Gotham_ A History of New York City to 1898 - Edwin G. Burrows [163]
Parliament took no notice and in the spring of 1765 made good its threat to pass a Stamp Act. The measure taxed a broad range of paper and paper products sold in the colonies, and the revenues raised were to be paid into the royal treasury for the maintenance of British troops stationed in America—meaning, of course, a proportionate reduction in the flow of military appropriations from Britain that had boosted the colonial standard of living in the 1740s and 1750s.
The drive to reduce American dependence on British imports prompted Peter Curtenius and Company to build this iron foundry on the Hudson River in 1767. It produced kettles, pots, plows, and other items for the local market. In 1776 Curtenius contracted to make bayonets and muskets for local patriots. (© Collection of The New-York Historical Society)
More important, the Stamp Act put at risk the power and authority of every colonial political establishment by violating the old assumption that the inhabitants of America could be taxed only by representatives of their own choosing. Partly in response to Gage’s prompting, Parliament also adopted a Quartering Act that required civil authorities in the colonies to provide shelter and supplies for British troops. Never before had Parliament attempted to tax the colonies directly; never before had it ordered them to help pay imperial bills. To many colonists this was tantamount to slavery. Britain “will make Negroes of us all,” cried Robert R. Livingston.
By the summer of 1765 urban America was in an uproar. In New York, the Assembly agreed to host an emergency Stamp Act Congress in October for the purpose of coordinating colonial opposition. There was talk of refusing compliance with the Quartering Act on the grounds that it, like the Stamp Act, violated the ancient principle of no taxation without representation. What, after all, was the difference between a tax levied directly by Parliament and a parliamentary order that a colonial legislature spend money for one purpose or another?
RIOTOUS PROCEEDINGS
Mid-August brought word from Boston of a violent disturbance that forced the stamp distributor there to resign in fear of his life. James McEvers, a rich merchant who had accepted appointment as New York’s distributor, announced that he too would resign to avoid “the like treatment.” “My House would have been Pillag’d, my Person Abused and His Majestys Revenue Impair’d,” he advised Governor Golden. McEvers’s announcement was followed by reports of more trouble in Boston and the spread of rioting to Newport, Rhode Island. The stamp distributor from Maryland appeared at the gates of Fort George to tell how he had fled from a mob in that colony with just the clothes on his back.
Colden, now grasping what he and Parliament had wrought, began to prepare for the worst. He informed Gage that Fort George couldn’t be defended “in its present state, from a Mob, or from the Negroes”—an allusion, perhaps, to the events of 1741—and Gage obligingly sent down reinforcements from Crown Point. Major Thomas James, commander of the Fort George artillery, wheeled up new guns and positioned them on the walls to enfilade Broadway. Golden had the cannon on the Battery spiked to prevent their being turned against the fort, strengthened its gates, and had two frigates moved up to provide additional firepower if necessary. The more the truculent old governor prepared for trouble, however, the more it was said around town that he wanted trouble—and would get it if he tried to enforce the Stamp Act.
On October 7, 1765, twenty-seven delegates from nine colonies assembled at the City Hall for the long-awaited meeting of the Stamp Act Congress. Over the next eighteen days the Congress