in order "to show the Colonies that England claimed the
right of taxation."

To the Colonies a tax on one article was just as much an invasion of
their rights as a tax upon all; so that the last act of Parliament was
additional proof that England meant to force taxation upon them. Of
course, as brave and fearless patriots, they resisted. Tea was
universally discarded. Ship-loads of it in Boston, New York, and other
ports were returned to England, or packed away to perish. In Boston
seventeen citizens disguised themselves as Indians, boarded an English
tea-vessel, and cast the tea into the dock. This act aroused the
British lion, and he shook his mane and roared. Soon an English fleet
appeared in Boston Harbor to reduce the inhabitants to subjection by
force of arms. At the same time, the Boston Port Bill was enforced,
thereby closing the harbor of that city to commerce.

The citizens refused to provide quarters for the English troops, and
declared, in public assembly, that quartering British soldiers in the
State House and Faneuil Hall, as the English officers had done, was a
still further and graver invasion of their rights.

We should have said that the day on which the Stamp Act went into
operation, Nov. 1, 1765, was observed throughout the Colonies as a day
of fasting and prayer. The day was ushered in by the tolling of bells,
as if the funeral ceremonies of the king himself were to be performed.
Ships displayed their colors at half-mast. Business was suspended, and
halls and churches were opened for prayer and addresses. Washington's
journal shows that he spent the day very much as he did his Sabbaths,
in devout worship in the house of God, and religious exercises at home.

In Boston a solemn procession bore along the streets effigies of the men
who were promoters of the Act, burying them with appropriate ceremonies.
In New York City a similar procession carried the printed Act itself
upon a pole, surmounted by a death's head, with a scroll bearing the
inscription,

"THE FOLLY OF ENGLAND AND RUIN OF AMERICA."

Lieutenant-Governor Colden, who had lent his influence to secure the
Act, fearing violence, fled to the fort, and garrisoned it with marines
from a ship of war. "The mob broke into his stable, drew out his
chariot, put his effigy into it, paraded it through the streets to the
Common (now the Park), where they hung it on a gallows. In the evening
it was taken down, put again into the chariot, with t