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Quartering Act

In 1763, the French and Indian War ended with two important outcomes: a British victory over their traditional enemy France and an equally tremendous British debt.

At the time, the British government decided to keep a standing (permanent) army in North America. Although the mission of the peacetime army was not clearly defined, it seemed to be a combination of defending newly acquired Canada and Florida and managing Indian affairs.

One of the major problems for the British in dealing with a far-flung, enormous empire wasn’t just the issues of defense (fighting off opposing armies, Native American raids, and so forth), but the administrative issues that defense brought up, such as housing soldiers.

Housing and feeding a group of several hundred or even a few thousand soldiers was a difficult and costly proposition.

General Thomas Gage, the new British commander-in-chief, recommended that Parliament pass a quartering law for the colonies.  The Quartering Act of 1765 directed colonial governors and their councils to hire inns and vacant buildings as quarters for soldiers when regular barracks were unavailable.

The law also required colonial governments to furnish the soldiers with firewood, bedding, candles, salt, vinegar, cooking utensils plus a daily ration of beer, cider, or rum. Furthermore, the Quartering Act authorized innkeepers to feed the soldiers at the colonies’ expense.

Contrary to popular belief, the Quartering Act of 1765 did not require that colonists shelter soldiers in their private homes.

The act did require colonial governments to provide and pay for feeding and sheltering any troops stationed in their colony.  If enough barracks were not made available, then soldiers could be housed in inns, stables, outbuildings, uninhabited houses, or private homes that sold wine or alcohol.

Nevertheless many American colonists saw the Quartering Act as one more way Parliament was attempting to tax them without their consent. Others suspected that the real purpose of keeping a small standing army in America – stationed in coastal cities, not on the frontier – was not for defense, but to enforce new British policies and taxes.

Americans saw the Quartering Act of 1765 as an attempt to force the colonists to pay for a standing army that they did not want. When Parliament was forced to repeal the hated Stamp Act in 1766, Massachusetts’ radical leader, Sam Adams, pointedly asked, “Is not [the Quartering Act] taxing the Colonies as effectively as the Stamp Act?”

The Quartering Act did become a divisive issue in 1766, after 1,500 British soldiers disembarked at New York City.

The New York Provincial Assembly refused to provide funds to cover the costs of feeding and housing these men as required by the law. In response, the British Parliament voted to suspend the Provincial Assembly until it complied with the act.

As it turned out, the suspension was never put into effect since the New York Assembly later agreed to allocate revenue to cover some of the costs of quartering these troops. The Quartering Act of 1765 was largely circumvented by most colonies during the years before the Revolution.

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Stamp Act

The French and Indian War had been enormously expensive and left Great Britain with a heavy debt.  And, the expense of protecting the English possessions in America seemed likely to increase rather than diminish.

The war and the British government’s attempts to impose taxes on colonists to help cover these expenses resulted in increasing colonial resentment of British attempts to expand imperial authority in the colonies.

One of the early taxes to be imposed was the Stamp Act.  Its title and text noted it was, 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 …

Then, a long list of items related to “every skin or piece of vellum or parchment, or sheet or piece of paper, on which shall be ingrossed, written or printed  within such British Colonies .. [shall pay] a stamp duty …”

Effectively, the Act required the colonists to pay a tax, represented by a stamp.  Included under the act were bonds, licenses, certificates, and other official documents as well as more mundane items such as plain parchment and playing cards.  It imposed a tax on all papers and official documents in the American colonies, though not in England.

It was a direct tax imposed by the British government without the approval of the colonial legislatures and was payable in hard-to-obtain British sterling, rather than colonial currency.

Further, those accused of violating the Stamp Act could be prosecuted in Vice-Admiralty Courts, which had no juries and could be held anywhere in the British Empire. (Gilder-Lehrman Institute of American History)

With the passing of the Stamp Act, the colonists’ grumbling finally became an articulated response to what they saw as the mother country’s attempt to undermine their economic strength and independence.

They raised the issue of taxation without representation, and formed societies throughout the colonies to rally against the British government and nobles who sought to exploit the colonies as a source of revenue and raw materials.

In October 1765, delegates from the colonies convened in New York City at the Stamp Act Congress, where they drew up formal petitions to the British Parliament and to King George III to repeal the act. It was the first unified colonial response to British policy and it provided the British a taste of what would come soon thereafter.

