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1. 1 2016-08-19T16:54:45-07:00 Will Fenton 82bf9011a953584cd702d069a30cbdb6ef90650a A Declaration and Remonstrance Will Fenton 2 A declaration and remonstrance of the distressed and bleeding frontier inhabitants of the province of Pennsylvania, presented by them to the Honourable the governor and Assembly of the province, shewing the causes of their late discontent and uneasiness and the grievances under which they have laboured, and which they humbly pray to have redress'd. gallery 2018-02-12T01:11:29-08:00 Will Fenton 82bf9011a953584cd702d069a30cbdb6ef90650a

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• 1 2017-03-18T10:07:52-07:00 A New Looking-Glass for the 1764 Paxton Pamphlet War 25 Will Fenton image_header 403377 2019-08-04T06:42:18-07:00 At the end of the Seven Years’ War in 1763, France ceded to Britain its claim on North American territories spanning from Quebec to New Orleans. Faced with the prospect of British expansion, a diverse group of native peoples launched a preemptive strike against forts across the trans-Appalachian west.
  
  That December, armed settlers from Paxton township murdered six unarmed Susquehannock in the Conestoga reservation, and 14 more sheltered in the Lancaster jailhouse. In January, they marched toward Philadelphia where the government harbored 140 Moravian Indians. They were stopped in Germantown by a delegation led by Benjamin Franklin, who persuaded their leaders to publish their grievances in a document, Declaration and Remonstrance. Waged in pamphlets, political cartoons, broadsides, and correspondence, the ensuing pamphlet war featured some of Pennsylvania’s preeminent statesmen, including Benjamin Franklin, governor John Penn, and Hugh Williamson, who would later sign the U.S. Constitution.
  
  But what happens to our understanding of that print debate if when we situate it in a longer story of settler colonialism? After all, the Northwest Ordinance (1787) both conceptually and practically resolves many of the grievances that the Paxton Boys’ enumerate in Declaration.
  
  Historians have thoughtfully placed the Paxton incident in a revolutionary lineage. Extending that lineage to include the Northwest Ordinance allows readers to see the American Revolution as a continuation rather than a resolution of colonial debates about race and ethnicity, political representation, and settlement practices. Furthermore, de-monumentalizing the Revolution might also help us to heed Daniel Richter’s call to connect Atlantic and continental history. Finally, placing the 1764 pamphlet war in a timeline that extends from the Seven Years’ War to the Northwest Ordinance opens up the Paxton crisis to those who might not otherwise know about it. If the borderlands are often treated as a massive negation in early American history, as Ed White warns, the Paxton expedition forces us to confront that absence—borderlands settlers literally march to Germantown.
  
  By reading an ostensibly urban debate about Paxton conduct alongside correspondence, journal entries, and diaries available at regional archives, scholars and educators can de-emphasize urban polity and introduce students to archival research. As students and scholars look beyond the pamphlets that once defined study of pamphlet war, this project's Digital Collection is intended to support new attention to visual and manuscript materials. 
  
  Follow the path below Contents to explore this new looking-glass for the 1764 Paxton pamphlet war. 
  
  This pathway began as a material exhibition curated by Will Fenton at the Library Company of Philadelphia in Spring 2017, and it would not be possible without the resources, support, and generosity of staff at the Library Company of Philadelphia, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, American Philosophical Society, and Haverford College Quaker and Special Collections. Special thanks are due to Michael Goode (Assistant Professor of History, Utah Valley University), who helped shape this exhibition, and James N. Green (Librarian, Library Company of Philadelphia), who made it all possible.
• 1 2016-08-31T12:52:16-07:00 Peaceable Kingdom Lost: The Paxton Massacres 22 Kevin Kenny image_header 2019-08-11T08:12:53-07:00 The Paxton Boys, frontier militiamen on an unauthorized expedition, struck Conestoga Indiantown at dawn on December 14, 1763. "Fifty-seven Men, from some of our Frontier Townships, who had projected the Destruction of this little Commonwealth," Benjamin Franklin wrote in his Narrative of the Late Massacres in Lancaster County, "came, all well-mounted, and armed with Firelocks, Hangers [a kind of short sword] and Hatchets, having travelled through the Country in the Night, to Conestogoe Manor." Only six people were in the town at the time, "the rest being out among the neighboring White People, some to sell the Baskets, Brooms and Bowls they manufactured." The Paxton Boys killed these six and burned their settlement to the ground.
  
  The Conestoga people lived on a 500-acre tract, which William Penn had set aside for them seventy years earlier, near the town of Lancaster, one hundred miles west of Philadelphia. By 1763 only twenty Conestoga people were living there—seven men, five women, and eight children.
  
