When the treaty of peace was signed in 1763, extinguishing France's
title to Canada and turning over Canada and the Mississippi Valley to
the English, the colonists were prepared to enjoy all the blessings of
peace. But the treaty of peace had been made with France, not with the
red man. A remarkable genius, Pontiac, appeared among the Indians, one
of the few characters, like Tecumseh and Osceola, who are often cited
as proof of latent powers almost equal to the strongest qualities of the
white race. Within a few months he had united all the tribes of the
West in a discipline and control which, if it had been brought to the
assistance of the French six years earlier, might have conquered the
colonies to the Atlantic seaboard before the British regulars could have
come to their assistance. The tribes swept westward into Pennsylvania,
burning, murdering, and leveling every habitation to the ground with a
thoroughness beyond anything attempted under the French alliance. The
settlers and farmers fled eastward to the towns to live in cellars,
camps, and sheds as best they could. * Fortunately the colonies retained
a large part of the military organization, both men and officers, of
the French War, and were soon able to handle the situation. Detroit and
Niagara were relieved by water; and an expedition commanded by Colonel
Bouquet, who had distinguished himself under General Forties, saved Fort
Pitt.
* For an account of Pontiac's conspiracy, see "The Old Northwest"
by Frederic A. Ogg (in "The Chronicles of America").
At this time the Scotch-Irish frontiersmen suddenly became prominent.
They had been organizing for their own protection and were meeting with
not a little success. They refused to join the expedition of regular
troops marching westward against Pontiac's warriors, because they wanted
to protect their own homes and because they believed the regulars to be
marching to sure destruction. Many of the regular troops were invalided
from the West Indies, and the Scotch-Irish never expected to see any
of them again. They believed that the salvation of Pennsylvania, or at
least of their part of the province, depended entirely upon themselves.
Their increasing numbers and rugged independence were forming them
also into an organized political party with decided tendencies, as it
afterwards appeared, towards forming a separate state.
The extreme narrowness of the Scotch-Irish, however, misled them. The
only real safety for the province lay in regularly constituted and
strong expeditions, like that of Bouquet, which would drive the main
body of the savages far westward. But the Scotch-Irish could not see
this; and with that intensity of passion which marked all their
actions they turned their energy and vengeance upon the Quakers and
semicivilized Indians in the eastern end of the colony. Their preachers,
who were their principal leaders and organizers, encouraged them in
denouncing Quaker doctrine as a wicked heresy from which only evil
could result. The Quakers had offended God from the beginning by making
treaties of kindness with the heathen savages instead of exterminating
them as the Scripture commanded: "And when the Lord thy God shall
deliver them before thee, thou shalt smite them and utterly destroy
them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor show mercy unto them."
The Scripture had not been obeyed; the heathen had not been destroyed;
on the contrary, a systematic policy of covenants, treaties,
and kindness had been persisted in for two generations, and as a
consequence, the Ulstermen said, the frontiers were now deluged in
blood. They were particularly resentful against the small settlement of
Indians near Bethlehem, who had been converted to Christianity by the
Moravians, and another little village of half civilized basketmaking
Indians at Conestoga near Lancaster. The Scotch-Irish had worked
themselves up into a strange belief that these small remnants were
sending information, arms, and ammunition to the western tribes; and
they seemed to think that it was more important to exterminate these
little communities than to go with such expeditions as Bouquet's to
the West. They asked the Governor to remove these civilized Indians and
assured him that their removal would secure the safety of the frontier.
When the Governor, not being able to find anything against the Indians,
declined to remove them, the Scotch-Irish determined to attend to the
matter in their own fashion.
Bouquet's victory at Bushy Run, much to the surprise of the
Scotch-Irish, stopped Indian raids of any seriousness until the
following spring. But in the autumn there were a few depredations, which
led the frontiersmen to believe that the whole invasion would begin
again. A party of them, therefore, started to attack the Moravian
Indians near Bethlehem; but before they could accomplish their object,
the Governor brought most of the Indians down to Philadelphia for
protection. Even there they were narrowly saved from the mob, for the
hostility against them was spreading throughout the province.
