Run-Up to the Revolution: Philadelphia’s Response to the Taxation Crisis

George Heap’s rendering of Philadelphia in the 1750s, as seen from the Jersey shoreline, captures the importance of commerce to the city’s success. Many of the ships in the foreground were likely loaded with imported goods.
American Philosophical Society

Colonial America in the 18th century was a dynamic environment — constantly shifting, changing and growing as its population increased and governments and institutions developed to support it. More merchants progressively established shops in cities such as Philadelphia, Boston and New York, selling a dizzying array of necessities and luxury goods both domestic and imported. These goods, specifically those imported from Great Britain, were in many ways the catalyst of a transformation from a rustic collection of colonials to a more refined and genteel society comprised of citizens whose tastes, having been shaped by the increasing availability of imported goods, reflected those of Britain.

Importing those goods was not, however, without its problems. As colonists from all social classes emulated the strictly proscribed manners of genteel society and grasped at the imported goods that they believed would help to further indicate their refinement — and Englishness — public displays of luxury approaching excess became increasingly common as did rising consumer debt. Concerned that the fervor for imported goods was damaging colonial society and increasing its dependence on Britain, observers published exhortations in newspapers and magazines urging colonists to curb their extravagant spending. As tension between Britain and its American colonies grew, so too did calls for protest against the consumption of British imports. This trend politicized colonists’ consumption of goods in the face of rising British taxation, transforming citizens’ choices in the colonial marketplace from routine purchases to political statements, allying colonists in protest of British taxation through agreements of nonimportation and nonconsumption.

Pennsylvania, the geographic center of British colonial America and home to one of its largest ports, Philadelphia, played a particularly important role in resisting rising British taxation. The Penn family’s policy of religious toleration, free education, and expanded access to occupational opportunities quickly drew thousands to Pennsylvania. Wealthy Quakers who had settled first in Barbados and then relocated to Pennsylvania established themselves as merchants in Philadelphia. With the Quakers’ contacts throughout the Atlantic world and Pennsylvania’s bountiful crops of timber, grain and flax, Philadelphia soon became one of the colonies’ busiest ports and a major center for shipbuilding. Its place at the center of the transatlantic trade also meant Philadelphia had much to lose if that trade was disrupted.

Purchased from a sea captain trader, this imported china belonged to William and Mary West and is typical of the imported goods so popular with colonists. The Wests occupied Hope Lodge in Whitemarsh, Montgomery County, from 1776 to 1782. William West, a Philadelphia merchant, was a supporter of the Continental Congress and the Revolution.
The State Museum of Pennsylvania

During the 18th century, American colonial life underwent a profound transformation from a collection of colonists residing in cramped houses sparsely furnished with simple, homemade goods to a society concerned — perhaps obsessed — with refinement and gentility. These ideals, according to Richard Bushman in The Refinement of America, were “revitalized in the Renaissance and spread first to the European courts and then to the upper middle classes.” The ideals moved throughout the American colonies to all classes of inhabitants. At the root of the transformation to refinement and gentility within America was a growing culture of consumption in which citizens imported a vast number of luxury items from overseas. Reinforced by long-standing practices of British mercantilism, the importation and consumption of foreign goods soon became intertwined not only with refinement and gentility but also with politics, as Britain began to tighten its grasp on the North American colonies. Philadelphia, as a major commercial center, struggled to balance highly lucrative foreign trade with resisting increasingly onerous British policies. The fight against rising taxation unified colonists throughout America and set the stage for the coming revolution.

British imports landed in the port cities of Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Charleston, all of which had swiftly transformed from crude settlements to bustling commercial centers with fine buildings and soaring church steeples constructed through financing from the burgeoning trade with England. Artist George Heap’s 1754 rendering of Philadelphia depicts the growing city in the distance, awash in a forest of ship’s masts, demonstrating the importance of trade to the city’s growth. Goods flowed outward from the port cities to merchants in smaller cities and towns throughout the colonies. These merchants offered similar goods for sale, providing an opportunity for colonists to unite in a new shared experience of consumption. One could travel throughout America and dine on the same china in the homes of a Boston lawyer, a Philadelphia merchant, and a Charleston plantation owner. Indeed, even settlers further inland enjoyed such goods, as wagons full of merchandise made their way into the hinterlands.

