=Popular Opposition.=—­The Stamp Act was greeted in America by an outburst of denunciation.  The merchants of the seaboard cities took the lead in making a dignified but unmistakable protest, agreeing not to import British goods while the hated law stood upon the books.  Lawyers, some of them incensed at the heavy taxes on their operations and others intimidated by patriots who refused to permit them to use stamped papers, joined with the merchants.  Aristocratic colonial Whigs, who had long grumbled at the administration of royal governors, protested against taxation without their consent, as the Whigs had done in old England.  There were Tories, however, in the colonies as in England—­many of them of the official class—­who denounced the merchants, lawyers, and Whig aristocrats as “seditious, factious and republican.”  Yet the opposition to the Stamp Act and its accompanying measure, the Quartering Act, grew steadily all through the summer of 1765.

In a little while it was taken up in the streets and along the countryside.  All through the North and in some of the Southern colonies, there sprang up, as if by magic, committees and societies pledged to resist the Stamp Act to the bitter end.  These popular societies were known as Sons of Liberty and Daughters of Liberty:  the former including artisans, mechanics, and laborers; and the latter, patriotic women.  Both groups were alike in that they had as yet taken little part in public affairs.  Many artisans, as well as all the women, were excluded from the right to vote for colonial assemblymen.

While the merchants and Whig gentlemen confined their efforts chiefly to drafting well-phrased protests against British measures, the Sons of Liberty operated in the streets and chose rougher measures.  They stirred up riots in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston when attempts were made to sell the stamps.  They sacked and burned the residences of high royal officers.  They organized committees of inquisition who by threats and intimidation curtailed the sale of British goods and the use of stamped papers.  In fact, the Sons of Liberty carried their operations to such excesses that many mild opponents of the stamp tax were frightened and drew back in astonishment at the forces they had unloosed.  The Daughters of Liberty in a quieter way were making a very effective resistance to the sale of the hated goods by spurring on domestic industries, their own particular province being the manufacture of clothing, and devising substitutes for taxed foods.  They helped to feed and clothe their families without buying British goods.