28. Response in the Carolinas and Georgia

In North Carolina and Georgia, no stamp distributors had been appointed by November 1. In Georgia, radicals had to content themselves with demonstrating with nameless effigies. The appointment of George Angus was announced to the Georgians on November 7, but Angus, alone of all the colonial distributors, was a native Englishman, and had not yet set sail for America. The people of Georgia could only keep vigil to mete out similar treatment as in the other colonies; meanwhile, the Stamp Act was not being enforced there.

In North Carolina, Henry McCulloh had naturally been the original appointee, but he prudently declined. The appointment then went to Dr. William Houston, who only heard the news by mid-November. When Houston arrived at Wilmington on November 16 to claim his commission, he was confronted with a determined crowd headed by the mayor and forced to resign immediately.

South Carolina provided a notable example of radical resistance to the Stamp Act. Its leader was the great statesman Christopher Gadsden of Charleston, a leader in the House and one of the wealthiest merchants in the colony. For his mass base, Gadsden, as in the case of Massachusetts and New York, relied on the small businessmen, the artisan-manufacturers of Charleston, the bulwark of the Sons of Liberty.

South Carolina’s appointed stamp distributor, Caleb Lloyd, arrived at Charleston on October 18, along with the stamped paper. Immediately, lamented Governor William Bull, “The minds of men... were... universally poisoned with the principles which were imbibed and propagated from Boston and Rhode Island....” The next day, the people erected a high gallows at the center of Charleston; hanging there was an effigy of Lloyd, with a devil effigy at one side and the symbol of a boot at the other. Written on the display were various mottoes and warnings, including “Liberty and no Stamp Act” and “Whoever shall dare attempt to pull down these effigies, had better been born with a stone about his neck, and cast into the sea.”

That evening the crowd took down the effigies, and two thousand people paraded them around town in a mock funeral procession. They arrived at the house of George Saxby, appointed inspector of stamps for the Carolinas and the Bermudas, and still on the high seas. The crowd searched the house but could find no telltale stamped papers, which had been placed at Fort Jackson. Over a hundred Sons of Liberty, however, stormed Fort Jackson and destroyed the papers. After burning the effigies and burying a coffin dubbed “American Liberty,” the crowd proceeded to search the houses of Tories and British officers for more stamped paper.

Caleb Lloyd fled for his life to Fort Johnson, and there he was joined by Saxby a week later. In Charleston, threats to the British officers and posters asserting the natural rights of the colonists filled the town. Finally, on October 29, under threat of death, Saxby and Lloyd agreed to suspend execution of their offices until Britain decided whether to enforce or repeal the stamp tax as a result of colonial protests.

By November 1, then, the popular liberals of the colonies had done their work well: not one stamp master remained ready, willing, or able to enforce the Stamp Act. Virtually all had either resigned or publicly pledged not to support the act. Only two ambiguities in status remained, and these were cleared up quickly. At his refuge in Flushing, New York, Zachariah Hood, the Maryland stamp distributor, was visited on November 28 by an angry crowd of three hundred Sons of Liberty from New York City carrying banners inscribed with the slogan “Liberty, Property and No Stamps.” Hood was persuaded to resign forthwith. The New York Liberty Boys were thanked for their effective work by the Sons of Liberty of Baltimore, who assured them that Hood had escaped “the just resentment of his injured countrymen.”

George Angus finally arrived to assume his post in Georgia on January 4. Spirited to the home of Governor James Wright, Angus distributed some paper to the customs officers. But within two weeks, angry crowds persuaded Angus to flee the country. Plans for a march of some six hundred men on Savannah induced the governor to send the stamped paper back to England on a British warship.

Thus, the ambiguities of stamp distribution in Maryland and Georgia were quickly resolved. The New York Sons of Liberty also exercised due vigilance in pursuing current and potential stamp masters. In late November, the Sons of Liberty of New York forced the retirement of Peter DeLancey from his post as inspector and distributor of stamps in Canada and Nova Scotia. A few days later, James McEvers was forced to repeat his public resignation as stamp distributor for New York. In early January, the Albany Liberty Boys warned prospective stamp distributors, and some four hundred of them pulled down the house of one such candidate, Henry Van Schaack. Van Schaack, seeing the handwriting on the wall, hurried to a Sons meeting the following day to promise never to accept the post of stamp master. He was duly cheered by the throng. And in Rhode Island, Augustus Johnston was again forced to resign as stamp distributor, at the end of December. When a little later the stamped papers arrived, the Sons of Liberty of Newport ceremonially burned the papers.