Америка революциясы кезіндегі оппозициялық ұйымдар

Dissident organization during the American Revolution

The Sons of Liberty was a loosely organized, clandestine, sometimes violent, political organization active in the Thirteen American Colonies founded to advance the rights of the colonists and to fight taxation by the British government. It played a major role in most colonies in battling the Stamp Act in 1765 and throughout the entire period of the American Revolution. Historian David C. Rapoport called the activities of the Sons of Liberty "mob terror." In popular thought, 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 make or create 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."

An original flag flown from the Liberty Tree is in the collection of Revolutionary Spaces in Boston at the Old State House. The flag is wool with nine vertical stripes, four white and five red. The owner of the flag post Revolution, Samuel "Rat Trap" Adams, claimed that the flag was used by the Sons of Liberty, although there is no contemporary documentation of a non British striped flag used by the Sons of Liberty. A flag having 13 horizontal red and white stripes was used by the Continental Navy and by American merchant ships during the war, although the two styles of flag do not appear to be related.

At various times, small secret organizations took the name "Sons of Liberty". They generally left very few records. In the early 19th century, there was an organization in Bennington, Vermont, named the Sons of Liberty, that included local notables such as military officer Martin Scott and Hiram Harwood. The Improved Order of Red Men, established in 1834, claimed to be descended from the original Sons of Liberty, noting that the Sons participated in the Boston Tea Party dressed as their idea of "Indians". The name was also used during the American Civil War. The Copperhead group, the Knights of the Golden Circle, reorganized in 1863 as the "Order of American Knights". In 1864, it became the Order of the Sons of Liberty, with the Ohio politician Clement L. Vallandigham, most prominent of the Copperheads, as its supreme commander. In most areas, only a minority of its membership was radical enough to discourage enlistments, resist the draft, and shield deserters. The group held numerous peace meetings. A few agitators, some of them encouraged by Southern money, talked of a revolt in the Old Northwest, with the goal of ending the war. In 1864, both the KGC and the Order of the Sons of Liberty were prosecuted for treason by federal authorities, especially in Indiana. In 1948, a radical wing of the Zionist movement, calling itself the "Sons of Liberty", launched a boycott of British films in the U. S., in response to British policies in Palestine.