Sons of Liberty

The Sons of Liberty was organized in 1765 to protest Britain's passage of the Stamp Act, which was enacted to raise revenue through colonial taxation. A secret intercolonial organization [Page 428]of men that cut across class lines, the Sons of Liberty expanded definitions of male citizenship and republican manhood by mobilizing thousands for political action. Previously, traditional notions of social and political deference had effectively confined legitimate political activity to elite men, despite the high proportion of men eligible to vote by virtue of property ownership. The Sons of Liberty offered much wider access to public politics, thus expanding the social reach of the responsibilities and privileges of citizenship.

The organization's very name was rooted in the gendered nature of English republican political ideology and practice. Like the radical politicians in eighteenth-century England who challenged the growing power of the monarchy, American patriot leaders tended to portray liberty and political virtue as feminine and to cast themselves as liberty's masculine defenders.

The Sons of Liberty included men with previously limited access to democratic participation. Local leaders were men from middling backgrounds—including small merchants, seamen, and artisans—who assumed positions of political importance by organizing public demonstrations and acting as middlemen between political elites and laboring men. On August 14, 1765, the Boston chapter of the Sons of Liberty organized a mob protest in response to the Stamp Act. The demonstration, the first known organized action by the group, was led by shoemaker Ebenezer McIntosh, probably in concert with wealthy and powerful politicians such as Samuel Adams and James Otis. After hanging effigies of Stamp Distributor Andrew Oliver and the Earl of Bute, McIntosh led two thousand of Boston's laboring men to Oliver's genteel house, where they demolished his elegant furniture and destroyed his wines. This crowd action resulted in Oliver's resignation as stamp distributor. The anti–Stamp Act demonstration exemplifies the Sons of Liberty's broadening of republican manhood and its challenge to older notions of deference and elite rule.

Despite its potentially radical widening of republican citizenship and encouragement of political protest, the Sons of Liberty attempted to discourage social upheaval and ultimately offered a conservative definition of manhood rooted in property ownership. Their experiences during the August 14 demonstration convinced them that recruiting lower-class crowds for political purposes involved risks to the security of propertied men, since they could not ensure control over these crowds. Subsequent street protests in 1765, which involved pillaging symbols of wealth and power, made apparent the risks of radicalizing the lower classes through empowering notions of republican manhood. Boston crowds attacked Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson's mansion, destroying his furniture, wine, and other objects of value, while New York crowds dragged Governor Cadwallader Colden's coach, and his effigy, through the streets before burning both in front of the royal fort.

In denouncing these later attacks while continuing to celebrate what they considered the legitimate activities of August 14, the Sons of Liberty revealed class differences and tensions over the meaning of republican manhood during the Revolutionary period. Patriot leaders established formal delegations for intercolonial committees, held town meetings, and published public notices and political pamphlets. They were interested in pursuing radical political agendas and targeting symbols of royal authority, but theirs was a socially conservative version of republican manhood that remained grounded in traditional notions of social hierarchy, and was therefore suspicious of the unchecked power of mobs. However, the laboring men who participated in antigovernment crowd actions embraced a socially and politically radical version of republican manhood; their belief in property-based citizenship, infused with class resentment, led them to target symbols of wealth and to conclude that existing property arrangements should be overthrown. The middling artisans and small merchants who were the early members of the Sons of Liberty used their position between elite patriot leaders and the laboring poor to give themselves political legitimacy and enter the fold of republican manhood. Through their ability to influence and control extralegal crowd action, these men gained access to legitimate channels of political control.

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