American Canopy: Trees, Forests, and The Making of A Nation

Contents
introduction: The Death of Prometheus 1 1 From Discovery to revolution 2 1 The Fruits of Union 3 1 The Unrivaled nature of America 4 1 Forests of commerce 5 1 A changing consciousness 6 1 new Frontiers 7 1 Under Attack 8 1 Trees as Good Soldiers and citizens 9 1 Postwar Prosperity 10 1 The environmental era epilogue Acknowledgments notes bibliography index
1 11 40 71 99 129 168 201 228 268 308 345 349 351 380 390
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Introduction
The Death of Prometheus
White Pine
n t h e m o r n i n g of August 6, 1964, thirty-year-old Donald currey was leading several men up a trail along Wheeler Peak, the highest mountain in nevada. One of curreys companions wore a U.S. Forest Service uniform, a second lugged a chainsaw, and a third carried a camera to document the event that would follow. They hiked through the thinning air for several hours, past clusters of pion pines and Utah junipers. eventually, the men reached the timberline, a point 10,750 feet high on the mountain, where tall plants yielded to the onslaught of natures winds and nothing survived beyond scrubby vegetation. There, on the environments edge, curreys team would encounter one of the worlds more remarkable trees, the bristlecone pine. And there, they would change five thousand years of history. The bristlecone pine is found only in the mountains of the southwestern United States at altitudes that sustain few other life-forms. The rugged envi1
Introduction
ronment sculpts the bristlecones into a dramatic, gnarled form, more horizontal than vertical, the physiognomy of an endless battle against the elements. On the wind-facing side, sand particles sheer away outer bark in a process called die-back. The wood beneath looks almost polished, as though it has been petrified alive. John Muir, the eminent naturalist, wrote that the bristlecone offers a richer and more varied series of forms to the artist than any conifer i know of. The trees can grow up to thirty feet high and twenty around, but often maintain living needles in only a small sectionan indoor christmas trees worth of greenwhich produces the distinctive prickle-tipped purple cones that lend the conifer its name. in 1958 the bristlecone pine had created a giant measure of excitement within a tiny segment of the scientific community when a National Geographic article declared that the species produced the oldest trees on earth. edmund Schulman, the scientist who wrote the piece, explained that he had used treering datingliterally counting up the annual rings in the trunkto identify multiple bristlecone specimens in californias inyo national Forest that were more than four thousand years old. The most impressive find, a tree containing 4,676 rings, was named Methuselah, a nod to the longest-lived figure in the bible. The National Geographic article asserted that the oldest bristlecones were located at the western limit of their range where Methuselah grew, suggesting that Schulmans biblically named discovery was quite possibly the worlds oldest tree. Schulmans finding held great promise for a variety of reasons. Tree rings recorded climatic activity with remarkable precisionwetter years generated widely spaced rings, drier periods kept them close, and all trees in a given area corresponded. consequently, these bristlecones were silent but scrupulous witnesses to several millennia of droughts, floods, shifting rivers, and retreating glaciers. Their rings offered scientists, specifically dendrochronologists (those who study tree rings), a chance to reconstruct the local climate to dates contemporaneous with the building of the egyptian pyramids. currey, a graduate student in geography, was hoping to exploit this relationship between trees and history. He wanted to develop a climatic timeline connected to glacier growth and rock settlements in the Southwest as far back as 2000 bce. His research centered on geological features in eastern nevadas Snake range, a mountain chain capped by the imposing 13,063-foot Wheeler Peak. bristlecones near the ranges timberline held valuable data within the rings of their trunks. curreys research site was several hundred miles east of the Methuselah find. Thus, he anticipated finding only specimens much younger than those featured in National Geographic. During the summer of 1964, however, he stumbled
upon something unexpected. A bristlecone stand in the national forest tract known as the Wheeler Peak Scenic Area appeared to contain trees as old as anything that Schulman had described. An eager currey began to take samples of the trees using his twenty-eight-inch-long Swedish increment borer, a sophisticated hand tool with an aperture approximately the size of a drinking straw that removed a fragment of the trunk without causing permanent damage. Day after day, he scrambled over the limestone soil and the deposited rock that surrounded the bristlecones, carrying his notebook and Swedish borer alongside, collecting samples that he could later analyze under a microscope. curreys 114th specimen was the most spectacular that he encountered. He measured it as having a dead crown 17 feet high, a living shoot 11 feet high, and a 252-inch circumference 18 inches above the ground. Such a wide base would have required four men with arms outstretched to encircle it. currey also noted that the trees bark, which was necessary for its survival, was only present along a single 19-inch-wide, north-facing strip. The winds and sand had worn away everything else. but the tree was alive and still producing its compact bunches of needles on a three-inch-wide shoot. currey attempted to sample this tree, which he labeled WPn-114, but his borer broke. He tried again and damaged his reserve borer. Without equipment, he was suddenly stymied. This ancient specimen stood before him, its rings holding the secrets to several thousand years of climate change, and he had no way to study it, not with his borers, anyway. currey appealed to the district Forest Service ranger, explaining that he wanted to cut down WPn-114 and study the cross-section directly. At the time, sawing down trees for dendrochronological research was not uncommoneven Schulman admitted in National Geographic to felling three samples, though not Methuselah itself. The Forest Service ranger consulted with his supervisor and determined that the tree was like many others and was not the type that the public would visit and that it would better serve science and education. The supervisor concluded, cut er down. Shortly thereafter, on that August 6 morning, currey led the cutting team up Wheeler Peak. When they reached WPn-114, the men took turns sawing away at the tree. Several hours later there was nothing left but an enormous stump. currey brought the prepared samples to his microscope and began counting tree rings. Then he made a startling discovery. There were 4,844 rings, nearly two hundred more than in Methuselah. And WPn-114 had been cut down several feet above its true base, losing access to some of the earliest rings. The tree could have easily been five thousand years old. Schulman had been wrong about where the oldest bristlecones lived.
Introduction
Thirty-year-old Donald currey had unintentionally felled the most ancient tree ever discoveredan organism already wizened when columbus reached Hispaniola, middle-aged when caesar ruled rome, and starting life when the Sumerians created mankinds first written language. The next year, currey quietly published his discovery in the journal Ecology. The three-page article, written in the scientific passive voice, acknowledged that WPn-114 was the oldest tree on record but postulated that future research would yield many older specimens. However, the only thing that the future actually yielded was a growing controversy over why WPn-114 was allowed to be cut down in the first place. The forest ranger who had claimed that the tree held no interest for the public had been wrong. conservationists knew about the bristlecones and had earlier named WPn-114 Prometheus after the Titan who stole fire from Zeus, gave it to man, and then suffered eternally for his action. These conservationists claimed that the Forest Service had acted recklessly in permitting the cutting. Stories that a member of curreys team had died carrying a slab of Prometheus down Wheeler Peak left some observers suggesting that the tree had taken a life to remedy the injustice. Several dendrochronologists attacked currey as an ignorant graduate student who didnt know how to handle a borer and had little or no scientific reason to fell this particular sample. evidence supported both sides of the controversy, depending on which accounts were used, and new perspectives leaked out over the decades. As late as 1996, the Forest Service ranger who authorized the cutting wrote a memo to correct the many rumors, and currey himself gave the occasional interview up until his death in 2004. The only facts that anyone seemed to agree upon were that WPn-114 was the oldest tree ever discovered and that Americans had intentionally killed it.
he deat h of Prometheus was a tragedy, something to reflect upon with disbelief. Some of us, the more environmentally inclined, may react with anger, even outrage, knowing that scientists discovered such a marvelous tree only to steal it with a hasty and arrogant hand. After all, nothing can bring the elder statesman of the plant kingdom back. Others among us, perhaps more than would admit it in public, may simply shrug. it was one tree hidden on a mountain almost no one visited, whose only distinction was having been there longer than logic would suggest, a literal freak of nature, a sideshow act in wood. There are plenty of other bristlecones. but to treat the felling of Prometheus in isolation misses much of the story. The controversy was not merely a localized battle between dendrochronolo-
gists, conservationists, and the men holding sap-stained chainsaws. it was a tiny chapter in a much larger narrative of trees and America, or trees and Americans, two members of the natural environment who are constantly acting on one another, and over time changing as a result. Trivial details in the Prometheus story represent important shifts in Americas relationship with wood, trees, and nature. Take the location of the tree, for example. Wheeler Peak Scenic Area was part of a national forest, a type of government-controlled land first created in the late nineteenth century. For much of American history, the idea that the government would control some of the forests seemed ridiculous, an affront to the spirit of individualism and private property that helped build the country. The controversy itself formed part of a long lineage of Americans realizing that they had abused their great renewable resource when it was too late. Sometimes, this awakening involved a single tree, like the Liberty Tree that the boston patriots could not protect from the axes of the british redcoats. Other times, it was a single species, such as the American chestnut, which was once the mightiest forest tree and now is little more than a legend due to an imported disease. Often, it was an entire forest, like the white pine belts of new england and the Lake States, which fell victim to Americas logging industry. The death of Prometheus offers only the tiniest window into this rich and wide-ranging history of Americans and their trees. The tale of how they shaped each other over time is simply too large, too multilayered, too varied for any single bristlecone on a lonesome timberline in nevada. This larger story, however, forms the subject of American Canopy.
ow eas y it is to forget that much of American history has been defined by trees. Giovanni da Verrazzano, the first european to leave a detailed account of a journey to north America, marveled in 1524 that the wooddes [were] so greate and thicke that an armye (were it never so greate) mighte have hydd it selfe therein. He labeled this heavily forested land Acadia, meaning idyllic place. The trees, in his opinion, were the most useful thing the land had to offer. but Verrazzanos observation is high praise, for there is simply nothing else in nature quite as helpful to man as a tree. Timber is a universal building material, essential for shelter, furniture, tools, and countless types of transport. The initial english efforts to colonize America depended, in no small part, on a desire to secure timber for construction of the great naval fleet that would soon come to define the british empire. Once european settlers began to infiltrate Americas mighty forests, many would build dwellings that were
Introduction
little more than felled logs, stacked in a pile, sealed with a bit of mud and straw. even now, most homes are constructed mainly with softwood timbers and sheets of plywood. Trees were also the nations essential source of fuel for hundreds of years. Wood was used in the forges and furnaces of almost every American manufacturing industry, every steam engine, and every family hearth. Furthermore, the pulp of trees is the source of manufactured paper, an unsung pillar of advanced society. The transition to inexpensive wood-pulp paper, which began in the 1860s, allowed for an explosion in written materialsdaily penny papers, dime novels, low-cost stationerythat would forever alter the culture of the country. The creation of every horseshoe, wagon, carriage, gun, bottle, ship, train, and early airplane required trees. every mine, corral, stockyard, tannery, mill, refinery, dock, barge, telegraph and telephone line, and early oil derrick required trees. James Hall, the famous American geologist, once said, Well may ours be called a wooden country; not merely from the extent of its forests, but because in common use wood has been substituted for a number of the most necessary and common articlessuch as stone, iron, and even leather. but to speak of timber or fuel or pulp is to flatten trees into a single dimension. They also provide sustenance: sap into sugar, seeds into nuts and fruits. Their foliage brings life to desolate landscapes, their roots stability to shaky soils. Finally, on a hot summer day, there are few pleasures that rival hiding in the shade beneath the boughs of a noble oak. Over the years, technology has obscured the vital role that trees have played in shaping society. Steel and plastic replaced timber. coal and oil substituted for firewood. Digital screens are crowding out paper copies. industrial food chains have left almost no one relying directly on the forests for dinner. Sometimes it seems like this was always the way, mans dominion over nature. Americans interact with trees that have been circumscribed, commoditized. Our furniture is a thin veneer of wood placed over synthetic materials. The wooden supports of our homes are tucked away from view with drywall and vinyl siding. Forests are cordoned off in carefully delimited regions, far away from the cities and suburbs. The juice from the fruit of trees has been pasteurized and homogenized. This separation from nature makes it easy to forget just how important trees are to our lives today. each year, the average American consumes roughly 250 board feet of timber, 200 square feet of plywood and other structural panel products, and 700 pounds of paper and paperboard. More than 2.5 million Americans hold jobs directly dependent on the countrys woodlands. nearly 20 percent of the nations freshwater originates in the national forests. And these same national forests provide more than seven billion activity days for
vacationers, hunters, fishermen, and hikers. but these are just the most obvious dependencies. Trees also provide raw materials for countless medicines, plastics, technological devices, and artificial food. Additionally, some believe that our trees will hold the key to the countrys future, as they have the past. Our illimitable forests, which extract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store much of it as wood and other plant matter, may provide an opportunity to combat global warming. The same is imagined of tree planting. Scientists are also working to develop new processes that might turn trees into sources of renewable energy. Thus, even as we have found many ways to replace trees, they remain as important as ever.
c a n o p y explores this remarkable evolution. How trees changed from enemy, to friend, to potential savior. How forests morphed from obstacles to timber reserves to tree farms to sanctuaries of nature. How wood built the country, and apples united it, and trees imbued its great cities with life. How trees became part of the political calculus for westward settlement, as necessary as water and air, valued by settlers, speculators, surveyors, and soldiers. Americans started as people frightened of the woods, transitioned into a nation that consumed these woods for profitalong the way turning the tree into a lifeless, deracinated objectand finally arrived at the present point. Today, few of us understand where timber comes from or what to call any given tree species, but most of us share a sense that to destroy trees is to destroy part of ourselves. This story is uniquely American. no other country was populated because of its trees quite like the United States. nowhere else has the culture been so intimately associated with wood. entire states were peopled specifically for their trees: lumbering in the northwest; orange growing in Florida and Southern california. Such great American cities as chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, and Seattle would have looked completely different without the early commercial opportunities that trees provided. The industrial advance of the late nineteenth centuryAmericas great surge forwardmay have been exploiting steam trains, telegraphs, and electricity, but it depended on cheap, abundant wood for rail ties, fuel, buildings, and utility poles. The nations military might also owed its fair debt to trees, unsung heroes of both world warsfor forests were recruited alongside soldiers. And after World War ii, when a fastrising population needed new housing, it was cheap timber that allowed for the sudden emergence of the suburbs, where, it should be noted, a tree could be found in every yard.
meric an
Introduction
it is no surprise that trees would shape America more than other nations. After all, America has some of the most spectacular tree resources on the planet. Forests once covered almost half of the contiguous states, a staggering 950 million acres. The diverse geography across the country gives America ideal soil for almost any type of tree, from the palms of Southern california to the pines of new england. The United States is home to the worlds biggest trees (the giant sequoias), the worlds tallest trees (the coastal redwoods), and the worlds oldest trees (the bristlecone pines). The biggest single organism on earth is also a tree speciesand is also Americana stand of quaking aspens in Utah, known as Pando; it reproduces clonally, weighs sixty-six hundred tons, and is tens of thousands if not millions of years old. American Canopy takes these magnificent American trees as its subject, but the story is most often one of personal drama. Americans, after all, are half the equation. The Sons of Liberty used a famous tree as a center for popular protest that helped spark the American revolution. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were avid horticulturists who traded tree specimens as they negotiated the constitutionJefferson even considered the introduction of the olive tree to South carolina as one of his greatest achievements. John chapman, a man most Americans know as Johnny Appleseed, sold his trees to settlers looking to establish residence in the Ohio Valley. Henry David Thoreau helped awaken a nation to the beauty of woodlands. John Muir then used his passion for trees and unbounded nature to champion the creation of national parks. J. Sterling Morton, one of the first settlers in nebraska, tried to turn the Great Plains into a forest by creating Arbor Day. Later, President Theodore roosevelt, with his close confidant Gifford Pinchot, struggled to save the great western forests from industrial ruin. And in the following generation, President Franklin roosevelta tree lover if there ever was onelooked to the nations woody resources as a way to ameliorate the Great Depression. each mans story tells a small fragment of a much larger tale, a tale that becomes the story of America. This relationship with trees has been one of the great drivers of national development. it belongs in a conversation with other forces that helped to forge American identity: the endless frontier, immigration, democracy, religion, slavery and its legacy, the struggle for labor rights, the expansion of civil rights, and free market and state capitalism, to name a few. And like all useful cicerones, the trees show us a picture of America at its best and at its worst. History has lost or buried many of the episodes highlighted in American Canopy. To learn about trees is to discover a side of the nations past that is rarely told. no one has ever treated Americas trees in all their dimensions as a subject for historical study. Pieces of the story for certain, but not the story
itself. Perhaps it is because trees have been so integral to American history that it becomes easy to overlook them. People notice the unusual, not the ubiquitous. Like so many Americans, historians are guilty of taking trees for granted. but trees are the loudest silent figures in Americas complicated history. eanw h il e, Prometheus turned out to be one of the loudest trees of all, though only in death. With each year that passed and without the discovery of an older bristlecone, the trees reputation grew, as did the controversy over its cutting. The felling of Prometheus convinced conservationists to take a more aggressive stand to ensure that such ill-advised chain-sawing was never repeated. Donald currey even became one of the foremost advocates for greater controls over the region that contained the bristlecones. These efforts helped to create, in 1986, the Great basin national Park, a heavily protected area that includes Wheeler Peak Scenic Area. And today all bristlecone pines, standing or down, receive federal protection. Thanks to these measures the bristlecones can continue to fight their eternal battle with natures wind undisturbed and to silently record America and the world as they change. but for Prometheus, all that remains is an unmarked stump and a footnote in history. it is still the oldest tree ever discovered.
From Discovery to Revolution
White Oak
wooddes of All Sortes

