Sons of Liberty

LEADER: Samuel Adams

YEAR ESTABLISHED OR BECAME ACTIVE: 1765

USUAL AREA OF OPERATION: Great Britain's American colonies, especially the cities of Boston, New York, and Providence

OVERVIEW

The Sons of Liberty refers to a terrorist organization as well as to scattered groups and individuals who employed terror during the American Revolution. Some of the groups were known as the Sons of Liberty, while others used such names as Liberty Boys, but all of these loosely organized groups had the same philosophy and used the same tactics to achieve the same end. A Son of Liberty was also a generic term for anyone violently opposed to British rule.

The best-known Sons of Liberty organization began in Boston in 1765 as the Loyal Nine. They used intimidation and violence to protest the Stamp Act that had been imposed on American colonists by the British government. Enormously effective at stopping tax collection by the British, the Sons of Liberty were instrumental in starting the Revolutionary War. When the war officially began in 1776, the various Sons of Liberty disbanded.

HISTORY

The Sons of Liberty were secret colonial societies that emerged in 1765 in response to the widely hated Stamp Act. Great Britain's national debt had doubled in the decade after 1754, partly because of the expenses of supporting troops in the colonies in the wake of the French and Indian War (also known as the Seven Years' War). Believing that the colonists should pay more for their protection instead of further burdening the British taxpayer, Britain's Parliament placed a tax on legal documents, customs papers, newspapers, almanacs, college diplomas, and playing cards. The American colonists viewed the Stamp Act as a serious danger to liberty. To them, property was the source of strength for every individual because it provided the freedom to think and act independently. The Stamp Act threatened to destroy liberty because it deprived a person of property. It also insulted the colonists by implying that they were second-class citizens who were not entitled to consent to their own taxation.

The Sons of Liberty, centered in the colonial seaports, protested against the Stamp Act legislation and sought to nullify the tax through terrorism. They took their name from Isaac Barré's speech opposing the act in the British House of Commons. Barré had closed with a reference to the American colonists as "these sons of liberty." The resisters consisted mostly of traders, lawyers, and prosperous artisans. These men violated the Stamp Act by refusing to purchase stamps. They organized the lower classes such as sailors, dockworkers, poor artisans, apprentices, and servants. In every colonial city, mobs instigated by the Sons of Liberty burned stamp collectors in effigy, insulted them on the streets, demolished their offices, and attacked their homes. All stamp agents in the American colonies, with the exception of ones in sparsely settled Georgia, had resigned before the Stamp Act officially became law on November 1, 1765. It was repealed in 1766.

The Sons of Liberty died down after the Stamp Act's repeal, although some leaders such as Silas Downer of Rhode Island tried to keep the organization alive. Downer wanted the Sons of Liberty to stay mobilized for immediate action against any future threats to colonial liberties by the British government. He began a Committee of Correspondence to alert other Sons of Liberty chapters about British misgovernment.

LEADERSHIP

SAMUEL ADAMS

Samuel Adams, one of the most important radicals of the American Revolutionary era, helped start the Sons of Liberty in 1765. Born in Boston on September 27, 1722, he attended Harvard. After the family brewery business failed, Adams became the tax collector of Boston from 1756–1764. When he founded the Sons of Liberty, he became a leading patriot. In the decentralized politics of colonial America, Adams typically collaborated closely with others and deliberately sought to obscure his own political role. It is known that after the Townshend Acts were passed in 1767 in an attempt to generate the revenue never raised by the failed Stamp Act, Adams formed the Non-Importation Association to boycott British goods. He also drafted the Circular Letter that Massachusetts sent to the legislatures of other colonies to drum up opposition to the new taxes.

When the Townshend Acts were repealed in 1770, Adams continued to agitate against the British and in favor of the rights of colonists. After the British East India Company was granted a monopoly on the sale of tea in the colonies, Adams supported the patriots who dumped the tea in Boston Harbor in 1773. When the British responded to this action by closing Boston Harbor, Adams organized a confederation of the colonies. He joined the Continental Congress in 1774, persuaded it to support the Bostonians, and served in that body until 1782. He signed the Declaration of Independence and participated in the convention called to ratify the new Constitution of the United States. Although he approved the Constitution, he believed that it needed a bill of rights to protect the citizens against tyranny. Adams concluded his public life as governor of Massachusetts. He died on October 2, 1803.

Most of the Sons of Liberty opposed the various revenue acts that the British Parliament passed in the wake of the failure of the Stamp Act, though subsequent resistance was not as violent. Besides opposing the Townshend Acts and the tea tax, the group may have played a role in the Boston Massacre. The Sons of Liberty were strongest in Boston, and British soldiers in the city were constantly cursed by citizens and frequently pelted with stones, dirt, and excrement. On March 5, 1770, a crowd surrounded ten British soldiers, who then panicked and fired into the mob, killing five men. Samuel Adams, the Boston Sons of Liberty leader, termed the incident a "massacre," and publicized the incident throughout the colonies. Whether or not the Sons of Liberty triggered the incident, Adams certainly took advantage of it.

The term Sons of Liberty also applied to popular leaders. The first street radical identified as a Son of Liberty was Scottish immigrant Alexander McDougall. He did not take a stand on the Stamp Act and did not join the original organized Sons of Liberty. In 1769, McDougall published a broadside, To the Betrayed Inhabitants of the City and Colony of New York, under the pseudonym, "A Son of Liberty." He charged the provincial assembly with sacrificing New Yorkers' rights for partisan advantage. When he was revealed as the author, the assembly imprisoned McDougall for a total of 162 days, although he was never convicted of an actual crime. Thereafter, McDougall was very active in the politics of resistance and revolution. He helped form a New York City Sons of Liberty branch for direct resistance to the Tea Act at the end of 1773. The city's initial tea ship turned around at Sandy Hook after a committee, including McDougall, warned its captain of the consequences should he enter the harbor. When a second vessel did try to bring in taxed tea in April 1774, the Sons of Liberty dumped the cargo into the sea.

