PATRICK HENRY AND HIS OBJECTIONS TO THE STAMP ACT!

IN 1765

PATRICK HENRY AND HIS OBJECTIONS TO THE STAMP ACT

Patrick Henry, America’s premiere silver-tongued orator was never at a loss for words, and he spoke with a ready arsenal of logic. Biographer William Wirt said of him in 1817, “Tis true he could talk — Gods how he could talk!” Lord Byron called him the “forest-born Demosthenes.”

The event that evoked the cries of “treason, treason” — and that more than any other guaranteed Patrick Henry’s place in the pantheon of American heroes, even more so than his famous “Give me liberty, or give me death” speech a decade later — was his key role in opposing the Stamp Act that played out in the Virginia House of Burgesses in 1765.

The Stamp Act
In March of 1764, Parliament expressed its intention to impose a tax on stamps and other documents sold in the American colonies. News of the proposed taxes reached Virginia in the summer of 1764. The Assembly was not then in session and would not be until October 30. Although the Assembly was in recess, the Committee of Correspondence ordered Virginia’s agent in England to oppose passage of such resolutions. On November 30, 1764, a special committee of the House of Burgesses reported a draft of an official response to be sent to the King and Parliament. On December 14 of the same year, the following resolutions were adopted: