[October 7th
marks the 250th anniversary of the convening of the
Stamp Act Congress, one of the most significant moments in
pre-Revolutionary American history. So this week I’ll highlight and
AmericanStudy three such pre-Revolution moments, including the Congress itself
on Wednesday. Leading up to a weekend post on some of the best scholars of this
period, past and present!]
On how the 1765
gathering anticipated the Continental Congress, and how it didn’t.
250 years ago
today, the Stamp Act Congress
(also known as the First Congress of the American Colonies) convened in New York’s
City Hall (known today as Federal
Hall). Composed of 27 elected delegates from nine British colonies,
including such famous figures as Massachusetts’ James Otis
and South
Carolina’s John Rutledge, the Congress met for two and a half weeks; by its
October 25th conclusion, it had drafted a Declaration
of Rights and Grievances (likely written by Pennsylvania delegate John
Dickenson, perhaps with the aid of New York delegate John Cruger) against the
Stamp Act, as well as a number of other petitions to King George III and
Parliament. Sent to England’s Lord Dartmouth (the colonial secretary, on whom
more in tomorrow’s post), these documents contributed both to rising tensions
between the colonies and England and to the eventual successful efforts (led by
England’s
Rockingham Ministry) to repeal the Stamp Act—a repeal passed concurrently,
however, with the 1766 Declaratory
Act, which granted Parliament “full power and authority to make laws to
bind the colonies in all cases whatsoever.”
Taken together,
the Stamp Act repeal and the Declaratory Act reflect the conflicts both within
England and between England and the colonies that would develop fully over the
subsequent pre-Revolutionary decade. Moreover, the Stamp Act Congress itself
can be seen as a direct predecessor and model for the Continental
Congress, the multi-year 1770s convention that embodied the colonies’ steps
toward the Revolution. A handful of the Stamp Act Congress delegates would go
on to serve in one or more of the Continental Congresses, the Declaration
of Rights and Grievances served as a primary model for the Declaration of
Independence produced by those Congresses, and the process of electing and
convening the Congress itself reflected perhaps the first (and certainly the
most impressive) such coordinated, colonies-wide political effort, one without
which the Continental Congresses might never have gotten off the ground at all.
That last point is perhaps the most easily overlooked: in an era when travel of
any kind was laborious and challenging, and when the individual colonies
existed far more separately than in our Revolutionary images of them as a
united community, the common cause of the Stamp Act Congress brought together
delegates from Massachusetts to South Carolina.
On the other
hand, those delegates did not remain in agreement over subsequent Revolutionary
events. Indeed, precisely as many delegates (five) as would go on to serve in
the Continental Congresses would become ardent Revolutionary-era
Loyalists, with one (New
York’s William Bayard) raising a regiment for the British Army during the
Revolution. Another delegate who seemed to support independence, Rhode
Island’s Metcalf Bowler, has subsequently been discovered to have served as
a British spy throughout the war. These individuals and stories reflect the
divided nature of the American political and social communities in this period,
but they also illustrate the danger in analyzing the Stamp Act Congress solely
as a predecessor to the Continental Congresses. Seen in retrospect, history can
seem all too inevitable, a natural procession toward subsequent moments and
events. Yet it’s vital in analyzing any one moment to recognize not only its own
specifics and complexities, but also the many possible futures toward which it
might have led. For these Loyalist delegates in particular, it’s fair to say
that the goal of the Stamp Act Congress might well have been to redress English
wrongs in such a way as to produce a more harmonious relationship between the
colonies and England—which would make the Declaration of Rights and Grievances
quite different from, if not indeed opposite to, the Declaration of Independence.
Next
pre-Revolutionary post tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Pre-Revolution moments you’d highlight?
No comments:
Post a Comment