Rag Linen | Online Museum of Historic Newspapers

Stamp duty. When these two words touched American soil in April 1764 — as a teaser of the internal tax coming after the Sugar Act — they set in motion a chain of events that forever altered the course of American history.  One ripple effect was the formation of the Sons of Liberty.

To some, Sons of Liberty was a generic label for any opponent of the stamp tax.  To others, including Pauline Maier, professor of American history at MIT and scholar of the American Revolution, it was an intercolonial network of organized resistance groups that eventually evolved from structured resistance into revolution.

As Maier wrote in From Resistance to Revolution (1992), “the idea of regularizing intercolonial cooperation against the Stamp Act sprang up independently in several widely separated colonies, but the most intense organizational effort began and remained centered in New York. It was there on either October 31 or November 6 [1765; the Stamp Act went into effect on November 1, 1765] that a meeting of some type appointed a committee to correspond with the other colonies.”

From November 1765 through March 1766, New York’s organized resistance aligned and opened communication channels with Philadelphia, New London, Boston, rural Massachusetts, Albany, Portsmouth, Newport, New Brunswick, Baltimore, Annapolis, Norfolk, etc.  According to Maier, by March  1766, the Sons of Liberty were an intercolonial network of great significance. “The emergence of organized local resistance groups and their often simultaneous merger into an intercolonial organization of a new type and significance began only in the closing months of 1765, and never really caught on until February 1766.”

To highlight the Sons’ early days of formal existence and cross-colonial communication, Rag Linen uncovered a few key colonial newspaper reports, which are pictured below (click images to enlarge). These pieces have also published as a permanent Rag Linen collection.

1. First row: Supplement to the Boston Gazette — January 27, 1766*
2. Second row: Boston Gazette – February 17, 1766**
3. Third row: Pennsylvania Gazette — March 20, 1766 (1)*** and Boston Gazette — May 21, 1770 (2, 3;  printed two and a half months after the Boston Massacre)****

*Featured in the first row are full-page pictures of the Supplement to the Boston Gazette for January 27, 1766, which include several exciting early details about the Sons of Liberty, such as their first meeting in Savannah, Georgia, at Machenry’s tavern.

**Of particular note is the third image in the second row from the February 17, 1766 Boston Gazette. Under the headline “Portsmouth, Feb 10″ is a report of the Sons’ letter from New York, Connecticut and Boston reaching New Hampshire.

***Another great clip is the first image of the third row from the March 20, 1766 Pennsylvania Gazette. Under the headline “Annapolis, March 6″ is a report of the inaugural Sons of Liberty meeting in the Maryland capital.

****The last image of the third row is from the May 21, 1770 Boston Gazette. It highlights a local meeting of the Daughters of Liberty.

If a finger had to be pointed at one person for causing the American Revolutionary War, a strong case can be made for pointing it at Thomas Hutchinson.

According to the Origins of the American Revolution by Andrew Stephen Walmsley (1999):

Rarely in American history has a political figure been so pilloried and despised by his contemporaries as Thomas Hutchinson… Vilified, stigmatized, and ridiculed, he eventually became the pre-eminent bete noire or scapegoat of America’s most vigorous radical activists. By 1774 he was arguably the most unpopular man in North America. His name had become synonymous in the popular imagination with detested loyalism, hated toryism and treason… One of the greatest challenges to confront Massachusetts’ radicals throughout the years of imperial crisis was to develop an effective formula for ousting Hutchinson. Without him as their foil, Boston’s radicals would have had a far more difficult time engineering the crisis that produced the Revolution.

The Hutchinson letters affair was one of the most famous controversies tied to Hutchinson, as well as Benjamin Franklin. The Hutchinson letters that Franklin leaked to his friend in Boston were eventually published in June 1773 in the Boston Gazette. Likely used as war propaganda, the New-England Chronicle republished the Hutchinson letters in June and July of 1775 — click here to read some of the Thomas Hutchinson letters printed in the June 29 to July 6, 1775 issue of the New-England Chronicle.

Equally interesting about the Hutchinson letters affair is the Benjamin Franklin confession (but no apology).  According to Walter Isaacson’s biography on Franklin:

In December, two men engaged in an inconclusive duel in Hyde Park after one accused the other of leaking the letters.  When a rematch seemed imminent, Franklin felt he had to step forward… he wrote… a letter to the London Chronicle on Christmas Day (published December 27). But he did not apologize.

Franklin’s public confession led to his appearance before the Privy Council, which many historians point to as the moment when Franklin officially stopped supporting Britain and became an American revolutionary.