Merchants, including those in Philadelphia, teased consumers with a myriad of fine products. In the Pennsylvania Gazette, headlines drew the eye to “A Fresh and neat assortment of European goods” ranging from Irish linen and silk handkerchiefs to London pewter and writing paper, making it difficult for readers to ignore the allure of finely manufactured goods that were not only durable or of high quality but also carrying the promise of, at least, a small degree of gentility and refinement. The growing dependence on imported goods, especially luxury items, permeated nearly every aspect of colonial life, from the style in which people built their homes to the (probably imported) cups from which they drank their (also imported) tea. Examining British custom house ledgers, author T.H. Breen notes in his book The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence that in Pennsylvania alone, consumption of British imports rose nearly 380 percent between 1740 and 1760.

Colonial dependence on British imports was reinforced by the system of mercantilism practiced throughout the British Empire whereby the mother country’s colonies existed to provide a market for English goods. Britain limited the types of products that colonists themselves produced, dictated upon whose ships those goods must be transported and with whom colonists traded. Britain levied duties on a variety of imports to discourage the purchase of products from other European nations; however, a long-standing unofficial policy of salutary or benign neglect meant that even though trade-restricting laws existed, they were seldom enforced and frequently circumvented, allowing colonial trade to flourish outside the bounds of British control.

Throughout the 1760s more than 300 tons of British pewter goods, such as this offering plate manufactured by Bush & Perkins in Bristol, were exported annually to the American colonies. British law taxed unworked pewter and forbade the import of tin, pewter’s primary component, meaning colonial pewterers were restricted to repairing, refashioning or melting down English pewter to create new objects.
The State Museum of Pennsylvania

In Philadelphia, merchants and traders operated two distinct types of commerce. Some merchants dealt in dry goods; they sold American-made products like bar iron, ash, beeswax and lumber directly to Britain and purchased British-manufactured goods like paper, glass, buttons, gloves and ribbons, which they sold in Pennsylvania shops or re-exported to other colonies. Others dealt in provisions, trading Pennsylvania’s raw materials such as flax, flour and lumber to the Caribbean and Ireland for items manufactured there, including linen, molasses, sugar and rum. Provisions traders also operated coastal routes, balancing their trade in imports by moving goods produced throughout the colonies up and down the Eastern Seaboard.

Experiencing economic hardship following the end of the French and Indian War, Britain sought to raise revenue by reversing its long-standing policy of salutary neglect. They began by enforcing the Navigation Acts, a series of laws passed throughout the 17th century aimed at regulating trade between Great Britain and her colonies. These acts stated that only English ships could transport goods from the colonies to Britain and that the North American colonies could only export their commodities (sugar, lumber and tobacco) to Britain. In April 1764 Parliament passed the Sugar Act, a modification of the Sugar and Molasses Act of 1733 that reduced the tax on molasses but levied new taxes on goods such as sugar, coffee, some wines and printed calico cloth. The act also regulated the export of colonial lumber and iron.

The Sugar Act greatly disrupted trade in Philadelphia and throughout the colonies by reducing the markets where colonial merchants sold their goods. It also diminished the amount of hard currency available to merchants for purchasing British imports. Recognizing the impact of Britain’s actions, Pennsylvania lawyer and politician John Dickinson (1732–1808) argued in the pamphlet The Late Regulations Respecting the British Colonies on the Continent of America Considered, in a Letter from a Gentleman in Philadelphia to His Friend in London that the act caused a disruption to the balance of trade between the colonies and Britain, harming not only the colonies but Britain as well. Dickinson soon became one of the colonies’ strongest voices of opposition in the fight against rising taxation.

In the fall of 1764, Britain continued to tighten its grasp on the American colonies when Parliament passed the Currency Act, further disrupting the colonial economy by effectively assuming control of the currency system. Because coin could only be obtained through trade with Great Britain, the colonies experienced a near-constant shortage of hard currency. To compensate for this, individual colonies had been producing their own paper money, essentially bills of credit that could not be exchanged for a set amount of gold or silver coin. Hoping to alleviate British creditors’ fears of being paid in this inferior paper currency rather than hard coin, the Currency Act prohibited the colonies from using paper money as legal tender for the payment of debts. This act greatly hampered trade, as merchants found themselves increasingly unable to purchase imported goods or pay debts for goods already acquired. Britain’s enforcement of the Navigation Acts and the passage of the Sugar and Currency acts rankled many Americans. Calls of protest went up in newspapers and pamphlets throughout the colonies.