The British had been receiving reports of mob violence in the colonies, and Prime Minister Grenville had been replaced by Lord Rockingham, who proved more sympathetic than his predecessor to the colonists’ demands. (Khan Academy)

The colonists also took exception with the provision denying offenders trials by jury. A vocal minority hinted at dark designs behind the Stamp Act. These radical voices warned that the tax was part of a gradual plot to deprive the colonists of their freedoms and to enslave them beneath a tyrannical regime.

By October of that year, nine of the 13 colonies sent representatives to the Stamp Act Congress, at which the colonists drafted the “Declaration of Rights and Grievances,” a document that railed against the autocratic policies of the mercantilist British empire.

Realizing that it actually cost more to enforce the Stamp Act in the protesting colonies than it did to abolish it, the British government repealed the tax the following year.   (History-com)

Click to access Stamp-Act.pdf

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Currency Act

The paper money issued by the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1690 was the first authorized by any government in the Western world.  The Massachusetts Bay Colony financed a military expedition to Canada in 1690 by issuing bills of credit.

Over time, each of the thirteen colonies’ governments had emitted their own currency issues, although Great Britain opposed and tried to suppress them.  Subsequent military campaigns and other expenses by other Colonies were funded with these bills.  In all cases, they were a financial expedient adopted to cover a lack of funds by promising to “pay later.” (American Numismatic Society)

The French and Indian War represented the decisive turning point in British-colonial relations. The Treaty of Paris in 1763 ratified Britain’s undisputed control of the seas and shipping trade, as well as its sovereignty over much of the North American continent east of the Mississippi River, including French Canada.

The British Government had borrowed heavily from British and Dutch bankers to finance the war, and as a consequence the national debt almost doubled from £75 million in 1754 to £133 million in 1763. In order to address this onerous liability, British officials turned to larger import duties on enumerated goods like sugar and tobacco, along with a series of high excise (sales) taxes on goods such as salt, beer, and spirits.

This taxation strategy tended to burden consumers disproportionately. In addition, government bureaucracy expanded in order to collect the needed revenue. As the number of royal officials more than doubled, Parliament delegated new legal and administrative authority to them. Thus, even as British subjects lauded their pre-eminent position in the world, they chafed under the weight of increased debts and tightened government controls.

In 1764, Parliament passed the Currency Act, which banned the use of paper money as legal tender in all colonies. (This effectively took the prohibition of issuance of new bills of credit that had been imposed on New England colonies: Rhode Island, Massachusetts Bay, New Hampshire and Connecticut and extended that prohibition to all of the colonies.)

British merchants had asked for relief from the depreciated currency brought about by deficit financing in Virginia.  It was argued that Parliament sought to control currency depreciation against silver and sterling and to ensure its value for payments of debt to British merchants.   The Act represented an effort to take control of monetary policy from colonial assemblies.

The colonies faced a chronic shortage of hard money, which was being sent across the Atlantic to pay debts in England. To meet the shortage, they resorted to issuing their own paper money. British creditors, however, feared payment in such a depreciated currency.  (JD Lewis)

To protect British merchants and creditors from depreciated colonial currency, this act regulated currency, abolishing the colonies’ paper currency in favor of a system based on the pound sterling.

Effect of the Currency Act

As a result, the colonies suffered a constant shortage of currency with which to conduct trade. There were no gold or silver mines and currency could only be obtained through trade as regulated by Great Britain.

  • The Act banned colonial paper money as legal tender in private transactions.
  • Colonial paper money was accepted for public debt payments such as provincial taxes.
  • It prohibited the extension of paper bills beyond its date of redemption.
  • The Currency Act did not place limits on the amount of paper money in circulation and on the period of redemption.

Opposition to the 1764 Currency Act started immediately. Colonial governments petitioned its repeal as the postwar economic slowdown was being felt in most colonies.

In 1770 Parliament revised the Act and allowed New York to issue bills as legal tender for all types of debt. In 1773 parliament allowed colonial legislatures to print bills to cover costs and to be used as legal tender.

Click to access Currency-Act.pdf

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Sugar Act

In 1760, twenty-two-year-old monarch George III ascended the throne of England. The French and Indian War (Seven Year War) that had stretched on for years and encircled the globe finally ended in 1763, with the signing of the Treaty of Paris by France, Great Britain and Spain.

France lost all claims to Canada and gave Louisiana to Spain, while Britain received Spanish Florida, Upper Canada, and various French holdings overseas. The treaty ensured the colonial and maritime supremacy of Britain and strengthened the 13 American colonies by removing their European rivals to the north and the south.