  After the murders, local magistrates removed the remaining fourteen residents to the Lancaster jail and workhouse for their safety, but on December 27 the Paxton Boys rode into that town to continue the attack they had started two weeks earlier. Fifty men, "armed as before, dismounting, went directly to the Work-house and by Violence broke open the Door," Franklin reported, "and entered with the utmost Fury in their Countenances." Within a matter of minutes they had slaughtered the fourteen individuals sheltering at the workhouse, including the eight children.
  
  The Paxton men were fully aware of the symbolic and political significance of their actions. They murdered unarmed, peaceable Conestoga people to make the point that all Indians were the same. And they slaughtered the Conestogas on government property in broad daylight. In perpetrating the massacres, they repudiated the settlement policy of William Penn.
  
  Inspired by Quaker principles, Penn had founded his colony in 1682 as a "holy experiment" in which Christians and Indians could live together in harmony. He drew the model of his colony from the "Peaceable Kingdom" envisioned in the Book of Isaiah. That dream proved surprisingly resilient. In fact, the nineteenth-century Quaker artist Edward Hicks produced a series of paintings of the Peaceable Kingdom in which he always included Penn's legendary meeting with the Delaware peoples under the elm tree at Shackamaxon, in present-day Philadelphia. In pursuit of his vision, William Penn treated the native peoples in his province with uncommon respect (John Penn to James Harrison). 
  
  Yet for all his popularity, Penn's holy experiment always rested on colony-building foundations. There would have been no Pennsylvania, after all, had he not received a gift of 29 million acres from King Charles II in 1681—a gift that made him the largest individual landlord in the British Empire. Within this immense territory, Penn purchased land from native peoples and, by his understanding, fairly. But he did so because he needed to get clear title to their land so that he could sell it to settlers and try to make a profit from his colony.
  
  The myth of the Peaceable Kingdom, already in decline by the time of William Penn's death in 1718, disintegrated gradually over the next few decades. Penn's son and principal heir, Thomas, cast off the Quaker faith and converted to Anglicanism. He and his brothers continued to negotiate with native peoples but they did not hesitate to use fraud and intimidation. In 1737 they swindled the Delawares out of a huge tract of land in a transaction known as the "Walking Purchase." For the Delawares, the measure of this land was how much a man could walk in a day and a half. The Penns, however, sent out a team of relay runners who marked out a tract almost as big as Rhode Island. Most of the Delawares who lived there were forced to move west of the Susquehanna River, which at that time marked the western boundary of European settlement. The "Walking Purchase" remained their primary grievance when they went to war against Pennsylvania twenty years later.
  
  Immigrants from the province of Ulster, in the north of Ireland, also posed a threat to Pennsylvania's native peoples. These settlers began to arrive in Pennsylvania at the beginning of the eighteenth century and set up as squatters along the frontier, ignoring the land rights of the native peoples and the Penn family alike. They claimed the land by "tomahawk right"—marking trees at a distance from one another with their axes, and declaring the territory between these trees as their own. As early as 1730, a generation before the Paxton massacres, a group of Ulster squatters temporarily occupied Conestoga Manor, declaring that it was "against the Laws of God and Nature that so much Land Should lie idle while so many Christians wanted it to labour on and raise their Bread" (James Logan to John, Thomas, and Richard Penn).
  
  Conflict between western colonists and native peoples intensified during the Seven Years' War (1756–1763). Expelled from their lands in eastern Pennsylvania, most of the Delawares and Shawnees west of the Susquehanna River sided with the French as the lesser of two evils and launched devastating raids on frontier settlers. The colonial government in Philadelphia responded by declaring war on the Delawares and, for the first time, establishing a militia. A handful of strict Quakers remained true to William Penn's pacifist vision, but the Peaceable Kingdom had come to an end. Frontier settlers did most of the fighting during the war and, from their perspective, both branches of the government in Philadelphia—the Quaker-dominated Assembly and executive branch, run by the Penn family—seemed indifferent to their wishes.
  
  No sooner had the British defeated the French in 1763 than Pontiac's War, the largest Indian war in colonial American history, erupted. Delawares and Shawnees once again launched raids east of the Susquehanna River. Frontier settlers re-lived the nightmare of the Seven Years' War. It was in this context, in December 1763, that the Paxton men carried out their massacre.
  
  The Paxton Boys arose directly out of a local militia created by the colonial government in response to frontier demands for defense in the summer of 1763. Colonel John Armstrong of Carlisle commanded a unit west of the Susquehanna River and the Rev. John Elder, the "fighting pastor" of Paxton Presbyterian Church, commanded a unit to the east. These two units were supposed to be strictly defensive, but Elder and Armstrong used them to launch raids against the Delawares. When raids failed, the Paxton Boys, led by Lazarus Stewart and Matthew Smith, attacked the Conestoga people instead.
  
