Stamp Act Congress
American colonial meeting against the British Stamp Act / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The Stamp Act Congress (October 7 – 25, 1765), also known as the Continental Congress of 1765, was a meeting held in New York City in the colonial Province of New York. It included representatives from some of the British colonies in North America. It was the second gathering of elected representatives from British American colonies after the Albany Convention of 1754. The Congress sought to devise a unified protest against new British taxes by the British Parliament, which passed the Stamp Act, requiring the use of specialty stamped British paper for legal documents, playing cards, calendars, newspapers, and dice for virtually all business in the colonies starting on November 1, 1765.
Stamp Act Congress/Continental Congress | |
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Part of the American Revolution | |
Type | |
Type | |
History | |
Established | October 7, 1765 (1765-10-07) |
Disbanded | October 25, 1765 (1765-10-25) |
Preceded by | Albany Congress |
Succeeded by | 1st Continental Congress |
Leadership | |
Chairman of the Congress | |
Seats | 27 |
Meeting place | |
City Hall (later Federal Hall, since demolished) New York, New York |
The Congress consisted of delegates from nine British colonies in continental North America. All of the attending delegations were from the Thirteen Colonies that eventually launched the American Revolution, breaking from British colonialism to form the United States. Although sentiment was strong in some of the other colonies to participate in the Congress, a number of royal governors took steps to prevent the colonial legislatures from meeting to select delegates.
The Congress met in the building where Federal Hall now stands and was held at a time of widespread protests in the colonies, some violent, against the Stamp Act's implementation. The delegates discussed and united against the act, issuing a Declaration of Rights and Grievances in which they claimed that Parliament did not have the right to impose the tax because it did not include any representation from the colonies. Members of six of the nine delegations signed petitions addressed to Parliament and King George III objecting to the Act's provisions.
The extralegal nature of the Congress caused alarm in Britain, but any discussion of the congress's propriety were overtaken by economic protests from British merchants, whose business with the colonies suffered as a consequence of the protests and their associated non-importation of British products. The economic issues prompted the British Parliament to repeal the Stamp Act, but it passed the Declaratory Act the same day, to express its opinion on the basic constitutional issues raised by the colonists; it stated that Parliament could make laws binding the American colonies "in all cases whatsoever."[1]