"liberty tree", 1765, 1766 (antedating 1776)

[Joel S. Berson]

Comments interspersed.  I apologize for the total length of this
message, but I didn't want to delete anything Victor wrote.

At 3/6/2010 06:35 PM, victor steinbok wrote:
>Ouh, boy! After the initial thought, when I saw the header, directed
>at an actual tree, the second flash was to "Tree of Liberty". Sure
>enough, OED does have a separate entry under tree:
>
> > tree of liberty, a tree (or a pole) planted in celebration of a
> revolution or victory securing liberty (chiefly in reference to the
> French Revolution)

American colonial "liberty poles" were different from trees.  The
Boston Liberty Tree was a living elm.  (I would bet the Rhode Island
tree was also.)  See _Liberty and Freedom_, David Hackett Fischer
(2005), Index, "liberty poles".  "The symbolism of the Liberty Pole
began with an ancient image that was familiar throughout the
English-speaking world in the eighteenth century. Political cartoons
... commonly represented liberty as a Roman goddess of libertas ...
She was distinguished from other Roman goddesses by the things she
carries: a long wand called a vindicta in one hand ..." (p. 41; see also 6).

>That's a rather odd statement, in my book, especially if Liberty Tree
>and Tree of Liberty mean the same thing.

In 1765 Boston the terms were used synonymously, referring concretely
to the elm tree in the South End.

>The citations make it more complicated too:
>
> > 1765 Universal Mag. XXXVII. 376/2 (Amer.) Known by the name of
> the Tree of *Liberty ever since the memorable 14th of August. 1837
> CARLYLE Fr. Rev. II. I. xii, A Tree of Liberty sixty feet high; and
> Phrygian Cap on it, of size enormous. 1890 LECKY Hist. Eng. xxvii.
> VII. 207 Trees of liberty had been planted in Antrim, and bonfires
> lit in consequence of French victories.
>
>All refer to actual trees, it seems, including one that is likely the
>same one that pops up the same year as "Liberty Tree".

Yes, it is the same in 1765.


>But the literal meaning in the case of the "tree of liberty" struck me
>as an odd one because I am so used to the metaphor. Maybe it's just
>me, but "Liberty Tree" as a tree makes sense, but "Tree of Liberty" is
>liberty.
>
>With that in mind, [GB copy of] a volume residing at Oxford:
>
>Pamela: Or, Virtue Rewarded: In a Series of Familiar Letters from a
>Beautiful Young Damsel to Her Parents: and Afterwards, in Her Exalted
>Condition, Between Her, and Persons of Figure and Quality, Upon the
>Most Important and Entertaining Subject In Genteel Life. The Third and
>Fourth Volumes, by the Editor of the Two Firsts. Printed for Samuel
>Richardson; 1842, p. 191
>
> > A Method I take it, my Dear, /turning to me/, that was of great
> Service to you, as it initiated you into Writing with the Freedom
> and Ease, which shine in your sauce Letters and Journals ; and to
> which my present Fetters are not a little owing : Just as Pedlars
> catch Monkeys in the Baboon Kingdoms, provoking the attentive
> Fools, by their own Example, to put on Shoes and Stockens, till the
> Apes of Imitation, trying to do the like, intangle their Feet, and
> so cannot escape upon the Boughs of the Tree of Liberty, on which
> before they were wont to hop arid skip about, and play a thousand
> puggish Tricks.

I don't see the relevance of an 1842 work to the 1765 tree and phrases.

>This is preceded--at least, as far as GB is concerned--by The
>Craftsman No. 436, November 9, 1737.
>
>The Craftsman, [by] Caleb D'Anvers of Gray's Inn, Esq
>[A series of letters] The Dissertation upon Parties, p. 62
> >If Liberty is that delicious and wholesome Fruit, on which the
> British Nation hath fed for so many Ages, and to which We owe our
> Riches, our Strength, and all the Advantages We boast of ; the
> British Constitution is the Tree, that bears this Fruit, and will
> continue to bear it, as long as We are careful to fence it in, and
> trench it round against the Beasts of the Field, and the Insects of the Earth.

