Program Information

For ten years Parliament would impose various taxes on the colonies. The Sugar Act, a tax on imported sugar from the West Indies, was among the first.

Liberty or Death is a production of the Community Idea Stations and the St. John's Church Foundation. When England taxed the American colonies to pay for the French and Indian war, the colonists became enraged and ardently resisted. What was at odds was the right of the colonists to govern and tax themselves versus Britain's absolute authority over its empire. In Virginia, Patrick Henry brought this issue to the forefront through many impassioned speeches to the colonial leaders in the years leading up to the American Revolution. Henry is most noted for the speech in which he decrees "give me liberty or give me death." Henry's immortal words spread throughout the colonies and became a rallying cry for revolution.

Transcript

NARRATOR
For the next ten years Parliament would impose various taxes on the colonies. The Sugar Act, a tax on imported sugar from the West Indies, was among the first.

KAY PENINGER
“And the colonists did not see this as a threat to their individual rights and liberties because this was not a tax directly imposed on them, it was a tax, it was more of a way to regulate the commerce.”

JOHN WILKES
“Where they did not see appropriateness was in taxes that were purely for revenue. The Stamp Act had nothing to do with the regulation of trade. It was on products that the colonists used each and every day, a lease, a marriage license, playing cards, newspapers were also taxed. So this was the kind of tax that everyone could feel. And this was a tax that was affixed upon the object with a stamp thus the term the Stamp Act and it began to serve as a sort of a reminder of oppression more than anything else.”

ALAN TAYLOR
“So the issue wasn’t that very heavy taxes were being put on the colonists, on the contrary, there were very small, but the colonists saw that as insidious, they saw that if they accepted the precedent that they would pay these small taxes, they feared that, down the road the British would increase those taxes and that someday this would turn out to be a very tax burden and one that would impoverish them.”

RHYS ISSACS
“They would have to deal with it or as many chose play ostrich and it must have been some speculation, I think, that Patrick Henry was not going to play ostrich.”

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