Sons and Daughters of Liberty in AP US History

1765: the Sons of Liberty take on the Stamp Act

The Sons of Liberty grew out of opposition to the Stamp Act, which taxed printed paper like newspapers and legal documents. Members were mostly artisans, shopkeepers, merchants, and printers, with leaders such as Samuel Adams in Boston.

Their tactics ran from petitions and public meetings to crowd action. In August 1765, Boston crowds hanged stamp distributor Andrew Oliver in effigy and damaged his property, and he resigned. Similar pressure across the colonies left the act nearly impossible to enforce.

Parliament repealed the Stamp Act in 1766 but passed the Declaratory Act the same day, claiming full power to legislate for the colonies. When the Townshend Acts taxed imports like glass, paper, and tea in 1767, the Sons pushed nonimportation agreements and pressured merchants who kept importing British goods.

Homespun and liberty tea: why the Daughters made boycotts last

A boycott of British cloth only works if people have something else to wear. The Daughters of Liberty held spinning bees, made homespun fabric, and brewed herbal "liberty tea" so families could keep refusing British goods for months at a time.

This turned household work into political action. Wearing homespun became a public sign of Patriot loyalty. In 1774, women in Edenton, North Carolina, signed a pledge supporting the boycott of British tea, one of the clearest examples of women taking a public political stand.

The pressure worked because the colonies were a major market for British manufacturers. Falling sales pushed British merchants to lobby Parliament, and in 1770 Parliament repealed most of the Townshend duties, keeping the tax on tea.

Evidence for Topic 3.3's claim that ordinary people drove resistance

In Topic 3.3, Taxation Without Representation, the AP course argues that resistance to British policy after the French and Indian War wasn't just the work of famous leaders. Popular movements, including women, artisans, and laborers, energized resistance alongside figures like Benjamin Franklin. The Sons and Daughters are the most concrete evidence you have for that claim.

The Daughters' spinning and the Sons' enforcement of nonimportation show how broad participation in resistance had become before the war. The course makes a related point about the war years. Once fighting began, large numbers of men and women gave the Patriot movement financial and material support, supplying troops, raising money, and keeping farms and shops running through wartime scarcity and British occupation. Keep the two ideas distinct: boycotts were resistance, and wartime supply efforts were material backing.

A stimulus about boycotts or colonial protest could give you an opportunity to use the Sons and Daughters of Liberty as historical context. A multiple-choice set might use a nonimportation agreement, a newspaper account of a crowd action, or Paul Revere's engraving of the Boston Massacre, with questions about cause or purpose. For Short-answer Question 2, a primary source on a boycott or spinning bee could ask you to explain its historical situation (the Stamp Act or Townshend Acts) or how it reflects broader participation in resistance. In Question 1 (Document-based) or Question 2 (Long essay), they work as outside evidence for how colonial protest escalated between 1763 and 1776.

The "they wanted independence" trap

When a question asks about the goal of the nonimportation agreements, a tempting wrong answer is independence from Britain. In 1765-1770, the aim was repeal of specific taxes. Boycotts hurt British merchants, merchants lobbied Parliament, and Parliament backed down. Colonists framed their protest as defending their rights as British subjects. The movement toward independence intensified later, after Lexington and Concord in 1775 and Common Sense in 1776, and it culminated in the Declaration of Independence that July.

A second wrong answer says the boycotts mainly aimed to build American manufacturing. Homespun was a means to keep the boycott going, and the target was Parliament.

Also keep these groups separate from the committees of correspondence. Committees like these existed earlier, but Boston's standing committee, formed in 1772, and the intercolonial network that expanded in 1773 used letters to share news and coordinate resistance between towns and colonies. The Sons and Daughters acted locally through crowds, boycotts, and home production. The committees connected colonies and helped lay the groundwork for the First Continental Congress in 1774.

A strong essay answer names what the groups did, ties it to a specific act, and explains the result, such as Stamp Act repeal in 1766 or the partial Townshend repeal in 1770.