March 22 · This Day in America
In London, Parliament votes 205 to 49 to tax the American colonies directly — a stamp required on newspapers, contracts, licenses, even playing cards, payable in scarce British coin. The men who passed it thought it reasonable: the colonies should help pay for their own defense. They badly misjudged what they had done. Three thousand miles away, the tax lands not as a fee but as a question of consent: can a people be taxed by a body in which they have no voice? The answer comes back as four words that will not stop echoing — no taxation without representation. Stamp agents are hung in effigy. A congress of nine colonies meets in New York. Britain repeals the act within a year, but the argument is loose now, and it will not be put back. The road to 1776 begins, quietly, on this day.
Source: www.nps.gov
Also on this day · 1972
After nearly fifty years of being introduced and buried, the Equal Rights Amendment — 'Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged on account of sex' — passes the Senate 84 to 8 and goes to the states. Within two hours, Hawaii ratifies. Thirty states follow within a year. It would fall three states short of the Constitution, but the sentence had finally been spoken aloud by Congress, and a generation grew up arguing it was overdue.
Source: www.senate.gov