colonies at will and that colonies were “subordinate unto, and dependent upon the imperial crown and parliament of Great Britain.” Parliament further stated that the colonies had no right to resist British law and taxes. After passing the Declaratory Act, Parliament demonstrated its determination to rule the colonies more directly and to extract desired tax revenue through the passage of the Townshend Acts.

The British government expanded the list of items that would be taxed under the Townshend Acts and provided for stricter enforcement of the laws and tax collection. The British government also expanded its use of writs of assistance allowing for greater search and seizure of suspected smugglers and their property; American colonists, including James Otis, had previously sought to invalidate writs of assistance by arguing that they violated the colonists’ fundamental rights, but British courts upheld their legality.

As with the earlier Stamp Act, colonial resistance was swift and sustained; as the imposition of the Townshend Duties hurt American commerce, colonial resentment mounted. In March 1770, violent confrontation between British soldiers and colonists erupted in what Paul Revere would term the Boston Massacre. Eventually, Parliament repealed all of the increased taxes, except for one: the tax on tea. Parliament’s refusal to repeal this tax and the colonists’ determined opposition to paying this tax culminated in the most (in)famous act of organized property destruction in American history: the Boston Tea Party.

Boston Massacre

As British soldiers and sailors became increasingly common in the colonies, particularly in the city of Boston, tensions with colonists mounted. British naval captains began impressing, forcibly commissioning civilians into service on British naval vessels. Britain had also angered colonists by seizing one of John Hancock’s ships, Liberty, on suspicion of smuggling. In February 1770, a British customs employee killed an 11-year-old boy, Christopher Seider, while attempting to disperse a crowd of colonial protesters. Seider’s death provoked strong denunciations of British officials from colonial Bostonians. Within two weeks, these mounting tensions erupted on King Street in Boston.

By early March 1770, Boston was a veritable powder keg. On March 5, a crowd of hundreds of angry, and often intoxicated, colonists confronted a detachment of 9 British soldiers. The colonists, angry over an earlier dispute between a 13-year-old colonial boy and a British soldier, yelled at the British soldiers and threw snowballs and rocks at them. After a British private was knocked down, he fired into the crowd, followed shortly thereafter by more British soldiers. 3 American colonists died instantly, including Crispus Attucks, a mixed-race formerly enslaved person, another colonist died the next morning, and a fifth colonist died from his wounds within 2 weeks of the shooting.

British and colonial authorities and messengers sought to, in today’s parlance, control the narrative through the printing press and the arts. Prominent Bostonians, including Samuel Adams and Paul Revere, immediately termed the conflict the Boston Massacre and called for swift punishment of the British soldiers. Revere, then a silversmith and printer, and Samuel Adams, a prominent colonial legislator and organizer of boycotts against British goods through his work on a committee of correspondence, would also feature prominently in the American Revolution, although Revere’s fame is due more to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem written on the verge of the Civil War.

The British soldiers would ultimately face trial in November 1770 and would be defended by prominent colonial lawyers, including John Adams, cousin of Samuel Adams, and later President and Vice President of the United States. Most of the British soldiers were acquitted at trial, with two of them being convicted of manslaughter; as it was a first offense for both soldiers, their sentences were reduced from the death sentence to thumb branding. While trial may have averted further violence in 1770, this reprieve proved only temporary.

Tea Act

The back and forth between Parliament imposing taxes on the colonists and fierce colonial resistance continued throughout the early 1770s. In May 1773, Parliament passed the Tea Act primarily to aid the ailing British East India Company. Parliament maintained the detested Townshend Act tax on tea and authorized the British East India Company to sell surplus tea directly to colonists, effectively circumventing colonial tea merchants. Predictably, colonial resistance quickly surfaced, but it was in December 1773 when that resistance culminated in the Boston Tea Party.

Boston Tea Party

Determined to demonstrate their willingness to defy the British government, the Sons of Liberty boarded British ships in the midnight hours of December 16, 1773 and dumped hundreds of chests of tea into Boston Harbor’s water. The economic losses mounted to the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of today’s dollars; British authorities then ratcheted up their pressure on the colonies by enacting the Coercive Acts, a series of punitive and restrictive laws that the colonists would promptly deem the Intolerable Acts.

Intolerable Acts

British anger stemming from the Boston Tea Party boiled over when the news reached London in January 1774. Parliament swiftly passed 5 new acts to stamp out colonial resistance and to compensate the **British East India Company **for the financial losses it suffered. The first act, the Boston Port Act, closed Boston’s port until **King George III **was satisfied that the colonists had not only made full restitution for the destroyed tea but were also sufficiently repentant for their individual and collective acts of defiance. In the Massachusetts Government Act, Parliament and the King revoked the colonial government’s authority and placed Massachusetts directly under crown control. The British government then invoked the principle of extraterritoriality, the concept allowing for a national of an imperial power, in this case Great Britain, to be tried in his/her homeland, rather than the colonies, when accused of a crime against a colonist. This Administration of Justice Act infuriated colonists because they believed that British courts would allow British officials and soldiers to act with impunity against colonists; furthermore, the colonists argued that the trial of British soldiers after the Boston Massacre proved that colonial courts could administer justice to British soldiers accused of committing crimes against colonists. The strengthened Quartering Act permitted British soldiers to be housed outside of colonial barracks if they believed that the conditions in the barracks were substandard. In the text of the Quartering Act, the legislation calls for the use of “uninhabited houses, outhouses, barns, or other such buildings”; many Americans then and now believe(d) that this act authorized British soldiers to demand to be billeted and fed directly in the homes of colonists. As noted above, resentment of such arbitrary power, real or imagined, culminated in the Third Amendment to the US Constitution. Finally, while not directly incorporated within the Coercive/Intolerable Acts, the Quebec Act, which sought to prevent colonists from extending further into the Ohio Valley, engendered considerable colonial ire.