n l at e 1 6 0 5 , richard Hakluyt, archdeacon of Londons Westminster Abbey and the preeminent geographer in europe, sat in his study preparing for a meeting that he had spent a lifetime awaiting. The newly crowned king of england, James i, had granted Hakluyt and his colleagues an audience to discuss overseas expansion. They were seeking a royal charter that would authorize them to establish permanent settlements in a mysterious land known to some as norumbega, to others as Acadia, and to others still as Virginia. The territory stretched from thirty-four to forty-five degrees north latitude, the present-day location for most of Americas eastern Seaboard. if King James refused Hakluyts appeal, the project of english colonization in north America might wither before it could begin. And the central argument that Hakluyt planned to use with the king of england rested on trees. Hakluyt viewed north American expansion as the key to his countrys future. Overseas growth had already been a boon for Spain and Portugal, the
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two states that had most successfully exploited the new World since christopher columbuss famous 1492 voyage. Their western holdings provided mineral wealth and access to raw materials. Spain, in particular, had used these newfound riches to develop the worlds strongest navy and administer an ever-growing empire. england, by contrast, had barely participated in the sixteenth-century land grab. in Hakluyts opinion, westward expansion into the one great Atlantic region that remained unclaimedthe north American continent above Spanish Floridawas necessary to contest Spains spreading dominion and to boost the english economy. in the epistle to his first book, a 1582 collection of north American travel literature called Divers Voyages, Hakluyt exhorted his countrymen to remedy the situation: i marvaile not a little... that since the first discoverie of America... after so great conquests and plantings of the Spaniardes and Portingales there, that wee of englande could never have the grace to set fast footing in such fertill and temperate places. in 1584, Hakluyt first set out his thoughts on the whys and hows of north American expansion in a manuscript titled A Discourse of Western Planting. The work had been commissioned by Sir Walter raleigh, a friend of the geographer and one of europes most respected explorers. raleigh had recently received a royal patent from Queen elizabeth i authorizing him to discover, search, and find uninhabited lands, but he wanted additional royal support for a proposed permanent settlement in north America and felt that Hakluyt could make a compelling case. Western Planting advocated britains expansion through colonies, often referred to in the sixteenth century as plantations or plantings. The idea was to populate north America with transplanted englishmen, who would work the land. This approach differed from the early Spanish style of conquest, which focused on precious metal extraction and used native peoples in mining or cash crop production. Hakluyt wanted colonies to be for the manifolde imploymente of numbers of idle men, a category that had been increasing during the last three decades of the sixteenth century, when englands population grew from 3.25 million to 4.07 million people. north American colonies would turn these unemployed men into producers and traders. They would harvest raw materials and ship them to england in exchange for woolen clothes and other manufactured goods. Western Plantings colonial ideas corresponded with an economic theory in fashion during Queen elizabeths reign. it argued that a countrys balance of tradeexports versus importsdetermined prosperity. The key was to import raw materials, so-called marketable commodities, and export manufactured goods. north American colonies, Hakluyt argued, could provide a steady
From Discovery to Revolution 2 13

