An Appeal to Heaven once changed the world.   
The creation of a new type of nation that would forever change the idea of freedom.

Wisdom, honor and selflessness lead stability and abundance 
creating a glorious and beautiful culture. 

Our exceptionalism was the world standard for centuries, yet still discontent lurked. 
Slowly we slid, honor to narcissism, altruism to avarice and wisdom to foolishness.

Yet Here we stand at one final miracle. 
The tiniest glimpse at what we have become has shocked and shaken us to our core. 
What was once concern is now calamity. Every inch of us is rotten and hollow.

Now another appeal is made.
It falls on broken wings and a ravaged land.

The American Divinity needed to deliver us is dead.

We are on our own and it is time to rise or disappear forever.  

 

Our design for this shirt originates from the ‘Pine Tree Flag’ which we have all come to know and love. Flown as a naval insignia in the Revolutionary War, its bold statement ‘An Appeal to Heaven’ led divine credence to the Colonial cause. The Crown had ignored their pleas and thus they appealed to a higher authority. 

The Pine tree was already in use as a Colonial symbol of resistance at the outbreak of war. As early as 1691 the crown had begun marking the best pine trees with a broadhead arrow to reserve them for Royal Navy masts. Two years prior to the Boston Tea Party, New Hampshire mill owners held the ‘Pine Tree Riot’ in which they brutally beat a sheriff and his deputy for passing fines on locals possessing broadhead stamped trees.

The particular phrase ‘Appeal to Heaven’ was chosen from John Lockes ‘Second Treatise on Civil Government’ where he describes The Right of Revolution and decries the divine rule of kings. “And where the body of the people, or any single man, is deprived of their right, or is under the exercise of a power without right, and have no appeal on earth, then they have a liberty to appeal to heaven, whenever they judge the cause of sufficient moment. And therefore, though the people cannot be judge, so as to have, by the constitution of that society, any superior power, to determine and give effective sentence in the case; yet they have, by a law antecedent and paramount to all positive laws of men, reserved that ultimate determination to themselves which belongs to all mankind, where there lies no appeal on earth, viz. to judge, whether they have just cause to make their appeal to heaven.”

For our design and call for a New Appeal we paraphrased Lockes closing words “Just cause for a New Appeal.” We also felt it important to include the broadhead arrow stamp as a reminder for how much the current authority deigns to control and posses us. Finally our most notable change we went with our new National Tree, the majestic oak.