30. The Stamp Act Congress

The major effort of official protest was the Stamp Act Congress, called in June by the Massachusetts House at the behest of James Otis and the Boston Town Meeting. The congress, which met in New York City on October 7, consisted of delegates from each of the colonial assemblies—with the exception of those of Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia, whose governors prevented the assemblies from meeting, and of New Hampshire, which declined to attend. Delaware and New Jersey met the same obstruction from their governors, but their assemblymen defied the governor by meeting informally and selecting delegates anyway. All in all, twenty-seven delegates from nine colonies attended this early example of united intercolonial resistance.*

Massachusetts could have been expected to give the leadership to the congress, but its delegation consisted of trimmers and renegades to the colonial cause. Otis was in one of his conservative phases, having recently called for British troops to put down rebellion. Ruggles’ and Partridge’s election had been craftily engineered by Governor Bernard, and this manipulation paid off when Ruggles was chosen as chairman of the Stamp Act Congress. Ruggles had secretly agreed with Bernard to try to bend the congress to ask England for repeal solely on pragmatic economic grounds, and to recommend, in the meanwhile, passive submission to the Stamp Act.

Fortunately for colonial liberty, Ruggles was not able to prevent and cripple the movement for colonial resistance. The first struggle in the congress was waged over a declaration of principles, which occupied the delegates for twelve days. Over the bulk of the principles there was general agreement: the right to be taxed only by one’s own representatives; the impracticality of any American representation in Parliament; the inherent right of trial by jury; and the evils and invasions of rights committed by the Stamp Act. The big struggle was waged over the definition of the scope of Parliament’s authority over the colonies. All the delegates privately admitted that Parliament had the authority to regulate colonial trade, but the radical-liberals—led by Christopher Gadsden and Thomas Lynch of South Carolina—strongly objected to any explicit admission of parliamentary authority. Such admission might leave a loophole for implied consent to such external parliamentary taxation as the Sugar Act.

The first draft of the congress’s declaration, composed by Dickinson, pledged colonial obligation to “all acts of Parliament not inconsistent with the rights and liberties of the colonists.” But Gadsden insisted throughout on taking a stand on “the broad and common ground of those natural and inherent rights” that all Americans possessed, not only as Englishmen but as men. A second Dickinson draft then changed “rights and liberties of the colonists” to “the principles of freedom” in an attempt to appease the radicals. But here too the radicals saw that such phrasing would commit the colonists to obey all parliamentary legislation that did not violate principles that remained highly vague. The final wording, then, only committed the Americans to “all due subordination” to Parliament, which of course conceded nothing to England since the word “due” remained undefined.

This solution was bitterly opposed by the ultraconservatives in the delegation, especially by Ruggles, Robert Ogden, speaker of the New Jersey Assembly, William Samuel Johnson of Connecticut, and Robert R. Livingston of New York. Ruggles and Ogden, indeed, went to the length of refusing to sign any of the proceedings of the Stamp Act Congress.

The next step for the congress was to draw up petitions of protest to England, based on its declaration. Gadsden and the radicals urged that no petition be sent to Parliament, as this would imply an admission of parliamentary authority. But the others would not go that far, and Gadsden could be happy in knowing that the main radical point—no explicit admission of parliamentary authority—had been carried. The petitions were drawn up and approved in only four days. By late October, the Stamp Act Congress had been concluded. Every one of the colonial assemblies, even those that had been absent, hastened to approve the actions of the congress, and Ruggles and Ogden were censured by their respective assemblies for not going along. Ogden, furthermore, was burned in effigy in almost every town in New Jersey, and was forced to resign his seat in the Assembly. Only the Virginia House of Burgesses, prevented from meeting by the governor, could not meet to approve the congress’s resolves; but it had made its position clear months before.

It must be noted, however, that the radicals were not able to generate a call for open resistance by the congress. Rhode Island remained alone in this courageous stand. Nor was Gadsden able to carry, in the congress’s petition, a position grounded on natural human rights, rather than one confined to the mere rights of Britons. Of the colonial resolves, only the assemblies of Pennsylvania and Massachusetts expanded their groundwork to include these libertarian natural rights. Pennsylvania referred to “the Natural Rights of Mankind,” which later helped form the groundwork of Pennsylvania’s constitution.

By far the most eloquent statement of the natural-rights position was the Massachusetts Resolves of October 29. These logical and incisively libertarian resolutions were drawn up by Sam Adams, who had replaced Thacher in the Massachusetts Assembly. Squarely in the tradition of John Locke’s Essay on Civil Government, Adams began by explicitly grounding British rights on “the law of God and Nature, and on the common rights of mankind.” Therefore, Adams continued, the people of Massachusetts “are unalienably entitled to those essential rights in common with all men: and that no law of society can consistent with the law of God and Nature divest them of those rights.” Crucial to these natural and inalienable rights was the right of property: “Resolved, that no man can justly take the property of another without his consent.” And from this Adams presumed to derive the right of representation in levying taxes.

*The delegates to the Stamp Act Congress were as follows: Massachusetts: James Otis, Jr., Timothy Ruggles, and Oliver Partridge; Rhode Island: Henry Ward and Metcalf Bowler; Connecticut: Eliphalet Dyer, William Samuel Johnson, and David Rowland; New York: Robert R. Livingston, Philip Livingston, William Bayard, John Cruger, and Leonard Lispenard; New Jersey: Robert Ogden, Joseph Gordon, and Hendrick Fisher; Pennsylvania: John Dickinson, George Bryan, and John Morton; Delaware: Thomas McKean and Caesar Rodney; Maryland: Edward Tilghman, Thomas Ringgold, and William Murdock; South Carolina: Christopher Gadsden, Thomas Lynch, and John Rutledge.