The Little Book of the Flag Author:Eva March Tappan Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III LIBERTY AND LIBERTY POLES After the middle of the eighteenth century there was much talk among the colonies of liberty. It is possible that not... more » all the people were quite clear in their minds what that "liberty" might mean; but whatever it was, they wanted it. England required nothing more of her colonies than other nations required of theirs. The colonies asked nothing of England that would not be granted to-day as a matter of course. The difficulty was that the mother country was living in the eighteenth century, while the colonists were looking forward into the nineteenth. A demand for liberty was in the air. The pole on which a flag was hung was not called a flag pole, but a liberty pole. Most of the flags on these liberty poles bore mottoes, many of them decidedly bold and defiant. When the Stamp Act was passed, the wrath of the people rose, and now they knew exactly what they wanted — "No taxation without representation." The stamped paper brought to South Carolina was carefully stowedaway in a fort. Thereupon three volunteer companies from Charleston took possession of the fort, ran up a blue flag marked with three white crescents, and destroyed the paper. New York's flag had one word only, but that one word was "Liberty." Portsmouth, New Hampshire, had a banner inscribed "Liberty, Property, and no Stamps." In Newburyport, Massachusetts, there was a regular patrol of men armed with stout sticks. "What do you say, stamps or no stamps?" they demanded of every stranger, and if he had a liking for a whole skin, he replied emphatically, "No stamps." One wary newcomer replied courteously, "I am what you are," and was uproariously cheered. In going from one colony to another, it was not uncommon for a man to get a passport from the sons of Liberty to attest ...« less