The Stamp Act Protests in Savannah - Part II

by Denise Weimer

In last month’s post, we looked at the seething political cauldron in the colonies in the mid-1760s—and specifically, how the repressive tax acts affected Savannah, Georgia. The city waited to see if Governor Wright would appoint a stamp master and enforce the Stamp Act. He had prevented delegates from being sent to the Stamp Act Congress held in New York in October, 1765. However, the Commons House had sent a recorder who brought documents to present on October 24. The very next day, a small explosion became the first in a chain of events that fall and winter that led to a major confrontation.

October 25 – A group of Savannah citizens disapprove of the flag and gun ceremony at Fort Halifax on the fifth anniversary of the king’s ascension to the throne, also a militia muster day. That evening, the effigy of a stamp officer is carried through the streets, hanged, and burned.

October 31 – Documents from the Stamp Act Congress are published in the Georgia Gazette, along with a sensational article revealing that four local citizens received letters signed by “the Townsman,” accusing them of being the stamp master or having stamped papers in their possession. The men are instructed to publicly advertise their innocence or risk grievous results. Three comply, one returns to England, and James Habersham offers a reward of fifty pounds to anyone who turns in the sender of the letters.

Joel Chandler Harris, "The Liberty Boys"

November 4 – Sons of Liberty meet at Machenry’s Tavern to plot opposition to the Stamp Act. Having learned George Angus, not from Georgia, would be the stamp master, they agree to confront him upon his arrival and demand his resignation.

November 5 – A group of sailors enact the stamp master being placed on a scaffold and carried about town, amusing crowds.

November 12 – Governor Wright orders rangers from frontier forts to Savannah.

December 5 – Speedwell arrives with stamps in the Savannah River. Stamps are transferred secretly to Fort Halifax, east of town, and locked in the King’s Store.

January 2 – About two hundred citizens threaten to assault Fort Halifax. Meanwhile, a smaller group with drums and flags parades to Wright’s residence. There he chides them for their ill manners with musket in hand. He gathers a crowd of rangers, sailors, and merchants to confront the crowd at Fort Halifax. The rangers move the stamps to the guardhouse. Forty men remain on duty overnight and for the next two weeks.

January 3 – Rangers meet the boat of Stamp Agent George Angus on the river and escort him to Wright’s house to take his oath of office. He is then spirited away to hide in the countryside for two weeks. Wright clears sixty ships waiting to enter Savannah’s port but chooses not to issue any further stamped papers until the king answers the petition sent by the Stamp Act Congress.

January 30 – Wright learns “incendiaries” from Charleston have inflamed Savannah citizens to destroy the papers, so he moves them to Fort George on Cockspur Island.

February 2 – Stamped papers are returned to the Speedwell. Seven hundred backwoodsmen arrive in town, threatening to raze the city and shoot the governor if the stamps are not destroyed. Wright musters supporters to face the mob.

February 4 – Almost 250 Stamp Act opponents march to Savannah commons with plans to demand the governor hand over the stamps. Wrights calls seventy rangers and twenty crew of the Speedwell plus his loyal friends to face down the mob for three hours. After trading insults, the crowd disperses.

March 4 – Pressured by English merchants who feel the pinch of colonial non-importation agreements, English Parliament repeals the Stamp Act but quickly follows with the Declaratory Act, which states parliament has the right to legislate for the colonies in all matters. A hint that the reprieve will not last…

A Conflicted Betrothal, Book Four of the Scouts of the Georgia Frontier, https://www.amazon.com/Conflicted-Betrothal-Scouts-Georgia-Frontier-ebook/dp/B0CRF911PD/: When Savannah erupts into protests following the passage of the Stamp Act, Georgia Royal Ranger Ansel Anderson is summoned from his frontier post to provide intelligence to his father’s friend, a Loyalist judge. To obtain the land grant he needs, he’s also to court the man’s daughter, an ardent Patriot. Patience Scott has no intention of letting herself fall for a sworn King’s Man…until anonymous letters threatening those loyal to the governor corner her into agreeing to a betrothal. But will their attraction survive their conflicting loyalties?