In Massachusetts, New York and Virginia, colonial assemblies petitioned Parliament to repeal the acts. Benjamin Franklin (1706–90), sent to London some years earlier by the Pennsylvania Assembly, argued along with other colonial agents to repeal the acts. While Franklin was in London, a letter addressed to him from “A Merchant in Philadelphia” (likely Charles Thomson) appeared in the London Chronicle, telling Franklin, “We are really in a distressed situation at present; our debts multiplying, and no way to pay them. Our paper currency will soon be gone, and in a short time all the hard money on the Continent will not suffice to pay the taxes laid upon us. Bankruptcies are daily following bankruptcies.” Despite these efforts, colonial protests largely fell on deaf ears in Britain.

The Currency Act of 1764 forbade the American colonies from using its paper currency as legal tender for public and private debts. The paper bills had depreciated in relation to the British pound sterling causing inflation and costing British merchants money. Indebted colonists were then forced to pay their debts in gold or silver.
National Numismatic Collection at the Smithsonian Institution

When Parliament passed the Stamp Act in 1765, however, colonists’ concerns regarding the consumption of British imports acquired a fresh sense of urgency. Authored by British Prime Minister Lord George Grenville (1712–70), the Stamp Act levied a direct tax on all materials printed for commercial and legal use throughout the colonies including court documents, magazines, newspapers, playing cards and dice. Grenville intended to use the proceeds from the Stamp Act to defray the costs of maintaining the presence of British soldiers in America for defending the colonies from attack. Further, the act stated that violators of the Stamp Act faced trial in British vice admiralty courts. These juryless courts established by Britain throughout the colonies held jurisdiction over matters that pertained to maritime activities, including transatlantic trade. As details of the Stamp Act circulated, many felt that the British Parliament had acted unconstitutionally and violated the colonists’ rights to representation and fair taxation.

In response, the American colonies banded together for the first time in protest. Riots broke out in the streets of Boston, largely organized by a group of shopkeepers known as the Loyal Nine. The Loyal Nine quickly grew and became known as the Sons of Liberty. Their influence spread as mobs of angry colonists vandalized customs houses and threatened Stamp Act agents. The Daughters of Liberty took a less violent approach, organizing spinning bees in which colonial women gathered to produce homespun cloth to replace imported British textiles. Recognizing that the colonies needed an organized (and less violent) response to the Stamp Act, Massachusetts called for a meeting of representatives from the colonies to craft a formal response.

The Stamp Act Congress convened in New York in October 1765. Although only nine of the 13 colonies sent delegates, this meeting represented the first time that representatives from individual colonies convened to debate policy that affected them all. Realizing the potential economic impact of opposing the Stamp Act, the Pennsylvania Assembly sent its representatives — Dickinson, George Bryan (1731–91) and John Morton (1725–77) — with instructions to avoid expressing any opinions that could offend Parliament or the Crown. Following several weeks of debate, the congress passed a Declaration of Rights and Grievances that raised 14 points of protest including the rights to be treated equally as Englishmen, to fair trials by jury, and to be free of taxation without representation by Parliament. Delegates circulated the declaration among the colonies and sent a copy to Britain, along with formal petitions to the British House of Lords and the House of Commons.

Recognizing that an appeal to Parliament was not enough, colonial merchants organized themselves to consider measures of economic resistance, including refusing to import or sell the stamped paper Britain now required. Merchants in New York quickly passed such a resolution. In Philadelphia, a group convened at the State House and elected a committee to persuade Pennsylvania’s stamp distributor, John Hughes, to resign. Hughes refused but agreed to refrain from enforcing the act, slated to take effect November 1, until other colonies did so.

In the meantime, merchants throughout the city worked to empty their ships of British goods before the act took effect. Merchants soon realized that the combined effects of the Currency and Stamp acts would render it nearly impossible for them to clear debts or purchase new goods, and so they followed New York’s lead and agreed to cease purchasing goods from England on November 7, 1765. To enforce the agreement, Philadelphians formed an 11-man committee comprised of some of the city’s wealthiest merchants.

