Liberty Tree

The Liberty Tree (1646–1775) was a famous elm tree that stood in Boston, Massachusetts near Boston Common in the years before the American Revolution. In 1765, Patriots in Boston staged the first act of defiance against the British government at the tree. The tree became a rallying point for the growing resistance to the rule of Britain over the American colonies, and the ground surrounding it became known as Liberty Hall. The Liberty Tree was felled in August 1775 by Loyalists led by Nathaniel Coffin Jr. or by Job Williams.

In 1765, the British Parliament introduced the Stamp Act, which was directed at Britain's American colonies. It required all legal documents, permits, commercial contracts, newspapers, pamphlets, and playing cards in the American colonies to carry a tax stamp. The act was met with widespread anger in the colonies, and in Boston a group of businessmen calling themselves the Loyal Nine began meeting in secret to plan a series of protests against it.

On August 14, 1765, a crowd gathered in Boston under a large elm tree at the corner of Essex Street and Orange Street to protest the Stamp Act. Hanging from the tree was a straw-stuffed effigy labeled "A. O." for Andrew Oliver, the Secretary of Massachusetts, Boston's appointed stamped-paper distributor, and stamp tax collector. Beside it hung a boot with its sole painted green. This second effigy represented two members of the Grenville ministry who were considered responsible for the Stamp Act: the Earl of Bute (the boot being a pun on "Bute") and George Grenville (the green being a pun on "Grenville"). Peering up from inside the boot was a small devil figure holding a copy of the Stamp Act and bearing a sign that read: "What Greater Joy did ever New England see / Than a Stampman hanging on a Tree!" This was the first public show of defiance against the Crown and spawned the resistance that led to the American Revolutionary War 10 years later.

The tree became a central gathering place for protesters, and the ground surrounding it became popularly known as Liberty Hall. A liberty pole was installed nearby with a flag that could be raised above the tree to summon the townspeople to a meeting. Ebenezer Mackintosh was a shoemaker who handled much of the hands-on work of hanging effigies and leading angry mobs, and he became known as "Captain General of the Liberty Tree." Paul Revere included the Liberty Tree in an engraving, "A View of the Year 1765".

When the Stamp Act was repealed in 1766, townspeople gathered at the Liberty Tree to celebrate. They decorated the tree with flags and streamers and hung dozens of lanterns from its branches when darkness fell. A copper sign was fastened to the trunk which read, "This tree was planted in the year 1646, and pruned by order of the Sons of Liberty, Feb. 14th, 1766." Soon colonists in other towns began naming their own liberty trees, from Newport, Rhode Island to Charleston, South Carolina, and the Tree of Liberty became a familiar symbol of the American Revolution.

The Loyal Nine eventually became part of the Sons of Liberty. They continued to use the Liberty Tree as a gathering place for protests, leading loyalist Peter Oliver to write bitterly in 1781:

This Tree stood in the Town, & was consecrated for an Idol for the Mob to Worship; it was properly the Tree ordeal, where those, whom the Rioters pitched upon as State delinquents, were carried to for Trial, or brought to as the Test of political Orthodoxy.

Townspeople dragged a customs commissioner's boat out of the harbor all the way to the Liberty Tree during the Liberty Riot of 1768, protesting the seizure of John Hancock's ship by Boston customs officials. The commissioner's boat was condemned at a mock trial and burned on Boston Common. Two years later, a funeral procession for the victims of the Boston Massacre passed by the tree. It was also the site of protests against the Tea Act. In 1774, a customs official and staunch loyalist named John Malcolm was stripped to the waist, tarred and feathered, and forced to announce his resignation under the tree. The following year, Thomas Paine published an ode to the Liberty Tree in The Pennsylvania Gazette.