If one is concerned with the phrase "tree of liberty" -- as I, and I
assume the OED, are -- and not a metaphorical association of the
fruit of liberty with its tree (surely not an elm!), then the above
paragraph is not an antedating -- it does not contain the phrase.  At
best, I suppose, it (or something perhaps much earlier) might receive
a listing in square brackets.

>The letters are anonymous--as is the publication of the entire set in
>its /eighth/ edition in 1756, but, from external sources they are
>identified with Henry St. John Bolingbroke.
>
>Brewer blamed "the Tree of Liberty" on "American of the United States
>... who planted poplars and other trees during the war of
>independence" and "Jacobins". This is essentially what the OED has. No
>word of metaphoric use, no mention that the phrase was used several
>decades before the War of Independence.

As I said above, the 1737 quote does not use the phrase "tree of liberty".

>There are not many customs
>that gravitate from metaphorical to the literal, but this seems to be
>exactly what happened in the case of the colonists who took the idea
>of a Tree of Liberty and decided to physically plant a tree. The
>Boston Liberty Tree might have been the first merely by coincidence of
>being one of the earliest and most aggressive riots.
>
>The Library of [useless] Universal Knowledge, 1881 (Reprint of 1880
>Chambers), is a bit broader in its description than Brewer, but also
>fails to mention any Tree of Liberty used to mean, literally, Liberty.
>
> >TREES OF LIBERTY. The custom, common to almost all the nations of
> Europe, of celebrating the beginning of spring and various national
> and ecclesiastical festivals by setting green boughs, led, during
> the war of independence in the United States, to the habit of
> planting poplars and other trees as the symbol of growing freedom.
> This example was imitated during the French Revolution. ...
>
>I have no idea how much thought went into this description, but it
>still seems to be missing half the context. What might be classified
>as deliberate with the OED (I can't believe they were not aware of
>non-literal use), certainly would not serve as an excuse here since
>the description attempts to give the history of the expression.

As I wrote above, the question for the OED is when the phrase "tree
of liberty" can be found in print, not the history of the metaphor.

>And there can be no doubt, of course, that the infamous (and largely
>abused) Jeffersonian expression relies on the metaphor that already
>existed, rather than coining one based on the Boston Liberty Tree (or
>its other colonial equivalents).

I certainly can doubt it.  The term "tree of liberty" was used as a
literal reference to the Boston tree.  I can suppose that Jefferson
picked it up from there.  And did not coin it.

>Finally, the orations delivered at the dedications of the Liberty Tree
>in Boston and Rhode Island had been published in Boston and
>Providence, respectively, in 1766 and 1768 (assuming they are
>distinct).

I noted -- but I have not examined (no preview in Google, so no
quotation is offered) -- the 1766 publication, since I do not have
access to Early American Imprints from home.  I believe there is only
*one* "oration", and it refers to an "assembly" in Boston:  _A
discourse, addressed to the Sons of Liberty, at a solemn assembly,
near Liberty-Tree, in Boston, February 14, 1766, by Sons of Liberty_
(published in Providence).

This information is  from WorldCat, which of course is dependent on
what the holding libraries send them.  But I believe there is no
other publication.  ESTC notes "There exist three variant issues,
with the place in title given as Providence, Boston, and Newport
respectively. The caption title on p. [3] reads Providence in all
three issues. Cf. Alden."  I would not be surprised if the texts are
identical, and the two Rhode Island placements were designed to
arouse that colony to the fever of Massachusetts.  But only one of
the variants (Boston) is in EAI..  I suspect there is no single
library holding both of the other two.

I also had noted that there were a number of Google Books hits for
1768.  They seemed less important given the closely preceding, and
primary source, 1765/1766 instances.

>Not sure if there was more than one such tree in Rhode
>Island--which is mentioned in correspondence with the home office as
>one of the two major sources of Stamp Act riots--but there was a "Tree
>of Liberty" in Newport. The reason I mention this is because there is
>no doubt about the origin of the name in the Newport case--and, in
>this case, it is not literal (or so say the people responsible for
>it).