stream of marketable commodities to england and in exchange receive goods that the home country manufactured. And colonial importation was vastly preferable to trading between independent states because there would be no duties and no risk of diplomatic problems. For this idea to work, however, Hakluyt needed to identify marketable commodities in north America. They would need to be raw materials that were plentiful overseas, easy for settlers to obtain, and scarce in england. Hakluyts years of studying travel literature had familiarized him with north Americas raw materials. The topic appeared frequently in the writings of overseas adventurers, who typically surveyed the land with an eye toward exploitation. John ribault, one of the first englishmen to record a voyage to north America, in 1564, wrote the contrie... is the fairest, frutefullest, and pleasauntest of all the worlde, aboundinge in honye, waxe, venison, wilde fowle, fforrestes, [and] wooddes of all sortes. The potential resource list was long, so much so that Hakluyt suggested, hyperbolically though not insincerely, that the land could yield all the commodities of europe, Affrica, and Asia, as far as we were wonte to travel. One raw material, however, stood out above all the rest in Hakluyts manuscript: trees. There were certainly others, among them fish and furs, two commodities that different geographers and explorers identified as the most essential resource. And there were the speculative commodities as well, such as gold and silver deposits. but none of these held equal footing with trees for Hakluyt. north America, he wrote, was infinitely full fraughte with sweet wooddes... and divers other kindes of goodly trees. colonists could immediately be put to work settynge upp mylles to sawe them and producing boards ready to be turned into goodly chests, cupboordes, stooles, tables, desks, etc. Trees would be the ideal marketable commodity for a colonial expedition: unlimited in supply, simple to harvest, and able to serve as the raw material for countless manufactured goods. Hakluyt concluded: So that were there no other peculier commodities, this onely [wood] i say were ynoughe to defraye all the chardges of all the begynnynge of the enterprise, and that oute of hande. Trees, Hakluyt assured, were the guarantee that the colonial venture would succeed financially. north Americas woody resources, however, fulfilled only the supply half of the economic calculus. For trees to qualify as a marketable commodity, there would also need to be strong demand. And this was the case, because of a problem Hakluyt diplomatically labeled the present wante of tymber in the realme. in truth, england was suffering from a severe timber crisis that, at the time of his writing, left the poor literally freezing to death in wintertime for want of firewood.
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Originally, the british island had been a woodland. Forests of oak and other hardwoods had filled the southern lands, while conifer stands populated the higher latitudes. Sheepherders over the centuries converted much of this to pastureland, but the domestic wood supply remained great enough to handle timber and firewood demands. Then, beginning in the 1540s, came new manufacturing industries that razed the forests for their fuel. This new wave of deforestation started with the iron industry, an early royal effort to boost manufacturing in accord with the trade-based economic theorythe production of iron required immense amounts of heat and, initially, used charcoal (which is derived from wood) as fuel. in 1543, Parliament first addressed the impending timber shortage with the Act for the Preservation of Woods, which restricted farmers from exploiting woodlands more than two furlongs (440 yards) from their homes. Sherwood Forest was becoming as much a myth as robin Hood. The situation worsened during the long reign of Queen elizabeth i (1558 1603). She promoted numerous other wood-fuel-driven manufacturing industries, including copper smelting, salt making, and glass production. (The coal industry, which was beginning, could not meet the skyrocketing demand for fuel.) One writer from this period commented, never so much [oak] hath been spent in a hundred years before as is in 10 years of our time. The price of firewood doubled between 1540 and 1570. This pushed some citizens out of the firewood market, and it became commonplace for the poor to shiver through the winters. The timber shortage had commoditized a product once freely available for the cutting. but fuel needs did not fully account for englands timber demand. Wood was also necessary in the construction of ships. And Queen elizabeth, in addition to promoting domestic manufacturing, had championed shipbuilding, part of the crowns long-term strategy to contest Spanish sea power and strengthen english commercial trade. Few industries in history have depended on wood quite like shipbuilding (at least before the conversion to iron and steel hulls in the mid-nineteenth century). A large naval warship, known as a ship of the line and constructed almost entirely from wood, weighed over one hundred tons in Hakluyts day. The bodies of such vessels required about two thousand mature oaks, which meant at least fifty acres of forest had to be stripped. While oak supplied the timber for much of the ship, it was too inflexible and heavy for ship masts, the poles that supported the canvas sails. instead, these required lighter and more shock-resistant softwoods, such as pines and firs. The largest masts were more than three feet wide at their base and over one hundred feet tallroughly one yard in height per inch in width. To maintain these wooden cathedrals of the

sea, shipwrights relied on a range of forest products, known as naval stores, extracted from pines and firs as well. Most notable were the tar, pitch, and turpentine used to condition and preserve the hull, mast, and other components. The twin demands of shipbuilding and wood-fuel-hungry manufacturing had turned england into a net wood importer. in particular, the country had to trade for masts and naval stores, since it had no suitably commercial conifer forests. The preferred mast trees, called riga firs or Scotch pines, came from an eastern european region around the city of riga (in present-day Latvia), but several northern countries had giant spruce forests that were also exploited for naval stores. The trade centered on ports in Scandinavia and the baltic Sea the latter, which included riga, was accessible only through narrow straits between Denmark and Sweden. rulers who controlled the various ports and access to the straits knew that englands sea power depended on forest products and, consequently, kept duties, taxes, and shipping fees high. The Danish, for example, collected tolls for each crossing. if england ever lost access to these ports, it would cripple the entire shipping industry, and with it the royal navy. Hakluyt saw the solution to this potential dilemma in the woods of north America as well. if his travel narratives agreed on anything, they agreed that the new World was an inexhaustible source of naval supplies, according to historian Howard Mumford Jones. Hakluyt stressed this same point in Western Planting: And england posessinge the purposed place of platinge... [will] have plenty of excellent trees for mastes, of goodly timber to builde shippes and to make greate navies, of pitche, tarr, hempe, and all thinges incident for a navie royall, and that for no price and withoute money or request. A foothold in tree-rich north America would shore up the royal navys greatest vulnerability and seemingly do so at little cost. Viewed more broadly, Hakluyts Western Planting was attempting to translate into economic and political terms a majestic wooded landscape that europeans could hardly comprehend. Many of the north American tree varieties were unknown on the continent, and even the familiar species possessed inconceivable size and number. Giovanni da Verrazzano, in 1524, wrote of mightie greate wooddes... with divers sorts of trees [as] plesaunte and delectable to beholde as is possible to imagine. The early voyagers simply ran out of adjectives to describe the abundance, grandeur, and range of the virgin forests. Geographers estimate that woodlands covered about 95 percent of presettlement new england and contained three-quarters of a million trees for every ten square miles. The mature specimens in any given stretch generally stood over one hundred feet high and were three feet thick at chest height. They towered above the forest floor, often free of branches for thirty to fifty feet, their
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leafy crowns floating like green fortresses in the sky. england, by comparison, was a barren wasteland. Sir Thomas culpepper, a seventeenth-century british economist, lamented that no man can let his Timber stand, nor his Wood grow to such years growth as is best for the common-Wealth. in late 1584, Hakluyt met personally with elizabeth, the virgin queen, to discuss his book and to make an appeal for colonization on behalf of his patron raleigh. it was Hakluyts first royal audience (and the last before his meeting with James i twenty-one years later). During the meeting, the geographer presented the queen a copy of Western Planting. They then almost certainly discussed the various colonial arguments: the economic promise of north American forests, the twin political advantages of a new World check on Spain and of a secure naval supply chain, the religious opportunities to spread the reformed Protestant gospel to the infidels, the possibilities of mineral wealth or a direct passage to china and the east indies spice trade. Despite Hakluyts best efforts, however, he failed to secure a charter authorizing permanent settlements. The problem seemed to be that equally compelling reasons against colonization existed. To begin with, such an aggressive undertaking was an incredibly dangerous proposition in the early 1580s. Spain still ruled the seas and showed interest in north America. committing england to a colonization project risked war with the most powerful nation in europe. but even without the Spanish menace, the project was precarious. in 1578, elizabeth had granted a six-year exploratory charter to Sir Humphrey Gilbert, but he never returned from the trip, his crew lost at sea. (Hakluyt had turned down an opportunity to travel with Gilbert, a decision that unquestionably saved his life.) Perhaps Hakluyts unwavering enthusiasm struck Queen elizabeth as zealotry. it was common for colonial propagandists to face charges of exaggeration and mendacity, claims that did not always lack merit. After all, Hakluyt, a man who had never seen north America, was promising the queen resources greater than those of all of europe. His fantastical-sounding assurances may have outweighed his inchoate reputation for pragmatism and integrity. Still, the geographer must have impressed elizabeth, for two years later he received a clerical advancement to bristol cathedral on her mandate. raleigh, meanwhile, pursued his colonial plans without the royal charter he desired. The year after Hakluyts royal audience, the explorer founded a colony in north America called roanoke (on an island near present-day north carolina). The project lasted for two years, but the original settlers all disappeared under mysterious circumstances, this doomed adventure remembered by history as the Lost colony. Hakluyt, in the period between his two royal audiences, continued his colo-

