During the next few months
excitement in New York and in the other colonies increased, and efforts
to keep the stamps in use caused riots everywhere.
When the King saw that he could not enforce the Stamp Act, and that
serious trouble was likely to occur from every attempt to do so, he
repealed the act, the year after it had become a law.
The people were overjoyed at this.
The King's birthday coming soon after, there was in his honor a great
celebration, and a liberty pole was planted on the Common, which in
after years played an important part in the history of New York; and
a marble statue of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, was erected. This
William Pitt had done more than any other man in England to secure the
repeal of the Stamp Act, and had time and time again spoken strongly
against it. His statue was set up in Wall Street, and at the same time
a statue of King George III., seated upon a horse, was erected on the
Bowling Green. It fared ill with these statues later, as you will see.
There was no longer a stamp act, but there was another act quite as
disagreeable. It was called the Mutiny Bill, and it required that food
and drink and sleeping-quarters be given to all the British soldiers.
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