the hateful business of enslaving their own countrymen.

Who these gentry might be was not certainly known until early
August, when Jared Ingersoll, himself as it turned out one of the
miscreants, brought the commissions over from London, whereupon
the names were all printed in the papers. It then appeared that
the gentleman appointed to distribute the stamps in Massachusetts
was Andrew Oliver, a man very well connected in that province and
of great influence with the beet people, not infrequently
entrusted with high office and perquisites, and but recently
elected by the unsuspecting Bostonians to represent them in the
council of Massachusetts Bay Colony. It seemed inconsistent that
a man so often honored by the people should meanwhile pledge
himself to destroy their liberties; and so on the morning of the
14th of August, Mr. Oliver's effigy, together with a horned
devil's head peeping out of an old boot, was to be seen hanging
from the Liberty Tree at the south end of Boston, near the
distillery of Thomas Chase, brewer and warm Son of Liberty.
During the day people stopped to make merry over the spectacle;
and in the evening, after work hours, a great crowd gathered to
see what would happen. When the effigy was cut down and carried
away, the crowd very naturally followed along through the streets
and through the Town House, justifying themselves--many
respectable people were in the crowd--for being there by calling
out, "Liberty and Property forever; no Stamp." And what with
tramping and shouting in the warm August evening, the whole crowd
became much heated and ever more enthusiastic, so that, the line
of march by some chance lying past the new stamp office and Mr.
Oliver's house, the people were not to be restrained from
destroying the former and breaking in the windows of the latter,