Desperate Sons

by Les Standiford

  Grenville nodded as if he took the suggestion seriously, then glanced around the room. “Can you,” he asked, “agree on the proportions each colony should raise?”

  There was an uncomfortable silence before Grenville gave an “I thought not” nod. The meeting was at an end.

  On February 6, 1765, Grenville introduced the Stamp Bill in Parliament, where the House of Commons passed it by a vote of 245 to 49 on February 17. The House of Lords added its unanimous approval on March 8, and on March 22, King George III decreed that on November 1 would take effect the following: “AN ACT for granting and applying certain stamp duties, and other duties, in the British colonies and plantations in America, towards further defraying the expenses of defending, protecting, and securing the same.”

  Among its fifty-five provisions, the bill established a duty of anywhere from 3 pence to 20 shillings on virtually every legal document in common use. A will, for instance, was to be taxed at 6 pence, and a diploma was taxed at £2. As previously mentioned, it is difficult to give a modern equivalent of the sums (there are 12 pence in a shilling and 20 shillings to a pound)—and another of the prevailing economic issues plaguing trade relationships with the colonies was the lack of a standard currency on the westward side of the Atlantic. But the eventual establishment of the American dollar and of the exchange rate that prevailed more or less steadily for much of the next two centuries provides something of a measure: while some of the fees could be measured in pennies, the prospect of a tax of roughly $10, at base rate, on one’s college diploma in 1764 would not have seemed insignificant.

  A license to sell liquor would cost 10 shillings, while one to trade in wine was £4. Any grant or license requiring the signature of a governor, colony proprietor, or public governing body was to cost £6. Rates for contracts of employment, deeds, land surveys, secured notes, and audits were also carefully laid out, and provision number 41 attempted to lay claim to anything inadvertently overlooked: “For every skin or piece of vellum or parchment, or sheet or piece of paper, on which shall be engrossed, written, or printed, any register, entry, or enrollment of any grant, deed, or other instrument whatsoever, not herein before charged, within the said colonies and plantations, a stamp duty of two shillings.”

  Also liable to the tax were playing cards (1 shilling), dice (10 shillings), broadsides (a penny), newspapers and pamphlets (1 shilling), and advertisements in those papers and pamphlets (2 shillings). Almanacs and calendars would be taxed at 2 to 4 pence depending on their length, and any documents published in a foreign language would be assessed at twice the rate of those composed in the king’s tongue. Even documents of apprenticeship would be taxed, at 6 pence for every 20 shillings offered for the post.

  The process was to be overseen by the commissioners responsible for collecting similar taxes in England, though deputies responsible for collecting the duties would have to be appointed throughout the colonies. The act stipulated that all monies would be deposited into a distinct account maintained by the chancellor of the Exchequer, and that they “shall be there reserved to be from time to time disposed of by Parliament, towards further defraying the necessary expenses of defending, protecting, and securing, the said colonies and plantations.”

  If a colonist were not dismayed by the very length and breadth of the listings, the final codicil would clarify the gravity of the matter: any “offenses” relating to the legislation would be “prosecuted, sued for, and recovered, in any court of record, or in any court of admiralty, in the respective colony or plantation where the offense shall be committed, or in any court of vice admiralty appointed or to be appointed, and which shall have jurisdiction within such colony, plantation, or place.” In other words, the provisions of the Stamp Act were not suggestions—violators could be hauled into courts administered not by locals but by the Crown.

  As noted, it was not as if there had been no “taxes” levied on colonists before. Local assemblies assessed various fees as a means of raising revenues for law enforcement, firefighting, road building, and other governmental activities. In his extended study of the Sons of Liberty in Charleston, historian Richard Walsh points out that Charlestonians felt that they, for one, were simply taxed out: in that colony, for instance, residents paid a tax of 35 shillings for each slave; 17½ shillings per hundred pounds’ value on lots, wharves, and buildings; 17½ shillings per hundred pounds on interest-bearing notes; 17½ shillings per hundred pounds on profits from professional activities, manufacturing, and trade; and on and on. The Stamp Act added especially to the burden of attorneys, but also to that of anyone doing business handled by an attorney. It also seriously affected skilled labor, with the taxes on apprenticeship agreements amounting to more than half the weekly wage for an average master craftsman. The most galling feature of the Stamp Act, however, was that it had originated not in local government but in Parliament.

  While a liberal-minded Congregationalist minister named Jonathan Mayhew is sometimes credited with having decried the practice of “taxation without representation” in a noted sermon published in 1750, the truth is a bit more complicated. In his Discourse Concerning Unlimited Submission and Non-Resistance to the Higher Powers, Mayhew does lay out a compelling justification for civil disobedience, but the main point of that sermon was to justify the execution of King Charles I by the Puritans a hundred years or so before. As close as Mayhew got to the issue of “taxation” in his 1750 address was a complaint that Charles I had “levied many taxes upon the people without consent of parliament.”