Again, I take the use of "tree of liberty" in the Newport document
(below) as literal, as equivalent to "liberty tree".  The 1875
author, George C. Mason, equates the two.

>Newport Illustrated in a Series of Pen & Pencil Sketches, by George C.
>Mason; Newport, RI: 1875.
>p. 102
>
> > At the head of Thames Street stood the venerable Liberty Tree, a
> memorial of the early resistance of Newport to British aggression.
> The copper plate, with names of the thirteen who joined in its
> restoration after the departure of the enemy, is still preserved.
> > In 1766, Wm. Read, Esq., deeded to Wm. Ellery, John Collins,
> Robert Cooke and Samuel Fowler, the Liberty Tree lot. The
> instrument, drawn up by Henry Marchant, Esq., is to this effect:
> > > [[Said lot and tree thereon, were conveyed to the grantees "in
> trust, and for ever thereafter to be known by the name of the 'Tree
> of Liberty,' to be set apart to, and for the use of, the Sons of
> Liberty ; and that the same stand as a monument of the spirited and
> noble opposition to the Stamp Act, in the year 1765, by the Sons of
> Liberty in Newport, and throughout the continent of North America,
> and to be considered as emblematical of Public Liberty taking deep
> root in English America, of her strength and spreading protection,
> of her against the attempts of tyranny and oppression. And
> furthermore, the said Tree of Liberty is destined and set apart,
> for exposing to public ingominy and reproach, all offenders against
> the liberties of the country, and the abettors and approvers of
> such as would enslave her. And, in general, said tree is hereby set
> apart, for such other purposes as they, the true born Sons of
> Liberty, shall, from time to time, from age to age, and in all tim!
>  es and ages hereafter, apprehend, judge and resolve, may subserve
> the glorious cause of Public Liberty."]]
>
>The Boston tree was initially identified as the epicenter of the local
>riots because of the Andrew Oliver effigy that was hanged on the tree
>and subsequently burned. According to several non-contemporaneous
>accounts (I have not yet seen any that had been written by the
>participants), it was named Liberty Tree /later/, although it is not
>clear how much later.

It was called "Liberty Tree" in December 1765, four months after
Oliver was hanged.  It was called "Tree of Liberty" a little earlier,
in September, one month after Oliver.  These are anonymous items in
the Boston newspapers, so we don't know whether they were provided by
participants.  But that is not a deciding factor -- both terms were
used by contemporaries, and these were contemporaneous accounts.

>As the Stamp Act was enacted on March 22,

The Stamp Act was to be effective in Massachusetts on November 1.

>and
>the initial riots occurred in August--with the effigy appearing on
>August 14--

The riots that vandalized the houses of Oliver and acting governor
Hutchinson occurred the evening of March 13, after the Oliver effigy
had been hun overnight on the 13th.  See Fischer, pp. 20-22; or
Wikipedia, "Andrew Oliver".

>that leaves several months before the printed references to
>the "Liberty Tree".

The commissioning of Oliver as "Stamp Master" was surely later than
the March enactment of the act in Britain.  _A history of Boston: the
metropolis of Massachusetts_, by Caleb Hopkins Snow (1828 -- close to
the time for a non-contemporary historian), p. 258, implies that it
took place in or after July.  The Boston tree was adorned the night
of August 13, so clearly it would not have been called the "Liberty
Tree" before then.

A contemporary and historian, Thomas Hutchinson, uses the phrase
"liberty tree", but he also wrote and was published in
1828.  Hutchinson too uses both "liberty tree" and "tree of liberty",
synonymously when speaking of Boston.  (Once the "tree of liberty" is
in Cambridge, in 1768, when Harvard students gathered under it and
rebelled against the tutors.  Hutchinson was, as acting governor, one
of the Overseers.)

Snow is interesting also because on pp. 264-265 he asserts that the
name "Sons of Liberty" came from the speech by Barre:   "In the early
part of December the Sons of Liberty (so those who espoused the
popular side were called, adopting the appellation given them by Col.
Barre on the floor of parliament) ..."  This speech was reported in
Boston on May 27, 1765, just 2 and 1/2 months before the Oliver
effigies on the Boston Liberty Tree.  See below.

