“An Idol for the Mob to Worship”: Liberty Trees and the Origin of American Protest
To honor our collective history of civic engagement, the Kentucky Historical Society, through its America250KY commission, has developed the Liberty Tree Project. The project’s goal is to plant one tulip poplar—Kentucky’s official state tree—in each of Kentucky’s 120 counties. It is the commission’s hope that these trees will one day serve as spaces for civic engagement. Additionally, these trees will stand as living reminders that civic engagement and protest form the cornerstones of our democracy.
The idea of trees as hubs for public protest stretches back to before the American Revolution to the very first liberty tree planted in Boston approximately 380 years ago. At the time, this simple elm tree, planted on Orange Street as part of a grove, was perhaps only intended to offer a bit of shade or a cool breeze to pedestrians. However, in 1765, more than one hundred years after it was first seeded, the citizens of Boston transformed this elm tree into a powerful symbol of anti-British protest.
On the morning of August 15, 1765, an early morning crowd curiously approached a figure suspended in an elm tree. The figure was not a person but rather an effigy of Andrew Oliver, the royal tax collector for the city. Pinned to the effigy’s left arm was a note that read, “I’ts [sic] a glorious sight to See a Stamp-man hanging on a Tree.”1
Liberty Tree, Boston, 1765. Print Etching, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C.
A group of Boston merchants, known as “the Loyal Nine,” were responsible. These merchants, as well as other Bostonians, were enraged by the British Parliament’s enactment of the Stamp Act. The measure, combined with others the British Parliament issued in the 1760s and 1770s, served as a catalyst for the American Revolution. For its part, the Stamp Act required colonists to pay a tax, in the form of a royally approved stamp, on various forms of paper, including playing cards and postage. The act also stipulated that anyone who did not comply with the tax could be prosecuted before a military tribunal and imprisoned anywhere in the vast British Empire. Colonists argued that the act violated their rights as British subjects because their local legislatures had no say regarding the law.2
Throughout the day, Bostonians gathered at the tree, giving impassioned speeches against the Stamp Act. Eventually a mob formed, tearing down the effigy of Oliver, beheading it, and dragging it in front of his home before setting it ablaze. The mob eventually added timber from Oliver’s home, garden fence, and boat house to the inferno, breaking windows and smashing furniture in the process. Cyrus Baldwin, a resident of Boston at the time, reported in a letter to his brother that the incident served as a “Sufficient warning to others not to take Offices that Encroach upon American liberty.”3
By December 1765, persistent intimidation forced Oliver to resign his position as tax collector. As part of his resignation, the Sons of Liberty, a secret paramilitary organization dedicated to resisting British oppression, forced Oliver to pledge that he would never enforce the Stamp Act. He did so under the same elm tree in which his effigy was strung up less than a year before.4
The Stamp Act Denounced, 1913. Wood engraving, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C.
Bostonians welcomed Oliver’s resignation as a renewal of their liberty. They celebrated by decorating the Orange Street elm, which they affectionally dubbed the “Liberty Tree,” with lanterns and attached a plaque that read, “This tree was planted in the year 1646, and pruned by order of the Sons of Liberty, Feb. 14th, 1766.” Peter Oliver, Andrew’s brother, did not think kindly of the celebration, denouncing the elm as “an idol for the Mob to Worship.”5
An idol or not, Boston’s liberty tree continued to play an important role in the city’s resistance to British oppression in the years prior to the Revolution. Bostonians gathered frequently beneath its branches to protest British policies and the tree quickly transformed into a powerful symbol of resistance.
In 1770 alone the tree stood witness to two key events in British colonists’ move toward independence. On February 22, Ebenezer Richardson, a customs officer who was widely disliked across Boston, shot and killed an eleven-year-old German boy, Christopher Seider, in his backyard. The murder occurred amid a city-wide boycott of British goods organized in further defiance of parliament’s taxes.
