Tree of Liberty Dedication
Thomson Memorial Cemetery
Thomson, Georgia
Saturday, February 8, 2025
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Our Memorial Cemetery was the site of the dedication last weekend of its newly planted Liberty Tree, the 118th in the nation. The ladies of the Captain John Wilson Chapter of the DAR purchased and planted the tree and its plaque to celebrate and memorialize the upcoming 250th anniversary of the founding of our beloved country, the United States of America. The 29 attendees included many Daughters [and also Sons] of the American Revolution and the public.
The tree later known as the ‘Liberty Tree’ was planted in 1646 in Boston at a place everyone entering or leaving the city would see. Almost a hundred and twenty years later in 1765, passersby saw something unusual. As a protest against the Stamp Act, Bostonians hung a dummy of the proposed Collector, the lieutenant-governor of Massachusetts, from the large elm. Beside it hung a boot with its sole painted green. This second effigy represented the men responsible for the Stamp Act: the boot being a pun on the Earl of Bute and the green being a pun on George Grenville. Peering up from inside the boot was a small devil figure holding a copy of the Stamp Act and bearing a sign that read: "What Greater Joy did ever New England see…. Than a Stampman hanging on a Tree!" The protestors then “beheaded the effigy; and broke all the windows next to the street” of his home. Mr. Oliver immediately sent a notice of his resignation. This was the first public show of defiance against Britain. Soon after, the Stamp Act was repealed. The colonists celebrated at the elm grove they began calling ‘Liberty Hall.’
In 1773, Bostonians protested the Tea Act at the great elm, targeting the merchants who supported the Act. Bostonians were told “to meet at the Liberty Tree to hear them make a public resignation of their office.” However, the tea consignees did not show up. Shortly thereafter, the Boston Tea Party occurred.
Many non-violent, but threatening, protests of political expression were committed at the Liberty Tree. The colonists took justice into their hands multiple times between 1765 and 1775. The most famous instance occurred in 1774, when British custom official John Malcom was tarred and feathered, dragged through the streets of Boston, and forced to symbolically drink tea beneath the tree.
The official Thomas Jefferson website says that “in 1775, the Liberty Tree was cut down by occupying British soldiers and used as firewood. Their act was intended to destroy a powerful symbol of resistance, protest, and revolution. The Liberty Tree represents the ideal American nation; a place where disenfranchised citizens can gather, create community, exchange political ideology, and ultimately work to have their voices heard. This alone means that the story of the Liberty Tree is worth remembering.”
In 1787, in a letter copied in the website, Jefferson first used the phrase "tree of liberty." In it he laughed at the “impudent and persevering lying” of the British to degrade and weaken our new country. He said their government had told so many lies about our country being in chaos and social disorder that “the world has finally believed them, the English nation has believed them, the ministers themselves have come to believe them, and what is truly a wonder, we have believed them ourselves.” The problem was, he said, that all people cannot always be well informed. The problem causing our temporary, but serious, chaos and confusion arose when the Revolutionary War ended in 1783, and Europeans refused to extend credit to Massachusetts merchants, who then refused credit to their local business partners, who then refused credit to their customers. Veterans, hurt hard because they had received little pay during the war and afterwards couldn’t collect payments owed to them from the State or Congress, began to protest. So, Daniel Shays resigned from the army unpaid and went home to start Shays Rebellion which was fought in Massachusetts from 1786 to 1787.
“We have 13 states which have been independent for 11 years,” Jefferson wrote. That is the equivalent of 143 years, and “there has been only one rebellion. What country has ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.” Freedom is not free; blood is the manure, the fertilizer, that keeps freedom growing. God bless America.
Submitted by Lewis Smith, Little River Chapter SAR Historian