from the lower classes who plunged into debt risked imprisonment. Therefore, for many, the choice between defying the British and acquiescing to higher taxes carried the severest of consequences: "[C]onsidering the present scarcity of money . . . the execution of that [stamp] act for a short space of time would dreign the Country of Cash, strip multitudes of the poorer people of all their property and Reduce them to absolute beggary" (Hoerder 91). The common people, therefore, were not fighting for economic gain as a result of the American Revolution, they fought for the economic survival of themselves and their families.
Cognizant of the burden placed on the lower class by British tyranny, middle class groups sought ways to harness the resultant discontent. One such group was the Loyal Nine, one of many social and political clubs in Boston. The Loyal Nine was comprised of small businessmen with connections to town leadership: "The Loyal Nine became a kind of clearing house between top leadership and crowd. Their strength was the organizational talent with which they arranged crowd action or responded to it" (Hoerder 94). With the enactment of the Stamp Act, the Loyal Nine flew into preparation to mobilize the lower classes from Boston's Northend and Southend. Prior to the Loyal Nine's intervention, these two neighborhoods had been engaged in sectional rivalry.
The Loyal Nine convinced the Northend and Southend to form a coalition aimed at a common target: Andrew Oliver, the local stamp master. Oliver was both a provincial official and a wealthy merchant. As a symbol of the chasm that existed between the aristocracy and the lower classes, he was anathema to Boston's Northend and Southend inhabitants.
Crowd action against the stamp master began by hanging two effigies in an old elm called "Liberty Tree" in the Southend, near Boston's entrance. A crowd of spectators gathered, and soon after, the magistrates, w...