Prominent Leaders Included Samuel Adams, John Hancock Samuel Adams (left) and John Hancock were prominent members of the Sons of Liberty. The Boston Tea Party, as the act would become known, was one of the key events that pushed the colonies and the British government toward war. Their most famous act of disobedience was destroying 92,000 pounds of British tea in Boston Harbor in December 1773. The group may have taken its name from a speech given in Parliament by Isaac Barre, an Irish member sympathetic to the colonists, who warned that the British government’s behavior “has caused the blood of these sons of liberty to recoil within them.”
The first Sons chapters sprung up in Boston and New York City, but other cells soon appeared in other colonies as well. The Sons likely formed from a secretive group of nine Boston-based patriots who called themselves the Loyal Nine. It was an exhibition of the fearsome clout of the Sons of Liberty. He appeared as demanded, walking through the streets of Boston in a driving rainstorm and quit his job, to the cheers of a crowd of 2,000 people. The message left to Oliver’s imagination what terrible fate might befall him if he didn’t comply.
“Provided that you comply with the above, you shall be treated with the greatest Politeness and Humanity,” the letter explained.
