Talk:Sons of Liberty

Benjamin Church, trader or traitor?
The line for Benjamin Church here currently reads: "first Surgeon-General of the United States Army and known trader. Banished from Massachusetts in 1778."

The underlying entry for Benjamin Church (physician) has no indication he was a merchant ("trader") but that he "was tried and convicted of 'communicating with the enemy'" ("traitor", hence the banishment).

This looks like an obvious unintended typo or spelling error from an earlier author, but the last attempt to repair it got flagged as vandalism and reversed. Can someone suggest and get through an appropriate entry? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Phyxit (talk • contribs) 03:09, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

Samual adams, a member or not? Make up your mind.
In the third paragraph it says " Samuel Adams and his cousin John were not members of the Sons of Liberty."

Then in the "Notable Members" section, Samual Adams is the first person listed.

So, according to the top of the article he is NOT a member, according to the middle part he IS a member.

Which is it? Have any sources? Actual facts? Or is this an opinion based article?
 * To the unsigned member above: And now John Adams is listed as a 'Notable member' although, as you say, the page says he and Samuel Adams were not members. Which way is up on this contradiction? Thanks. Randy Kryn 00:14 26 August 2014 (UTC)

No Talk about the Gaspee Affair or the Boston Tea Party
These are very important events, notable i may say. It is very lacking to not have these Mentioned once on this Wikipeidia article Billy Apicella 38.73.233.229 (talk) 16:23, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

Israel Putnam
Trying to add Israel Putnam, as founding member of sons of liberty. This is both widely known as well as referenced in history. Additionally it can be found right on his own Wikipedia page (paragraph 10) I really enjoy early colonial and especially revolutionary history, specifically Rogers rangers, of which Putnam was one. Concerning the sons of liberty, he famously threatened to level the British governors house if his tax stamp wasn’t immediately turned over. Which it then was. This was in the fall of 1765. Also thanks to the gentlemen who pointed out the talk page etc as I’m obviously new here. 8thgenerationson (talk)


 * The Israel Putnam article does indeed state he was involved with the Sons of Liberty -- specifically that he was one of the founders of the state's chapter of the Sons of Liberty. Note the qualification: a "state chapter" of the group.  I believe this is significant, as this article (Sons of Liberty) states The group officially disbanded after the Stamp Act was repealed. However, the name was applied to other local separatist groups during the years preceding the American Revolution.  This means that this article is about one specific group, not other local groups of the same name.  Further, the Stamp Act was repealed and the original Sons of Liberty was disbanded in early 1766, apparently about the same time Putnam help found his state's local group.  This implies Putnam's group had little or no connection to the subject of this article, except using the same name.


 * However, this reasoning relies on the text of Wikipedia itself, which isn't a good idea, per WP:CIRCULAR. Instead, this should be decided by the sources.  If we find a WP:Reliable source that links Putnam directly to the origin of the Sons of Liberty, then he should be included in the lede.  If no source can be found for this, then he should not be included.


 * It may be possible that Putnam might be included later in this article, at Sons of Liberty. But I'm not sure what qualifications are being used to add names in that section, so cannot comment on whether Putnam could go there.  Perhaps other editors can comment on that.  --A&#8239;D&#8239;Monroe&#8239;III(talk)  20:14, 23 November 2019 (UTC)


 * I'm not really sure that the Sons of Liberty was a "national" organization the way we think of them today. To that extent, they were all state chapters.  Besides, there is an issue of timing and the Israel Putnam wiki page doesn't exactly address that.  From what I can tell, the Connecticut Sons of Liberty was started up prior to the Stamp Act repeal.


 * Often mentioned together with Putnam are John Durkee and Hugh Ledlie. Doing a search for them seems to place the organization more firmly prior to the repeal of the Stamp Act.


 * Jared Ingersoll Sr. was one of the first targets of the Connecticut Sons of Liberty, which was before its repeal. Progressingamerica (talk) 14:41, 29 November 2019 (UTC)


 * The current article purports that there was one original Sons of Liberty with other local groups later sharing the same name, which are outside the subject of the article. Yes, it is possible that is somehow incorrect.  But changing the definition of the subject matter of the article (requiring support of new reliable sources) would have to be done before rolling members of all those other groups into the lede of this article.
 * Underling all this is the fact that, as semi-secret and semi-informal organizations, good primary sources of these various SOL groups are often rare or incomplete, making the reliable secondary sources we need for any of this also rare or incomplete. That's just the way it is; we cannot resort to WP:SYNTH -- making additions based on selected implications in the gaps between different sources.
 * If someone can find sources that change the definition of the SOL in this article, great; the article will be all the better for it. Until then, we have to strictly follow the sources we have.  --A&#8239;D&#8239;Monroe&#8239;III(talk)  00:27, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

clandestine vs. revolutionary
You've certainly put some work into this. I am reversing your good faith edit because the original wording was accurate.

