The American folk song “O! Say Bonny Lass” is a fictional conversation between a colonial soldier and his intended wife. The soldier asks his beloved if she will stand by him through the horrors of the war he is about enter, and the woman replies she will. He speaks of lying in a barrack, campaigning, enduring battle and famine and wounds, marching to the rhythm of the drums, and firing the canons. The soldier then asks his bonny lass to follow after him and to care for him:
O! say, bonny lass, can you lie in a barrack,
And marry a soldier and carry his wallet?
O, say, will you leave both your mammy and daddy,
And follow to the camp with your soldier laddy?
O, yes, I will do it and think nothing of it.
I’ll marry my soldier and carry his wallet.
O, yes, I will leave both my mammy and daddy
And follow to the camp with my soldier laddy.
O! say, bonny lass, will you go a-campaigning,
Endure all the hardships of battle and famine?
When wounded and bleeding, then will thou draw near me,
And kindly support me, and tenderly cheer me?
O! say, bonny lass, will you go into battle,
Where the drums are beaten, and cannons loud rattle?
O, yes, my bonny lad, I will share all thy harms,
And should thou be killed, I will die in thy arms.[1]
In wartime, every member of society has his part to play. In the War of Independence, the men took up arms and marched into battle; the women nursed the wounded and cared for the home. While “O! Say Bonny Lass” romanticizes the soldier going off to war, this conversation between a man and his intended demonstrates the different roles men and women traditionally have served.
The soldier’s bonny lass will not stand beside him on the battlefield. She, along with doctors and nurses, will arrive with food and water and medicine after the battle has been fought. War affects those fighting in myriad ways. The role of men was very different than the role of women, but their roles were complementary. Militia leaders and politicians called on every member of the family to participate in American independence. Those patriots, Sons and Daughters of Liberty, responded to the Stamp Act of 1765 and the Intolerable Acts of 1767, discussed in Phillip T. Morgan’s most recent post which can be found here, by boycotting British goods.
This essay argues that the Sons and Daughters of Liberty contributed significantly to the patriots’ cause through family-centric means.
“Those Sons of Liberty”
Early February of 1765 began the Parliamentary debates on the proposed Stamp Act. Colonel Isaac Barré was a friend to the American colonists. In the House of Commons, he often argued in the interest of the colonies. For example, Barré did not support the Stamp Act of 1765. He saw it as something that created “disgust” within the colonists.[2] By contrast, Charles Townshend argued against the colonists. Townshend, maker of the Intolerable Acts of 1767, argued that Britain was the Mother Country; therefore, the Mother had a right to parent her Children. In a heated exchange between Townshend and Barré, the term “Sons of Liberty” was first coined.
Townshend asked the House: And now will these Americans, Children planted by our Care, nourished up by our Indulgence untill they are grown to a Degree of Strength & Opulence, and protected by our Arms, will they grudge to contribute their mite to relieve us from the heavy weight of that burden which we lie under?[3]
Barré answered: They planted by your Care? No! your Oppressions planted em in America. . . . They nourished up by your indulgence? They grew by your neglect of Em . . . men whose behavior on many Occasions has caused the Blood of those Sons of Liberty to recoil within them.[4]
Here, Barré continued Townshend’s imagery of the Mother and Child, by calling the colonists her “Sons of Liberty.” By summertime, Barré’s speech had been circulated through American newspapers, and as early as September of that same year, advertisements talked of some Sons of Liberty convening together under the Liberty Tree.
In Boston, nine community leaders and tradesmen met together and organized boycotts against British paper. John Avery, Henry Bass, Thomas Chase, Steven Cleverly, Thomas Crafts, Benjamin Edes, John Smith, George Trott, and Henry Welles were known as the Loyal Nine.[5] The Loyal Nine began as a local association trying to encourage boycotts in their community. As Barré’s “Sons of Liberty” popularized, those groups adopted a new name: “the Sons of Liberty” or Liberty’s Boys.
Homemade, Homegrown, and Homespun
Sons of Liberty and “every other Friend to the Liberties and Trade of America” were invited to meet at central areas like City Hall in New York or under the Liberty Tree in Pennsylvania to discuss trade and “Business.”[6] By means of the Boston Gazette, the New Hampshire Gazette, the Virginia Gazette, the Pennsylvania Gazette, and the New York Gazette, the Sons and Daughters of Liberty petitioned that colonists rally together and oppose the Townshend Acts. Through the papers, patriots invited large audiences to respond to this threat of British tyranny. In Boston, these Sons and Daughters of Liberty were asked to resist buying goods from importer William Jackson; for if they bought British goods, “they [would] bring Disgrace upon themselves, and their Posterity, for ever and ever, AMEN.”[7] That advertisement was published in 1770, just three years after Great Britain enacted the Townshend Acts.