>The Newport effigies were hanged and burned on
>August 27 (Maryland had a similar event on August 29). And the
>colonial press was /filled/ with anti-Stamp Act rhetoric from the date
>of its enactment

Not from its March enactment -- it would take at least 6 weeks, and
probably several weeks longer, to get from enactment to the seals, to
a suitable ship, to its sailing, to favorable winds out of the
Channel (or a few days to a west country port), and across the
Atlantic to Boston.

>--including, POSSIBLY, some of the rhetoric from
>sources that used the Tree of Liberty metaphor. (There are several
>letters in the Cadwallader Colden collection at NYHS, among others,
>that have shed light on the details of the rhetoric and the
>planning--perhaps they will offer linguistic details as well. Newport
>Mercury, Pennsylvania Journal, Boston Gazette and New York Gazette
>were likely the most aggressive sources of anti-Stamp Act propaganda
>from March to December of 1765.)

I did not find any earlier use in newspapers of "tree of liberty"
than the one I reported from Sept. 1756.  Of the four papers
mentioned above, three are contained in EAN; the Pennsylvania Gazette
is not.  Also, EAN does give us false negatives -- it did not give me
the Sept. 1756 instance.  So perhaps there is an earlier instance,
although I think that is unlikely.

>In any case, it is in this sense that the Sons of Liberty are related
>to the Tree of Liberty--the Boston naming appears more accidental than
>prescient.

Not so.  The term "Sons of Liberty" was taken up in a general sense
shortly before the Boston tree was named "Liberty Tree", and probably
not adopted by an organized group in Boston until then.  The "Loyal
Nine", who managed the effigy hanging, "grew into a much larger group
called the Sons of Liberty" (Fischer, pp. 20-22, quote from 22).  The
earliest I find the phrase "sons of liberty" in the American
newspapers is in a report of a Parliamentary speech by Barre on May
27, 1765 (also reported in an August 1 newspaper); but this clearly
is not a reference to a group of Bostonians -- it is political
rhetoric.  The next instance is July 1765, in a complaint about
unwarranted seizure of property in a suit; the complainant writes
"Let the Sons of Liberty judge, whether this is most agreeable to and
English Government, or to the arbitrary Measures of some Foreign
States."  Again not a reference to the Boston group.  (Remember that
nouns were generally capitalized, so "Sons of Liberty" is not
necessarily the name of some organization.)

The first use to refer to an identifiable group of people appears to
be August 12, 1765 (two days before Oliver's hanging), in the Boston
Post-Boy.  It says:

"We hear from Providence, in the Colony of Rhode Island, that the
Freemen of that Town being lately called, to confer on such Measures
as should appear to them necessary relative to the STAMP-ACT, whereby
the Liberties, the darling Boast of the English North American
Subjects ... must be greatly abridged ... they accordingly met ...
and unanimously appointed a Committee to prepare Instructions {for]
their Representatives ... in the next general Assembly ... and that
they are to be laid before the Town for their Approbation tomorrow:
at which Time those Sons of Liberty are to convene again for the
noblest of all Causes, their Country's Good."

But here the "Sons of Liberty" are all the voting freemen of the town
of Providence, assembled at a town meeting.

Since it took a day or a day and a half to ride from Providence to
Boston, the news is from 1 or 2 to 9 days old (the newspaper was a
weekly).  Thus the Providence meeting took place perhaps 10 days
before the hanging of Oliver, which must be close to when -- I assume
-- the term "Liberty Tree" was first used, although it apparently
does not appear in print until December, about 4 months later.  (I
note that both "Sons of Liberty" and "Liberty Tree" are used in the
December newspaper item -- see my previous post, at the end of this message.)

>But symbols tend to take on the lives of their own and
>acquire their own legends along the way--hence the Brewer and Chambers
>accounts, above.

Those are a century later than the events.

My speculation is that knowledge of Barre's phrase, used to refer to
the colonials, combined with the image of the Roman goddess Liberty
with a "vindicta" and the use of the South End elm tree (a lofty tree
being a suitably prominent place to hang an effigy) to lead to the
appearance of all three phrases -- Sons of Liberty, Tree of Liberty,
and Liberty Tree -- at nearly the same time.