Soon afterwards another party of Scotch-Irish, ever since known as the
"Paxton Boys," went at break of day to the village of the Conestoga
Indians and found only six of them at home--three men, two women, and a
boy. These they instantly shot down, mutilated their bodies, and burned
their cabins. As the murderers returned, they related to a man on the
road what they had done, and when he protested against the cruelty of
the deed, they asked, "Don't you believe in God and the Bible?" The
remaining fourteen inhabitants of the village, who were away selling
brooms, were collected by the sheriff and put in the jail at Lancaster
for protection. The Paxtons heard of it and in a few days stormed the
jail, broke down the doors, and either shot the poor Indians or cut them
to pieces with hatchets.
This was probably the first instance of lynch law in America. It raised
a storm of indignation and controversy; and a pamphlet war persisted
for several years. The whole province was immediately divided into
two parties. On one side were the Quakers, most of the Germans, and
conservatives of every sort, and on the other, inclined to sympathize
with the Scotch-Irish, were the eastern Presbyterians, some of the
Churchmen, and various miscellaneous people whose vindictiveness towards
all Indians had been aroused by the war. The Quakers and conservatives,
who seem to have been the more numerous, assailed the Scotch-Irish in no
measured language as a gang of ruffians without respect for law or order
who, though always crying for protection, had refused to march with
Bouquet to save Fort Pitt or to furnish him the slightest assistance.
Instead of going westward where the danger was and something might
be accomplished, they had turned eastward among the settlements and
murdered a few poor defenseless people, mostly women and children.
Franklin, who had now returned from England, wrote one of his best
pamphlets against the Paxtons, the valorous, heroic Paxtons, as he
called them, prating of God and the Bible, fifty-seven of whom, armed
with rifles, knives, and hatchets, had actually succeeded in killing
three old men, two women, and a boy. This pamphlet became known as the
"Narrative" from the first word of its title, and it had an immense
circulation. Like everything Franklin wrote, it is interesting reading
to this day.
One of the first effects of this controversy was to drive the excitable
Scotch-Irish into a flame of insurrection not unlike the Whisky
Rebellion, which started among them some years after the Revolution.
They held tumultuous meetings denouncing the Quakers and the whole
proprietary government in Philadelphia, and they organized an expedition
which included some delegates to suggest reforms. For the most part,
however, it was a well equipped little army variously estimated at from
five hundred to fifteen hundred on foot and on horseback, which marched
towards Philadelphia with no uncertain purpose. They openly declared
that they intended to capture the town, seize the Moravian Indians
protected there, and put them to death. They fully expected to be
supported by most of the people and to have everything their own way.
As they passed along the roads, they amused themselves in their rough
fashion by shooting chickens and pigs, frightening people by thrusting
their rifles into windows, and occasionally throwing some one down and
pretending to scalp him.
In the city there was great excitement and alarm. Even the classes who
sympathized with the Scotch-Irish did not altogether relish having their
property burned or destroyed. Great preparations were made to meet the
expedition. British regulars were summoned. Eight companies of militia
and a battery of artillery were hastily formed. Franklin became a
military man once more and superintended the preparations. On all sides
the Quakers were enlisting; they had become accustomed to war; and this
legitimate chance to shoot a Scotch-Irish Presbyterian was too much for
the strongest scruples of their religion. It was a long time, however,
before they heard the end of this zeal; and in the pamphlet war which
followed they were accused of clamorously rushing to arms and demanding
to be led against the enemy.