Significantly, the Revenue Act of 1767 imposed customs duties on glass, paint, lead, paper, tea, and other household goods. Political leaders responded to these taxes by encouraging domestic production. Mary Beth Norton, author of Liberty’s Daughters, argues that since the Townshend Acts impacted homelife, homemade goods, homegrown foods, and homespun fabrics became extremely important to the success of America: “American leaders decided to use economic boycotts in their struggle against Great Britain,” but the tactic could work only if families carried out those boycotts. If husbands and wives substituted American goods for British goods, then the colonies could demonstrate economic independence. Political leaders increasingly emphasized what households could contribute to the war effort.[8] However, the Sons and Daughters of Liberty did not act as a unified whole. Depending on the colony and the specific locale, the political groups could be more radical or more temperate. The names Sons of Liberty and Daughters of Liberty can refer to any supporter of liberty. Being a son or daughter of liberty signified patriotism.
Seemingly simple decisions, like substituting imported tea for strong coffee or locally grown mint, lemon balm, chamomile, Hyperion, or yaupon holly teas distanced the colonies from the Mother Country. The Sons and Daughters of Liberty called on patriots to grow gardens, raise livestock, and process textiles. Advertisements called for women to sit at their spinning wheels and spin thread for the sake of the colonies. By 1774, many families grew flax and hemp for cloth and kept sheep for wool. In fact, Massachusetts and New England famously hosted “spinning bees” where women would compete:
Early in the morning, a group of eminently respectable young ladies (sometimes as many as one hundred, but normally twenty to forty), all of them dressed in homespun, would meet at the home of the local minister. There they would spend the day at their wheels, all the while engaging in enlightening conversation. When they stopped to eat, they had ‘American produce prepared which was more agreeable to them than any foreign Dainties and Delicacies,’ and, of course, they drank local herbal tea. At nightfall, they would present their output to the clergyman, who might then deliver a sermon on an appropriate theme.[9]
At larger spinning bees, the competition drew an audience. As the spinners spun thread, young men and women sang songs or acted out plays. Spinning bees emphasized how families could resist taxation by spinning their own clothing. Inevitably, fathers and husbands and sons left home long enough to fight off the British, and the mothers and wives and daughters supported the war on the homefront. Women and children baked biscuits, sewed haversacks and uniforms, and fashioned cartridges and bullets. Men made paper, nails, and glass, and they tended to large vegetable and herb gardens when they were not off fighting.
Conclusion
In eighteenth-century America, society focused largely on the home and the development of the colonies. The North American colonies were importing everyday household goods like food and clothing and building materials from the Mother Country. When Great Britain began enforcing heavier taxes on imported goods without colonial representation in Parliament, the colonists responded by boycotting British goods. In those early years leading up to the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the subsequent fighting of the War, patriot leaders called on families to support the war efforts by producing American goods and by purchasing what was locally grown or locally made. We are inheritors of this liberty that the American colonists fought for. In our own homes with our own families, we can make simple changes to support our nation, whether it is buying food from local farmers or shopping at mom-and-pop shops. Like the Sons and Daughters of Liberty, we can invest in domestic production.
[1] Anne Enslow and Ridley Enslow, Music of the American Colonies (Berkeley Heights, NJ: Enslow, 2000), 46.
[2] Franklin Bowditch Dexter, ed., Jared Ingersoll Papers, vol. IX (New Haven, CT: New Haven Colony Historical Society, 1918), 310. https://www.loc.gov/item/18019189/.
[3] Dexter, Jared Ingersoll Papers, 310.
[4] Dexter, Jared Ingersoll Papers, 311.
[5] Philip G. Davidson, “Sons of Liberty and Stamp Men,” The North Carolina Historical Review 9, no. 1 (1932): 39, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23514881.
[6] “The members of the Association of the Sons of Liberty are requested to meet at the City-Hall,” advertisement (New York, 1773), https://www.loc.gov/item/2020767482/. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.
[7] “William Jackson, an importer; at the Brazen Head, North side of the Town-House, and opposite the Town-Pump, in Corn-Hill, Boston,” advertisement(Boston, 1770), https://www.loc.gov/resource/rbpe.0370020a/?st=image. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.
[8] Mary Beth Norton, Liberty’s Daughters: The Revolutionary Experience of American Woman, 1750—1800 (New York: Cornell University Press, 1996), 155.
[9] Norton, Liberty’s Daughters, 167.
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