Joel


>I may have a couple more details to add later, but I must run now and
>wanted to send this off before leaving.
>
>VS-)
>
>On Sat, Mar 6, 2010 at 1:30 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
> >
> > OED 2nd edition has "liberty tree" in 1776 -- and no other
> > quotations, earlier or later.  The earliest I find are 1765 and 1766.
> >
> > (1)  [Datelined "Boston (Hanover Square) Dec 18, 1765."]
> > Your inserting the following Letter sent on Monday Evening last to
> > the Honorable Andrew Oliver, Esq; Commissioner for distributing
> > Stamps in this Province, with the Proceedings occasioned thereon,
> > will oblige THE TRUE SONS OF LIBERTY.
> > ...
> > SIR,
> > The respectable Inhabitants of the Town of Boston ... desire that you
> > would, To morrow, appear under Liberty-Tree, at 12 o'clock, to make a
> > public Resignation.
> >
> > [He did resign.  However, Wikipedia says he publicly resigned on Aug.
> > 17, and later, "On December 17, the Sons of Liberty again forced him
> > to publicly swear that he would never act as stamp distributor."  I
> > don't swear to Wikipedia's account.]
> >
> > Source:  [EAN, from download of masthead and entire issue.]  The
> > Massachusetts Gazette, No. 0. [sic] Thursday, December 19,
> > 1765,  page [3], col. 1.  EAN classifies the Massachusetts Gazette
> > with the Boston News-Letter, for this article citing:
> >      "Boston News-Letter, published as The Boston News-Letter and
> > New-England Chronicle; Date: 12-19-1765; Page: Supplement [2]."
> >      According to the Harvard Library catalog, "When the Stamp Act
> > took effect, the Drapers changed the title of this paper to:
> > Massachusetts gazette, from Nov. 7, 1765-May 15, 1766, and abandoned
> > the volume numbering. With the repeal of the Act, they resumed the
> > former title and numbering."
> >      Note that EAN cites the page as "Supplement [2]"; I find no
> > heading "Supplement", and count to the 3rd page.  There are two pages
> > having the masthead, suggesting that this 6-page issue was 4 pages
> > with a 2-page supplement.  Sometimes EAN does not order the pages of
> > issues with supplements in the correct sequence, but I can't tell
> > here (for one thing, all 6 pages are unnumbered).
> >      Curiously, the 3rd of EAN's 6 pages ends with a hyphen, but no
> > later (or earlier) page begins with a continued word.  If any pages
> > are missing, it would be 2 (one sheet) -- but a total of 8 pages
> > seems unlikely.  The hyphenated end of page seems more like a
> printer's error.
> >
> > The above is the earliest of the appearances of "liberty tree" (two
> > words, hyphenated, or one word) in 6 different newspapers in 1765,
> > all between Dec. 19 and Dec. 30 and all about Oliver's encounter
> with the tree.
> >
> >
> > (2)  EAN claims its earliest citation for "liberty tree" is November
> > 27, 1765, but this actually is December 27, and the text refers to
> > the Dec. 17 event in Boston.
> >      EAN says "Connecticut Gazette, published as The New-London
> > Gazette; Date: 11-27-1765; Issue: 111; Page: [3]."  But the masthead
> > says "Friday, December 27, 1765 ... Number 111.  The New-London
> > Gazette."  And the issue contains news items dated Philadelphia,
> > December 12; Boston, Dec. 16; etc.
> >
> >
> > (3)  _A discourse: addressed to the Sons of Liberty, at a solemn
> > assembly, near ..._, 1766, 8 pages.  [Google Books, no
> > preview.]  This is _A Discourse, addressed to the Sons of Liberty ...
> > February 14 1766_, Providence, [1766]; Evans 10286; Early American
> > Imprints, First series.
> >
> > (4)  The above is the only instance found by Google Books for 1766
> > and 1767.  In 1768, there are 4 British journals containing
> > "liberty-tree" [all full view].
> >
> > Joel
>
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