It is amusing now to read about it in the old records. But it was
serious enough at the time. When the Scotch-Irish army reached the
Schuylkill River and found the fords leading to the city guarded, they
were not quite so enthusiastic about killing Quakers and Indians. They
went up the river some fifteen miles, crossed by an unopposed ford, and
halted in Germantown ten miles north of Philadelphia. That was as far as
they thought it safe to venture. Several days passed, during which the
city people continued their preparations and expected every night to be
attacked. There were, indeed, several false alarms. Whenever the alarm
was sounded at night, every one placed candles in his windows to light
up the streets. One night when it rained the soldiers were allowed
to shelter themselves in a Quaker meeting house, which for some hours
bristled with bayonets and swords, an incident of which the Presbyterian
pamphleteers afterwards made much use for satire. On another day all the
cannon were fired to let the enemy know what was in store for him.
Finally commissioners with the clever, genial Franklin at their head,
went out to Germantown to negotiate, and soon had the whole mighty
difference composed. The Scotch-Irish stated their grievances. The
Moravian Indians ought not to be protected by the government, and all
such Indians should be removed from the colony; the men who killed
the Conestoga Indians should be tried where the supposed offense was
committed and not in Philadelphia; the five frontier counties had
only ten representatives in the Assembly while the three others had
twenty-six--this should be remedied; men wounded in border war should be
cared for at public expense; no trade should be carried on with hostile
Indians until they restored prisoners; and there should be a bounty on
scalps.
While these negotiations were proceeding, some of the Scotch-Irish
amused themselves by practicing with their rifles at the weather vane,
a figure of a cock, on the steeple of the old Lutheran church in
Germantown--an unimportant incident, it is true, but one revealing the
conditions and character of the time as much as graver matters do. The
old weather vane with the bullet marks upon it is still preserved. About
thirty of these same riflemen were invited to Philadelphia and were
allowed to wander about and see the sights of the town. The rest
returned to the frontier. As for their list of grievances, not one of
them was granted except, strange and sad to relate, the one which asked
for a scalp bounty. The Governor, after the manner of other colonies,
it must be admitted, issued the long desired scalp proclamation, which
after offering rewards for prisoners and scalps, closed by saying, "and
for the scalp of a female Indian fifty pieces of eight." William Penn's
Indian policy had been admired for its justice and humanity by all the
philosophers and statesmen of the world, and now his grandson, Governor
of the province, in the last days of the family's control, was offering
bounties for women's scalps.
Franklin while in England had succeeded in having the proprietary lands
taxed equally with the lands of the colonists. But the proprietors
attempted to construe this provision so that their best lands were taxed
at the rate paid by the people on their worst. This obvious quibble of
course raised such a storm of opposition that the Quakers, joined by
classes which had never before supported them, and now forming a large
majority, determined to appeal to the Government in England to abolish
the proprietorship and put the colony under the rule of the King. In the
proposal to make Pennsylvania a Crown colony there was no intention
of confiscating the possessions of the proprietors. It was merely the
proprietary political power, their right to appoint the Governor, that
was to be abolished. This right was to be absorbed by the Crown with
payment for its value to the proprietors; but in all other respects
the charter and the rights and liberties of the people were to remain
unimpaired. Just there lay the danger. An act of Parliament would be
required to make the change and, having once started on such a change,
Parliament, or the party in power therein, might decide to make other
changes, and in the end there might remain very little of the original
rights and liberties of the colonists under their charter. It was by
no means a wise move. But intense feeling on the subject was aroused.
Passionate feeling seemed to have been running very high among the
steady Quakers. In this new outburst the Quakers had the Scotch-Irish on
their side, and a part of the Churchmen. The Germans were divided, but
the majority enthusiastic for the change was very large.
There was a new alignment of parties. The eastern Presbyterians, usually
more or less in sympathy with the Scotch-Irish, broke away from them
on this occasion. These Presbyterians opposed the change to a royal
governor because they believed that it would be followed by the
establishment by law of the Church of England, with bishops and all the
other ancient evils. Although some of the Churchmen joined the Quaker
side, most of them and the most influential of them were opposed to the
change and did good work in opposing it. They were well content with
their position under the proprietors and saw nothing to be gained under
a royal governor. There were also not a few people who, in the increase
of the wealth of the province, had acquired aristocratic tastes and were
attached to the pleasant social conditions that had grown up round the
proprietary governors and their followers; and there were also those
whose salaries, incomes, or opportunities for wealth were more or less
dependent on the proprietors retaining the executive offices and the
appointments and patronage.
