The Stamp Act and the Duxbury Town Meeting

An Independence Day Post

[Dear Readers: I have been working on a number of long articles that are nearly done, from which various duties have distracted me — so I do apologize for that, and mea culpa; however, rather than publish them now, and in honor of the holiday, I thought I would include an excerpt from my doctoral dissertation on a relatively neglected aspect of the Revolution, its opening act — the Stamp Act Crisis, here in Plymouth County, with a few words added to set the scene]:

The Stamp Act, passed by the British Parliament in 1765, put a small duty on all kinds of documents — newspapers, legal documents, even playing cards — that would have been considered minor in Britain, given relatively high levels of taxation in the 18th century, to defray both the vast cost of the Seven Years War (the French and Indian War in the Colonies), and the expenses associated with the maintenance of a military establishment in North America to protect both the 13 original colonies, and the territories newly conquered from France, from Quebec to Illinois and beyond.