On the morning of the 22nd, Seider and a group of companions appeared at a Richardson’s shop and erected a sign in front of the store mocking him for not participating in the boycott.6 Angered by their slight, Richardson, a suspected British informant, began arguing with the children. A mob of disgruntled Bostonians eventually formed, prompting Richardson to retreat to his home out of fear of being overwhelmed by the crowd. The mob, however, followed him and began hurling stones at his home, shattering several windows. Richardson and an acquaintance, George Wilmont, who had come to his aid, armed themselves with muskets. At some point, Richardson fired aimlessly into the crowd, hitting and mortally wounding Seider who died later that evening.7
In the aftermath of Seider’s murder, Bostonians demanded Richardson’s head. Although he was convicted of murder, Richardson escaped the gallows and only served two years imprisonment after which he received a royal pardon.
Seider immediately became a martyr for liberty and thousands of Bostonians turned out for his funeral. Appropriately, the funeral procession began at the Liberty Tree. Funeral attendees, upset by the leniency afforded Richardson, affixed a plaque to the tree, which read, “Thou shalt take no Satisfaction for the Life of a Murderer. He shall surely be put to Death. Though Hand join in Hand, the Wicked shall not pass unpunished.”8 John Adams, a witness to the funeral, recorded in his diary that “eyes never beheld such a funeral.” In fact, Adams only found the funeral procession, which he noted “extended further than can be well imagined,” because he noticed a “vast Collection of People [sic], near [the] Liberty Tree.”9 Thus, from Adams’ account, the Liberty Tree played a prominent role in mourning the deceased child and in the city’s civil protest of British oppression.
Less than two weeks later, British violence once again outraged Bostonians. On March 5, 1770, protesters gathered outside the custom house on King Street and began taunting and hurling snowballs at British soldiers guarding the grounds. Soon after, British regulars from the 29th Regiment of Foot arrived on the scene to reinforce the overwhelmed sentries. Their arrival, however, only inflamed the anti-British gathering. During the ensuing chaos, random shots rang out, prompting the regulars to release a volley into the crowd. Five Bostonians lay dead, and several others were wounded, in the incident. Among the dead was a man named Crispus Attucks whom scholars suspect was a refugee from slavery living in Boston at the time.
Print Titled "The Massacre Perpetrated in King Street Boston on March 5th 1770." Library of Congress Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Washington, D. C.
Paul Revere’s famous engraving titled, “The Bloody Massacre perpetrated in King Street Boston [sic],” forever canonized the event in American history as the infamous Boston Massacre.10
Following the killings, nine British soldiers (one officer and eight enlisted men) stood trial for murder. Future president of the United States, John Adams, served as the defense counsel. Despite the threat to his reputation, Adams insisted on everyone’s right to legal representation and fair trial.
During the trial, John Cox, a local brick mason and witness to the violence, testified that on the night of March 5, the night of the massacre, he observed three British soldiers attempting to blow up the Liberty Tree. Realizing their intent, Cox stated that he called out to the soldiers: “I said, so sure as you offer ye scoundrels to blow up that pole, you will have your brains blown out.”11 Whether or not an attempt to blow up Boston’s liberty tree served as the catalyst for the Boston Massacre is unclear. Propaganda and rumor flooded the city in the aftermath of the incident as patriots sought to capitalize on the moment to turn more colonists against the British Crown. A diversity of issues formed the catalyst for the tragedy, including British military occupation, which created friction and hostility between colonists and British troops. Yet, Cox’s reference to the attempt on the tree in his testimony suggests that it was an important enough site in the city to mention it as a possible catalyst behind the massacre.
For five more years, the Liberty Tree stood as a symbol of Bostonians opposition to “taxation without representation.” This was no clearer than on December 16, 1773. Around noon that day, the Boston Sons of Liberty stood beneath the Liberty Tree and called for the resignation of tea house owners in the city who received shipments from the British East India Company (BEIC). The protest was once again in response to another law, the Tea Act (1773), that Bostonians viewed as a violation of their liberties.
The Tea Act was incredibly unpopular in the colonies not just because it taxed tea, but because it also effectively placed a monopoly on the popular beverage, forcing colonists to purchase tea at an inflated rate. The crown then used the excess revenue to bail out the financially floundering BEIC. Such was needed to rescue the once powerful trading company from years of corruption and mismanagement that had brought it to its knees, a fact that was not lost on colonists.12
Only a few hours separated from their Liberty Tree proclamation, members of the Sons dressed as Mohawk Indians and under cover of darkness boarded three ships in Boston Harbor ladened with hundreds of chests of BEIC tea. The men proceeded to dump 342 chests of tea into the harbor, forever solidifying the event as the “Boston Tea Party.” Thomas Hutchinson, the royal governor, called the act “high treason.”13 Thus, one of the defining moments in the coming of the American Revolution began beneath Boston’s Liberty Tree.