Revolutionary is an after-the-fact description, and revolution as we now understand it wasn't the goal in 1769. Your own explanation says "At this time in the history of their organization they still considered themselves to be loyal subjects of the monarchy of Great Britain". So they weren't revolutionary.

The group described in the news article is the "True Sons of Liberty of Massachusetts". I believe there was more than one such group, and they were loosely organized. You point this out, saying there were multiple groups, loosely organized. While they sometimes made a show, membership, planning, and operations of the SOL groups were secret. The sons of liberty who dumped tea in the Harbor werenkt open about it. The event wasn't publicized, the participants were named, and they even disguised themselves. So "clandestine" is the right word.

I think your extensive revisions should be taken to the talk page. Patriotism and one-sided history are the enemy of a neutral point of view.

For example the cartoon was printed in England, but we can't say whether it is anti-American or not. It was simply political commentary which could be taken in different ways. We don't label cartoons from the Boston Globe as "American anti-British". The pot of liquid is labelled TEA so we could take it at face value, except the illustration of the Boston tea party in the background destroys an argument for quotation marks around it. Humphrey Tribble (talk) 04:35, 22 September 2022 (UTC)


 * I don't have time to review every word of my edit of the article right now I have to say that the actual historical record captured in the newspapers of the day in New York and Boston belies any notion that the "Sons of Liberty" were "a clandestine organization". Holding public demonstrations against British laws and the presence of British troops; holding public celebrations of their anniversaries right under the noses of the British in Boston and New York hardly fits the "clandestine" label. There's no doubt that British military intelligence must have had a pretty comprehensive list of the principal leaders of the "Sons" groups in most cities. Those were relatively small towns in those days; everyone knew everyone and a little greasepaint and a feather headdress wouldn't have fooled many people. As for the cartoon, it is CLEARLY anti-American.  The caption describing "hot tea" being forced down the throat of the victim of the tar-and-feathering is inaccurate; the clothing the Americans are wearing clearly indicates their non-aristocratic class origins: "the mob" in Boston is derided as lower-class hooligans - hardly how a great many Americans of that time would have described the men throwing the despised British tea in the harbors. It's clearly a British propaganda cartoon. Your argument that it is premature to call the SoL "revolutionary" in 1769 is more accurate; but this was a dynamic situation in which certainly many British of that time saw the SoL as being "insurrectionary" and even treasonous; and it wasn't many years before the SoL began openly calling for a permanent break from the motherland.
 * Having only recently re-discovered these documents that utterly overthrow the traditional view of the SoL as "clandestine" or "secret" I can see why people who prefer to stick to that received wisdom would balk at a new interpretation of the evidence; that doesn't give them the right to deny its existence and what appears to me to simply be the extraordinary laziness if not outright incompetence on the part of many modern copyist "historians" of the American Revolution. IWPCHI (talk) 20:42, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

Political position
Is it controversial or something to state the fact that the sons of liberty were, relatively speaking, left wing? I mean the Whigs and Jacobins and Jeffersonians are treated as left wing, and they share very similar ideology and politics with the Sons of Liberty. 2600:1007:B0A3:862C:A9BE:D626:A282:DC31 (talk) 22:51, 8 April 2023 (UTC)


 * The words "left" and "right" weren't used with a political meaning at that time, and it might not be simple to apply the later French revolution or modern meanings. They were certainly against British government forceful tactics.  It would be good to have a reliable source for any description of their ideological affiliation. AnonMoos (talk) 10:58, 12 April 2023 (UTC)


 * "the terms left and right weren't used with a political meaning at the time" yet the article for the whig party of England has a "center, center left" label, even though the party predates the "french revolution meaning". The "Left-Right" label describes a historical trend, progressive (purely political sense) vs conservative (again, purely political sense) groups or factions or parties or ideologies (it's equivalent to the usage of Whig/Liberal and Tory in 18th-19th century America and Britain). 2600:1007:B0A2:FCB3:71F3:524C:6DC:2766 (talk) 22:05, 17 May 2023 (UTC)


 * In the UK during much of the 19th century, the Whigs were somewhat dominated by factory-owners and commercial merchants, while the Tories were somewhat dominated by large rural landowners, and each exploited and profited off a repressed workforce -- factory workers for the Whigs and agricultural laborers for the Tories. Which was then "left" and which "right"?? AnonMoos (talk) 03:59, 18 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Who do you think the French leftists were? Collectivising commies? The political divide at the time was between the "progressive" enlightenment inspired liberalism supporting bourgeois, and the "conservative" monarchist landed gentry peerage. The talk about the rights of workers and peasants doesn't come until after the fact, after the "liberals" establish Capitalism and it's promises fail to come to fruition (in the eyes of 19th century socialists). 2600:1007:B0A2:FCB3:C04A:F19A:CA72:A04B (talk) 18:02, 19 May 2023 (UTC)