med to hear the patriotic voice of
Patrick Henry, which had startled the House of Burgesses, echoing
throughout the land, and rousing one legislative body after another to
follow the example of that of Virginia. At the instigation of the
General Court or Assembly of Massachusetts, a Congress was held in New
York in October, composed of delegates from Massachusetts, Rhode
Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware,
Maryland, and South Carolina. In this they denounced the acts of
Parliament imposing taxes on them without their consent, and extending
the jurisdiction of the courts of admiralty, as violations of their
rights and liberties as natural born subjects of Great Britain, and
prepared an address to the king, and a petition to both Houses of
Parliament, praying for redress. Similar petitions were forwarded to
England by the colonies not represented in the Congress.

The very preparations for enforcing the stamp act called forth popular
tumults in various places. In Boston the stamp distributor was hanged
in effigy; his windows were broken; a house intended for a stamp
office was pulled down, and the effigy burnt in a bonfire made of the
fragments. In Virginia, Mr. George Mercer had been appointed
distributor of stamps, but on his arrival at Williamsburg publicly
declined officiating. It was a fresh triumph to the popular cause. The
bells were rung for joy; the town was illuminated, and Mercer was
hailed with acclamations of the people. The 1st of November, the day
when the act was to go into operation, was ushered in with portentous
solemnities. There was great tolling of bells and burning of effigies
in the New England colonies. At Boston the ships displayed their
colors but half-mast high. Many shops were shut; funeral knells
resounded from the steeples, and there was a grand auto-da-fe, in
which the promoters of the act were paraded, and suffered martyrdom in
effigy. At New York the printed act was carried about the streets on a
pole, surmounted by a death's head, with a scroll bearing the
inscription, "The folly of England and ruin of America."

These are specimens of the marks of popular reprobation with which the
stamp act was universally nullified. No one would venture to carry it
into execution. In fact no stamped paper was to be seen; all had been
either destroyed or concealed. All transactions which required stamps
to give them validity were suspended, or were executed by private
c