nial advocacy unabated, as scholar, propagandist, and agitator. in 1589 he published the first edition of a massive compendium of north American travel narratives called Principall Navigations, which reappeared ten years later in a three-volume expanded format. The revised edition of the book remains the definitive text of precolonial exploration. Many consider it one of the most important documents from the elizabethan age and have dubbed Hakluyt the english Homer. Shakespeare is thought to have referenced one of the maps from Principall Navigations in his play Twelfth Night. ever the pragmatist, Hakluyt eventually contributed his unrivaled reputation to a business partnership with seven other men in order to found a permanent settlement in north America. Known as the Virginia company, they hoped to succeed where Gilbert and raleigh had failed. And it was with this group that Hakluyt was going to petition King James in 1605. The circumstances for colonization, meanwhile, had grown more favorable in the two decades since Hakluyts first royal audience. in 1585, war had erupted between Spain and england with control of the seas the winners prize. Sir Francis Drake, the famed british explorer, defeated a Spanish fleet in a 1587 preemptive strike, proving that the Spanish were not invulnerable upon the seas and could not defend the extensive territories that they claimed. The following year, a coalition of english naval and merchant ships conquered Spains great Armada, arguably the most important sea battle in history. in August 1604, King James i signed a peace treaty with Spain, meaning that english-flagged ships could sail through Atlantic waters for the first time without fear of Spanish attack. england suddenly controlled the worlds waterways, a position it would maintain into the nineteenth century. During this sea change, several english voyages to north America had reinforced Hakluyts claim that timber-trade-based colonization could be profitable and benefit the crown. in 1602, bartholomew Gosnoldan eventual member of Hakluyts Virginia companyhad sailed to north America and returned with a ship weighed down with cuttings of sassafras, a tree that became briefly invaluable amid rumors that its extract cured syphilis. George Weymouth, another english explorer, had traveled to north America two years later and reported that the entire coast was indeed covered with dense woods. He determined, among other things, that the trees produced turpentine in marvellous plenty and so sweet, which would be a great benefit for making Tarre and Pitch. Against this backdrop, Hakluyt and his Virginia company met with King James i. The geographers arguments, little changed since Western Planting, had gained force, especially since the timber crisis had only deepened and the royal navy had grown in power. Hakluyt himself had also gained force, no
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longer the young novitiate, but an asset to his country, the patriotic expert in a field of self-interested explorers and businessmen. Once again he set forth the manifold reasons for colonization that he had earlier given elizabeth, this time with twenty more years of reputation, knowledge, and favorable political developments to assist him. And this time he succeeded. On April 10, 1606, James i issued the First charter of Virginia. it granted the men of the Virginia company the right to make habitation, plantation, and to deduce a colony of sundry of our people into that part of America commonly called Virginia. The charter split the Virginia company into two sections, a London-based group that included Hakluyt (known as the London company) and a Plymouth-based group (the Plymouth company). Hakluyts team received rights to the southern half of the territory. The northern half went to the Plymouth company. The geographer had finally persuaded the crown to support north American colonization, and his long-standing dream was on the verge of being realized. Of course, the charter was nothing more than a document and a promise of governmental assistance. it would have meant little if the Virginia company had failed like all of the previous unchartered colonization attempts, such as roanoke. Almost exactly one year after James issued the charter, on April 26, 1607, the first colonists from the London company reached Virginia. They formed a small settlement in the chesapeake region that they called Jamestown, in honor of the king. captain John Smith, a man contracted to oversee the adventure, proved a gifted leader, able to manage the settlers and negotiate with the native population. Soon, the colonists started to send shipments back to england, especially trees. A 1608 letter stated, i heare not of any novelties or other commodities she hath brought more then sweet woode. The early years nonetheless proved difficult. Of the original 214 colonists, only 60 survived a brutal winter in 1609, known as the Starving Time. colonial promotional literature, designed to garner financial support and dampen bad publicity, emphasized the claims Hakluyt had long been making about trees as a commodity. The most famous pamphlet, from the more than twenty the London company printed, quoted one of the founding company members, who had traveled to the new colony, as swearing under oath that the country yeeldeth abundance of wood... which are the materials, of... clap boards, Pipe-staves, Masts and excellent boardes of forty, fifty and sixtie length. The publication concluded, [n]either the scattered Forrest of england, nor the diminished Groves of ireland, will supply the defect of our navy. When in Virginia there is nothing wanting, but onely mens labours, to furnish both Prince, State and merchant, without charge or difficulty.

Despite these claims, the London company struggled financially for the next fifteen years, largely because exporting the abundant commodities proved more challenging and expensive than anticipated. Jamestown, however, was the first permanent english settlement in north America and became the foundation of present-day Virginia. Meanwhile, the Plymouth company was simultaneously working to colonize the northern territories, which roughly correspond to present-day new england. George Popham, a founding member of the Virginia company, led an expedition that settled on the shore of present-day Maine on August 13, 1607. Problems such as an unexpectedly cold winter and food shortages plagued the new settlement. The colonists put all their efforts toward constructing a shipa foreshadowing of new englands futureand produced a thirty-ton vessel named Virginia. but Popham died during that first winter, and all forty-five colonists returned to england the next spring. The Plymouth company was then inactive until a revival in 1620 when, among other activities, it granted settlement rights to a group of religious dissidents known as the Pilgrims, who had earlier negotiated with the London company but accidentally landed far north of their intended destination and became new englands first permanent english colonists. As for Hakluyt, he never made it to the new World. The man who devoted his life to studying sea voyages refused to be part of one. The reasons for this remain a mystery. He died in 1616, leaving behind a son and two shares in the London company worth twenty-one pounds. His grave in Westminster Abbey is unmarked. A commemorative plaque in bristol cathedral reads: The ardent Love of my country devoured all Difficulties. Hakluyt had realized his patriotic vision of a colonial england, but in doing so he had also planted the seeds of a new nation. And the trees that he saw bringing so much prosperity to his homeland would soon shape the emigrants to this once-unknown land.
Here is Good Living for those that Love Good Fires
n n ov em ber 1 1 , 1 6 2 0 , after a two-month journey, the Mayflower finally settled in to a harbor near cape cod bay. As carpenters began repairing the ship, sixteen men set out to explore the territory, necessitie calling them to looke out a place for habitation, according to William bradford, the future governor of the Pilgrims colony. The scouting party wandered toward the forests, when they spotted several natives, who fled into the woods like startled deer. The Pilgrims pursued them to ensure that more were not lying in ambush. However, according to bradford, his companions soone lost
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both [the natives] & them selves, falling into shuch thickets as were ready to tear their cloaths & armore in peeces, but were most distressed for wante of drinke. Several days later, while bradford was lost in the woods with another party, he leaned over to look at a curiously bent sapling, which gave a sodaine jerk up, and he was immediately caught by the leg and pulled off the ground by an indian game trap. Hakluyt may have been correct about the value of trees as a commodity, but he had not appreciated the challenges of living in the woods. in bradfords words, the whole countrie, full of woods & thickets, represented a wild & savage heiw [hue]. The forests were a frightening place for settlers transported from europe. Savages lived there, alongside strange beasts, swarming insects, and, quite possibly, the devil himself. but these fears were, in some ways, no more troubling than the trees themselves. The Pilgrims could not begin planting crops nor building homes until they cut them down, one by one, a task near impossible for men who had never handled heavy axes. One potential settlement region the Pilgrims had a very great liking to plant in was rejected largely because of the trees. According to bradford, it was so incompassed with woods, that we should bee in much danger of the Salvages, and our number being so little, and so much ground to cleare, so as we thought good to quit and cleare [leave] that place. eventually, the Pilgrims established their colony near Plymouth Harbor in an outcropping free of woods. The lands natural forest had earlier been cleared by Patuxet indians, who had been growing corn there until a 1617 plague decimated the population. Hakluyts travel narratives had described the continent as pristine territory, but in reality the native population had shaped the forests for thousands of years through burnings and tree fellings. Many of the earliest settlement pointsPlymouth, boston, Salem, Medford, Watertownwere actually abandoned indian fields or natural clearings, ironic for a Yankee culture that would soon be defined by trees. The forest, while not the Pilgrims literal home, quickly became their salvation. They had brought stores of food and clothes on the Mayflower, but few building materials and no fuel. in the first two years, bradford and his men hauled great logs and thousands of small trees from the nearby woodlands to construct a fort as well as individual houses. And firewood was their only source of heat in a territory with unexpectedly cold wintersHakluyts travel narratives were from summertime voyages, which described the climate accordingly. Wood gathering always cost a great deale of labour, according to bradford. One Pilgrim complained that the colonys location forced him to walk halfe a quarter of an english myle to gather wood, not a great distance, but tiresome considering the backbreaking labor and the enormous quantities

involvedeach family burned through an acre of wood a year. Despite the heavy labor, access to unlimited timber and fuel mitigated the effects of the first brutal winter, which claimed the lives of half the original settlers. A report on the original new england colonies by a minister in Salem, Massachusetts, stated, Here is good living for those that love good fires, though the Pilgrims who had to carry the logs might have disagreed. The new england trees were as diverse as they were plentiful. Though most woodlands had several dominant speciessuch as the oak-chestnut forests of southern new england or the spruce-hardwood forests of Vermontthere was a cornucopia of species variation within any given region. William Wood, the first englishman to produce a detailed account of new england ecology, in 1634, summed up the situation with a poem: Trees both in hills and plaines, in plenty be, The long livd Oake and mournefull Cypris tree, Skie towring pines, and Chesnuts coated rough, The lasting Cedar, with the Walnut tough: The rozin dropping Firre for masts in use, The boatmen seeke for Oares light, neate growne Sprewse [spruce], The brittle Ash, the ever trembling Aspes, The broad-spread Elme, whose concave harbours waspes... The Diars [dyers] Shumach [sumac], with more trees there be, That are both good to use, and rare to see. collectively, these trees formed the landscape of early new england, one of vibrant springtime blossoms, dense summer foliage, and brilliant autumnal leaves. Timber was the most conspicuous resource, practically the only resource, the Pilgrims had at first. When they yielded to pressures from their financial backers in 1621 and sent a load of commodities back to england aboard the fifty-five-ton vessel Fortune, it contained only 2 hoggsheads of beaver and otter skins but was laden with good clapboard as full as she could stowe, according to bradford. but this practice of timber export did not last long. The Pilgrims found their wood supply too important, and on March 29, 1626, the colonys leaders restricted overseas sale with the following: That for the preventing of such inconveniences as do and may befall the plantation by the want of timber, That no man of what condition soever sell or transport any manner of workes... [that]
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may tend to the destruction of timber... without the consent approbation and liking of the Governour and councile. Hakluyts vision of north American colonies immediately supplying the home country with timber butted up against the reality that survival concerned bradfords group more than providing commodities. Trees made the task of carving a life out of a new, savage land easier, but only by so much. by the mid-1630s, following a decade of increased immigration (partly related to the ongoing timber famine in england), the original treeless outcroppings started to become overpopulated. recent settlers, of necessity, entered the woods to make their property claims. This presented a new series of challenges, aside from the indian attacks or a visit from Satan. The earliest forest dwellers often did not have the time or resources to construct a proper home. As one colonist explained, for many, forming a shelter meant [they would] dig a square pit in the ground, cellar fashion, 6 or 7 feet deep, as long and as broad as they think proper, case the earth inside with wood all around the wall, and line the wood with the bark of trees or something else to prevent the caving in of the earth; floor this cellar with plank and wainscot it overhead for a ceiling, raise a roof of spars clear up and cover the spars with bark or green sods. Once a shelter was established, at least a year was needed to burn, chop, log, plow, and sow several acres. And that was if the settler was handy with an ax, which practically none were. For the heaviest tasks, like moving logs and building a more permanent shelter, he needed the aid of several neighbors and, ideally, oxen, which had to be imported from europe. The more new england colonists lived with trees, however, the more they learned to exploit them for goods beyond timber and fuel. The woodlands offered the raw material for daily life, replacements for comforts and necessities that had been left behind in england. early settlers crafted tools and bowls from the hardest woods, like ash, hickory, and hornbeam, which, according to William Wood, required so much paines in riving [splitting] as is almost incredible. Distinctive woods, like the sweet-smelling, red-hued cedar or the dark, richly textured black walnut, were often selected for fancier products, ranging from decorative boxes and carved furniture to ceremonial gunstocks. The trees also provided new englanders with fruits and nuts, including wild plums, cherries, acorns, chestnuts, and walnuts, which could be as bigge as a small peare, according to Wood. From the amber

