U.S. History

Chapter 6: Conflicts in the ColoniesSection 3: Trouble over Colonists’ Rights

Raising Taxes

George Grenville: prime minister who decided to tax colonists to pay for debts from the French &

Indian War

Raising Taxes

•Sugar Act:

–Duties on molasses & sugar imported by colonists

–Law intended to raise money in the colonies

Raising Taxes

•Vice-admiralty courts granted greater powers:

–No jury trials

–Guilty until proven innocent

Taxation without Representation

“The supreme power cannot take from any man any part of his property, without his consent in person or by representation. “

--Samuel Otis, The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Provided, 1764

Taxation without Representation

“The very act of taxing, exercised over those who are not represented, 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. “

--Samuel Otis, The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Provided, 1764

Taxation without Representation

• Samuel Adams: person whose ideas helped inspire the slogan “No taxation without representation.”

Samuel Adams

Taxation without Representation

Committees of Correspondence: shared ideas & information with groups in other colonial

towns about British laws & ways to challenge them

Taxation without Representation

•Boycott—refusal to buy certain goods

The Stamp Act

•1765: Grenville proposes the Stamp Tax as an alternate tax planStamp Act stamp

The Stamp Act

Embossed Stamp

The Stamp Act

Sons of Liberty: used violent

means to stop tax collection

The Stamp Act

•Patrick Henry: presented resolutions to the House of Burgesses suggesting the Stamp Act was unjust

Patrick Henry

"Caesar had his Brutus, Charles the First his

Cromwell, and George the Third…”

--Patrick Henry

“TREASON!”

“If this be treason, make the most of

it." --Patrick Henry

Repealing the Stamp Act

•October 1765: Stamp Act Congress convenes

•British merchants hurt boycott & urge repeal

Repealing the Stamp Act

•1766: Stamp Act repealed

•Declaratory Act issued

Repealing the Stamp Act

…the said colonies and plantations in America have been, are, and of right ought to be,

subordinate unto, and dependent upon the imperial crown and Parliament of Great Britain;

and…Parliament…hath…full power and authority to make laws and statutes of sufficient force and

validity to bind the colonies and people of America, subjects of the crown of Great Britain, in

all cases whatsoever.

--Declaratory Act, 1764

Reasons for Taxation

British Tax Laws

Colonial Response

1.

2.