Twelve days after, a mob sacked the splendid house of Chief Justice Hutchinson, threw his plate into the street, and destroyed the valuable library which he had been thirty years in collecting, and which contained many manuscripts, the loss of which was quite irreparable. As usual with mobs, the vengeance fell in the wrong place, for Hutchinson had done his best to prevent the passage of the Stamp Act. In most of the colonies, the stamp officers were compelled to resign their posts. Boxes of stamps arriving by ship were burned or thrown into the sea. … In New York, the presence of the troops for a moment encouraged the lieutenant-governor, Colden, to take a bold stand in behalf of the law. He talked of firing upon the people, but was warned that if he did so he would be speedily hanged on a lamp-post, like Captain Porteous of Edinburgh. A torchlight procession, carrying images of Colden and of the devil, broke into the governor's coach-house, and, seizing his best chariot, paraded it about town with the images upon it, and finally burned up chariot and images on the Bowling Green, in full sight of Colden and the garrison, who looked on from the Battery, speechless with rage, but afraid to interfere. Gage did not dare to have the troops used, for fear of bringing on a civil war; and the next day the discomfited Colden was obliged to surrender all the stamps to the common council of New York, by whom they were at once locked up in the City Hall. Nothing more was needed to prove the impossibility of carrying the Stamp Act into effect." _J. Fiske, The American Revolution, volume 1, chapter 1._ In Connecticut the stamp agent, Mr. Ingersoll, was compelled by a body of armed citizens to resign. See CONNECTICUT: A. D. 1765. ALSO IN: _D. R. Goodloe, The Birth of the Republic, chapter 1, (a compilation of accounts of proceedings in the several colonies)._ _W. Tudor, Life of James Otis, chapter 14._ _W. V. Wells, Life of Samuel Adams, volume 1, chapter 2._ _I. W. Stuart, Life of Jonathan Trumbull, chapters. 7-8._ _T. Hutchinson, History of Province of Massachusetts Bay, 1749-1774, pages 117-141. _ _H. S. Randall, Life of Jefferson, volume 1, chapter 2._ _M. C. Tyler, Patrick Henry, chapter 5._ UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1765. The Stamp Act Congress.