  At the end of January 1764, a month after the massacres, reports reached Philadelphia that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Paxton Boys were marching eastward, threatening to sack the city unless their grievances were met. They also demanded the right to "inspect" 140 Lenape and Moravian Indians who had been removed from the frontier and placed in protective custody. Given what the Paxton Boys had done to the Conestogas, the residents of Philadelphia could only imagine what this "inspection" might entail.
  
  When several hundred Paxton Boys reached Germantown, just six miles outside Philadelphia, they were met by a delegation led by Benjamin Franklin, who persuaded them to write down their grievances. Their spokesmen, Matthew Smith and James Gibson, submitted a Declaration and a Remonstrance for consideration by the colonial government, and what followed was a war of words instead of a war of weapons. Presbyterian supporters of the Paxton Boys in alliance with the Anglican faction surrounding the Penn family battled Benjamin Franklin and the Quaker party in print. The debate, which featured more than sixty pamphlets and ten political cartoons, went far beyond the immediate issue of the Conestoga massacres to address the fundamental question of how Pennsylvania ought to be governed.
  
  Despite Franklin's efforts, the Paxton murderers went unpunished. Nobody was investigated, let alone arrested or prosecuted. As a result, like-minded settlers on the Pennsylvania frontier felt free to behave in similar ways. The result was wave after wave of violence on the frontier, culminating in total war against indigenous peoples during the American Revolution. In Pennsylvania, the Paxton Boys' brutality was the exception as late as 1763, but during the Revolution it became commonplace.
  
  Ironically, Benjamin Franklin and the Paxton men ended up supporting the same side in the American Revolution. But that is because there was more than one revolution going on—the familiar struggle for lofty principles of liberty and equality in the east, and a lesser-known struggle involving land and American Indians in the west. Some historians have seen the Paxton Boys as frontier democrats fighting against the privilege of the Penn family who extended their fight for democracy into the revolutionary era. John Elder, Matthew Smith, John Armstrong, and Lazarus Stewart all rallied to the patriot cause, to be sure, but they were fighting for the same thing as they had fought for in the 1760s—access to land, personal security, and vengeance against indigenous peoples.
  
  In their Remonstrance, the Paxton Boys had demanded greater political representation for the western counties in the Pennsylvania Assembly, but that was only one of nine grievances; all of the others concerned the "savages" in their midst. The American Revolution did more than destroy the privilege of the Penn family; it doomed the region's native peoples. During the Revolutionary War, American patriots enacted the brutal logic of the Paxton Boys on a devastating scale. 
  
  This essay is based on Kevin Kenny, Peaceable Kingdom Lost: The Paxton Boys and the Destruction of William Penn’s Holy Experiment (Oxford University Press, 2009).
  
  Further Reading
  • "James Logan to John, Thomas, and Richard Penn, February 17, 1731." Historical Society of Pennsylvania, James Logan letterbooks, vol. 3.
  • "John Penn to James Harrison, August 25, 1681." Mary Maples Dunn and Richard S. Dunn, eds, Papers of William Penn, 4 vols. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981–1987), 2:108.
• 1 2018-11-04T11:21:09-08:00 One Year Later: The Black Boys of 1765 12 Jay Donis image_header 2018-11-06T17:38:44-08:00 A little over a year after the Paxton massacre, Pennsylvania frontiersmen united to assert themselves over a perceived injustice. Whereas the Paxton Boys believed Conestoga Indians assisted Indian raiders during Pontiac’s War, Cumberland County frontiersmen suspected white businessmen of aiding Indian enemies. 
  
  West of the Susquehanna River in Cumberland County, at Sideling Hill, eleven men lay in wait for a pack train eighty-one horses long, laden with goods, and destined for Fort Pitt. A few days prior, Cumberland County residents pleaded with the traders to halt, wondering why fellow Pennsylvanians would send material west that would help Native Americans to continue their war effort. Robert Callendar, an Indian trader with the convoy, and his companions “made light of” the request and continued their journey (Smith, Account, 110).
  
  According to the Philadelphia-based trading company of Baynton, Wharton, and Morgan, the pack train travelled legally under a military pass. In theory, the goods would help end Pontiac’s War by facilitating Britain’s diplomatic efforts. However, frontiersmen saw the cargo as supplying their enemies, representing “a kind of murder, and would be illegally trading at the expense of the blood and treasure of the frontiers” (Smith, Account, 110). King George III’s Proclamation of 1763 gave colonial governors the power to reopen the trade, but, by early March of 1765, Pennsylvania’s Governor Penn gave no such order.
  
  At about one o’clock in the afternoon of March 6, 1765, James Smith and ten frontiersmen with blacked faces ordered the pack train to halt near Sideling Hill before firing upon several of the horses after the traders refused Smith’s order. As a former Indian captive, James Smith understood Native ways. Upon his return to Cumberland County in 1760, Smith also understood white ways and served in locally funded militias and in Henry Bouquet’s 1764 offensive.
  
