mar 22, 1765 - Road to Revolution Stamp Act

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The Stamp Act of 1765 was the first tax directly taken on American colonists by the British government. The act, which imposed a tax on all paper documents in the colonies on March 22, 1765, came at a time when the British Empire was deep in debt from the Seven Years’ War and looking to its North American colonies as a revenue source. Arguing that only their own representative assemblies could tax them, the colonists insisted that the act was unconstitutional, and they resorted to mob violence to intimidate stamp collectors into resigning. Parliament repealed the Stamp Act in 1766, but issued a Declaratory Act at the same time to reaffirm its authority to pass any colonial legislation it saw fit. The issues of taxation and representation raised by the Stamp Act continued to strain relations between the colonists and the British.

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