Origin
After 1765 the major American cities saw the formation of secret groups that were set up to defend their rights. Boston had the "Boston Caucus Club," led by Samuel Adams and comprising artisans, merchants, tradesmen, and professionals, as well as the "Loyal Nine". Groups such as these were absorbed into the greater Sons of Liberty organization. Its name comes from a speech in the British Parliament by Colonel Isaac Barré referring to the colonials as sons of liberty.
In the popular imagination, the Sons of Liberty was a formal underground organization with recognized members and leaders. More likely, the name was an underground term for any men resisting new Crown taxes and laws. The well-known label allowed organizers to issue anonymous summons to a Liberty Tree, "Liberty Pole", or other public meeting-place. Furthermore, a unifying name helped to promote inter-Colonial efforts against Parliament and the Crown's actions. Their motto became, "No taxation without representation."
Read more about this topic: Sons Of Liberty
Famous quotes containing the word origin:
“The origin of storms is not in clouds,
our lightning strikes when the earth rises,
spillways free authentic power:
dead John Brown’s body walking from a tunnel
to break the armored and concluded mind.”
—Muriel Rukeyser (1913–1980)
“In the woods in a winter afternoon one will see as readily the origin of the stained glass window, with which Gothic cathedrals are adorned, in the colors of the western sky seen through the bare and crossing branches of the forest.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“We have got rid of the fetish of the divine right of kings, and that slavery is of divine origin and authority. But the divine right of property has taken its place. The tendency plainly is towards ... “a government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich.””
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)