Stamp Act Congress - Legacy

Legacy

This Congress is generally viewed as one of the first organized and coordinated political actions of the American Revolution, even though its participants were not at all interested in independence from Great Britain. Despite significant political differences and disagreements between the Thirteen Colonies, tensions occasioned by the harsh Parliamentary response to the 1773 Boston Tea Party prompted the calling of the First Continental Congress, which produced a united response to the Intolerable Acts of 1774. Colonies such as Quebec and Nova Scotia that had only moderate opposition to the Stamp Act continued to act moderately through the rising protests, and remained Loyal during the American Revolutionary War.

Most of the official papers of the Congress have not survived. One copy of its journal, from the papers of Caesar Rodney, survives in the library at Rowan University in Glassboro, New Jersey, and a second exists in the Connecticut state archives. The Maryland copy of the journal, although the original is lost, was transcribed into its assembly's records and printed in 1766. Inconsistencies within and between these documents make it uncertain whether any is an accurate representation of the official journal (which was probably taken to Massachusetts and was not located by Weslager in his research).