  Smith and his men became known as the “Black Boys” and represent another chapter in the complex relationship between frontiersmen and the Pennsylvania government regarding Native Americans.
  
  The Paxton Boys and the Black Boys
  There are similarities between the Black Boys and Paxton Boys, most notably their origins in frontier defense forces. Both groups wanted the Pennsylvania government to better provide for frontier inhabitants, and both pushed for this measure through pistol and pen. The entreaties from each of the frontier associations aimed to capture attention of and demand action from the colony’s governor. Both the Black Boys and the Paxton Boys questioned the Anglo-American relationship with Native Americans. Both groups feared Native attacks on their communities.
  
  The Paxton’s Declaration and Remonstrance accused the Moravian and Conestoga Indians of aiding enemy Indians, while the Black Boys wanted the government to better police its own subjects to prevent Anglo-Americans from providing goods to enemies. For both groups, their appeals relied upon a shared belief in, and expectation of, government attention to frontier concerns, with the understanding that frontiersmen could take action when government failed to uphold its responsibilities.
  
  While the Black Boys echoed the complaints of the Paxton Boys, the groups were not directly related. Importantly, the Black Boys never advocated for the murder of Native Americans. Nor did they seek out and attack peaceful Indians, an important distinction stressed by scholar Greg Dowd (203–204, 211). That is, the Black Boys focused on the actions of white colonists rather than Indians.
  
  The Black Boys appealed across colonial borders to a diverse ethnic constituency. The composition of the Black Boys differed from Scots-Irish and Presbyterian affiliations associated with the Paxtons. John Armstrong, a Cumberland County Justice of the Peace, wrote “as to the people concern’d from all we can learn they are Irish, English, Dutch and Welch- from Potomack to the Kittatinney Hill, it’s confidently asserted there were some Virginians amongst them, others say not, but that they had made proposals of joining” (Armstrong). Samuel Llewellyn, a Marylander, later deposed that “there came some Express from Pennsylvania that there was goods going to the Indians & Desired assistance from Maryland to stop the same” (Llewelyn). Llewellyn and others traveled north to assist the Black Boys. William Smith, a Justice of the Peace and a relation of James, confirmed the presence of people from other colonies when he wrote to a Maryland official that “a great Number of Men appeared in Arms, from Pennsylvania, Maryland, & Virginia” at Fort Loudon (Smith to Shelby).
  
  The Contest over Imperial Authority
  After the attack at Sideling Hill, the traders fled to nearby Fort Loudon and the protection of a detachment of soldiers from the 42nd Highland Regiment, nicknamed the Black Watch. In contrast to the inaction of the 200 soldiers stationed in Lancaster in December 1763, Lt. Grant’s assistance to the traders escalated events (Brubaker). Grant, unaware of the cargos’ illegal nature, felt obligated to protect the traders and goods, despite his acknowledgement that the traders refused to obtain a pass from him earlier on their trip. The soldiers he sent out from Fort Loudon, in combination with some traders, seized prisoners and guns from the locals. They even captured one man in front of a Cumberland County magistrate, “without any warrant or authority” from the official (Maxwell).
  
  The involvement of British soldiers created a second issue separate from the Black Boys’ original complaint over the cargo. The Black Boys felt that British soldiers violated Pennsylvania’s civil jurisdiction, whereas the soldiers thought the Black Boys did not respect military, and therefore imperial, authority.
  
  Colonial Americans generally detested the use of soldiers to interfere in civil affairs and the actions of the soldiers broadened support for the Black Boys along the frontier. By March 9, just three days after the initial attack, James Smith rallied hundreds of riflemen to Fort Loudon to demand the return of the prisoners and guns. British Captain Thomas Barnsley noted of the siege force that “a great many of which had no hand in Destroying the Goods, yet Rose in a body to Rescue the Prisoners” (Barnsley).
  
  The soldiers could reasonably argue that they acted to protect imperial authority. So, too, could the Black Boys. The traders believed their military pass provided a loophole which allowed them to move goods under the king’s authority and without the governor’s reauthorization of the trade. The soldiers respected the military pass and, following the trader’s logic, the Black Boys killed four horses and burned thousands of dollars’ worth of goods destined for imperial use at Fort Pitt. However, the Black Boys could counter that the military pass did not override the King’s Proclamation of 1763, nor did the trader’s pass empower British soldiers to capture civilians.
  
  Unfortunately for the soldiers, few believed the goods were intended solely for diplomacy. Baynton, Wharton, and Morgan wanted to be the first firm to market after the governor formally reauthorized the Indian trade. Having a large quantity of goods at Fort Pitt before the trade re-opened ensured this goal and the trading firm informed a Cumberland County magistrate in December 1764 that they would transport goods to Fort Pitt the following spring. 
  
