Britain gave royal assent to the Stamp Act on the colonies
On this day · 22 March 1765
A tax on paper — newspapers, contracts, even playing cards — handed American colonists a rallying cry they would not forget.
On March 22, 1765, the Stamp Act received royal assent, becoming British law. It required that a huge range of printed material in the American colonies — newspapers, legal documents, licenses, pamphlets, and even playing cards — be produced on specially stamped paper carrying an embossed revenue mark.
It was Parliament’s first attempt to raise revenue directly inside the colonies, intended to help pay for British troops stationed there after the French and Indian War. The catch, colonists argued, was that no American sat in Parliament to consent to it.
Their objection crystallized into a slogan: no taxation without representation.
Resistance was swift and fierce. Stamp distributors were threatened into resigning, the Stamp Act Congress met in New York that October, and boycotts of British goods spread. Parliament repealed the act on March 18, 1766, but the grievance it planted helped set the colonies on the road to revolution.
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