Colonial Crowds Protest the Stamp Act (short version with text supports)
The British parliament passed the Stamp Act in 1765. The act required that colonists buy a stamp from the government for most printed items, such as newspapers, contracts, books, playing cards, and court documents. Popular protests against the new law broke out across the American colonies. This account of an attack by artisans and farmers on the office and home of Andrew Oliver, Boston's stamp collector, appeared in the patriot newspaper the Boston Gazette. The day after the protest, Oliver resigned his position. Political protests against Britain took place not just among elites or in colonial legislatures but on the streets as well; in New York alone, fifty-seven crowd risings took place between 1764 and 1775.