  One dedicated blog writer and historian (J. L. Bell, Boston 1775) cites the first literal colonist’s use of the phrase as occurring in a pamphlet—An Humble Enquiry into the Nature of the Dependencies of the American Colonies—published by a Savannah minister named John Joachim Zubly in 1769: “In England there can be no taxation without representation, and no representation without election; but it is undeniable that the representatives of Great-Britain are not elected by nor for the Americans, and therefore cannot represent them.”

  However, the concept of the basic unfairness of being taxed without the consent of one’s elected representatives had certainly been eloquently expressed by the Boston assemblyman and attorney James Otis, Jr., as early as 1764 in a pamphlet of protest, The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved. Otis framed his argument by asking, “Can there be any liberty where property is taken away without consent?” Then he began his answer with a second question: “Is there the least difference as to the consent of the colonists whether taxes and impositions are laid on their trade and other property by the crown alone or by the Parliament?”

  For Otis, it was a simple matter, though he made his case with passion: “I can see no reason to doubt but the imposition of taxes, whether on trade, or on land, or houses, or ships, on real or personal, fixed or floating property, in the colonies is absolutely irreconcilable with the rights of the colonists as British subjects and as men . . . for in a state of nature no man can take my property from me without my consent: if he does, he deprives me of my liberty and makes me a slave. If such a proceeding is a breach of the law of nature, no law of society can make it just. The very act of taxing exercised over those who are not represented [emphasis added] appears to me to be depriving them of one of their most essential rights as freemen, and if continued seems to be in effect an entire disfranchisement of every civil right.”

  It was in essence the same complaint that Irishmen were voicing about their treatment by the British for a century, but the modern reader can see a certain ingenuousness in the tenor of Otis’s prose. “His Majesty George III is rightful King and sovereign, and, with his Parliament, the supreme legislative of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, and the dominions thereto belonging; that this constitution is the most free one and by far the best now existing on earth; that by this constitution every man in the dominions is a free man; that no parts of His Majesty’s dominions can be taxed without their consent [emphasis added]; that every part has a rig
ht to be represented in the supreme or some subordinate legislature; [and] that the refusal of this would seem to be a contradiction in practice to the theory of the constitution.”

  How could anyone fault such logic? The reader might be forgiven for asking in the wake of Otis’s stirring statement. And in truth, there were quite a few in the colonies who found the argument compelling, even if Otis himself stopped short of advising outright rebellion at the time. Even if the prospect of stamp taxes was unjust, Otis counseled moderation: “As it is agreed on all hands the crown alone cannot impose them, we should be justifiable in refusing to pay them, but must and ought to yield obedience to an act of Parliament, though erroneous, till repealed.”

  If Otis was calling for colonists to boycott the tax, however, shortly after the act’s passage the British were taking steps to see that the desperately needed funds would in fact begin flowing into the national coffers. Even Benjamin Franklin miscalculated the depth of passions loosed in the colonies, it seemed, for he went so far as to nominate a Philadelphia friend, John Hughes, to serve as stamps distributor for Pennsylvania. It was only when word reached Franklin that an angry mob had surrounded Hughes to prevent him from assuming his duties and another had marched on Franklin’s own home, threatening to burn it down, that the envoy began to understand that a profound shift in Anglo-American affairs had taken place.

  Further proof that a tipping point had been reached came in the form of the widespread and independent nature of actions taken to protest the tax. News did not travel to, from, or through the colonies at the speed of light as it does today, of course. It could take six to eight weeks for a ship to carry mail and newspapers the five thousand miles from London to Boston (it was Franklin, ironically, who first called popular attention to the fact of the Gulf Stream, which could retard a westward-bound ship by as many as two extra weeks). And it took the better part of a week to travel the 250 miles from Boston to New York by land (though only two days by sea).

  Colonial legislatures were convened once a year and for limited periods for very practical reasons. Travel was not so much broadening in those days as it was deadening. Roads were rutted and either dust-plagued or mud-mired in summer; in winter most were simply impassable. For that very reason, every major city that developed in the colonies was a seaport, and nine out of ten colonists lived within fifty miles of the Atlantic.

  Albany itself had come into existence because of its place on the navigable portion of the Hudson River. As a gateway for the lucrative fur trade between the port of New York and the western frontier, Albany was serviced largely by a fleet of single-masted wooden sloops that generally took two or three days to travel the 135 miles or so between the two cities. There was no real hurry and no such thing as regularly scheduled passenger service, though many of the boats did have staterooms and could accommodate as many as thirty-five or forty in addition to the crew. A ship, however, sailed when its cargo hold was full and when there was a reasonable expectation that there would be some set of goods waiting to be loaded up at the other end. “Information transfer” was important, of course, but it was a decidedly secondary consideration under ordinary circumstances.

  In the Albany of January 1766, things had indeed begun to trend away from the ordinary, but it was a fact of which the newly appointed stamp deputy Henry Van Schaack was only dimly aware as he was ushered into that steaming tavern on a dark night shortly after the arrival of the New Year.

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  The Sons Are Born

  When John Lansing, the spokesman for the gathering, angrily accused Van Schaack of having sought appointment as the local tax collector for Parliament, the postmaster tried to talk his way out of it: “I assured them that I never had made any Such application, and begged they would do me the justice and let me know who was my informer that I might clear myself upon the spot.”