sap of maple trees, colonists derived sugar, their main source of sweetness besides honey. And they fermented birch, black walnut, sassafras, and spruce to produce beer. The forest even served as something of a pharmacy: purgatives from nut oils; suppuratives from the bark of alder, birch, oak, and willow; cough medicine from the dark, potato-chip-like bark of black cherry trees; and astringents from white pine or hemlock sap. Additionally, colonists extracted colorful dyes from numerous species, including ash, birch, dogwood, hemlock, hickory, sassafras, and sumac. These first colonistsPilgrims, Puritans, and independent settlersthus started to find refuge among the new england forests, but they were failing to live up to their commercial obligations. Their sponsors, joint-stock companies such as Hakluyts London company, were for-profit ventures that expected the colonies to deliver commodities and justify the investment. Pilgrims and Puritans may have arrived in America to discover an uncorrupted life, but that didnt mean their backers shared this enthusiasm. in 1629, the new england company, a reorganized version of the original Plymouth company, sent six or seven shipwrights to Salem, Massachusetts, jump-starting a domestic shipbuilding trade. The directors of the Massachusetts bay company then sent over their own trained shipwrights, coopers, and woodsmen to begin exploiting the woods for profit. Suddenly, the new england coasts were buzzing with the sounds of hammers, axes, and adzes. The region seemed to have been designed for the building of ships. White oaks, similar to english oaks, furnished excellent ship timber and planking. cedars, chestnuts, and black oaks were decay-resistant and provided resilient boards for outdoor and underwater sections of ships. colonists extracted the ever-important naval stores from pitch pines, a fire-resistant conifer, which populated areas that indians had burned. but perhaps the greatest asset was the white pine, which grew to prodigious heights in the unspoiled forests of new england and produced larger masts than any of the riga firs in europe. collectively, these assets bolstered the shipbuilding trade. in turn, this brought about the fishing, shipping, and whaling trades, three staples of new england life. Maritime work would become the second-largest colonial occupation, exceeded only by agriculture and trailed closely by logging. The natural endowments of new england were so great that colonial shipbuilders gained a competitive advantage over their english counterparts, who had an eighty-year head start and the active support of the crown. colonists never needed to import timbers or naval stores. Their shipwrights easily obtained even the naturally curved timbers that were preferred for bows, ribs, stems, and sterns. Ultimately, the abundance of good timber allowed new englanders to produce ships at least 30 percent cheaper than the english, and
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it became commonplace to sell new england ships to ship merchants in the mother country. These ships would become new englands most profitable manufactured export in the colonial period. While the home country showed interest in the colonial ships, it was less enthusiastic about timber itself. Hakluyt had been wrong about wood products becoming the commodity that would justify colonization for his country. The problem was that American timber was too costly. Part of the issue was that freehold laborers in the colonies earned six times more than their serf counterparts in european timber-producing nations. but a bigger concern was that transatlantic shipping made new england uncompetitive. The baltic ports charged nine to twelve shillings per shipping ton, while the boston ports charged forty to fifty shillings for the longer transatlantic journey. new englands inability to sell one of its most widely available products helped send the colonial economy into serious debt. by 1640, there was a glut of british manufactured goods in the colonies and not enough marketable commodities to sell back in exchange. The need to develop timber markets and bolster the economy forced the colonists to look beyond england for trading partners, one of the first steps that helped separate new england from the mother country. boston traders began to establish timber markets in Spain, Portugal, the canary islands, the Azores, and Madeira after the 1640 economic downturn. Shipping costs to these locations were relatively neutral between the colonies and the baltic ports. Madeira, a Portuguese settlement and one of the wine islands, actually translates to wooden land, but deforestation had made this name ironic. The new iberian and wine islands trades consisted primarily of oak staves for barrels, but also included building timber, white pine boards, and cedar shingles. Seven boston vessels sailed to these ports in 1642, and this region became the dominant trading partner by the 1660s. Timber was not among the enumerated commodities in englands navigation Acts, which restricted trade between the colonies and the rest of europe. new englanders, consequently, could continue their wine islands commerce in timber without upsetting the home country. Such was not the case with most of the valuable commodities that the southern colonies produced, such as indigo and tobacco, both regulated under the navigation Acts. The next major trade relationship that new england developed was with barbados, a british colony in the West indies. The small island was the colonial center for cane sugar, one of the most coveted marketable commodities. The navigation Acts prohibited barbados from trading its sugar with other european nations, but allowed unrestricted intracolonial commerce with new england. Sugar production had completely denuded a once-forested ter-

ritory, and barbadians became wholly dependent on new england. When bridgetown, the islands capital, burned to the ground in 1668, the city sent a flotilla to new england for timber to rebuild. by the 1670s british West indian sugar islands depended entirely upon trade with new england, and timber was the most important commodity in terms of tons shipped. A group of barbadian representatives in 1673 told the british Parliament of the great necessity the Sugar Plantations had of a trade with [new england] for boards timbers pipestaves horses & fish, & that they could not mainetaine theire buildings, nor send home theire Sugars, nor make above halfe that quantity without a Supply of those things from new england. With trading partners on both sides of the Atlantic, boston ships began participating in various triangular trades to address commodity imbalances. in one route, timber and other goods were traded for wine in the wine islands. This was then sold to prosperous sugar planters in exchange for rum, which was then resold in new england. in another variation, new england supplies, mainly timber and low-grade fish for slave food, went to the british West indies in exchange for rum, which was then used to purchase African slaves or sold to european slave traders. These slaves were then traded back to the british West indies in exchange for sugar, which was distributed in the colonies or england. in the most historically famous triangle trade, new england ports, which handled almost all international trading from the American colonies, sold southern cash crops like tobacco, indigo, and rice to england; european manufactured goods were then bartered for African slaves, who were shipped back to the West indies or southern colonies to fuel the various cash crop plantations. in little more than fifty years, abundant timber resources had transformed new england from a harsh, uninviting land to a wealthy trading outpost. Some of the timber barons were as rich as any man in england, and the Puritans controlled one of the strongest shipping trades outside of the Dutch empire. Hakluyt had been correct about the potential for north Americas forests, but he had not foreseen the manner in which it would develop. Of course, there was one forest commodity, new england masts, about which Hakluyt had been uncannily prescient. Their importance to the royal navy was too great for england to ignore, regardless of shipping costs or political consequences.
the kings Broad Arrow

n ear ly O ct obe r, 1 6 9 1 , King William iii issued a new royal charter governing the Massachusetts bay colony. its final section included a curious provision reserving to the King all Trees of the Diameter of Twenty
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Four inches and upwards that were not on lands previously granted to private persons. Anyone who felled such trees would suffer the penalty of Forfeiting One Hundred Pounds sterling. The crown had suddenly codified a prediction that Hakluyt had made more than one hundred years earlier: new england pines, according to the charter, were being regulated for the better provideing and furnishing of Masts for [the] royall navy. During the second half of the seventeenth century Hakluyts fears about the baltic mast trade had been realized. it began in the early 1650s when the ascendance of Dutch shipping, combined with that nations opposition to the english navigation Acts, led to a series of Anglo-Dutch wars. The Dutch had earlier purchased the rights to the baltic straits from the Danes for a sum of thirty-five thousand pounds annually and had used this leverage to threaten the supremacy of english shipping. The strait was shut down entirely for a brief period in 1654, and the situation remained tense throughout the late seventeenth century. When englands new rulers, William and Mary, stepped up naval production once more in 1689 in preparation for a struggle with France, the heightened demand, along with the already strained baltic conditions and growing hostility from Sweden, triggered a new timber crisis, and the crown finally chose to exert its authority over the great mast resources in the forests three thousand miles away. The north American mast trade, however, was already well established before the 1691 charter. The initial shipment had occurred in 1609 when Jamestown colonists sent fower score masts to the home country. Twenty-five years later, new england sent its first delivery of the enormous pines aboard a ship aptly named Hercules. Then, in 1652, during the First Anglo-Dutch War, the british admiralty dispatched a mast transport to new england. This precipitated an annual trade with prices for good masts averaging around one hundred pounds. Samuel Pepys, the seventeenth-century english naval administrator whose daily diaries have made him one of the most famous figures in english history, talked about the new england mast trade on repeated occasions in his journal. On December 3, 1666, he wrote: There is also the very good news come of four new england ships come home safe to Falmouth with masts for the King; which is a blessing mighty unexpected, and without which, if for nothing else, we must have failed the next year. but God be praised for thus much good fortune, and send us the continuance of his favour in other things! Unlike timber or naval stores, colonial masts were not simply an alternative or an insurance policy to the baltic trade. They were superior to the european equivalents, regardless of shipping costs. To begin with, the north American white pines were generally considered more resilient than the riga firs and

