The Disaffected

Britain's Occupation of Philadelphia During the American Revolution

Aaron Sullivan

• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780812296167
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Early American History
• Index: History

Elizabeth and Henry Drinker of Philadelphia were no friends of the American Revolution. Yet neither were they its enemies. The Drinkers were a merchant family who, being Quakers and pacifists, shunned commitments to both the Revolutionaries and the British. They strove to endure the war uninvolved and unscathed. They failed. In 1777, the war came to Philadelphia when the city was taken and occupied by the British army.Aaron Sullivan explores the British occupation of Philadelphia, chronicling the experiences of a group of people who were pursued, pressured, and at times persecuted, not because they chose the wrong side of the Revolution but because they tried not to choose a side at all. For these people, the war was neither a glorious cause to be won nor an unnatural rebellion to be suppressed, but a dangerous and costly calamity to be navigated with care. Both the Patriots and the British referred to this group as "the disaffected, " perceiving correctly that their defining feature was less loyalty to than a lack of support for either side in the dispute, and denounced them as opportunistic, apathetic, or even treasonous. Sullivan shows how Revolutionary authorities embraced desperate measures in their quest to secure their own legitimacy, suppressing speech, controlling commerce, and mandating military service. In 1778, without the Patriots firing a shot, the king's army abandoned Philadelphia and the perceived threat from neutrals began to decline—as did the coercive and intolerant practices of the Revolutionary regime.By highlighting the perspectives of those wearied by and withdrawn from the conflict, The Disaffected reveals the consequences of a Revolutionary ideology that assumed the nation's people to be a united and homogenous front.

CHAPTER 1

CONSENT

That it shall and may be lawful . . . to arrest any person or persons within this commonwealth who shall be suspected from any of his or her acts, writings, speeches, conversations, travels or other behavior, to be disaffected to the community of this or all or any of the United States of America . . . and that no judge or officer of the supreme court or any inferior court within this common wealth shall issue or allow of any writ of habeas corpus or other remedial writ to obstruct the proceedings.

—“An Act to Empower the Supreme Executive Council,”
September 6, 1777

Through the 1760s and early 1770s, James Allen, a young Philadelphia lawyer and member of one of Pennsylvania’s most influential families, saw himself as a committed friend of American liberty. He bitterly objected to Britain’s attempts to control and tax the colonies, policies with which he was intimately familiar. As a lawyer and brother to the attorney general, he repeatedly found himself asked to prosecute fellow Americans for breaking laws he, personally, detested. Though his legal talents often allowed him to secure convictions, the experiences left him “fully persuaded of the oppressive nature of those laws,” and in time he began refusing to prosecute cases that seemed particularly unjust. In 1765 Allen became a leader of the Stamp Act protests in Philadelphia and was found at the head of large crowds demanding the resignation of the local stamp distributor. In the wake of Lexington and Concord, he embraced the idea of armed resistance against a king he considered “despotic” and a mother country that was “running fast to slavery.” Voluntarily taking up arms in the militia, Allen described himself as part of “a great & glorious cause” which would determine not only the future of America, but of humanity itself. “If we fall,” he wrote in 1775, “Liberty no longer continues an inhabitant of this Globe.”¹

Yet as time passed and the nature of the Revolution continued to evolve, Allen became increasingly uncomfortable with its goals, tactics, and leadership. He had little faith in the extralegal Revolutionary committees and deeply distrusted the crowds of middling and lower sort Philadelphians who periodically threatened or punished Loyalists and dissenters. His own legal background and elite upbringing likely exacerbated this distress, as did his growing fear that the “great & glorious cause” was being subverted by something altogether different and less noble. When radicals began to clamor for independence, Allen found himself suddenly caught between two equally distasteful alternatives. The bloodshed in New England and word that King George was sending tens of thousands of new soldiers to America only strengthened his belief that Britain was pursuing a despotic approach toward the colonies. Yet while Allen thought the king was denying key British constitutional liberties to Americans, he also suspected that the American radicals were determined to throw that cherished heritage out entirely, forcibly imposing a new order led by demagogues and rabblerousers. To Allen’s mind, a declaration of independence was not the culmination of the cause he had so proudly taken up but a total betrayal of its values and objectives, a leap from the frying pan of despotism into the fires of anarchy and mob rule. “I love the cause of liberty,” he declared in 1776, “but cannot heartily join in the prosecution of measures totally foreign to the original plan of Resistance. The madness of the multitude is but one degree better than submission to the Tea-Act.” Disheartened and disillusioned, he abandoned the militia and retreated to his country estate, hoping in vain to avoid participation in the conflict happening on his doorstep, and wondering what had become of his country and the glorious cause of liberty in which he had once believed.²

