The Sons of Liberty and the Creation of a Movement Model

Abstract

On Christmas Day 1765, a new era in the history of protest began. On frozen Connecticut fields outside New London, Sons of Liberty from New York City met deputations from the surrounding region. Building from the escalating resistance to the Stamp Act across Britain’s American colonies since news of the reviled legislation arrived several months earlier, the groups agreed “to associate, advise, protect and defend each other in the peaceable, full and just enjoyment of their inherent and accustomed rights as British subjects” – pledging to come “with their full force if required” to contest government incursions on their liberties. Even more importantly, all present pledged to spread the alliance to “perfect the like association with all the colonies on the continent” to reinforce their efforts. Within weeks, their pact spread from New Hampshire to Georgia, enabling unprecedented coordination across the thirteen colonies. The Sons of Liberty–centered opposition to the Stamp Act in 1765–66 created a fundamentally new kind of protest campaign. Utilizing correspondence and newspaper publicity, the colonists combined their efforts into an unprecedented political alliance, openly affiliating and coordinating their actions. In so doing, they created a model of allied corresponding societies with far-flung ramifications for both their standoff with British authorities and subsequent Atlantic movements over the decades to come.