were one-fourth lighter than the european product. but of infinitely greater importance was the size of the north American trees. Hundreds of years without human intervention had allowed these trees, capable of growing taller than nearly any others on earth, to reach proportions almost incomprehensible to London shipwrights (or, for that matter, modern-day Americans). The tallest white pines soared 250 feet above the forest floor, often a hundred feet straight up without a single branch. They were citadels of twenty-five stories (by comparison, twice the height of the nations first skyscraper, chicagos Home insurance building, built in 1885). The largest new england pine trees could also be several feet in diameter at their base. While forty inches was the widest mast that english ships of the line required, much broader trees were recorded and rumored to exist. A 1736 article in the American Weekly Mercury noted one tree whose Diameter was seven feet eight inches, and its Length proportionable. if such an awesome tree ever lived, it would have been twenty-four feet around at the ground. These grandiose pines grew in a broad swath that stretched from the connecticut river in the northern half of present-day connecticut straight into nova Scotia, a region that included almost all of Massachusetts, new Hampshire, and Mainein other words, new england. it is nearly impossible to convey in text just what these trees meant for the landscape, though many have tried. To quote Donald culross Peattie, author of a classic American tree guide, When the male flowers bloomed in these illimitable pineries, thousands of miles of forest aisle were swept with the golden smoke of this reckless fertility, and great storms of pollen were swept from the primeval shores far out to sea and to the superstitious sailor seemed to be raining brimstone on the deck. colonists, for the most part, were less interested in the mast potential of these mighty pine trees than in their value as timber. bostons powerful shipping business with the West indies and wine islands ensured a brisk commerce in colonial softwoods. Timber export was the premier, and really only, industry of new Hampshire and later Maine. White pines even served as currency in those territories. Advertisers in new Hampshire papers offered an Assortment of english and West india Goods, Pork and Molasses, cheap for cash or White Pine boards. consequently, whatever bounty the royal navy offered to encourage mast production was not incentive enough to preserve the white pines from general cutting. The 1691 charter was seeking to remedy this problem by fiat. Woodsmen, who were compensated only for their labor whether the product was timber or masts, particularly disliked the mast trade because the felling and transport of whole pine logs was brutal work. First, they had to cut a roadway, free of tree-damaging impediments, from the potential fell site to
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the nearest watercourse, a distance that increased as these trees became harder to find. next, the fell site had to be prepared with a springy bed of smaller trees, for the weight of a great pine easily caused the trunk to crack on impact with forest floors. According to a colonial official, the white pines were of such immense weight it [was] almost beyond the power of man to use any secure management in lowering them. And when trees did fall, they often went in unexpected directions, killing lumbermen or making the massive pines impossible to move. Once on the ground, though, loggers found that 48 out of 50 may happen to be defective, although while standing they appeared to be perfectly sound. Decay in the heart of the wood, common in centuries-old trees, disqualified it for use in shipbuilding. The unsuitable 90-plus percent was simply cut to pieces and sent to the nearest mill. Given what was involved in transport, the only person saddened to find a decayed pine was likely the mast contractor himself. Felled logs that had not cracked, become immobile, or shown signs of heart rot weighed from fifteen to twenty tons and were as difficult to transport as they had been to cut down. The loggers rigged them up with fifteen-foothigh wooden wheels, connected through heavy chains and axles, in a process known as baulking. enormous teams of oxen pulled these baulked logs toward the river, an especially precarious journey. A log that rose when cresting a hill could pull the oxen off the ground, at which point the yoke strangled them. Trees rushing downhill on icy roads crushed or injured many animals. The loggers simply cut dead or maimed members of the team from their yokes and replaced them with reserves. Once logs finally reached the river, they floated down, often before crowds who assembled to watch the spectacle, and were eventually loaded onto special transports. When the 1691 charter first appeared, its white pine reservation clause had little impact on the logging trade or the men involved. The independentminded colonists simply ignored the restriction on cutting trees with diameters exceeding twenty-four inches, treating it like other mandates that proved nearly unenforceable across an ocean. The only evidence of the clause was a marking on some protected trees known as the Kings broad Arrow, three strikes of an ax that looked like a crows track or an upward facing arrow. Parliament had authorized an official to survey the woods and mark restricted trees, but he also proved ineffectual, unsurprisingly, considering the size of the territory involved. One 1700 survey found more than fifteen thousand logs that violated the twenty-four-inch restriction. The situation changed, however, upon the arrival of John bridger on the scene. He had worked as a shipwright in Portsmouth, england, and had visited new england while serving as purser aboard a royal naval vessel. in his

opinion, Parliaments failure to enforce the reservation clause was putting the royal navy, and with it the crown, at risk. in 1705, Parliament needed a new surveyor general of His Majestys Woods, and bridger got the jobit helped that he was the only applicant. He arrived in north America the following year and began to perform his duties with enthusiasm, seizing timber, prosecuting violators, conducting extensive mast surveys, and blazing the Kings broad Arrow throughout the regions where logging was heaviest. colonists, who had lived for generations free from british interference in their timberlands, fought back against bridgers new regime. They cut down the marked pines and sent them to the mills in secret, where they would be sawed into boards just shy of the punishable twenty-four inches. Prerevolutionary homes in new england contained beautiful pine boards of twentytwo or twenty-three inches, but almost never more, a society-wide wink and nod. Fires also began to mysteriously damage trees that bridger had emblazoned, rendering them useless as masts but fine for timber. Paper townships appeared, turning public lands private and excepting the pines from bridgers broad Arrow. even when perpetrators were caught, colonial courts dismissed bridgers prosecutions and lectured him for exceeding the scope of his official mandate. A frustrated bridger wrote to his superiors in england, [H]ere everyones hand is against anything belonging to her Majestie or her intrest; no such thing as Loyallty ever breed here. For fifteen years, bridger petitioned members of Parliament and the british board of Trade to strengthen the broad Arrow laws. it became a personal obsession. He sent hundreds of letters asking for more resources, tighter regulations, and the authority to bring prosecutions in vice-admiralty courts, which were considered more loyal to the crown than colonial courts. nothing can Doe it else effectually, bridger pleaded. between 1706 and 1729, a series of parliamentary acts shaped a broad Arrow policy that met bridgers demands. The surveyor-generals resources and jurisdiction increased. More important, the new legislation brought almost all new england pine trees, not just those above twenty-four inches or on public property, under the control of the crown. bridger, however, never benefited from these changes, as he was removed from office under charges of corruption in 1718. His immediate successor as surveyor-general treated the new scheme much as bridgers predecessor had, with indifference. Though the new legislation wasnt being enforced, it still bred resentment among colonists. A similar broad Arrow policy had existed within england a century earlier as part of the policies attempting to combat the timber shortage, but the 1647 civil war that ousted King charles i had ended royal infringements on personal property. colonists wanted to own their property
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on the same terms as their countrymen, but the reformed broad Arrow policy abrogated their rights. At its strictest interpretation, the policy would have permitted the surveyor-general to arrest a man for building his home out of white pine logs or for clearing his land of trees to plant crops. The lieutenant governor of new Hampshire wrote in 1710 that the crown never had right: soil being in the natives, as judges of the courtt have declared. in 1734, a new surveyor-general, colonel David Dunbar, soon found out just how strongly the colonists felt about british claims to their pines. He was not only surveyor, but also the lieutenant governor of new Hampshire, which remained under the authority of Massachusetts through 1741. When he took over from bridgers replacement, he attempted for the first time to enforce the more expansive broad Arrow policy and decided to make an example of exeter Township in new Hampshire. in March 1734, Dunbar traveled up-country toward exeter to review the timber situation personally. While there, his team encountered a large supply of white pine logs floating in a mill pond. Dunbar proceeded to interrogate a townsperson about the name and ownership of the nearest mill. When the man refused to cooperate, Dunbar raised his cane and began to beat him vigorously. A second townsman refused to provide the information and received the same treatment. After two canings, Dunbar returned to Portsmouth, new Hampshire, to contemplate his next step. He procured a decree of seizure for a half million board feet from the viceadmiralty court and hired a brute squad to follow him to exeter. Several of these men headed there in advance of the surveyor-general to gather information. Upon arrival, they found the town quiet and retired to a lodging house for the evening. Soon, a party of exeter townsmen, dressed as indians, descended on the inn and assaulted Dunbars men with a fury that made the surveyors canings seem like gentle caresses. These assailants ordered Dunbars men from the inn, at which point the scouts discovered that their attackers had also burned the seizure boat, forcing them to return to Portsmouth on foot. The next morning, Dunbar approached the town with his entire enforcement squad. When he encountered his beaten scouts walking toward him, he grew enraged and set upon exeter, his cane raised in fury, prepared to right the injustice. Two more men suffered lashings from the surveyor. He next destroyed the sawblades of one of exeters larger mills with an iron bar. but the exeter townsmen were not to be intimidated. An armed militia met the surveyor and sent his team fleeing to the sound of gunshots. Dunbar never seized his half million board feet. His replacement as surveyor-general, benning Wentworth, had a much different idea about the role of the broad Arrow policy. Wentworth came from