Publisher William Bradford amended the masthead of the October 31, 1765, edition of The Pennsylvania Journal and Weekly Advertiser to resemble a tombstone, signifying the death of his newspaper at the hands of the Stamp Act. Despite the headline announcing its death, Bradford never stopped printing the paper.
allthingsliberty.com

Pennsylvania newspapers chronicled the colonial response to the Stamp Act crisis. Philadelphia printer William Bradford, publisher of The Pennsylvania Journal and Weekly Advertiser, announced in the issue of October 31, 1765, “I am sorry to be obliged to acquaint my Readers, that as The STAMP Act, is fear’d to be obligatory upon us after the First of November ensuing, (the fatal To-morrow) the Publisher of this Paper unable to bear the Burthen, has thought it expedient to STOP a while.” Similarly, Benjamin Franklin’s Pennsylvania Gazette halted publication on October 31.

On November 7, to circumvent the despised tax, Franklin’s business partner David Hall began printing newssheets without a masthead on unstamped paper, the top of which read “No Stamped Paper to be had.” In that day’s edition, Hall recounts Philadelphia’s response to the Stamp Act: “An Agreement of the same Kind, with that under the New-York head, relating to the Importation of Dry Goods, &c. from England, is now on Foot here. On Friday and Saturday last, the DREADFUL FIRST and SECOND Days of November, our Bells were rung muffled, and other Demonstrations of grief shewn.”

In a January 2, 1766, supplement to The Pennsylvania Journal and Weekly Advertiser, an anonymous writer identified as “Philoleutherus” scoffed at those who feared Britain would launch warships as a result of the colonists’ economic boycott, for Britain depended on America as a market for her goods. Further, the January 9 issue of the Pennsylvania Gazette printed numerous letters to the publisher regarding the Stamp Act crisis, including one from “Colbert,” who insisted that the colonies should throw off their dependence on British goods and engage in their own manufacturing.

In January 1766 Benjamin Franklin, acting as colonial representative for Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Georgia, testified before the British House of Commons to argue for the repeal of the Stamp Act. During four hours of questioning, Franklin explained that the colonists were already heavily taxed and could not afford to pay the Stamp Act duties. Further, he argued that the colonists “think it extremely hard and unjust, that a body of men, in which they have no representatives, should make a merit to itself of giving and granting what is not its own, but theirs, and deprive them of a right they esteem of the utmost value and importance, as it is the security of all their other rights.”

In his testimony, Franklin echoed the sentiments of the merchants who had signed nonimportation agreements, stating that if the act is not repealed, American colonists would cease to purchase British goods. He argued that indulging in the fashions and manufactures of Great Britain had once been the pride of the Americans. Now, Franklin declared, Americans would take pride in wearing their old clothes until they can make their own new ones.

The Repeal, or the Funeral Procession of Miss Americ-Stamp, 1766, celebrates the end of the Stamp Act. The cartoon depicts supporters of the Stamp Act carrying a coffin containing the dead bill to a vault prepared for housing the remains of unjust acts that would alienate English subjects.
Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division

On March 18, 1766, after months of civil unrest and facing pressure from both colonial representatives and British merchants whose businesses were suffering because of the lack of trade with the American colonies, Britain repealed the Stamp Act. The victory, however, was short-lived, as Parliament passed the Declaratory Acts simultaneously. These laws declared that Parliament’s authority over America was absolute; it could legislate and tax in any manner it saw fit, asserting its dominance over the colonies and ensuring that new taxes were sure to follow. Indeed, little more than a year later, Parliament passed the Townshend Acts, which levied new taxes on imported tea, paper, paint, lead and glass and established a customs board in Boston to collect the taxes. Revenue from the taxes would be used to pay the salaries of Crown officials in America. Further, the Townshend Acts established additional vice admiralty courts to prosecute smugglers and gave British officials the right to search the homes and businesses of suspected violators.

The Townshend Acts intensified the debate regarding Britain’s right to tax Americans who were not represented in Parliament. Lists of the taxed goods appeared in colonial newspapers, accompanied by exhortations urging colonists to avoid purchasing such items. Debate swirled among merchants over whether to reinstate nonimportation agreements.

Reprinted in newspapers throughout the colonies, Dickinson’s Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania presented a series of moderate, well-reasoned arguments regarding the legality of British taxation in the colonies. The letters helped to coalesce colonial resistance to the Townshend Acts and earned Dickinson fame throughout America.
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

John Dickinson, writing anonymously in his Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, argued that while Parliament could pass regulatory measures that raised incidental revenue, the Townshend Acts raised direct revenue, a power reserved for the colonial assemblies. Dickinson also argued, in contrast with the Sons of Liberty, that in conflict with Britain, violence ought to be a last resort. The series of 12 letters were published in the Pennsylvania Chronicle over a period of 10 weeks beginning December 2, 1767. Shortly thereafter, the letters appeared in pamphlet form and circulated widely throughout the colonies, helping to coalesce resistance to the Townshend Acts.