When the American Revolution officially began in 1776, the Sons of Liberty still in existence disbanded. They had achieved their aim of promoting resistance to British rule.

PHILOSOPHY AND TACTICS

The Sons of Liberty were responsible for many acts of mob violence. They typically tarred and feathered tax collectors. Contrary to popular conceptions and British propaganda, being tarred and feathered did not kill anyone. A tax collector would be roused out of his home, painted with warm tar, and then covered with chicken feathers. The stamp agent was not stripped of his clothing and the tar was never hot enough to burn his skin. However, he was covered with chicken feathers, which, unlike duck or goose down, are scratchy and uncomfortable. The tax collector was then placed on a wooden rail and carried out of town. As he was carried, the Sons of Liberty and other townspeople would shout abuse at him. The process was frightening and humiliating. The taxman would be left with bruises, scratches, ruined clothes, as well as emotional trauma.

KEY EVENTS

1765:

The Sons of Liberty formed to protest against the Stamp Act.

1765:

On August 14, the Boston chapter of the Sons of Liberty attacked property belonging to stamp collector Andrew Oliver and prompted his resignation.

1765:

On August 26, a Boston mob that included Sons of Liberty members destroyed the homes of Stamp Act supporters and Massachusetts Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson.

1765–1766:

The New York chapter of the Sons of Liberty joined in periodic rioting in New York City and sacked a newly opened theater.

1766:

Great Britain repealed the Stamp Act.

1776:

Sons of Liberty disbanded.

The Sons of Liberty never deliberately killed anyone. They sought to scare tax collectors into quitting their job. In this, they succeeded. One of the best known tax collectors in the colonies was Andrew Oliver of Boston. On August 14, 1765, the Loyal Nine, the Boston Sons of Liberty, staged a public drama beneath the Liberty Tree on Boston Neck, a strip of land that connected the city to the mainland. The play illustrated the impact of the Stamp Act on the daily lives of Bostonians. The show ended, and the men gathered under the leadership of Ebenezer Macintosh, a shoemaker who was not a member of the Loyal Nine. The crowd then attacked property belonging to Oliver, who resigned his post as a direct result.

The various Sons of Liberty organizations disagreed about the use of violence, as seen in events of 1765. Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson of Massachusetts, brother-in-law of Oliver, privately opposed the Stamp Act, but publicly supported it because he felt an obligation to do so as a British Crown official. A mob that likely included Sons of Liberty members attacked Hutchinson's home on August 26, 1765. Hutchinson and his family barely escaped the mob's wrath, but saw their home and possessions completely destroyed. The Boston Sons of Liberty subsequently disavowed the destruction of Hutchinson's home. The lack of respect for private property evident in the attack shocked the many men of property and standing who belonged to the Sons of Liberty. Afterwards, they took care to keep crowds under tighter control. However, the New York Sons of Liberty approved of such rioting and participated in the riots that swept New York City from October 1765 to May 1766.

OTHER PERSPECTIVES

Relatively few colonists chastised the Sons of Liberty for fighting against the Stamp Act in 1765. An anonymous New York writer summed up the view of many colonists when he or she placed a short advertisement of thanks in Rivington's New-York Gazetteer of November 11, 1774. This notice complimented the New Yorkers for persevering in the cause of liberty and acting quickly to oppose the "dark, and futile, scheme" of Great Britain.

However, those who were loyal to the British Crown did speak up in defense of the governors of the colonies who were appointed by the English. When Massachusetts Lieutenant Governor Hutchinson came under attack from an anonymous Son of Liberty with a poisonous pen, a friend defended him in Boston's The Censor on November 23, 1771. The friend declared that the Sons acted to increase their own importance and took pleasure in "producing disorder in the machine of government." They suffered from "unbridled ambition" and colonists had "something to lose, but nothing to gain, by uniting in the cry of the seditious … How despicable is the swagger of a presumptuous demagogue!"

SUMMARY

The historical Sons of Liberty group was an extremist group that was essential to the success of the American Revolution. They turned a debate about Great Britain's right to tax the American colonists into outright resistance to British control over its colonies. They brought a range of people into street politics, giving them both direction and discipline. When the various Sons of Liberty disbanded with the start of the American Revolution, it is possible that some of the members continued to harass British loyalists. The better known Sons of Liberty, such as Samuel Adams, joined the new government of the United States. The Sons of Liberty provide an example of how some extremist groups are often hailed as revolutionary heroes as members help transform the social-political order through what are considered extremist measures.

SOURCES

Books

Alexander, John K. Samuel Adams: America's Revolutionary Politician. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002.

Copeland, David A. Debating the Issues in Colonial Newspapers: Primary Documents on Events of the Period. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000.

Dawson, Henry B. The Sons of Liberty in New York. New York: Arno Press and the New York Times, 1969.

Hoerder, Dirk. Crowd Action in Revolutionary Massachusetts, 1765–1780. New York: Academic Press, 1977.

Maier, Pauline. From Resistance to Revolution: Colonial Radicals and the Development of American Opposition to Britain, 1765–1776. New York: Knopf, 1972.