The Stamp Act, enacted by the British Parliament on March 22, 1765, was one of a series of legislative acts crafted after victory over France in the Seven Years' War (known in North America as the French and Indian War). With passage of the Proclamation Line of 1763, which regulated settlement in formerly French territory; the Currency Act (1764), to eliminate unsound paper money; and the Sugar Act (1764), to control smuggling from the West Indies; as well as the Stamp Act, Parliament sought to exert greater control over Britain's colonies in North America and the West Indies.

The Stamp Act was also intended to raise money by levying a tax on a wide variety of paper goods. War with France had been costly for the British people, while the colonists benefited greatly from the defeat of the French and their Indian allies. Parliament thought it only fair that the colonies share in the costs of their defense. They extended to the colonies a form of taxation already in effect in Great Britain.

The Stamp Act went into effect on November 1, 1765, and affected all legal papers (bills, bonds, deeds, leases, insurance policies, and wills), newspapers, pamphlets, and playing cards, as well as dice. The stamped, or embossed, paper cost between a half-penny and ten pounds, depending on the type of document.

None of the Parliamentary measures had been popular in the colonies, but the Stamp Act met with immediate, widespread, and vocal opposition. The legislation came at a time of economic depression and hardship. The tax would affect virtually every household, and hit particularly hard at a number of influential groups?merchants, lawyers, tavern owners, and printers?who could sway public opinion in opposition to the act. Beyond the practical considerations, the tax raised a serious constitutional issue. Colonists had long paid customs duties to the mother country, but only colonial legislatures enacted what were known as "internal taxes," those levied directly on residents.

Jonas Green broke the news of the new tax to Marylanders in the April 18, 1765, issue of the Maryland Gazette and followed the announcement with weekly notices during the next several months that emphasized opposition to the act. In the August 22 issue, Green printed a letter from London announcing that Zachariah Hood (?-1789), an Annapolis merchant then in London on business, had accepted the post of stamp distributor for Maryland. Hood became the immediate target of the opposition leadership, a group that included merchant William Lux of Baltimore and three Annapolis lawyers: Samuel Chase, Thomas Johnson, and William Paca.

On August 26, a crowd led by Chase paraded an effigy of Hood through the streets of Annapolis in a one-horse cart. The procession ended just outside the city's gates, where the mob whipped, pilloried, hanged, and burned the effigy. Similar protests took place in Baltimore, Elk Ridge, Frederick, and other towns. Hood's return to Maryland a few days later resulted in a gathering on September 2 of three to four hundred townspeople who razed the small warehouse he had rented and was repairing to store his imported merchandise. After hiding locally for a few days, Hood escaped to New York City.

On June 8, 1765, the Massachusetts House of Representatives had sent a circular letter to other colonial legislatures inviting them to attend an October congress in New York City to discuss means of obtaining relief from the act. In the aftermath of the mob action against Hood, Governor Horatio Sharpe convened Maryland's General Assembly on September 23, 1765. The lower house chose three of its members, Edward Tilghman (Queen Anne's), William Murdock (Prince George's), and Thomas Ringgold (Kent), to represent the colony at the Stamp Act Congress. Delegates from nine colonies convened in New York from October 7 to October 25. When they adjourned, the delegates issued a Declaration of Rights and Grievances, a memorial to the House of Lords, a petition to the House of Commons, and an address to the king.

In Maryland, during this time, Jonas Green published the Gazette on October 10 with the heading "The Maryland Gazette Expiring," outlined by black bands of mourning, and with a skull and crossbones in the lower right corner of the page. This issue advertised an anonymous pamphlet, Considerations on the Propriety of Imposing Taxes in the British Colonies, for the Purpose of Raising a Revenue, which Green printed on October 14. It soon became known that Daniel Dulany the Younger, the proprietary secretary, had written the pamphlet, which argued that only colonial legislatures, whose members were elected by the colony's voters, had the right to levy internal taxes. Dulany's pamphlet, the most influential written protest against the Stamp Act, was reprinted as far north as New York and Boston?and also in London, where Parliamentary opponents of the act made use of Dulany's reasoning.

On November 1, 1765, business in the courts and proprietary offices came to a halt and the Gazette ceased publication. The colony had no stamp distributor and no stamped paper. Hood was in New York and the paper intended for use in Maryland remained on board the royal navy ship Sardeine in the Delaware River. But at the end of January 1766, with business at a standstill, the Frederick County court began to issue writs without stamps, and on January 30, Green published an issue of the Gazette: "The Maryland Gazette Reviving." Regular publication of the paper began three weeks later. Early in February, the newly formed Baltimore chapter of the Sons of Liberty sent an invitation to other counties to form chapters and to send delegates to a provincial congress in Annapolis at the end of February to request that government offices reopen.

Paca and Chase responded by organizing a chapter in Anne Arundel County which joined with the Baltimore group to confront Dulany and other proprietary officials. The movement gathered strength during March, culminating in an April 1 demonstration in Annapolis and Dulany's agreement to reopen the courts and provincial offices. Four days later news reached Annapolis that Parliament would repeal the Stamp Act (which it did on March 18, 1766).

Both reasoned political and constitutional arguments and out-of-doors pressure from riots and mob actions played a role in persuading the British government to repeal the Stamp Act. The most critical factor, however, was undoubtedly pressure from British merchants, hurt by the nonimportation agreement put into effect in the colonies. Although Parliament yielded to the merchants' pleas, it passed a second act, the Declaratory Act, affirming its authority to enact any legislation it wished for the colonies. In North America, colonists celebrated repeal of the Stamp Act and paid little regard to the Declaratory Act. But although the effects would not become obvious for nearly a decade, the first unraveling of the ties that bound colony to mother country had begun.

Morgan, Edmund S. and Helen M. The Stamp Act Crisis: Prologue to Revolution. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1953.