Worth Dying Quotes

The people of the American colonies were outraged by the Stamp Act which in effect placed a tax on almost everything operational in the economy at the time by making people buy government stamps to seal virtually all legal documents. Ingersoll had become the icon of the hated Stamp Tax collector holding what was then a very senior position in the Royalist government. The Sons of Liberty, today considered patriots, but then looked upon by the government as a groups of hooligan terrorists, caught up with Ingersoll and kidnapped him and took him to a house in Wethersfield. There he was roughed up and then given the choice of resigning his Stamp Act position or being hanged. He signed his resignation with this statement. The quotation and the incident is used by people who glorify the patriotism and the risk that the Sons of Liberty took for their beliefs. Others, use the quote and incident to illustrate that when such behavior occurs in countries today we often refer to it as terrorism such as in the Iraq War insurgency where the insurgents threatened government officials with death if the did not resign and often made good on their threat. A particular interesting historical story is Ingersoll’s son, Jared Jr. Unlike his Royalist father, young Ingersoll, Jared Jr., was an active patriot, serving in public office and was one of the signers of the U.S. Constitution.