One of the most striking instances of a change of sides was the case of
a Philadelphia Quaker, John Dickinson, a lawyer of large practice, a man
of wealth and position, and of not a little colonial magnificence when
he drove in his coach and four. It was he who later wrote the famous
"Farmer's Letters" during the Revolution. He was a member of the
Assembly and had been in politics for some years. But on this question
of a change to royal government, he left the Quaker majority and opposed
the change with all his influence and ability. He and his father-in-law,
Isaac Norris, Speaker of the Assembly, became the leaders against
the change, and Franklin and Joseph Galloway, the latter afterwards a
prominent loyalist in the Revolution, were the leading advocates of the
change.
The whole subject was thoroughly thrashed out in debates in the Assembly
and in pamphlets of very great ability and of much interest to students
of colonial history and the growth of American ideas of liberty. It must
be remembered that this was the year 1764, on the eve of the Revolution.
British statesmen were planning a system of more rigorous control of the
colonies; and the advisability of a stamp tax was under consideration.
Information of all these possible changes had reached the colonies.
Dickinson foresaw the end and warned the people. Franklin and the Quaker
party thought there was no danger and that the mother country could be
implicitly trusted.
Dickinson warned the people that the British Ministry were starting
special regulations for new colonies and "designing the strictest
reformations in the old." It would be a great relief, he admitted, to
be rid of the pettiness of the proprietors, and it might be accomplished
some time in the future; but not now. The proprietary system might
be bad, but a royal government might be worse and might wreck all the
liberties of the province, religious freedom, the Assembly's control
of its own adjournments, and its power of raising and disposing of the
public money. The ministry of the day in England were well known not
to be favorably inclined towards Pennsylvania because of the frequently
reported willfulness of the Assembly, on which the recent disturbances
had also been blamed. If the King, Ministry, and Parliament started
upon a change, they might decide to reconstitute the Assembly entirely,
abolish its ancient privileges, and disfranchise both Quakers and
Presbyterians.
The arguments of Franklin and Galloway consisted principally of
assertions of the good intentions of the mother country and the
absurdity of any fear on the part of the colonists for their privileges.
But the King in whom they had so much confidence was George III, and the
Parliament which they thought would do no harm was the same one which
a few months afterwards passed the Stamp Act which brought on the
Revolution. Franklin and Galloway also asserted that the colonies like
Massachusetts, the Jerseys, and the Carolinas, which had been changed to
royal governments, had profited by the change. But that was hardly the
prevailing opinion in those colonies themselves. Royal governors
could be as petty and annoying as the Penns and far more tyrannical.
Pennsylvania had always defeated any attempts at despotism on the part
of the Penn family and had built up a splendid body of liberal laws and
legislative privileges. But governors with the authority and power of
the British Crown behind them could not be so easily resisted as the
deputy governors of the Penns.
The Assembly, however, voted--twenty-seven to three--with Franklin
and Galloway. In the general election of the autumn, the question was
debated anew among the people and, though Franklin and Galloway were
defeated for seats in the Assembly, yet the popular verdict was strongly
in favor of a change, and the majority in the Assembly was for practical
purposes unaltered. They voted to appeal to England for the change, and
appointed Franklin to be their agent before the Crown and Ministry. He
sailed again for England and soon was involved in the opening scenes of
the Revolution. He was made agent for all the colonies and he spent
many delightful years there pursuing his studies in science, dining with
distinguished men, staying at country seats, and learning all the arts
of diplomacy for which he afterwards became so distinguished.
As for the Assembly's petition for a change to royal government,
Franklin presented it, but never pressed it. He, too, was finally
convinced that the time was inopportune. In fact, the Assembly itself
before long began to have doubts and fears and sent him word to let
the subject drop; and amid much greater events it was soon entirely
forgotten.