The Liberty Tree

In the days of the Massachusetts Bay colony, when Boston was still but a small peninsula, seemingly tethered to the earth by a mere string of land, the so-called “Boston Neck”; when the world was still simple in its symbiosis with nature and man; when the British Empire still clung to the rustic countryside of old Columbia, there was a most prodigious event whose consequences shook the world by the roots, and whose message was loudly proclaimed from out the American Shore. This event, so fortuitous in its broad application in the future, was hardly understood by its contemporaries, and even by those tepid descendants who could remember its progenitors. I speak, of course, of the resolution on Independence. Oh, how the message of our Continental Congress electrified the proud hearths of Europe! Oh how King George must have been thrown into such convulsions at the words “We hold these truth to be self evident” and how he must have stuttered at the thought! We can almost imagine the proud specter of an Adams or a Lee asphyxiating the hopes of a Dickenson or a Wayne inside those hallowed halls of the Pennsylvania State House, proclaiming the right of our American Colonies to be termed anew, adorned in the sublime majesty of the humble title “States”. How the momentous resolution would fair in the ensuing war was yet to be determined, and we can easily imagine how George the third, though slightly flummoxed by the Declaration sent thither from America, cast aside the sacrosanct broadside as easily as he would any other of the myriad of daily state-papers. Yet here in our old Massachusetts, on that Boston Peninsula tightly packed with clapboard houses and wharves moored with many a vessel, the resolution on Independence was a live-charge which fired pauper, yeoman, and gentry alike into a spirit of revolutionary fervor.

Here, amid the soiled streets of Boston, just liberated in March after the winter siege had been ended by the sagacity of General Knox and his fortification of Dorchester Heights, with Artemas Ward and his company of country lads gallantly entering their conquered city, were three young boys, who, pursuant to that universal creed of youth, that a child’s mind is as deep and broad as the bluest seas, and whose imagination is but a brig to take him to lands unknown, were exploring southern Boston near the State House square on King’s Street. There, standing on the steps of the Custom House, where the ill fated Captain Preston and his men made history from ice and musket fire, was a group of old Jacks, likely able seaman, who, loitering near the front, were spinning a good yarn. “I tell you, a prize of that size will be worth many a crown, broke her main almost in two!” spoke the sailor nearest the boys. He was dressed in dark and soiled clothes, smelling strongly of pine tar used in the rigging of those wooden boxes. These men were privateers, likely seeking payment on a prize captured coasting along the eastern seaboard. The Congress had not yet begun the frenzy of supplying generous letters of marque, yet these men seemed to have achieved at least the low approbation to seek prize-money.

The man next to him said in his sullen voice, “Quiet, lest someone passing mistake us for a band of corsairs!” Then, the fattest of them all laughed a jolly laugh and said, “Needn’t worry you, we won her fair. And be glad we did, that sloop is worth more than all the treasure under Liberty Tree!” Now here, that most magic of words, treasure, being spoken, the three errant children stopped dead in their tracks. They had been playing up and down the long wharf, marveling at the forest of masts, sprouting canvassed sails fore, main, and mizzen, the many colored pendants fluttering in the harbor breeze. By noon, they were playing midshipmen of the Royal Navy, calling out to one another as they disturbed the normal business of the busy wharf, “Unfurl ye canvas, loblolly boy!” and laughing a great storm along the busy Kings Street. Now it was midday, a vendredi evening, when they stopped to listen to the sailors yarn.

“Treasure under Liberty Tree? What nonsense are you on about?” and the jolly man told, “Huddle up lads, for I’ll tell you a quaint tale told by my wife’s wet-nurse. In the old day of William Blackstone, you know, that pilgrim who landed Boston before the other Puritans, in those days he lived in the Common, and there, near the tree where the Sons of Liberty did all the hullabaloo during the Stamp-Act business, supposedly, so my wife’s nurse says, there is a bag of gold pieces-of-eight buried there, buried by Mr. Blackstone himself. No small fortune ain’t it?” He finished, laughing and smacking his friend on the shoulder, as the man next to him said, “Tis’ but a wives tale, John.” Yet wives tale or not, the mind of ordinary schoolchildren were easily drawn to such fanciful stories, that, having forgotten about their adventures on the high seas, the three boys resolved to go look at the Common themselves.