  General Thomas Gage and Superintendent of Indian Affairs William Johnson both believed the trading company engaged in suspicious, if not illegal activity. Gage wrote that Johnson’s subordinate, George Croghan, acted in league with the traders “contrary to orders, and contrary to the Laws of the Province” (Gage).
  
  A few months later on the other side of the Atlantic, Thomas Penn wrote, “the Owners of them deserve the loss they have met with, for acting [so] directly contrary to the King’s Proclamation and the Laws of the Province” (Penn to Penn). When considering the initial issue, the trade goods, it is clear that it was not just the Black Boys who felt the traders erred in their actions. However, the intervention of the soldiers and the escalation of conflict turned Thomas Gage, William Johnson, John Penn, and other potential allies against the Black Boys.
  
  The Contest for Public Opinion
  Shortly after Sideling Hill, the people of Cumberland County defended their actions through a petition intended to garner a response from Governor Penn (Cumberland County Inhabitants). That petition echoes many complaints found in the Paxton’s Declaration and Remonstrance. Cumberland’s inhabitants stated the great suffering from “the incursions of the savages” and acknowledged the “tumultuous & lawless manner” in which the people assembled. Cumberland County faced Indian raids throughout the spring and summer of 1764. (In fact, in July 1764, Indian raiders killed ten children and their teacher, Enoch Brown, before killing a pregnant woman and ripping out her fetus.)
  
  But, importantly, the petitioners demanded that the governor “interpose your Authority to stop these goods from going to the Enemy until peace by finally concluded” and “bring to punishment the persons who contrary to his Majesties royal proclamation…are concerned in this unlawful commerce with our enemies” (Cumberland County Inhabitants). The petition demonstrated an understanding of imperial law, provincial law, and a desire for justice even as it acknowledged the lawless manner in which the Black Boys operated. The petitioners admitted the Black Boys broke the law, but only after the government failed to uphold the law and stop the traders in the first place, resulting in war material traveling west and endangering the Cumberland County community. 
  
  Perhaps due to comparisons made in Philadelphia between the Black Boys with the Paxton Boys, and perhaps to prevent another march on Philadelphia, Governor Penn, Attorney General William Allen, and two members of the Provincial Council journeyed to Carlisle, the county seat of Cumberland County. Arriving in Carlisle in late March, the governor needed to offer a careful response to the events of Sideling Hill. He did not want to further antagonize the Black Boys, but he also didn’t want to provide more ammunition against his family’s proprietorship. Penn issued warrants “for such as were suspected,” but ultimately “the suspected persons had all absconded before [the sheriff] arrived in the part of the Country where they lived, so that no one was apprehended” (Penn to Gage). Once officials organized their charges and the available witnesses, a grand jury convened to hear the evidence and “tho’ al the Witnesses appeared and were examined by the Jury, it seems they were of Opinion that there was not sufficient Testimony to convict a single Person charged” (Penn to Gage). Despite the lack of convictions, Penn maintained that he did “everything on this occasion that could be done consistent w’th Law” and withdrew to Philadelphia. 
  
  The prosecutorial failure energized the Black Boys to expand their detection network and continue their conflict with the Highlander Regiment at Fort Loudon. Some of the Black Boys even removed their masks, so to speak, issuing signed passes on cargo they personally inspected. (These passes are available in the Pennsylvania Archives, 1st series, vol. 4:219-220.) An advertisement appeared in Cumberland County in May, purportedly from the Black Boys, inviting volunteers to “come to our Tavern and fill your Bellys with Liquor & your Mouth full of Swearing” (Peters Township.) Greg Dowd doubts the advertisement originated from the Black Boys, but some debate exists (210).
  
  In any case, in early May Lt. Grant sent Sgt. Leonard McGlashan and twelve soldiers to assist traders attempting to get to Ft. Pitt. The Black Boys blocked the pack horses since they did not personally inspect the goods. The resulting firefight left Black Boy James Brown wounded. Magistrate William Smith insisted that Lt. Grant hand over Sgt. McGlashan for trial. Grant refused the offer. A few weeks later, James Smith and four others captured Lt. Grant while he was off riding in the country and left the lieutenant tied to a tree overnight. Upon reflection, Smith thought at about this time “the king’s troops, and our party, had now get entirely out of the channel of the civil law” (Smith, Account, 111).
  
  Back in Philadelphia, Governor Penn always doubted the commitment of frontiersmen to the civil authority, and he now laid a trap. Penn announced the formal reopening of the Indian trade and set a date of June 20, 1765 (Penn Proclamation). If the Black Boys truly wanted to follow the laws of the province they would comply with the governor’s orders. 
  
