A Brief History of the United StatesSteele, Joel Dorman
History
A Brief History of the United States
Steele, Joel Dorman
United States -- History
[Footnote: The newspapers of the day mention many wealthy people
who conformed to this agreement. On one occasion forty or fifty
young ladies, who called themselves "Daughters of Liberty," brought
their spinning-wheels to the house of Rev. Mr. Morehead, in Boston,
and during the day spun two hundred and thirty-two skeins of yarn,
which they presented to their pastor. "Within eighteen months,"
wrote a gentleman at Newport, R.I., "four hundred and eighty-seven
yards of cloth and thirty-six pairs of stockings have been spun and
knit in the family of James Nixon of this town." In Newport and
Boston the ladies, at their tea-drinkings, used, instead of
imported tea, the dried leaves of the raspberry. They called this
substitute Hyperion. The class of 1770, at Cambridge, took their
diplomas in homespun suits.]
Associations, called the "Sons of Liberty," were formed to resist
the law. Delegates from nine of the colonies met at New York and
framed a Declaration of Rights, and a petition to the king and
Parliament. The 1st of November, appointed for the law to go into
effect, was observed as a day of mourning. Bells were tolled, flags
raised at half-mast, and business was suspended,
[Footnote: The name was assumed from the celebrated speech of Barre
on the Stamp Act, in which he spoke of the colonists as "sons of
liberty."]
[Footnote: At Portsmouth, N. H., a coffin inscribed "LIBERTY, aged
CXLV years," was borne to an open grave. With muffled drums and
solemn tread, the procession moved from the State House. Minute
guns were fired till the grave was reached, when a funeral oration
was pronounced and the coffin lowered. Suddenly it was proclaimed
that there were signs of life. The coffin was raised, and the
inscription "Liberty Revived" added. Bells rang, trumpets sounded,
men shouted, and a jubilee ensued.]
Samuel and John Adams, Patrick Henry, and James Otis, by their
stirring and patriotic speeches, aroused the people over the whole
land.
Alarmed by these demonstrations, the English government repealed
the Stamp Act (1766), but still declared its right to tax the
colonies. Soon, new duties were laid upon tea, glass, paper, &c.,
and a Board of Trade was established at Boston, to act
independently of the colonial assemblies.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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