Discover the 250-year-old document that changed the course of America

New York has always been at the forefront of innovation and change. From the Civil Rights Movement to the Stonewall Uprising, its citizens have consistently set the pace for social and cultural change in the United States and beyond. This history goes back to its origins in the 18th century, as a member of the British Colonies, but from this time few examples are immediately apparent.

‘Like today,’ says Peter Klarnet, Christie’s Senior Specialist, Americana, Books & Manuscripts, ‘New York was the most cosmopolitan city in the 18th century, even before the Revolution.’ It was here that opposition to the Stamp Act — a colonial tax on printed goods that fomented the unrest that ultimately led to the American Revolution — reached its boiling point.

On 17 January, Christie’s is proud to offer a Stamp Act defiance placard as part of Fine Printed Manuscripts and Americana in New York. One of only two known extant examples, the rare placard is an important artefact evincing how New Yorkers defied the Stamp Act by any means necessary.

When Parliament passed Stamp Act was in 1765, the Colonies were already suffering from an economic downturn — an immediate consequence of the end of the French and Indian War as military contracts ended the opportunity to profit from lucrative privateering voyages evaporated with the peace of 1763. Meanwhile the war, while victorious for Great Britain, was incredibly costly — doubling the nation’s debt burden.

By 1765, Britain’s previous attempts to repay that debt by taxing the colonial trade — such as the 1764 Sugar Tax — had failed, as merchants would smuggle or more often bribe customs officials to avoid them. Imposing a stamp duty on legal documents and other printed materials within the American colonies was thought to be an effective way to refill their coffers. Even Benjamin Franklin, then in London as the agent for several colonies in Parliament, gave measured approval.

But to the surprise of Franklin and many others in London, the news of the Stamp Act was greeted by widespread opposition. Colonial assemblies sent written protests, while crowds hung effigies of local stamp agents and ransacked their houses in Boston and Providence in late August. Protesters even demonstrated outside of Franklin’s house in Philadelphia.

It was in New York City, however, that the resistance proved most violent and sustained. Already the host of the Stamp Act Congress, the crisis came to a head in the city when a ship laden with stamped paper arrived in the harbor on 23 October, 1765. That night, handwritten placards were pasted up on government buildings and streetcorners throughout the city, all of which offered the same warning: ‘The first man that either distributes or makes use of stamped paper let him take care of his house, person, and effects.’

Though the precise identity of the person who wrote this particular placard is unknown, it was most likely a member of the nascent New York chapter of the Sons of Liberty, possibly John Lamb, one of its key leaders. Its unambiguous language effectively threated the lives of those who complied with the Stamp Act, so whomever wrote it deliberately disguised their handwriting, knowing the dangers of distributing a placard like this.

One of these placards was discovered by acting New York Governor Cadwallader Colden, who sent it to London with a letter saying: ‘The night after the ship arrived, papers were pasted upon the doors of every public office, and at the corners of the streets, one [of] which I enclose – all of them in the same words. His Majesty’s Ministers are the best judges of the means to curb this licentious factious spirit.’ That very placard is housed today at the British National Archives and is the only other example known to have survived the ravages of time.

After the placards appeared on the night of 23 October, the stamps were sent to Fort George in Lower Manhattan for safekeeping from an angry mob of citizens. Eight days later, nearly 200 merchants from the city convened, agreeing not to sell any British goods so long as the Stamp Act was active, which only amplified these tensions. The day after, on the morning of 1 November, the day the Stamp Act was set to go into effect, all business ceased in the city, but as evening approached a large crowd began gathering, leading to, days of unquelled riots and a siege of the British garrison guarding the ‘stampt paper’ inside Fort George.

By 4 November, the colonial government had given over the stamps, which were promptly destroyed. ‘This is the beginning of the American Revolution in earnest,’ says Klarnet. ‘The Battle of Lexington and Concord begins the War of Independence, but the Revolution, which is a distinct phenomenon in my opinion, begins in 1765 with the Stamp Act, and it was in New York City that the opposition proved most vehement. This document represents the most direct challenge to the authority of the British empire and marks the beginning of the road to the famous ‘shot heard around the world’ on 19 April 1775.'

Thomas Gage, then head of the British forces in America, was clearly fearful that what occurred in New York City spelled trouble for Britain’s hold on her North American colonies. He secretly ordered his engineer, Lieutenant John Montrésor, to survey the city for a military map. Bernard Ratzer, an officer and cartographer in the Royal American Regiment, expanded on it to create what is widely considered one of one of the greatest maps of 18th century New York City. It was first printed in 1770, but most of its editions found today date from 1776 when demand for the map increased as British forces gathered to take the city by force.

Though the Stamp Act was repealed in 1766, Parliament refused to deny its right to tax the colonies, and over the next decade, tensions increased to the boiling point with the closure of Boston Harbor following the ‘Tea Party,’ resulting in the founding of the First Continental Congress in Philadelphia, from which formal and coordinated resistance to the monarchy began.

If the Stamp Act defiance placard played such a key role in American Revolution, then is why is it so little known?

‘One part of it is the fact that many Americans wanted to distance the American Revolution form the violence of French Revolution, downplaying the important role that urban crowds played in that struggle,’ says Klarnet. ‘The other comes from the economic trajectory of New York City. Over the course of the 19th century, New York eclipses the other cities of the East Coast in population and economic dominance, and as a result doesn’t dwell on its history with the same regard as places like Boston and Philadelphia. We have few remnants here of the colonial era — besides the Lower Manhattan Street grid, and a later replica of Fraunces Tavern — because of how quickly everything developed, and how the city continues to develop.’

While states like Pennsylvania, Delaware and Massachusetts have more visible colonial heritage to this day, New York was where the strongest and most violent revolutionary sentiments that spread throughout the colonies crystallised. It was in this city that citizens decided they had to be the change that they wished to see, establishing a precedent that has never abated, through to today.