the most prominent timber family in new Hampshire. His brother, Mark Hunking Wentworth, was the primary new england mast contractor and one of the richest men in the colonies. Thanks to these connections, benning had been appointed governor of new Hampshire in 1741. Two years later he actually paid two thousand pounds for the surveyor title, a remarkable sum considering that the job only provided two hundred pounds salary. The position, in conjunction with his governorship, allowed him to secure his familys monopoly and increase his brothers fortune for the twenty-five years of his reign. enforcement was superficial or used as a tool to intimidate rivals, though woodsmen still chafed at seizures. The surveyor-general reported that one of his deputies, while in the execution of his office, was Seized... & thrown into a Mill pond, whereby he was in great danger of being drowned. in 1767, benning Wentworth finally lost his titles due to malfeasance and disloyalty to the crown. His cousin, John Wentworth, took both positions, partly to save face and to preserve the family name. The younger Wentworth, despite the conflict of interest with his family, took his responsibilities seriously. According to reverend Timothy Dwight, who knew Wentworth, he was a man of sound understanding, refined taste, enlarged views, and a dignified spirit. His manners, also, were elegant; and his disposition enterprising. new Hampshire citizens respected Wentworth for these qualities as well as for his having been born in the state, which distinguished him from all the other royal governors. He was truly one of their own. Wentworth marshaled all his resources and personal charisma to enforce a mast policy that he found deeply flawed but necessary. Whereas his uncle had sent deputies to survey the woods, Wentworth went personally, riding on horseback through the forests for days at a time and greeting new settlers and lumberers. One of Wentworths tours began in South carolina, which produced naval stores, and stretched all the way back to his home state. When he did encounter violators, he treated them with respect and sympathy, a sharp contrast to Dunbars cane. in one incident Wentworth patiently explained the mast policy to a group of poor woodsmen who had assumed that they could fell the trees because they owned the land. At the conclusion of the conversation, in Wentworths words, he singled out one man who had been the most zealous... and required him to... help me to seize and mark five hundred logs... which he directly performed. This approach to enforcement led to a hundredfold decrease in destruction after one year, at least according to Wentworth. if this were true to any extent, it proved the peoples affection for Wentworth, not respect for the mast policy. As Wentworths term as surveyor and governor advanced, he was increasingly torn between loyalty to his homeland and loyalty to his home country.
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Many colonists shared these concerns in the last decade before the revolution, when open hostility toward royal authority became commonplace. For every new Hampshire resident who cursed the crown and its forest policies, another stressed that all colonists were british citizens first. An opinion piece in a new Hampshire paper argued for continued broad Arrow enforcement, especially when all that is required of us, is to preserve such trees as nature has provided for the sole use of the navy, and which the laws of our country enjoin upon us, from falling a sacrifice to the avaricious and unbounded desires of groveling and mean spirited men. The words might as well have been Wentworths. Soon, circumstances forced him to choose between his state and his country. in April 1775, eight days before the violence at Lexington and concord that initiated the revolutionary War, the Massachusetts Provincial congress sent word to northern ports instructing them to make use of all proper and effective measures to prevent any masts on hand from reaching the enemy. Woodsmen from Portsmouth and from Falmouth and Georgetown in Maine began towing masts from the loading pools and hiding them. The following month, Maine loggers kidnapped the british commander of a mast transport ship. Later on, the british, in retaliation, bombarded the kidnappers town until there was little left but ashes. The last supply of new england mastsa trade that had sent forty-five hundred white pines to england under the broad Arrow policyreached the home country on July 31, 1775. Wentworth honored his position and stayed loyal to the crown through the revolution. Though some in his family sided with the colonists, Wentworth himself left new Hampshire soon after hostilities began, figuring that it was safest to wait out the conflict abroad and return after the english triumphed. but he never saw his beloved new Hampshire again. Halifax, nova Scotia, became his new home, as was the case with numerous Loyalists. He once more was surveyor-general, only in a different Majestys Woods, the forests of the region that would become canada. ironically, the policies meant to protect england from a mast shortage would trigger one during the revolutionary War. The royal navy had used new england pines almost exclusively as their mainmasts in ships of the line, and the sudden outbreak of hostilities, and consequent cessation of mast shipments, forced england to turn back to the baltic ports. While the eastern european ports quickly filled the demand, the riga firs they provided almost never exceeded twenty-seven inches. nearly all of the new mainmasts that english ships of the line used in the eight-year revolutionary War were inferior composite or made masts, and the british were unable to produce a wartime efforts worth of made masts on schedule after several generations of relying on colonial white pines.

Without new england masts, the royal navy was weakened, if not crippled. During the war, many ships were stuck in port with broken masts, and masting problems also delayed the outfitting of multiple british fleets throughout the war, leaving the british at a disadvantage. new englanders, meanwhile, sold their masts to the French, whose navy assisted the colonial army during the conflict. robert Albion, one of the greatest naval historians, has argued that the lack of masts deserves more of a place than it has yet received among the various reasons for englands temporary decline in sea power during the American revolution. Some think he overreaches, but his basic point is true: new england white pines, in their role as naval masts, were an unsung hero in Americas gaining its independence. regardless of what role masts played in the naval history of the American revolution, englands colonial mast policy proved an outright disaster for deeper reasons. The disrespect for private property rights, draconian cutting laws, and generally shoddy enforcement drove a wedge between the colonists and the crown. england might have saved itself money and aggravation by simply purchasing a gigantic masting nursery from the colonists. in the lumbering regions of new england, white pine masts became a symbol of english repression. but in the cities and towns of the colonies another type of tree was becoming a symbol of something differentAmerican liberty. Trees, it turned out, would help unify the colonies around the belief that liberty was an ideal to hold above all others.
the tree of Liberty

he bost on t ow n s pe opl e who walked past Deacon eliots house on the morning of August 14, 1765, encountered something unexpected. Hanging from the branches of a great elm at the corner of essex and newbury Streets was the body of a man. closer inspection revealed it to be a strawstuffed dummy wearing the letters A.O., the initials of Andrew Oliver, secretary of the province. next to the effigy, swinging in the breeze, was a boot with a little devil peeping out and thrusting the [effigy] with an Horrid Fork, according to one account. Oliver was not only secretary of the province but also the royal official commissioned with distributing papers for a new english tax on the colonies, the Stamp Act. The legislation had not gone into effect yet, but when it did it would require that almost all colonial papers carry a stamp that showed payment of a tax. The range of documents covered was staggering, everything from legal transactions and licenses down to dice and playing cards. boston already had
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economic problems that summer, and the threat of new taxes enraged nearly all the colonists. The words written near Olivers hanging effigy summed up the sentiments: How Glorious is it to see, a Stamp officer hang on a Tree. Olivers dummy remained in the great elm for all to observe throughout the day. At one point, according to an eyewitness, [t]hree Guineas was offerd to any one that should take it down and no one dard to make the Tryall. People openly mocked Oliver and the act, pantomiming stampings on various goods. As evening approached, a spontaneous crowd gathered under the tree. Witnesses counted one thousand participants, a massive number in a town of fifteen thousand. They cut the effigy from the tree and with great solemnity placed it in a coffin. Then a procession, led by about fifty well-dressed tradesmen, paraded the two dummies through the streets of boston, past the house of the royal governor. They continued toward the newly built stamp office and leveled the brick building with a makeshift battering ram. The mob scene concluded with a bonfire in front of Olivers house, where the crowd burned the effigy and broke all the windows in his house. by 11:00 p.m. the rioters had dispersed. Oliver made it known the next day that he would not serve as stamp distributor. Though the riots failed to dissuade Parliament from enforcing the Stamp Act, they succeeded in forging a new folk hero: the large American elm where the entire affair began. The tree, in many respects, had grown up in tandem with colonial boston. early Massachusetts bay colonists had planted it in 1646 on a spot near the citys common. During the intervening six score years, it matured into a mighty elm around one hundred feet tall, its leafy crown towering above the nearby houses. And by the 1760s, it had become one of the greatest trees in the entire city, just as boston had become one of the greatest cities in all of the colonies. The elm was formally recognized as a symbol of public protest the month after the antiStamp Act riot, on September 11, 1765. That day, the boston Sons of Liberty, a group of leading patriots that included Samuel Adams and Paul revere, affixed a copper plate to the mighty tree at Deacon eliots house that read The Tree of Liberty in gold letters. The cause of liberty suddenly had an icon. Soon everyone knew of bostons Liberty Tree, even members of Parliament in London, who talked of the Affair at Liberty Tree. Local carpenters pruned the elm for free as it was for the public good and they were always ready to serve the true-born Sons of Liberty. The American colonies had a long tradition of using trees as meeting spots. John eliot, a Puritan missionary who reached Massachusetts bay in 1631, had spent much of his life preaching to indians beneath a great white oak, known as eliots Oak until its death in the twentieth century. William Penn

had signed a peace treaty with the Lenape indians in 1683 beneath the graceful branches of an American elm. black slaves often met in hush arbors in the woods, where their activities were shielded from the eyes of white masters. in colonial new York city, businessmen routinely gathered around a buttonwood tree (better known in the modern day as an American sycamore) to meet and trade stocksthe new York Stock exchange would formally begin in 1792 with the signing of the buttonwood Agreement. And trees had also served as symbols of the colonies themselves. connecticuts charter Oak, for instance, took its name from a story, considered apocryphal, stating that in 1687 a connecticut colonist had successfully secreted the states charter inside an oak tree when King James ii attempted to seize it. early Massachusetts colonists minted a shilling with the image of a pine treethe coins designer observed, What better thing than a tree to portray the wealth of our country? in the eighteenth century, new englanders began using a flag with a pine tree emblem, a practice that became commonplace during the revolutionary War. A pine tree flag would wave at bunker Hill and also when the Massachusetts navy sailed down the charles river to attack british-held boston. The newly christened Liberty Tree was both symbol and stage. it became an active participant in the decade of activity leading up to rebellion in 1775. The Sons of Liberty claimed the tree as their own and used it as an outdoor meeting spot, an area dubbed Liberty Hall. This became an egalitarian point of organization capable of holding thousands of people and excluding none. The Sons of Liberty also erected a flagpole a good deal above the Top of the Tree, and they would hoist a flag to signal meetings. The tree enfranchised the mobs and functioned as the locus of popular rebellious actions, the first place bostonians looked for news and demonstrations against the more opprobrious policies of Parliament. Official meetings occurred in nearby Faneuil Hall, but the so-called lower-class mobs held court around the elm in Liberty Hall. One disgruntled American Tory referred to the Liberty Tree as an idol for the Mob to Worship. The de facto custodian of the tree, at least at the outset, was a man drawn from the lower classes, twenty-seven-year-old ebenezer Mackintosh. His status as a shoemaker distinguished him from merchants like Adams and revere, who formed the core of colonial resistance. Mackintosh donned the title First captain General of the Liberty Tree, a half-mocking allusion to the royal governors official moniker. His biggest job qualification was his captaining the South end company, a neighborhood artisans group that participated in the annual Popes Day festival, a celebration in november when various artisan factions paraded through the streets. Mackintosh had led the festival before,
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and he would apply this experience to directing angry mobs that formed around the Liberty Tree. Such was the situation on november 1, 1765, the next time that the Liberty Tree made international news. The Stamp Act went into effect that day, and in the morning two new effigies, those of the prime minister and a member of Parliament associated with the act, appeared hanging from the boughs of the Liberty Tree. A crowd of several thousand formed around the site during the day, and at 3:00 p.m. the dummies were cut down from the tree, with Mackintosh leading the protesters through the streets. eventually, in token of their utmost Detestation, members of the crowd tore [the effigies] in Pieces & flung their Limbs with indignation into the Air, according to one witness. More Liberty Tree protests followed during the subsequent months. On December 17, 1765, upward of two thousand people gathered to hear Oliver reaffirm for the third time his commitment not to enforce the Stamp Act: i do hereby in the most explicit and unreserved Manner declare... that i never will... take any Measures for enforcing the Stamp-Act in America; which is so grievous to the People. Two months later, in February, the Sons of Liberty erected a stage below the Liberty Tree with a gallows. A representation of the devil lay along the top, handing a copy of the Stamp Act to two new effigies below, one of which was the prime minister. A crowd of between two and three thousand assembled around the tree and followed the Sons of Liberty, along with the gallows, a half mile to a spot where they set the entire structure ablaze. The Liberty Tree gained mythic status in late May 1766, when news reached boston that Parliament had finally repealed the Stamp Act. The Sons of Liberty gathered around the tree and, according to a contemporary account, regailed themselves on the Occasion with firing Guns, drinking loyal Toasts, & other decent expressions of Joy. On nearby boston common, an oiledpaper obelisk designed by Paul revere glowed with 280 interior lamps and entertained the reveling crowds. One side of the obelisk showed an image of the Liberty Tree with an angel above and an eagle nesting in the upper branches. The Sons of Liberty meant to move the obelisk in front of the Liberty Tree as a standing monument of this glorious era, but the object caught on fire and was consumed. The following night, they hung 108 lanterns on the Tree of Liberty, the number representing the members of the glorious majority in Parliament. The Sons of Liberty, it must be noted, remained loyal to the crown at this pointit was tyranny and oppression they had been contesting with the Stamp Act protests. Soon the Liberty Tree concept began to spread to the other colonies, establishing outdoor, public forums for the various Sons of Liberty groups that dot-