Colonists were proud of their role in defeating the French, but England was faced with a vast territory to safeguard and a soaring debt.

In 1764, George Grenville, First Lord of the Treasury, proposed to strengthen Britain’s hold on its American investment. Addressing the King in his declaration of intent, Grenville argued that,

“Whereas it is expedient that new provisions and regulations should be established for improving the revenue of this Kingdom, and for extending and securing the navigation and commerce between Great Britain and your Majesty’s dominions in America, which, by the peace, have been so happily enlarged and:

“whereas it is just and necessary, that a revenue be raised, in your Majesty’s said dominions in America, for defraying the expences of defending, protecting, and securing the same.”

“We your Majesty’s most dutiful and loyal subjects, the commons of Great Britain, in parliament assembled, being desirous to make some provision in this present session of parliament, towards the said revenue in America, have resolved to give and grant unto your Majesty the several rates and duties herein after mentioned;”

“and do most humbly beseech your Majesty, that it may be enacted; and be it enacted …, That from and after the twenty ninth day of September, one thousand seven hundred and sixty four, there shall be raised, levied, collected, and paid, unto his Majesty …,”

“for and upon all white or clayed sugars of the produce or manufacture of any colony or plantation in America, not under the dominion of his Majesty …; for and upon indico, and coffee of foreign produce or manufacture; for and upon all wines (except French wine  …)

The colonies have already been mired in a post-war depression.

In Boston, town meeting (the local government) carefully considered the Sugar Act (also called Plantation Act or Revenue Act). “We . . . declare our just expectations,” Bostonians announce, as they assert their rights and advise their representatives to the Massachusetts legislature to stand firm for traditional prerogatives.

Meanwhile, in New York, American patriots urge their countrymen to cast off British luxuries and set about producing their own raw materials and home manufactures. Such self-sufficiency, they insist, will empower colonists to dispel their dread and become the “richest People upon Earth.”

Effects of the Sugar Act

In order to enforce the collection of taxes violators were tried in admiralty courts where a judge decided the outcome rather than in colonial courts in where the decision was left to a jury. Admiralty courts were located in Halifax, Nova Scotia while colonial courts were local.

Admiralty judges were awarded 5% of the confiscated cargo as compensation which gave them the financial incentive to find the violator guilty and thus enforcing the law vigorously. This new system removed the traditional British protection to a fair trial.

In addition, the new law also affected the trade of certain commodities. Lumber and iron were added to the list of products that could be traded only with England. Duties were introduced to the importation of coffee, pimiento, wine from Madeira and the Azores and French and West Indian goods.

With few exceptions vessels going to the colonies had to pass through Britain, unload its cargo, pay duty on it, reload it and sail to the colonies. These measures increased the cost of doing business and undermined local industry.  (Stamp-Act-History)

 The Sugar Act and the American Revolution

Because of the strict enforcement the act did accomplish its goal of reducing smuggling which affected colonial economy, especially in Massachusetts, New York and Pennsylvania. The protests against the act were heavier in affected colonies and almost non-existent in unaffected ones. The law nevertheless promoted boycott of British luxury goods in some colonies and gave some boost to local manufacturing.

For the first time the Sugar Act raised different constitutional issues. While many perceived the Sugar Act as an infringement of their constitutional rights because they were, for the first time, taxed to raise revenue for the benefit of the crown, others viewed it as a tax to regulate the flow of trade and as a continuation of the existing and long accepted 1733 Molasses Act.

Those who perceived the law as unconstitutional thought that the law transformed a trade regulation into a revenue measure. Colonial residents had a fragmented view and it was not perceived in a uniformed way. The following year most colonial residents would agree that the proposed Stamp Act of 1765 violated their colonial rights of “No taxation without representation”.  (Stamp-Act-History)

Click the following link to a general summary about the Sugar Act:

Click to access Sugar-Act.pdf

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James Otis

It is hard to say exactly when the ‘American Revolution’ started.  However, John Adams gives a hint that it may have been on February 24, 1761, inside the Old Town House (now the Old State House) in Boston,

“Then and there was the first scene of the first Act of opposition to the Arbitrary claims of Great Britain. …”

“[James] Otis was a flame of fire!”

“With a promptitude of Classical Allusions, a depth of research, a rapid summary of historical events & dates, a profusion of Legal Authorities, a prophetic glance of his eyes into futurity, and a rapid torrent of impetuous Eloquence he hurried away all before him.”