Allen was not alone in disengaging from the struggle. Though Pennsylvania’s capital was the birthplace of independence and seat of the Continental Congress, the province’s commitment to the Revolutionary cause was questionable at best. Pennsylvanian Revolutionaries, having deemed the established provincial assembly far too conservative for their purposes, were forced to create their own government and constitution in order to take control of the province. Yet the evidence suggests that a great many Pennsylvanians had no strong attachment to that new regime or the cause of independence it represented. The final elections of the old government show an electorate, at best, evenly split on the issue, while the paltry turnout in the first elections of the new government imply widespread disengagement from the populace. The community fissured as those who joined and persisted in the local militias looked with shock and fury on their many neighbors who either felt no need to take up arms or, like Allen, abandoned militia service when the terms of the conflict shifted. As 1776 came to a close, the new state government was still lost in chaos, its legitimacy still hotly debated, its powers neutered by internal opposition and widespread protest. Legal proceedings had ground to a halt as judges and justices of the peace refused to serve under the new constitution. The new state assembly struggled to maintain a quorum as elected representatives refused to convene for any business except reform. The old colonial government, which continued to meet through September 26, 1776, repeatedly blasted the Revolutionaries’ regime as illegitimate and tyrannical.³ When George Washington led his retreating army across the Delaware into the state that December, he wearily confided to his brother “between you and me, I think our Affairs are in a very bad way.” Though he had only just escaped destruction at the hands of the redcoats, Washington’s foremost concern in that moment was not the British army but the decline in popular support he had discovered among the general populace, including what he described as the “defection” of Pennsylvania.⁴

Yet if the people of Pennsylvania were not the zealous Revolutionaries Washington desperately needed, neither were they the devoted Loyalists some Patriots feared and the British hoped they would be. Those seeking tales of ardent warriors for the king will be disappointed by events in Revolutionary Pennsylvania. By many measures, there were relatively few Loyalists in the state. During and after the war, Americans who had lost property or income because of their loyalty to the king would file claims with Britain, asking to be reimbursed or at least supported by the British government. Only a fraction of Pennsylvanians made such claims, a smaller proportion than in almost any other colony. On a per capita basis, residents of neighboring New York and New Jersey were, respectively, seven and two times more likely to register as claimants. Similarly, of the inhabitants of the many major cities occupied by British forces during the war, Philadelphians were the least likely to register claims with the British government. Even those who did identify as Loyalists in Pennsylvania proved to be subdued in their support for the empire. They were unlikely to actually enlist as soldiers for the king, and many of the Loyalist leaders had been outspoken opponents of Britain’s policies in the early days of the resistance. Though some benefited from the economic connections the empire fostered, they brought no great affection for the British government when they joined the redcoats. Historians have since described loyalism in Pennsylvania as “equivocal,” “neutral,” “subtle,” and “weak”; the province was “a stronghold of moderates, pacifists, and neutralists.” It was disaffection, not loyalism, which muted their support for the Revolutionary cause.⁵

Yet even if Pennsylvania’s disaffection did not create new soldiers for the king, the Patriots of Pennsylvania nonetheless perceived any absence of support as a significant threat to the Revolution. Revolutionary leaders were well aware that the strength of their cause was proportional to the level of support it received from the populace. While their foe could call upon an army of thousands of trained regulars and hire thousands more from other nations, the American Patriots depended entirely on a civilian populace willing to leave their homes, families, and economic pursuits in order to enforce and maintain the new Revolutionary governments and defend independence. Anything, or anyone, that called into question the desirability or utility of such endeavors threatened to rob the movement of its most valuable resource.

Beyond the realm of manpower and materiel, popular apathy and disaffection were also seen as threatening the ideological underpinnings of the Patriots’ cause. The republican ideas on which the Revolution was founded held that government existed solely to pursue the common good and was legitimized to the extent that it received the common consent of the people to do so on their behalf. The Patriots had condemned the British government’s policies as illegitimate because the American colonists did not truly consent to Parliament’s actions; their own governments were thus particularly vulnerable to accusations that they too were imposing acts on the people against their will. Consequently, the nascent independent regimes of America felt a desperate need for the people to positively express consent for their governments. Disaffection, a simple withholding of consent, even if not coupled with active support for the empire, seemed to present a profound threat to the legitimacy of the whole Revolutionary enterprise. At times it would seem even more threatening than outright loyalism. The rare Loyalist who lauded submission to royal authority and took up arms against his neighbors was far easier to demonize and disregard than were the peaceful inhabitants whose inaction and silence on the question of independence implicitly rejected the Patriots’ assumed authority.⁶ Driven by this need for visible signs of consent and convinced that disaffection represented a significant threat to the common good, as they perceived it, the Patriots pursued various means of forcibly encouraging participation in the Revolution, persecuting dissenters and eventually mandating active expressions of consent.

Consent Expressed

The Pennsylvania Revolutionaries’ need for consent and intolerance of opposition is readily apparent in their efforts to limit freedom of expression in the province. Dissenting speech directly challenged the radicals’ claim that their new governments represented the will of “the people” of America. Both in the State House and in the street, ardent Patriots came to believe that if the struggle for liberty was to be preserved such voices must be stopped. Through both public pressure and explicit legislation, sometimes subtly and sometimes directly, Pennsylvania’s Patriots set out to either convert or silence those who opposed them.

