Zachariah Hood

Zachariah Hood was an Annapolis businessman who in 1765 was given the job of stamp collector for the Province of Maryland, collecting the duty payable under the new Stamp Act. Returning to Maryland from England in August 1765, he was attacked by an angry mob, and was forced to flee to New York for his life, in what may have been the first forcible resistance in America to British taxation in the years preceding the American Revolution. Hood returned to Maryland but, finding himself persona non grata, he left for the West Indies. In 1774 he was appointed comptroller of the Port of Philadelphia, but he fared little better and in May 1775 he was forced again to flee, this time to England, where he was granted a salary by Prime Minister Lord North.

Hood was born in Maryland, the son of Elizabeth Maccubin. He had a sister, Susannah.

Tax, politics and revolution In 1764 Britain imposed a tax on sugar, the first of many ultimately unsuccessful attempts to make her North American subjects bear a portion of the cost of the recent French and Indian War. The first stirrings of revolution in Maryland came in the Fall of 1765, when the speaker of the Lower House of the Maryland General Assembly received a number of letters from Massachusetts, one proposing a meeting of delegates from all the colonies, others objecting to British taxation without consent and proposing that Marylanders should be "free of any impositions, but such as they consent to by themselves or their representatives".

In 1765 Hood was on business in England, where he was offered (and accepted) the job of stamp collector, collecting the duty payable under the new Stamp Act. It is likely that Hood was not aware of the depth of feeling in the colonies against the new tax. In the summer of 1765 protests took place all over the Province, with mock funerals and the hanging, whipping and burning of effigies. Hood would prove to be the first and last Stamp Act tax collector in Maryland.

Hood returns to Maryland News of Hood's appointment preceded his return to Annapolis, being published in the Maryland Gazette, a newspaper owned by one Jonas Green, a vocal and outspoken opponent of the new tax. The August 22 edition of the Gazette reported that a "Gentleman in London" had reported that Hood had let it be known that if the new tax should be imposed, it was at least preferable that it should be collected by a native son.

A few days later, Hood returned to Maryland, where passions were by now greatly inflamed, and was met at the Annapolis dock by an angry crowd which prevented him from landing. Attacked by the mob, Hood defended himself and one citizen was seriously injured in what has been called the "first successful, forcible resistance in America to King George's authority".

Hood refused to resign his commission and, a few days later, a mob of 300 citizens burned down his warehouse. Such was his fear that he spurred his horse on until the poor beast died from under him. Hearing this, the New York Sons of Liberty tracked him down and pressed him to resign. Hood again fled, this time to Flushing, where he was again hunted down. On 28 November, his resignation was at last forcibly obtained.

In fiction Hood appears as a character in Winston Churchill's historical novel Richard Carvel, in which the author dramatises Hood's arrival at the Annapolis docks. Hood is accused by the mob of having "come to lick stamps for his brother-colonists", but only "after licking his majesty's boots".