To answer an identification, you
should define and give the significance of the term. Think about it as answering who, what, where,
when, and why about a particular term. Part of this process involves linking the ID to the other relevant
information in the class (or, to put it differently, link it to the
other IDs that relate to it). For
example, the ID answer below explains the causes of the Stamp Act Revolt by
referring to Paying for Britain’s
War and the Great Awakening. The ID also
gives a sense about what happens next by talking about the Townshend Acts that
followed. In terms of significance, this
answer ties the Stamp Act Revolt to the larger themes were have been talking
about. It explains how the Stamp Act
Revolt was an example of the two Revolutions and, when talking about the
internal Revolution, it links the Revolt to other examples like the farm
uprisings.
The Stamp Act Revolt
The Stamp Act Revolt occurred in 1765 primarily in urban
areas and was a reaction to the Stamp Act and the other policies that Britain
had enacted to get the colonies to pay for the French and Indian War. Britain had begun eliminating paper
money and then enacted trade restrictions that enforced mercantilism. These policies had left people without paper
money or gold and silver to pay debts or buy new goods, throwing the economy
into a depression. The Stamp Act promised
to make the situation worse by taxing, among other things, official documents
in gold and silver. This would have been
particularly hard on those who had been sued for unpaid debts because they would
have to pay taxes on the court documents used to foreclose them. These policies
greatly angered colonists both rich and poor alike. In response to the Stamp Act, the gentry
petitioned for its repeal but did not organize protests. The Stamp Act Revolt was led by ordinary
people throughout the colonies. For
example, in Boston,
the revolt was led by a shoemaker named Ebenezer McIntosh. After Boston,
similar revolts emerged in every colony. The revolts involved the use of crowd
action (rough music) and were directed against stamp collectors and other
British officials. For example, in Maryland, crowds in Annapolis
prevented a merchant/stamp collector from landing and then burned his
warehouse; when he went to Baltimore,
crowds chased him away. Probably
inspired by religion and the Great Awakening, some crowds destroyed homes and
luxury items, evidently believing that these items represented the sins of
vanity and pride. Both British officials
and the elite Sons of Liberty
condemned the crowd actions.
Nevertheless, the Revolt was successful: crowd action by ordinary people
across the colonies convinced Britain
to repeal the Stamp Tax. Soon after,
however, Britain
tried a new set of taxes called the Townshend Acts.
Significance:
The Stamp Act revolt demonstrated the two Revolutions we
have been talking about in class. It
represented the first moment of crisis between the colonies and Great Britain. Britain backed down this time, as it would
during the crisis that followed the Towshend Acts,
but the Stamp Act Revolt was really the beginning of the independence
movement. The Revolt was also an example
of the internal Revolution between different groups of Americans. It showed how ordinary Americans often had
different ideas of liberty than the elite founding fathers. Ordinary Americans also expressed their views
differently: they used crowd action which often frightened the gentry. The Revolt worried the gentry that ordinary
Americans were going to turn the Revolution into a contest between rich and
poor and that the crowd was going to include them as “the rich” who needed to
be taken down. As a result, the gentry
tried to deflect criticism of “wealth” into criticism of the British in hopes
of keeping the lid on the internal Revolution.
This kind of internal revolution also appeared in the farm uprisings,
Indian protests, and the response of slaves to Lord Dunmore’s Proclamation.