These boys; William, John, and Richard, were neglecting their studies by the Boston Latin School. As the warm summer air wafted in through the windows and the monotonous voice of the school-master drooling on the “Titytre, tu patulae recubans sub tegmine fagi…”of Virgil, they felt inclined to slip out the back and to run in hopes of finding a shade for their own comfort. Although Boston was more inflamed now than ever, having been resurrected from the doldrums by the resolution of the Congress, the boys, in their child-like reveries, noticed not the change in pace of the atmosphere. “So, Will, do you think there really is a treasure?” asked Richard, the smallest of the three. “Are you Black Dick or what, to ask such a question? Where’s your sense of adventure?” “Oh knock it, John” said Richard, having previously played the part of the lauded Sir Richard Howe, or more famously known as Black Dick, the feared leader in His Majesties’ Navy.

By now the midday sun was dripping down the horizon of the west, and the summer-time night resumed its pale across the town of Boston, with a million gnats flying and sparse lit lanterns sending shadows across the streets. A rosy-grey pall was growing in the canvas of the sky, as the boys skipped merrily towards to the Boston Common, and their minds were so much consumed with thoughts of treasure that they barely noticed the windows along the streets illuminated by candlelight in celebration of the Declaration. They argued endlessly as they reached the outskirts of the lawn about distributions of the treasure, when they stopped at the foot of that holy elm, now crystallized in the public memory as the Tree of Liberty. There, dangling by a noose was the effigy of the late-departed Thomas Hutchinson, the previous governor, swinging in the nocturnal breeze. The night was already dark, though oddly the common seemed populated more than usual, and festive lamps there hung on the leafy boughs of the tree shined at an angle to the effigy, leaving it appearing gaunt and slim, like that of a skeletal frame. It was strung up, no doubt from that last debate, by the Sons of Liberty, perhaps even by Sam Adams himself, yet to the three boys he seemed a monitor of the treasure, guardian and ward of the tree.

"The Colonists Under Liberty Tree"

Then, to break the silence, William jumped in front of the two, and said, with flippant hyperbole, “Behold! My lads, the bones of Hutchinson! Run out, I heard tell, by the mob of Boston in ’65, now hung by lady Liberty’s sons to guard the treasure of Blackstone! Beware his stare whilst ye search for coin and glory, for I heard tell he will stop at nothing to protect his gold!” Laughing, John said, “Good one, Will, now let’s find that treasure.” And thus the search began. As the night was begun, they had to use the spare light descending from the lamps hanging high, yet the colored glass dimmed the light-beams and gave the ground around the tree a haunting aura. They searched for what seemed an hour, the difficulty exacerbated by the lack of light, and all the while oblivious to the growing crowd around the Liberty Tree. Finally, having almost given up hope of ever finding treasure, and with the propriety to check a few feet away, Richard yelled “Guys, here!” hoisting up a dirtied bag, clearly old, and very small.

A pine tree shilling

Upon opening it, they were disappointed to find only ten antique and clipped silver shillings, marked with a pine tree and the date “1652, Massachusetts in New England, An. Dom., XII,” “Only ten shillings?” cried John, looking clearly disaffected by the lack of real treasure. It seemed they had just found a buried money purse of any ordinary gentleman. “Well” said William, “I guess Hutchinson won’t mind us keeping these few coins then.” And this remark caused them all to laugh.

Having found and completed their objective, the three boys drifted back toward the land of reality, finally freed from the fetters of imagination. They noticed at once that something was amiss. They were not alone near the Liberty Tree, for in fact, a huge crowd had gathered at the other side of the knotted elm, and a mixture of gentry clad in silk waist-coats and poorer farmers in woolen breeches and overcoats stood transfixed by a speaker, standing at the fore, reading from a proclamation of some sort, in a strong, unwavering voice:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness…We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved;… And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

Thus spoke the Declaration of our great Continental Congress, from the mouth of the magistrate at Liberty Tree. There, in July of that fateful year of 1776, a new country was heralded in Boston by the roar and bright ruby display of fireworks which illuminated the clear and starry night sky. The Common was bathed in warm light, and the boys’ faces, clearly inspired and kindled into a flame of patriotism, shone forth the great crimson flair of the pyrotechnics. As the crowd huzzah’d the new Declaration, singing forth liberty; as the King across a thousand leagues plotted with the timid Lord North; as Adams and Lee celebrated in Philadelphia, so there, the three boys by the Liberty Tree decided forever to be, not colonists, not Bostonians, but Americans. As the three boys sung in rapture and watched the fireworks, the ten silver shillings fell to the ground, utterly forgotten, not to be found for another century.

#fiction #shortstory #revolutionarywar