Sons of Liberty

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Disregarding American protests that the colonists could not be taxed because they were not represented in Parliament, in March 1765 the British government enacted a stamp tax to take effect in the American colonies on November 1, 1765. Speaking against the proposed Stamp Act in the House of Commons, Isaac Barré had described the Americans as "Sons of Liberty" who would stead-fastly resist any assault on their liberties.

Although the term "Sons of Liberty" did not become commonplace until December 1765 and although not all Americans actively opposed Britain's new imperial policies, Barré was right about the general colonial response to the Stamp Act. Open defiance started in Boston when nine men, most of whom were middle-class shopkeepers or manufacturers, devised a plan to force the designated stamp distributor, Andrew Oliver, to resign. If Oliver resigned, the Stamp Act could not be implemented. Having gotten usually antagonistic working-class groups to unite, the Loyal Nine—who formed the nucleus of what became the city's Sons of Liberty—fashioned effigies, including one of Oliver. On August 14, 1765, Bostonians awoke to see those effigies hanging from a large old elm christened the Liberty Tree. Thereafter, it became a staging

area for Sons of Liberty activities. That evening a huge crowd of perhaps 3,000 people paraded the effigies through the streets. Coming upon a small building that Oliver reportedly would use as the stamp distribution office, the crowd demolished it. Later the crowd beheaded the Oliver figure and burned the other effigies. After the Loyal Nine left the scene, members of the crowd, acting on their own, slightly damaged Oliver's home. He resigned his stamp distributorship the next day. Neither the Loyal Nine nor Samuel Adams, who soon began working with them, saw any reason for further crowd action. Nevertheless, on August 26, crowds, not led by the Loyal Nine or other middle-class persons, spent the night tearing apart the mansion of Thomas Hutchinson, the colony's wealthy lieutenant governor. The Loyal Nine, and their new ally Samuel Adams, were horrified by this rioting.

Violent crowd actions attributed to Sons of Liberty also occurred in Newport, Rhode Island at the end of August. By threatening more violence and staging public protests at their own local Liberty Trees, Sons of Liberty groups in other colonies effectively stopped the Stamp Act from being implemented. By late 1765, the term Sons of Liberty—as well as "Liberty Boys"—had come to signify those Americans who secretly banded together and used extralegal means and public demonstrations—ranging from parading with effigies to destructive rioting—to stop the implementation of the Stamp Act.

In December 1765, with New York City Sons initiating the effort, plans were formulated to coordinate the Sons' resistance to Britain's intrusive imperial policies. By February 1766, the New York Sons were developing a committees of correspondence system to link Sons of Liberty organizations in the colonies as far away as Maryland. During this same period, many Sons of Liberty groups regularized their meetings and opened them to anyone who supported the American cause. The repeal of the Stamp Act in March 1766 marked the key triumph and, ironically, the start of the decline of the Sons' influence. Individual groups of Sons continued to meet, and Sons of Liberty often held public meetings to celebrate significant anniversaries in the fight against the Stamp Act. Internal fissures, however, soon developed. In New York City, for example, the Sons split into competing groups that backed different local political parties; only the threat of the Townshend duties forced a truce in which a group calling itself "The United Sons of Liberty" pledged in July 1769 steadfastly to support a non-importation agreement against the duties. Moreover, into the 1770s, groups and individuals calling themselves Sons of Liberty issued propaganda statements attacking British taxing policies and other efforts to tighten Britain's control over the colonies. But by the eve of the revolution, few groups used the term Sons of Liberty, and when the term was employed it had come to stand for virtually any American "patriot."

There were many reasons why the Sons' influence declined. Communities—especially urban communities—that had readily joined in opposition to the Stamp Act were not so united when it came to using economic boycotts as a weapon after 1766. The systematic opposition to the 1767 Townshend duties took over a year to materialize. Worse yet, the response to the 1770 repeal of all the Townshend duties except the one on tea revealed how fractured the resistance movement was. In city after city, an unbridgeable gulf appeared between manufacturers and merchants. In no small part to further their own economic position, manufacturers advocated maintaining the boycott until all the Townshend duties were repelled; most merchants, though, opposed continuing the boycott or undertaking any new economic warfare because it undermined their immediate economic interests. The rise of government sanctioned committees of correspondence to unify resistance against British policies also undercut the need for the kinds of activities that Sons of Liberty had undertaken in 1765 to 1766. And the crucial protests against the Tea Act of 1773 were usually based on mass gatherings such as those held in Philadelphia and Boston. These meetings created their own committees to force everyone in the community to comply with the publicly expressed will. Finally, once the Continental Congress created the Continental Association in October 1774, elected committees of inspection and observation provided the political muscle and engaged in the kind of pressure tactics associated with the Sons of Liberty.

Although the role of the Sons of Liberty declined sharply after 1766, their actions were essential in thwarting the Stamp Act. And the defeat of the Stamp Act stiffened the resolve of both Americans and the British Parliament to hold fast to their very different views of Parliament's powers. Had the Sons of Liberty not conducted vigorous extra legal actions, especially in 1765, the revolutionary movement surely would have unfolded in a very different way—if it unfolded at all.

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