The reign of Boston’s Liberty Tree ended abruptly in 1775 when occupying British soldiers were finally victorious in cutting down the elm, leaving only a stump to mark its location. The fact that British soldiers felt the need to cut the elm down reveals how important of a symbol it had become on the eve of the War for Independence. Even after it was felled, stubborn Bostonians were not deterred and soon began calling the remnants of the elm the “Liberty Stump.”14
The idea of the Liberty Tree as a civic gathering place spread to other places as revolutionary fervor ignited through the Thirteen Colonies. Where trees were not available, “Liberty Poles” took their place.
Since the Revolution, the tradition of gathering under a tree to practice the civic right of protest has faded. However, much of the spirit first expressed beneath the first liberty tree’s shaded refuge has maintained itself in other public spaces, such as courthouses, bars, parks, civic plazas, and more. Yet, “the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances” has always been a consistent and vital part of our ever-evolving democracy whether it occurs beneath a tree or somewhere else. Thus, the liberty trees planted across the commonwealth in this 250th year of our nation’s existence serve to remind us of this fundamentally American value.
Who knows what these trees and the values they embody will look like in another 250 years.
It is up to us to decide.
To Learn more about Kentucky’s Liberty Tree Project, visit history.ky.gov.
Additional references:
Eric Hinderaker, Boston Massacre (Harvard University Press, 2019).
David McCullough, John Adams (Simon & Schuster, 2002).
Jon Butler, Becoming America: The Revolution Before 1776 (Harvard University Press, 2001).
Bernard Bailyn, The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson (Belknap Press, 1976).
Edmund Morgan and Helen Morgan, The Stamp Act Crisis: Prologue to Revolution (The University of North Carolina Press, 1953).
NOTES
[1] Letter from Cyrus Baldwin to Loammi Baldwin, 15 August 1765, Boston, Mass., Miscellaneous Bound Manuscripts, Massachusetts Historical Society Online, Boston, https://www.masshist.org/database/viewer.php?item_id=601&img_step=1&pid=2&br=1&mode=dual#page1.
[2] Gilder Lerman institute stamp act https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/spotlight-primary-source/stamp-act-1765?gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=10648156210&gclid=Cj0KCQjw37nNBhDkARIsAEBGI8Mh_tJG7mo1Q7GtgloW5xS3I_HVuZ5WlisMP3w5ib8XhbogjPzG49IaApHsEALw_wcB
[3] Letter from Cyrus Baldwin to Loammi Baldwin, 15 August 1765, Boston, Mass.
[4] John Adams, Boston, 18 December 1765, Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, vol. 1, eds. L. H. Butterfield et al (Cambridge, 1961), 265–66.
[5] Quoted from Erick Trickey, “The Story Behind a Forgotten Symbol of the American Revolution: The Liberty Tree,” https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/story-behind-forgotten-symbol-american-revolution-liberty-tree-180959162/
[6] Legal Papers of John Adams, vol. 2., eds. L. Kinvin Wroth and Hiller B. Zobel (Belknap Press, 1965), 397–411.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Untitled, The Boston-Gazette, and Country Journal, 5 March 1770, The Annotated Newspaper of Harbottle Dorr, Jr., Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, https://www.masshist.org/dorr/volume/3/sequence/96.
[9] Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, vol. 1: 1755–1770, ed. L. H. Butterfield (Belknap, 1962), 350.
[10] “Paul Revere’s engraving of the Boston Massacre, 1770,” Historical Resources, The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/spotlight-primary-source/paul-reveres-engraving-boston-massacre-1770.
[11] Legal Papers of John Adams, vol. 3, eds. L. Kinvin Wroth and Hiller B. Zobel (Belknap Press, 1965), 195.
[12] “Tea Act,” American Battlefield Trust, https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/tea-act.
[13] Ibid.
[14] Emily Yurkus, “Legacy of the Liberty Tree: Where is it Now in Present-Day Boston?” Revolutionary Spaces, https://revolutionaryspaces.org/legacy-liberty-tree.