On this day in New York · October 7, 1765
Nine Colonies Meet at New York City Hall to Fight the Stamp Act
Before there was a Continental Congress, there was this: delegates from up and down the coast crammed into a room on Wall Street and decided London didn't get to tax them without asking.
The facts
- Date
- October 7 to October 25, 1765
- Location
- New York City Hall, on the site of today's Federal Hall
- Colonies represented
- Nine: Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and South Carolina
- Chairman
- Timothy Ruggles of Massachusetts
On October 7, 1765, delegates from nine colonies convened at New York's City Hall, on the site of what is now Federal Hall, to answer Parliament's new Stamp Act with something the colonies had never managed before: a joint response. Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and South Carolina all sent men. They elected Timothy Ruggles of Massachusetts as chairman, argued for two and a half weeks, and on October 19 adopted a Declaration of Rights and Grievances laying out why Parliament had no business taxing people it didn't represent. It wasn't unanimous and it wasn't a declaration of independence. It was a rehearsal for one.
In their words
The day in the words of the people who were there. Every quote is verbatim, and every source links out so you can check it.
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in all cases whatsoever
The Declaratory Act, passed by Parliament in March 1766 alongside the Stamp Act's repeal, asserting its authority over the colonies
Source: Wikipedia -
due Subordination to that August Body the British Parliament
The Congress's petition to the House of Lords, October 1765
Source: Wikipedia
Why it still matters
This was the first time colonies that mostly ignored each other showed up in the same room and argued that Parliament couldn't tax people who had no seat in it. Nine years later, a lot of these same colonies would send delegates to a different meeting in Philadelphia, and that one wouldn't stop at a petition.
Sources
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