  The Black Boys complied, ending their inspection network. However, the location of the guns captured in early March remained a separate and unresolved issue. In November, before the soldiers left Fort Loudon for winter quarters, James Smith gathered a few hundred people and besieged the fort. This time, the Black Boys demanded the guns and the delivery of Grant and McGlashan as prisoners. The soldiers did not acquiesce, and the Black Boys kept up a constant fire on the fort for two nights. Eventually, the Black Boys agreed to let the soldiers march away if they returned the guns. Lt. Grant obliged through a third party. 
  
  The Enduring Legacy of the Black Boys
  After they received the guns, the Black Boys faded as an active group. But their objectives found subsequent supporters. A “new club” of Black Boys appeared in 1769 over the supply of “warlike stores” to Native Americans. Despite the discontinuation of either a formal or informal Black Boys association, many of the people initially drawn to the Black Boys in 1765 continued to live along the frontier and participate in the political issues of the Revolutionary era.
  
  The Black Boys shared many grievances with the Paxtons, but the affairs played out rather differently. Both groups influenced the decisions made by the provincial government, local officials, and evaded legal punishment. However, the Paxton Boys committed, glorified, and defended the murder of Indians, while the Black Boys concerned themselves more with preventing bloodshed. In all likelihood, the Black Boys supported war against Natives, but it was not an explicit goal of their ad hoc organization. Many scholars conflate the two groups, but it is important to acknowledge their differing motivations and actions.
  
  Petitions, legal maneuvering in the court system, and adherence to the governor’s decree reopening the trade demonstrated that the Black Boys wanted to live within the political and legal systems of Pennsylvania and that frontiersmen possessed some control over those systems. The reluctant use of arms to ensure Cumberland’s security indicates the use of a final alternative when government failed in its duty.
  
  On the imperial side, the Black Boys’ rift with the 42nd Highland Regiment foreshadowed the American Revolution. The Black Boys resented the haughtiness of the British soldiers and found no imperial avenue of redress in which to appeal the conduct of the soldiers. In addition, the soldiers downplayed the legitimacy of Pennsylvania’s civil infrastructure in favor of imperial interests. In this case, frontiersmen found the behavior of imperial representatives, in the form of the soldiers, flawed. The pattern of interaction between the Black Boys and soldiers presaged a key divide of the American Revolution—the tension between the British government and colonial Americans over their insistence of political and legal sovereignty. Similar to the more celebrated urban, coastal colonists, many inhabitants of frontier communities also valued the protection of American rights that would inspire the revolutionary movement.
  
  This essay is based on an article by Jay Donis,“The Black Boys and Blurred Lines: Reshaping Authority on the Pennsylvania Frontier,” Journal of Early American History, vol. 6, no. 1 (2016), 68-93.
  
  The majority of primary sources are located in the Pennsylvania Archives (Series 1, Volume 4) and the Thomas Gage Papers at William L. Clements Library at the University of Michigan (also available on microfilm at the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission).
  
  Further Reading:
  • Armstrong, John to George Croghan, 26 March 1765. Cadwalader Family Papers, Box 201, Folder 2, Series 4, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
  • Barnsley, Thomas to General Thomas Gage, 11 March 1765, Thomas Gage Papers, Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, State Archives, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
  • Brubaker, Jack. “The Aftermath of the Conestoga Massacre.” Digital Paxton, 2017.
  • Cumberland County Inhabitants. “Petition to Governor Penn.” Col. Henry Bouquet Papers, 6:777-779. Full-text via Smith Rebellion 1765.
  • Cutcliffe, Stephen. “Sideling Hill Affair: The Cumberland County Riots of 1765,” Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine, 59, no. 1 (Jan. 1976), 39-53.
  • Deposition of Samuel [Llewelyn], Shelby Family Papers, 1738–1862, microfilm, Filson Historical Society, Louisville, Kentucky.
  • Dowd, Gregory Evans. War under Heaven: Pontiac, the Indian Nations, the British Empire. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002.
  • Gage, Thomas to William Johnson, 15 April 1765. The Papers of Sir William Johnson, 4:717. Full-text via Smith Rebellion 1765.
  • Maxwell, James. Deposition. Thomas Gage Papers, Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, State Archives, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
  • Penn, John. “Penn Proclamation, 4 June 1765.” The Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, Mapcase AB7 P3845L2 765b.
  • Penn, John to General Gage, 28 June 1765. Thomas Gage Papers, Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, State Archives, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
  • Penn, Thomas to Benjamin Chew, 20 July 1765. Penn Family Papers, Penn Correspondence VIII, 1763-1768, NV 218, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
  • Penn, Thomas to John Penn, June 8, 1765. Penn Family Papers, Penn Correspondence VIII, 1763-1768, NV 218, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
  • Peters Township. “Advertisement for Loyal Volunteers.” University of Pittsburgh, University Library System. Darlington Autograph Files, Box 5, Folder 86.
  • Spero, Patrick. Frontier Country: The Politics of War in early Pennsylvania. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016.
  • Spero, Patrick. Frontier Rebels: The Fight for Independence in the American West, 1765-1776(New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2018). 
  • Smith, James. An Account of the Remarkable Occurrences in the Life and Travels of Col. James Smith During his Captivity with the Indians, in the years 1755, ’56, ’57, ’58, and ’59. Appendix by Wm. M. Darlington. Cincinnati: The Robert Clarke Co., 1907.
  • Smith, William to Evan Shelby, 1 June 1765. Reuben T. Durrett Collection, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.
  • Webster, Eleanor M. “Insurrection at Fort Loudon in 1765: Rebellion or Preservation of Peace?,” Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine, 47, no. 2 (Apr. 1964), 125-139.
• 1 2019-01-13T19:09:54-08:00 An Interview with the Paxton Boys 10 Montgomery Wolf and Eleanor Andersen image_header 2019-02-09T14:07:36-08:00 This assignment is intended to be completed in-class over two 45-minute classes or one 90-minute class. Unfinished work may be assigned as homework. This lesson will inculcate students with the skills needed for civic involvement in a participatory democracy as described by Barton & Levstik (2001).
  
