Charleston reacts to Stamp Act

McCrady p. 564

Late in the evening of Friday, the 18th of October, the ship Planter's Adventure, Captain Miles Lawley, from London, came to anchor under the guns of Fort Johnson. It had been reported some time before that a distributor of stamps for this province was coming over in this ship, and from the vessel's not coming up to town it was supposed that there was on board either a stamp officer, stamps, or stamped paper. Early Saturday morning, the 19th, there appeared at the intersection of Broad and Church streets, near Mr. Dillon's tavern, — the most central and public part of the town, — suspended on a gallows twenty feet high, an effigy designed to represent a distributor of stamped paper, to which were affixed labels expressive of the sense of a people unshaken in their loyalty, but tenacious of just liberty. On the gallows, in very conspicuous characters, was written " Liberty and no Stamp Act," and on the back of the principal figure these words, " Whoever shall dare attempt to pull down these effigies had better been born with a millstone about his neck and cast into the sea."