ted the eastern Seaboard. The earliest such copycatthe only known imitator preceding the repeal of the Stamp Actwas a buttonwood tree in newport, rhode island. The grantor stated that he was bequeathing a Tree of Liberty as a Monument of the spirited and noble Opposition made to the StampAct that should be considered as emblematical of Public Liberty. colonists later dedicated trees at such wide-ranging locations as norwich, connecticut; braintree, roxbury, and Salem, Massachusetts; Providence, rhode island; and charlestown (charleston), South carolina. in new York, the Liberty Tree took on a different, though related, form. There, Sons of Liberty had erected a wooden pole in city Hall Park, near the citys british barracks, upon hearing the news of the Stamp Acts repeal. This irritated the english soldiers, who chopped it down repeatedly, only to see it spring up once again. in March 1767, the new York Sons of Liberty reinforced their most recent pole with ironwork around the base. A letter posted in the colonial papers warned that those who dared to cut this pole down were volunteers of Satan who may be almost assured new York will be too hot to hold [them] long. Liberty Poles, typically pine masts or flagstaffs, soon rivaled Liberty Trees as symbols opposing british oppression. back in boston, the original Liberty Tree became a self-perpetuating generator of antityrannical sentiment. The twin dates of the original August anti Stamp Act protests and the acts repeal (celebrated in March instead of May) were now semiannual holidays. in August 1766, at the first of these new rituals, the Sons of Liberty gathered at Liberty Hall to the sound of ceremonial cannon fire. While there they drank a series of fourteen toasts that presaged the conflicts of the next decade. At first, cheers rang out for King George iii, the Prince of Wales, and the british empire, and revelers raised their glasses that the Union between Great britain and the colonies never be dissolved. but later, the Sons of Liberty asked that the colonies ever be watchful to obviate any evil Designs, or clandestine Measures to disturb their Harmony. The closing toast demanded that the everlasting remembrance of the 14th of August, serve to revive the dying Sparks of Liberty, whenever America shall be in Danger of Slavery. Soon these sparks set the colonists anti-british sentiment aflame. One of the first violent clashes before the revolution began took place around the Liberty Pole in new York. On the night of January 16, 1770, a group of redcoats managed to fell the ironclad pole that had been erected in 1767. colonists called for justice the next day at a meeting that three thousand people attended. A street fight broke out two days later between soldiers and colonists, the scene threatening to explode into an uncontrollable battle before british officers arrived and dispersed the soldiers. both sides, however, suffered
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serious injuries and at least one new Yorker died of a stab wound. The clash became known as the battle of Golden Hill and preceded the better-known boston Massacre by six weeks. These sorts of bloody encounters hardened many of the Sons of Liberty against the british Parliament. However, their antityrannical passion was tempered by Parliaments abandoning nearly all colonial taxes in 1770 with the repeal of the Townshend duties, a series of revenue-raising measures that it had imposed on the colonies three years earlier. All that remained was a tax on tea, which had been retained as a symbolic assertion of british authority. but in May 1773, Parliament revived the simmering hard-line opposition when it granted the east india company a functional monopoly over the colonial tea market. The boston Sons of Liberty, like those of the other colonies, now demanded an outright boycott on tea imports and directed their anger toward the colonial tea importers. On the morning of november 3, 1773, a flag was again waving atop the Liberty Tree. The Sons of Liberty had called a meeting to insist that the local traders swear to reject and return any east india tea shipments. The traders posted their own opposition flyers, also supposedly signed by the Sons of Liberty, that labeled the days gathering the deceitful bait of those who falsely stile themselves Friends of Liberty. This counternotice insisted that traders were entitled to buy and Sell when and where we please. its authors urged bostonians to avoid the protest altogether. The Liberty Tree, however, had become the most respected representation of the Sons of Liberty, and no public postings could undermine its flag-flying call to order. A crowd several hundred strong gathered throughout the morning and decried the traders who would not comply with the boycott. As with the events of August 1765, the mob insisted that these tradesmen appear at the Liberty Tree to declare their fealty to the nonimportation of tea. but this time it was not to be. The traders sent letters explaining that it was impossible for [them] to comply with the request of the Town. repeated attempts to coerce these businessmen failed, and eventually, on December 16, the rebuffed Sons of Liberty, dressed as an indian party, snuck onto the tea ships sitting in boston Harbor and dumped their supplies overboard, a sabotage known, of course, as the boston Tea Party. Over the next eighteen months the situation devolved rapidly. Parliament, reacting to the Tea Party, adopted the intolerable Acts in the spring of 1774. The following fall, representatives of the thirteen colonies convened in Philadelphia for the First continental congress. Liberty Poles now began to shoot up throughout the colonies like cornstalks in July. They appeared at too many new sites to mention individually. in Plymouth, colonists attempted to erect

one pole on their famous rock, but split the mighty stone in the process, a fitting metaphor perhaps of the spirit of revolution cracking open the legacy of colonialism. Hostilities formally began on the morning of April 19, 1775, at the town of Lexington in Massachusetts. One of the wars earliest casualties was the original Liberty Tree itself, the great elm near Deacon eliots house that had first enlivened the boston mobs a decade before. A party of british soldiers decided in August 1775 that they needed to fell this tree that gave the rebels so much inspiration. According to a newspaper account, After a long Spell of laughing and grinning, sweating, swearing and foaming, with Malice diabolical, they cut down a Tree, because it bore the name of Liberty. One of the redcoats, while working to sever a branch, fell to the ground and died instantly. The following year, in August, bostonians erected a pole atop the Liberty Trees stump. The location had not changed, but this new sign of liberty was no longer rooted in english soil. One month before, the nations founders had signed the Declaration of independence. n 1787 Thom as Jef f e r s on famously said, The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. it is its natural manure. Liberty Trees and Liberty Poles would remain symbols of popular protest in America long after the last british soldier departed. Pennsylvania farmers would raise poles during the Whiskey rebellion, a 1794 reaction to the federal whiskey tax. Another wave of poles would appear in protest of the 1798 Sedition Act, which made it illegal to libel the government. in the 1832 presidential election, supporters of Andrew Jackson, known as Old Hickory, would erect Hickory poles, while those who favored Henry clay, from Ashland, Kentucky, would use Ash poles. Other isolated incidents would continue up until the civil War, when the practice seemed to finally die out, a timely end to a tradition that assisted the nation in taking its first steps. but while the original Liberty Tree helped to unite the colonies in their opposition to tyranny, that did not mean the thirteen colonies were united otherwise. The diverse groups that banded together to defeat the english came from different cultures, religious beliefs, and geographies. A lumberer in Maine, after all, shared little with a Virginia tobacco grower. This new land of promise would soon rely on trees to help bridge its many gaps.
A Division of Simon & Schuster, inc. 1230 Avenue of the Americas new York, nY 10020 copyright 2012 by eric rutkow All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Scribner Subsidiary rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, new York, nY 10020. First Scribner hardcover edition April 2012 scribner and design are registered trademarks of The Gale Group, inc., used under license by Simon & Schuster, inc., the publisher of this work. For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-866-506-1949 or [email protected]. The Simon & Schuster Speakers bureau can bring authors to your live event. For more information or to book an event contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com. Book by Ellen R. Sasahara Manufactured in the United States of America 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 iSbn 978-1-4391-9354-9 iSbn 978-1-4391-9360-0 (ebook) endpaper and chapter opener (pp. 1, 11, 40, 71, 99, 129, 168, 201, 228, 268, 308, 345) art courtesy of the General research Division, The new York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations. illustration on p. iii, The colonists Under Liberty Tree (1861), Duncan Walker/iStock.
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American Canopy: Trees, Forests, and The Making of A Nation

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What was the significance of the original Liberty Tree?

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What happened when British soldiers tried to fell the original Liberty Tree?

What happened when British soldiers tried to fell the original Liberty Tree?

Contents

The Death of Prometheus

The Death of Prometheus

The Death of Prometheus

The Death of Prometheus

From Discovery to Revolution

wooddes of All Sortes

From Discovery to Revolution 2 13

From Discovery to Revolution 2 15

From Discovery to Revolution 2 17

From Discovery to Revolution 2 19

Here is Good Living for those that Love Good Fires

From Discovery to Revolution 2 21

From Discovery to Revolution 2 23

From Discovery to Revolution 2 25

the kings Broad Arrow

From Discovery to Revolution 2 27

From Discovery to Revolution 2 29

From Discovery to Revolution 2 31

From Discovery to Revolution 2 33

the tree of Liberty

From Discovery to Revolution 2 35

From Discovery to Revolution 2 37

From Discovery to Revolution 2 39

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