“American Independence was then & there born.”

“The seeds of Patriots & Heroes to defend the Non sine Diis Animosus Infans [from Horace’s ode “Descende coelo”, which translates to ‘The infant is not bold without the aide of the gods.’];”

“to defend the Vigorous Youth were then & there sown.”

“Every Man of an immense crouded Audience appeared to me to go away, as I did, ready to take Arms against Writs of Assistants.”

James Otis originally supported Britain’s policies toward the Massachusetts colony. Though he held appointed positions in the colonial government, he gradually grew disenchanted with the English Parliament.

In 1761, Otis gave a tirade in Boston against the British use of writs of assistance. The writs, or court orders, allowed the government to search colonists’ homes and businesses. Their purpose: to seize undeclared imports that deprived the British treasury of funds.

Of the speech, historian John T. Morse wrote,

“This was the first log of the pile which afterward made the great blaze of the Revolution.”

Or, as John Adams wrote,

“Then and there the Child Independence was born. In fifteen years i.e. in 1776. he grew up to Manhood, & declared himself free.”

James Otis was called the most important American of the 1760s by John Adams.

Son of the elder James Otis, who was already prominent in Massachusetts politics, the younger Otis ((born Feb. 5, 1725, West Barnstable, Massachusetts) graduated from Harvard College in 1743 and was admitted to the bar in 1748. He moved his law practice from Plymouth to Boston in 1750.

A trained lawyer and master of argument, James Otis was a leader of the Patriot movement in Boston in those years. Initially a prosecutor for the British authorities, Otis changed sides in 1761, when he argued against writs of assistance (broad search warrants that British officials used to search the homes and businesses of colonists).

During the 1760s, Otis led the intellectual attack against British tyranny, composing ringing defenses of liberty that won Americans to the revolutionary cause and helped to inspire the well-known slogan, “Taxation without representation is tyranny.”

Otis was also one of the first well-known Americans to defend the natural rights of Africans and to condemn slavery. In doing so, he demonstrated his intellectual honesty and integrity, as well as his personal bravery.  John Adams and many others were alarmed by his arguments about race, though Adams knew that they could not be refuted.

In February 1761, Boston lawyer James Otis delivered a five hour speech that railed against the use of writs of assistance (general search warrants) in Massachusetts.

He noted, “One of the most essential branches of English liberty is the freedom of one’s house. A man’s house is his castle; and whilst he is quiet, he is as well guarded as a prince in his castle.

“This writ, if it should be declared legal, would totally annihilate this privilege. Custom-house officers may enter our houses when they please; we are commanded to permit their entry. Their menial servants may enter, may break locks, bars, and everything in their way; and whether they break through malice or revenge, no man, no court can inquire. Bare suspicion without oath is sufficient.”

This case, and the arguments he made, was the basis for the Fourth Amendment of the Bill of Rights, since John Adams witnessed the impassioned four-hour speech made by Otis and helped write the Massachusetts Constitution and the Constitution of the United States.

“Fourth Amendment

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

“Mr. Otis’s popularity was without bounds.”  He was elected in May 1761 to the General Court (provincial legislature) of Massachusetts and was reelected nearly every year thereafter during his active life. In 1766 he was chosen speaker of the house, though this choice was negated by the royal governor of the province.

As Adams notes,

“For ten years afterwards Mr. Otis at the head of his Countrys cause, conducted the Town of Boston & the people of the Province with a prudence & fortitude, at every sacrifice of personal interest, & amidst unceasing persecution; which would have done honour to the most virtuous Patriot or Mastyr of Antiquity.”

Already an eccentric, high-strung and unsteady man, Otis suffered brain damage when a British official whom Otis had singled out for criticism in a newspaper essay attacked him in 1769.

The assault incapacitated Otis and ended his public career. His contributions to the American resistance movement were largely forgotten, not only by his contemporaries but also by later generations.

He died on May 23, 1783,

On May 26, 1783, the Boston Gazette reported “that last Friday Evening, the House of Mr. Isaac Osgood was set on Fire and much shattered by Lightning, by which the Hon. James Otis, Esq., of this Town, leaning upon his Cane at the front Door, was instantly killed.”

“Several Persons were in the House at the Time, some of whom were violently affected by the Shock, but immediately recovering ran to Mr. Otis’s Support, but he had expired without a Groan.”

Click the following link to a general summary about James Otis:

Click to access James-Otis.pdf

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