Liberty pole

The symbol originated in the immediate aftermath of the assassination of the Roman dictator Julius Caesar by a group of Rome's Senators in 44 BCE.

This symbolized that the Roman people had been freed from the rule of Caesar, which the assassins claimed had become a tyranny because it overstepped the authority of the Senate and thus betrayed the Republic.

But the hat raised on the end of the pole was shown as an attribute held by Libertas on some coins of the emperor Antoninus Pius, which was enough, with the literary references, to bring it to the attention of Renaissance antiquarians.

With considerable cheek, Louis XIV of France had a medal cast in 1678, after the Treaty of Nijmegen ended the war started by his invasion of the Netherlands; this showed the Maiden "standing beside Peace, and receiving the instructions of Prudence".

[10] The image of Libertas holding a liberty pole can be found on the seals of some British American colonies, notably those of Trustee Georgia and North Carolina.

Liberty poles were often erected in town squares in the years before and during the American Revolution (e.g. Concord, Massachusetts; Newport, Rhode Island; Caughnawaga, New York; Savannah, Georgia and Englewood, New Jersey[11]).

[16][17] The 76 foot long liberty pole was originally a ship's mast that had been recently captured[18] from the British armed schooner HMS Diana (1775), in the aftermath of the Battle of Chelsea Creek on May 27 and 28, 1775.

[citation needed] During the Whiskey Rebellion, locals in western Pennsylvania would erect poles along the roads or in town centers as a protest against the federal government's tax on distilled spirits, and evoke the spirit embodied by the liberty poles of decades earlier.

The image of Liberty holding a pole topped by a Phrygian cap appears on many mid- and late-19th-century U.S. silver coins.

Residents in Dedham, Massachusetts awoke one October morning in 1798 to find a large wooden pole had been erected on the Hartford Road in Clapboard Trees parish.

[20][21] At the top was a hand painted sign declaring No Stamp act; no sedition; no alien bill; no land tax.

[27][29] Fairbanks, a prosperous farmer and former Selectman but also an "impressionable, rather excitable man," was quickly arrested and charged with violating the Sedition Act of 1798.

[37][22][38][29] As he did not have the money, and had no way of earning it while in prison, Brown petitioned President John Adams for a pardon in July 1800, and then again in February 1801.