Below is Benjamin Franklin’s public confession to leaking the Hutchinson letters as published in the March 7, 1774 Boston Gazette.

In 18th century media, long before the days of 140-character advertising (i.e., Twitter), copywriting was less of an art and more of a science. Does this advertisement from the May 10, 1764 issue of Benjamin Franklin’s Pennsylvania Gazette make you want to pick up some Benjamin Jackson Mustard and Chocolate? Click the image to enlarge.

On April 16, 1763, King George III appointed George Grenville First Lord of the Treasury, or Prime Minister, of Great Britain — the second of four different prime ministers appointed by George III between 1762 and 1766. During the 18th century, the title First Lord of the Treasury was often preferred to Prime Minister.

Grenville was immediately confronted with serious economical challenges, including a national debt that almost doubled during the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763).

Parliament anticipated the debt increasing with the ongoing defense of American colonial interests so new revenue sources were needed, and fast.

On March 9, 1764, Grenville presented his new national budget, which proposed the Sugar Act and served as the official Stamp Act teaser of what was heading to the colonies a year later. According to The Glorious Cause by Robert Middlekauff (2005):

“While the colonists conducted operations against the duties on molasses, the most thoughtful among them worried about the possibility that still another tax would be levied on America. They owed the worry to George Grenville, who on March 9, 1764, the day he introduced the proposals for the new molasses duties, warned that to meet the national expenses ‘it may be proper to charge certain Stamp Duties in the said Colonies and Plantations.’”

The external taxing of the Sugar Act and internal taxing of the Stamp Act were both aimed at raising revenue from America, but the Stamp Act was unlike any other legislation that previously affected the colonies.  Learning of the Stamp Act in 1764 as the first internal tax likely to be levied within the colonies, fueled the fire of revolution.  Colonists understood its certain widespread impact on the local economies, and many were familiar with or had already experienced similar stamp taxes in England.

After Grenville announced his plans on March 9, 1764, it wasn’t long before the bundled news of taxation, including the Stamp Act teaser, reached the American shores. Benjamin Franklin’s Pennsylvania Gazette first reported a “Scheme of Taxation of the American Colonies” in its May 10, 1764 issue:

“That it had been previously debated in the Parliament, whether they had Power to lay such a Tax on Colonies which had no Representatives in Parliament, and determined in the Affirmative: That on the Ninth of March Mr. [Grenville] made a long Harrangue on the melancholy State of the Nation, overloaded with heavy Taxes, and a Debt of 146 Millions, 52 Millions of which had arisen in the four last Years… To raise this Sum, he proposed that the Drawbacks on Re-exportation of particular Goods should be discontinued: That a Duty be laid… of 10 s. per Hundred on Sugars… Besides this, an internal Tax was proposed, a Stamp Duty, etc. but many Members warmly opposing it, this was deferred till next Session; but it was feared that the Tax upon foreign Goods would pass into a Law this Session.”

Franklin, whose Pennsylvania Gazette published the above report, has a unique history with the Stamp Act. During the summer of 1764, Franklin sailed to London to condemn the act and Great Britain’s taxation scheme.

“But when he arrived he found that the grinding at the mills of government was going on much too evenly to be disturbed by the introduction of any such insignificant foreign substance as a colonial protest,” according Benjamin Franklin by John Torrey Morse (1898).

In a letter to a Philadelphia friend (that was eventually made public), Franklin expressed sentiments of moderation or compliance with the Stamp Act when he wrote “We might well have hindered the sun’s setting. That we could not do. But since its down, my friend, and it may be long before it rises again, let us make as good a night of it as we can. We may still light candles.”

With these words, Franklin soon experienced one of his biggest PR nightmares as his reaction was strongly contradicted by the colonists’ response of resentment and revolt. And nightmare quickly escalated into crisis.

Franklin’s printing partner, David Hall, sent a warning to Franklin in London and expressed concern for his safety should he return soon: “The spirit of the people is so violently against everyone they think has the least concern with the Stamp law.”

According to Walter Isaacson’s Benjamin Franklin biography, the frenzy climaxed in late September 1765  — a full month before the Stamp Act went into effect — when an angry anti-tax mob attempted to destroy Franklin’s new home. The mob was deterred by a group of supporters known as the White Oak Boys.

By mid 1766, Franklin’s reputation was fully restored in America after colonists learned that Franklin played an integral role in convincing Parliament to repeal of the Stamp Act.