In the Pennsylvania Gazette of February 18, 1768, a reader from Lancaster County, clearly influenced by Dickinson’s essays, urged his fellow colonists to action: “At a time when the judicious Farmer opens to view the terrible effects of a late act of Parliament in all their native horrors do I, my countrymen! can I still behold your assenting to the force of his arguments without rousing you from your lethargy? Will not the chains of slavery, rattling in your ears, excite your attention?” The letter continues, encouraging colonists to once again act as they had during the Stamp Act crisis and refuse to submit to Britain’s “tyrannical measures” by forgoing luxuries and manufacturing their own necessities.

By March 1768 merchants in Boston formulated terms for a nonimportation agreement to take effect by August and urged other colonies to follow suit. New York did so soon after. Philadelphia, however, was slower to act. Merchants there met first in April but were reluctant to again curtail trade despite pleas from Dickinson, wealthy merchant Thomas Mifflin (1744–1800), and Sons of Liberty member Charles Thomson (1729–1824). Frustrated by Philadelphia’s inaction, Dickinson again took up the pen, this time in A Copy of a Letter from a Gentleman in Virginia to a Merchant in Philadelphia, chastising merchants of the city for giving up their liberty in exchange for profit.

Quaker poet Hannah Griffitts (1727–1817) encouraged her fellow Daughters of Liberty in Philadelphia and beyond to abstain from purchasing imported goods in her poem Female Patriots:

Let the Daughters of Liberty, nobly arise,
And tho’ we’ve no Voice, but a negative here.
The use of the Taxables, let us forebear,
(Then Merchants import till yr. Stores are all full
May the Buyers be few & yr. Traffic be dull.)

Philadelphia’s merchant community convened again in late September 1768; however, facing pressure from Quaker merchants who had been urged by their contacts in England not to disrupt trade, they again failed to pass a nonimportation agreement. Instead, they drafted a letter to merchants in England asking for their assistance in working to repeal the Townshend Acts. The letter had little effect, and finally in February 1769 Philadelphia merchants agreed to join Boston, New York and other colonial cities in a nonimportation agreement.

By early 1770 nonimportation had impacted business in America and Britain. Tea imports alone dropped by more than half. Colonial resistance to the Townshend Acts reached its peak on March 5, 1770, when British troops in Massachusetts fired on a mob outside the Boston customs house in what is now known as the Boston Massacre. Soon after, Britain repealed the Townshend Acts, save for the duties on British tea. Americans, however, increasingly rallied behind the call of “no taxation without representation” and the remaining legislation related to tea eventually pushed the colonies to open rebellion.

Faced with the prospect of paying taxes on goods that extended beyond luxury items to supplies necessary to conduct business and convey information, colonists began to investigate ways to reduce their dependence upon British goods while maintaining the quality of life to which they had become accustomed. Although many colonists did not relish relinquishing imported goods, the hardship was less of a stinging blow as boycotting increasingly became intertwined with notions of liberty and self-sufficiency. Purchases were no longer simply a matter of the appropriateness of excessive spending and the use of luxury goods. The moment colonists organized to declare that they would no longer allow British imports to be bought or sold until acts of taxation were repealed, purchasing or not purchasing imported goods became a political act. Colonists’ refusal to buy goods that had come into the colonies from Britain signified an important — and new — political alliance in support of freedom from oppression.

Further Reading

Breen, T.H. The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. / Bushman, Richard L. The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities. New York: Vintage Books, 1992. / Craig, Michelle L. “Grounds for Debate? The Place of the Caribbean Provisions Trade in Philadelphia’s Prerevolutionary Economy.” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 128, no. 2 (April 2004): 150-177. / Oaks, Robert F. “Philadelphia Merchants and the Origins of American Independence.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 121, no. 6 (1977): 407–436. / Wood, Gordon S., ed. The American Revolution: Writings from the Pamphlet Debate, 1764–1772. New York: Library of America, 2015. / Zakim, Michael. “Sartorial Ideologies: From Homespun to Ready-Made.” The American Historical Review 106, no. 5 (2001): 1553–1586.

Jennifer Gleim is the curator at the Pennsylvania Military Museum in Boalsburg.