  Relevant Standards
  • 8.1.12.A through 8.1.12.D
  • CC.8.5.11-12.A through CC.8.5.11-12.I
  • CC.8.6.11-12.A through CC.8.6.11-12.I
  
  Questions
  • How do settlers justify acts of violence?
  • How do we evaluate sources?
  
  Learning Objectives
  • Students will demonstrate comprehension of the motivations and justifications of historical actors.
  • Students will engage in critical dialogue with primary sources.
  • Students will translate historic discourse into a contemporary media format (a podcast recording) in order to identify similarities and differences between eighteenth and twenty-first century discourses.
  
  Primary Source Materials
  • A Declaration & Remonstrance
  • Franklin and the Quakers
  • The German Bleeds and Bears Ye Furs
  
  Secondary Source Materials
  • Pontiac's War and the Paxton Boys
  
  Assignment Materials
  • Projector
  • Google Drive or other file sharing service
  • Laptops or smartphones equipped with Internet access and audio recording app (e.g. Voice Recorder & Audio Editor for iOS or Voice Recorder for Android)

  Download a printable version of this background information.

• 1 media/brubaker cover iamge.jpg 2016-10-24T08:09:43-07:00 The Aftermath of the Conestoga Massacre 7 Jack Brubaker image_header 2017-03-14T12:51:35-07:00 How did the Paxton Boys avoid punishment for killing 20 peaceful Conestoga Indians under government protection? More than 250 years after the massacre, there is no clear answer to that question. But it is clear that a legal system that had previously punished white men for killing Christian Indians failed catastrophically in the County of Lancaster and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in December 1763.
  
  Many British and provincial leaders understood that identifying, trying, and punishing the killers of the Conestogas was critical to maintaining the rule of law. The British statesman Lord Halifax condemned the “horrid murders” and ordered Thomas Gage, chief of British armies in North America, to assist Pennsylvania’s government in finding and punishing the killers. Pennsylvania Governor John Penn delivered two proclamations condemning the Paxton Boys’ “barbarous” behavior and issued arrest warrants and rewards for information leading to convictions. He further requested that Lancaster County’s magistrates interrogate the county sheriff, coroner, and any others who might have information about the murderers.
  
  These should not have been difficult tasks. Lancaster’s magistrates and other residents knew the identity of some of the killers. On the day before the first attack, leaders of the vigilantes told John Elder, pastor of Paxton Presbyterian Church and military leader of the Paxton militia, as well as Edward Shippen, Lancaster County’s chief magistrate, that they planned to attack the Indians at Conestoga Indian Town. Neither man did anything to stop the slaughter or identify the killers.
  
  After leaving Indian Town in flames following the massacre of the first six Conestogas, the killers talked at some length with Thomas Wright, an Indian Town neighbor, and Robert Barber, a resident of nearby Wright’s Ferry. Given the tone of the conversation, Wright and Barber suspected the worst and soon discovered they were correct. They could have identified some of the killers.
  
  Scores, perhaps hundreds, of Lancaster residents observed the raiders as they marched to and from the slaughter of the last fourteen Conestogas at the Lancaster County workhouse in the center of Lancaster. But no one identified them.
  
