An anti-Stamp Act image: “O! The fatal stamp”

While visiting the Congressional Stamp Exhibition last week, I overheard someone mentioned that the “US was started because of a stamp.” And that’s true to an extent. The Stamp Act of 1765 was a real thorn in the side of colonists, imposing as it did a tax on all sorts of printed matter and a variety of paper goods. The stamps colonists were required to buy are in a class called revenue stamps and are not really the same thing as postage stamps.  In fact, since the Penny Black wasn’t issued until 1840 the idea of postage stamps probably didn’t even really exist to Colonists.

It wasn’t until 1847 that Congress approved the issuance of stamps to pre-pay postage.  The US issued postage stamps just 7 years after the UK issued the world’s first postage stamp: the famous Penny Black.

Of course, this is a really small thing I’m quibbling about.  After all, stamps of almost all kinds signify that someone has already paid for something, be it a service or a tax.  Philatelists collect revenue stamps much like they collect postage stamps.

I’m hesitant, however, to suggest that the stamps at the center of the Stamp Act are somehow equivalent to postage stamps; they symbolized very different things– governmental authority v. governmental service– and as such occupy very different places in the public’s imagination (or mine, at least).