As the primary means of mass communication and key sites of political debate, newspapers were invaluable to the Revolution; Patriots and Loyalists alike strove to control them, amplifying their own influence and giving no place to the arguments of their opponents. In 1774, moderates and conservatives in Philadelphia felt increasingly excluded from the press and struggled to have their stories told. Their difficulty in securing space in the local papers became, itself, an issue they wished to make known. John Drinker, Elizabeth Drinker’s brother-in-law, composed a series of “observations” on recent happenings in America, suggesting that elements of the Revolutionary leadership were acting out of self-interest more than concern for the public and asserting that “the freedom of the press here has . . . been interrupted by the illegal menaces and arbitrary frowns of a prevailing party, to the exclusion of an honest, unprejudiced and unawed investigation.”⁷ As he might have expected, Drinker encountered great difficulty in finding a printer who would publish his remarks. He contrasted the printers’ refusal to publish his material against their apparent willingness to reproduce the “scandalous handbills” of radical Revolutionaries, such as the self-described “Committee for Tarring and Feathering,” which responded to the Tea Act of 1773 by openly threatening violence against individuals who participated in importing British tea. Such writings had been “publickly exhibited to terrify such as were disposed for the preservation of peace and good order. For such kind of publications,” Drinker allowed, “there was, indeed! A freedom of the press.”⁸ Other writers turned to the papers of New York to carry remarks that would not be printed in Philadelphia. “Veritas” suggested in Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer “that the presses in Philadelphia are held under an undue influence” while another writer complained that “the Printers [in Philadelphia] were so closely watched, and held in such awe, that not one of them dared to print any piece that appeared to reflect upon the conduct of those sons of violence.” “And this,” he added sardonically, “is LIBERTY!”⁹

The following year, three new papers opened in Philadelphia to capitalize on the frustration of those who could not make themselves heard. The new diversity was not to last, however. Before the year was out, the conservative-leaning Pennsylvania Mercury had been consumed in a fire. The year after, the Pennsylvania Ledger was shut down when an anonymous individual accused James Humphries Jr., the printer, of reprinting pro-British articles from Loyalists in New York. The accuser declared that the Pennsylvania Council of Safety would be “very justifiable in silencing a press whose weekly labors manifestly tend to dishearten our troops.”¹⁰ Humphries promptly packed up his press and fled the city. Of the three new papers, only the pro-independence Pennsylvania Evening Post survived without interruption, due in large part to its printer’s skill at conforming himself to whichever party happened to be in power at the time.¹¹

An exchange in the Pennsylvania Gazette offers unusually clear insight into how advocates of Revolution could, on the one hand, fiercely denounce British impositions on their liberty while, on the other, work to silence those who opposed them. In a cautiously composed letter to the printers of Philadelphia, “An Anxious By-Stander” entreated them “to reflect on the immense importance of an open, and uninfluenced Press . . . to admit a free and fair discussion of subjects, which eventually concern the happiness of millions yet unborn.”¹² The author scrupulously avoided any direct accusations of partiality in the press and sheltered his words amid support for Congress and denunciations of the British. In the following issue, one “Philadelphus” responded by assuring the printer, “Your press, and I trust all others in this city, are open to every publication, wrote with decency and truth, and containing no public or private scandal.” However, in Philadelphus’s view, daring to “censure the proceedings of the late Congress . . . is neither just, decent or politic” and therefore such remarks could and should be suppressed. The justification laid out for this policy deserves careful consideration:

Unanimity and mutual confidence are allowed to be the only sure basis, on which the fabric of American liberty is to be reared. . . . How can we expect resolutions and associations . . . will be observed, if those, who profess themselves friends to the American cause, studiously endeavor to divest them of all title to our respect or regard? . . . The American cause derived its principal weight and dignity from the late Congress. . . . But let it once be thought that it wants the support and confidence of the people, all its terrors vanish. . . . All authority and government is founded in opinion, more or less—theirs is peculiarly so.¹³

In short, “Philadelphus” argued that unanimity and mutual consent were absolutely necessary for American liberty; dissenting from or disrespecting the acts of the Revolutionary governments weakened that unanimity; to suggest that the Congress lacked the confidence of the people, to fail to place confidence in it yourself, was to threaten the liberty of all Americans. On this basis, then, it was in the defense of the cause of liberty that such dissent and disrespect may be and must be silenced.

This kind of suppression, driven by what John Drinker called “the illegal menaces and arbitrary frowns of a prevailing party,” was eventually g...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter 1. Consent
• Chapter 2. Invasion
• Chapter 3. Siege
• Chapter 4. Occupation
• Chapter 5. Evacuation
• Chapter 6. Aftermath
• Epilogue
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Acknowledgments