  But it was to no avail. In response, John Vishher, a member of the crowd, stepped forward with a demand. It was all well and good that Van Schaack swore he had not sought the despised position. If that was his claim, then so be it.

  All that the group wanted from him on this night was his solemn oath that he would never take the job. The reasoning of the assembly was simple: if they identified the members of the Albany citizenry who were even remotely qualified for the post of tax collector and “convinced” each of them to pledge not to accept the appointment, how could the Stamp Tax ever function?

  In fact, four stalwarts of Albany—men well known to Van Schaack—had already applied for the position, but after consultation with the group that Van Schaack now faced, each had decided to remove himself from consideration. In Van Schaack, however, the group confronted an individual whose stubbornness and sense of independence would prove as strong as their own. Of course, he might have reasoned that signing such a public oath might also result in the loss of his other public position as postmaster, but hardheadedness and individuality were the hallmarks of many a man who left the confines of the highly stratified and static social system in Europe for the relative freedom of life in the American colonies.

  “I attempted Several times to argue with those people about the unreasonableness of their demand,” Van Schaack said, “but all to no purpose.”

  As a result, and in the words of one commentator, “Thereupon trouble ensued.”

  “Finding myself Surrounded by a Set of Men unable to reason and Determined upon measures against me that appeared illegal, unconstitutional and oppressive, I resolved to leave the room,” said Van Schaack. But as he turned to go, John Vishher caught him by his sleeve.

  By God, he would sign an oath never to serve as tax collector, Vishher told Van Schaack, or he would not leave the room.

  “Has every man among you signed such an oath?” Van Schaack shouted back, wresting himself free from Vishher. “Has every Freeholder in Albany done so?”

  There was an uneasy silence in answer to Van Schaack’s bold questions. “I’ve sworn to you that I have not sought this position,” he repeated, “and that’s all you’ll get from me.”

  Faced with the sort of bravado that prompted them along their own collision course with authority, the group seemed to relent. The group’s leader, Lansing, motioned for Vishher to step out of Van Schaack’s path, and the postmaster took his leave.

  It was hardly the end of the matter, however. As soon as he left Williams’s Inn, Van Schaack went to the home of his friend and counselor Richard Cartwright, where he set down his declarations to the ad hoc assembly in writing: he had never sought the post of tax collector in Albany, he repeated, but he thought it particularly unjust of the group to demand that he remove himself from consideration for a post that any of them were perfectly free to accept.

  Though the message was delivered, Van Schaack’s appeals to the group’s sense of justice produced little effect. As a reporter for the New York Mercury put it, the group answered Van Schaack that they could no longer regard him as “on equal footing with themselves,” for his refusal to disqualify himself “argued with some Degree of Inclination, the minutest Part of which was utterly inconsistent with their Sense of Liberty, and utter Abhorrence of any Post how profitable soever, so subversive of the very Foundation of human Happiness.”

  Van Schaack was resolute, however. “I had no notion that a Mob or any druncken Set of men had a right to make me Swear in that illegal way,” he said, and made his way on home.

  On Sunday morning, a friend came by Van Schaack’s house to let him know that he had overhead some disturbing talk: some of those who had been in attendance at Williams’s Inn the night before were not about to let the matter of Van Schaack’s refusal rest. What he heard next led Van Schaack to write out a petition to the city’s mayor in which he described the events of the previous evening and stated his fears that certain of the men who had confronted him now planned to “assemble to destroy me and my property.” Van Schaack added the names of at least thirty of the individuals who had been arrayed against him the night before, a
nd delivered his document, pleading for protection, to the mayor’s home late Sunday evening.

  For his part, Mayor Volkert Douw agreed to call the city’s magistrates to a hearing on the matter on Monday afternoon, January 6. There Van Schaack repeated the demands of the assembly at Williams’s and also reiterated his claim that he had never thought of applying for the post of tax collector.

  The magistrates listened patiently, conferred among themselves, then turned to ask Van Schaack a question: since he had stated that he had never applied for this post and claimed that he never had intended to apply for it, what would be the harm in simply adding that he never would?

  By now, staring at these magistrates with surnames such as Ten Eyck and Ten Broeck, Switts and Lansing, and others identical with those of the mob he had confronted at Williams’s on Saturday night, Van Schaack was surely getting the picture. Still he was resolute: he would sign any oath or lawful instrument that all of his fellow citizens agreed to sign, and that was all.

  The magistrates took this in; then one leaned forward to ask, “Just what sort of protection do you expect from us, Van Schaack?”

  The protection afforded any citizen by the law, Van Schaack answered. After a glance at his pocket watch, he closed with the observation that the very people who had threatened him were likely meeting at that moment at the inn of Thomas Williams “& that it was probable they would in that meeting fall upon measures for my destruction.”

  According to Van Schaack, he had no doubt that the magistrates, now that he had warned them, would put a stop to any attempts upon his person or his property. “So fully was I convinced of this that I spent that evening abroad,” he would say later.