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Illustrated Episode · Volume III, chapter 22 · 14 August 1765

The first revolutionary blow

Under a great elm in summer light, a crowd of tradesmen, sailors and women look up at a straw figure in a coat and a green boot with a small devil hanging from a branch, while a gentleman and two deputies hold back at the crowd's edge.
Boston, August 1765. A straw Andrew Oliver, the stamp master, hangs from an elm beside a green boot with a devil climbing out. Lieutenant Governor Hutchinson orders the sheriff to cut them down, but the sheriff finds his officers would risk their lives doing it. Rothbard calls the day the first revolutionary blow. Chapter 22 of Conceived in Liberty.

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Adapted from Murray N. Rothbard, Conceived in Liberty (Mises Institute, 2011), CC BY 3.0.

What happened

At dawn on 14 August 1765 Bostonians found a straw figure of Andrew Oliver, the province's new stamp master, hanging from an elm on Orange Street. Beside it hung a great green boot with a little devil climbing out of the top, a dig at Lord Bute. Rothbard credits Sam Adams and the Loyal Nine with the plan, and shoemaker Ebenezer Mackintosh's South End crowd with the muscle. Governor Bernard wanted the figure gone. Lieutenant Governor Hutchinson, as chief justice, ordered the sheriff to cut it down, and the sheriff found that his officers could do it only at the risk of their lives. By evening the crowd took the effigy down itself, carried it in a mock funeral past the Town House, leveled the building Oliver had raised at his dock, and burned the figure on a hill. The next day Oliver promised to ask the Crown for leave to resign. Rothbard calls it the first revolutionary blow, and for years Americans kept August 14 as the happy day on which Liberty arose from a long slumber. The elm soon had a new name, the Liberty Tree.

Sources

  1. Murray N. Rothbard, Conceived in Liberty (Mises Institute, 2011 single-volume ed.), vol. III, ch. 22, 'Sam Adams Rallies Boston', pp. 866-873. CC BY 3.0. Rothbard
  2. Francis Bernard to the Board of Trade, Castle William, 15 August 1765, in The Papers of Francis Bernard, Colonial Society of Massachusetts, letter 368 (read 2026-09-30): the effigy 'discovered hanging upon a tree, in a street in the town' at break of day; the lieutenant governor as chief justice told the sheriff to take it down; the Council called it 'a boyish sport'; the mob 'came down to the Town House' that evening. Primary source
  3. Massachusetts Historical Society, 'The 259th Anniversary of Boston's Liberty Tree', Beehive blog (August 2024), quoting Cyrus Baldwin's 1765 account: a straw-filled effigy marked A.O., a green boot with a small devil, thousands through the day. Secondary source
  4. 'Visiting Boston's Liberty Tree Site', Journal of the American Revolution (2015): the elm in Deacon John Elliott's front yard on Orange Street, behind a fence; sheriff's deputies could not remove the effigy 'without imminent danger to their lives'. Secondary source
  5. Era registry entry urban-colonial-1760-1775 (data/cil/registry/eras/), dress and architecture for Boston; its own sources are listed in its notes. Secondary source
  6. Place registry entry liberty-tree-boston-1765 (data/cil/registry/places/); its own sources are listed there. Secondary source