Denise Weimer writes historical and contemporary romance from her home in North Georgia and also serves as a freelance editor and the Acquisitions & Editorial Liaison for Wild Heart Books. A wife and mother of two daughters, she always pauses for coffee, chocolate, and old houses.

Connect with Denise here:

Monthly Newsletter Sign-up

Website

Facebook

Twitter

BookBub

The Stamp Act Protests in Savannah - Part I

1760s Christian Camphor House

by Denise Weimer

My post last month set the scene of Savannah in the 1760s, poised for revolution. The fuse for rebellion was lit in the decade before a shot was ever fired with a series of increasingly repressive acts levying taxes for Britain.

Designed to offset the cost of the French and Indian War, the April 1764 Sugar Act taxed molasses imported from any country outside the British Empire. Molasses was used in the distilling of rum, a huge industry in the colonies.

The September 1764 Currency Act aimed to pay for stationing ten thousand troops in America. Many of these helped protect the frontiers at the request of the governors. The act forbade the printing of paper money in the colonies and issued a “call in” date for old bills, many of which were not equalized throughout the colonies. With items from England costing more and little hard currency in circulation, inflation ensued.

The crowning grievance lay in the March 1765 Stamp Act, which was considered unfair because it was an internal tax not having to do with business outside the colonies. It required an imprint on official papers or a small blue paper affixed with tin foil to a document, including bills, calendars, warrants, deeds, court documents, commercial papers, degrees, newspapers, pamphlets, ads, almanacs, indentures, appointments, and even cards and dice. Anyone breaking the Stamp Act would be tried in admiralty court in Nova Scotia. Colonists objected to not having a local trial by their peers and because English parliament, not the local upper and lower houses, had set the tax.

Parliament swiftly followed in May 1765 with the Quartering Act requiring provincial assemblies to victual and billet British soldiers in barracks, inns, or uninhabited buildings. Most colonists felt capable of defending their own frontiers and resented the large standing army that remained after the French and Indian War, partly to satisfy the sons of noble families with commissions.

As early as February of 1765, Prime Minister Grenville met with Benjamin Franklin and other representatives of the colonies to discuss objections to the Stamp Act. Little headway was made. Isac Barré, an Irish politician who had served in the colonies during the French and Indian War, took up the cause of the patriots and coined the term “sons of liberty.”

Sons of Liberty flag

Soon, colonists were forming Sons and Daughters of Liberty groups. They developed their own flag to represent the nine colonies which attended a Stamp Act Congress held in New York during the month of October. The Georgia governor refused to call the assembly into session prior, preventing the state from sending delegates. However, the Commons House sent a supportive letter and a recorder to take notes.

Next month, we’ll look at the chaos that ensued in Savannah following the Stamp Act Congress.

A Conflicted Betrothal, Book Four of the Scouts of the Georgia Frontier, https://www.amazon.com/Conflicted-Betrothal-Scouts-Georgia-Frontier-ebook/dp/B0CRF911PD/: When Savannah erupts into protests following the passage of the Stamp Act, Georgia Royal Ranger Ansel Anderson is summoned from his frontier post to provide intelligence to his father’s friend, a Loyalist judge. To obtain the land grant he needs, he’s also to court the man’s daughter, an ardent Patriot. Patience Scott has no intention of letting herself fall for a sworn King’s Man…until anonymous letters threatening those loyal to the governor corner her into agreeing to a betrothal. Will their attraction survive their conflicting loyalties?

Denise Weimer writes historical and contemporary romance from her home in North Georgia and also serves as a freelance editor and the Acquisitions & Editorial Liaison for Wild Heart Books. A wife and mother of two daughters, she always pauses for coffee, chocolate, and old houses.

Connect with Denise here:

Monthly Newsletter Sign-up

Website

Facebook

Twitter

BookBub

Pre-Revolutionary Savannah and my birthday new release GIVEAWAY!

 

James Oglethorpe

by Denise Weimer

Savannah is Georgia’s oldest and arguably best-loved town—and the setting for the newly released fourth book in my Scouts of the Georgia Frontier Series, A Conflicted Betrothal. Savannah was founded in 1733 by James Oglethorpe and laid out in wards built around central squares. The Georgia trustees envisioned that in the thirteenth and last colony, English debtors working as yeoman farmers would support Savannah’s business class.

