Flag of Sons of Liberty (USA c. 1765, 9 stripes)

The Sons of Liberty were a loose association of merchants, craftsmen and lawyers formed in 1765 in Britain's North American colonies against the Stamp Act passed by the London parliament. Their principle was no taxation without representation: those who had no members in parliament should not have to pay its taxes. The groups organised boycotts, pamphlets and marches, and in Boston violence against tax collectors as well; in 1773 members threw the tea cargo of three ships into the harbour at the Boston Tea Party. Their gatherings often took place beneath trees that became known as Liberty Trees. Out of this movement the American War of Independence grew within ten years.

Meaning

The flag shows nine vertical stripes in red and white, five red and four white, beginning and ending with red. The number nine was the mark of recognition: nine colonies had sent delegates to the Stamp Act Congress in New York in 1765, the first joint meeting of the colonies against London. Coloured stripes without arms and without a crown were a deliberate choice of sign — they stood for no particular person, and that was precisely the message. Contemporaries mockingly called the pattern the rebellious stripes. From it grew the arrangement of stripes that later passed into the flag of the United States — there, however, laid horizontally.