James Wright became the governor of Georgia in 1760, beginning the decade of my novel’s setting. While loyal to the king, Wright farmed his own lands acquired through grants, completed the palisades around Savannah, and strengthened the area forts. The upper and lower houses of the colonial assembly worked together to promote economic growth.

James Wright

In the 1760s, Savannah’s importance as a trade city grew. Coasting vessels stopped here on their route between the West Indies, Charleston, and New England, and of course, Georgia imported numerous goods from the mother country while exporting deer skins, rice, indigo, naval stores, and lumber products to England and the West Indies.

Let’s take a bird’s-eye view of Savannah’s six squares at that time.

Working east to west along the river, we begin with Fort Halifax on the site of the original Trustees’ Garden and then Fort Oglethorpe, completed in 1760 of planks with a caponiere at each corner. In 1761, there were thirty royal rangers (such as the hero in my novel) and sixteen British regulars stationed here. Indian trade presents were secured in the King’s Storehouse. Farther along the riverfront were the offices and warehouses of fledging factors, such as Harris & Habersham, and the public dock and wharf.

On the east nearest the river, Reynolds Square was laid out in 1734 as Lower New Square, and this was where Methodist circuit-riding preacher John Wesley had his home. There was a 1759 powder magazine, a 1760 council house, and the 1759 filature house built by liberty-loving tavern owner Peter Tondee. Here silkworms were nurtured to produce fine silk thread.

Johnson Square was the largest, home of Derby Ward, Savannah’s first neighborhood, the public mill and oven, the House for Strangers, and Christ Church, completed in 1750.

Christ Church

Current-day Ellis Square would have been known as Decker Square or Market Square during the 1760s, since it was renamed between 1757 and 1770. The public market buzzed here under the steeple of 1759 Independent Presbyterian Church.

Situated to the east behind Reynolds Square, Oglethorpe Square was laid out in 1742 as Upper New Square. It was home to first governor of Georgia, John Reynolds, and Gerard de Brahm, a naturalist, engineer, and navigator who with Henry Yonge established the nearby town of Ebenezer for German immigrants, constructed area forts, and mapped South Carolina, Georgia, and the coastal area.

To the west, Percival Square was renamed Wright Square in 1763 to honor Georgia’s third royal governor. Tomochichi, the native leader and friend of James Oglethorpe who assisted in founding the colony, was buried here. Site of the 1759 prison and guardhouse, Wright Square is also known as the hanging square, since executions were carried out here.

Finally, St. James Square yet a bit farther west was a fashionable place to live in pre-Revolutionary Georgia. Governor Wright maintained his residence at the northwest edge.

Join me next month as I share about the Stamp Act protests that erupted in Savannah in 1765. 

And check out my new release, A Conflicted Betrothal, Book Four of the Scouts of the Georgia Frontier, https://www.amazon.com/Conflicted-Betrothal-Scouts-Georgia-Frontier-ebook/dp/B0CRF911PD/.

When Savannah erupts into protests following the passage of the Stamp Act, Georgia Royal Ranger Ansel Anderson is summoned from his frontier post to provide intelligence to his father’s friend, a Loyalist judge. To obtain the land grant he needs, he’s also to court the man’s daughter, an ardent Patriot. Patience Scott has no intention of letting herself fall for a sworn King’s Man…until anonymous letters threatening those loyal to the governor corner her into agreeing to a betrothal. But will their attraction to each other survive their conflicting loyalties? 

Today is my birthday! How about I offer you a present? If you'd like to be entered to win an e-book copy, comment below on what you find intriguing about early Savannah or A Conflicted Betrothal, or check out the other books in the series on Amazon and share which one stands out to you the most.

Denise Weimer writes historical and contemporary romance from her home in North Georgia and also serves as a freelance editor and the Acquisitions & Editorial Liaison for Wild Heart Books. A wife and mother of two daughters, she always pauses for coffee, chocolate, and old houses.

Connect with Denise here:

Monthly Newsletter Sign-up

Website

Facebook

Twitter