  One reason for this silence was indifference. Many Lancastrians did not pay much attention to the killings, either because they accepted the Paxton Boys’ allegation that the Conestogas had been spying for hostile Indians or because they did not care about the fate of any Indians, peaceful or hostile. Another reason was intimidation: the Paxton Boys threatened those who might have informed on them. James Wright, one of Lancaster County’s delegates to the Pennsylvania Assembly, a government-appointed caretaker for the Conestogas and a Quaker, might have been expected to identify the raiders he knew. A Pennsylvania historian reported in 1857 that Wright “well remembered” the killers and had told a fellow legislator that he had “survived nearly the whole of them, and that they generally came to untimely or suffering deaths!” (Watson 169). But Wright never identified any of the Paxton Boys. His sister, Susanna Wright, explained that Paxton vigilantes roamed about the area after the massacre, making threats against her brother and other Quakers. 
  
  Meanwhile, Lancaster County’s magistrates bizarrely modified their instructions from Governor Penn. Instead of collecting depositions naming the murderers, they obtained affidavits from residents who despised Indians. These affidavits are not included in court records—in fact, nothing related to the Conestoga massacre appears—but they do appear among pro-Paxton manuscripts produced early in 1764. None of these affidavits mention the Paxton Boys. Most cast blame on the Conestogas.
  
  Nothing in these affidavits relates in any way to Penn’s request that the magistrates obtain information about the men who had killed the Conestogas. Nothing in these accusations, which rely heavily on hearsay, clearly indicts the Conestogas for crimes against settlers. In sum, the affidavits seem to blame the murder of the Conestogas on the Conestogas themselves.
  
  While the magistates’ response was not unpopular among the general citizenry, it incensed some groups, particularly Pennsylvania Quakers. Quakers were quick to condemn the killers and those who paved the way for the killings. These “abettors,” according to several sources, may have included the county’s jailer, who unaccountably disappeared from the jail and workhouse on the day of the second massacre; and the county sheriff and coroner—the only “guards” at the workhouse—who quickly stepped aside when the Paxton Boys arrived to do their bloody work. John Reynolds, editor of the Lancaster Journal, later indicted several Lancastrians for their part in what he termed a conspiracy against the Conestogas. He said that the jailer, the sheriff and his son, and two other men “were also suspected of being in the plot” (Mombert 187).
  
  Others pointed to more obvious targets, especially the Rev. Elder and Judge Shippen. Elder, as the man who ministered to many of the Scots-Irish Paxton Boys in his church and led the Paxton militia in the county’s defense against hostile Indian attack, wielded great influence. As a large landholder in the Paxton area, some observers believe, he may have had a personal reason to rid the area of any Indians who would discourage investment on the frontier.
  
  As chief magistrate, Shippen held more power than any other Lancastrian. Few actions of substance occurred in Lancaster County without his approval. Early Quaker historian Robert Proud directly blamed the murder of the Conestogas on “the connivance, if not the encouragement, of the Christian-professing Magistrates, and other principal persons of that town” (Pound 329). While critics questioned why the magistrates did not employ a British regiment to guard the Indians against a second attack that they knew was coming, Shippen’s explanation to John Penn was that he did not know some 200 soldiers were billeted in a town of 2,000 residents.
  
  Concerns about the massacre faded with time. As it became clear that the authorities had no interest in discovering who had killed the Indians, let alone who may have helped them, most people moved on to other matters.
  
  But John Penn’s critics kept up a drumbeat for years. They charged that officials in Philadelphia and Lancaster had a political reason to avoid punishing the Paxtonians. In the 1760s, the militant Germans and Scots-Irish gained greater political power, at the expense of Quakers and German pacifists. Those who wanted to retain power found it useful to defend the Paxton Boys’ slaughter and to oppose the Quaker lobby that defended Indians. In the autumn elections of 1764, a united “new ticket” of Presbyterians, Anglicans, and Lutheran and Reformed Germans supported stronger anti-Indian policies. They won more seats in the legislature—although not enough to take control—and then strengthened their influence as the decade progressed.
  
  Some observers suggested that John Penn may have had another motivation for siding with anti-Indian forces. They believed he had made a deal with the Paxton Boys when they marched on Philadelphia following the killings in Lancaster. They claimed he had made political promises in exchange for retreat from a planned assault on the city to kill Lenapes, the so-called Moravian Indians, being held for their protection there.
  
  In any case, Quakers and other members of the General Assembly wrote to Penn in January 1768, saying that the Indian killers could still be identified. In a formal message, the legislators wrote

  When we consider the Manner of committing the Murders at Lancaster; that it was done at Noon-Day, in the midst of a Populous Borough, and in the Presence of many spectators by Men probably of the same County, undisguised and well known, we apprehend their Names may be easily discovered (Colonial Records 441). 

  But this was a legislative exercise in futility. More than four years after the massacre, most Pennsylvanians understood that the names of the killers would remain unknown.
  
  Recognizing that the Paxton Boys might not be brought to justice, some officials worried about how the killings might affect the conduct of other Indians, especially the Iroquois. In the winter of 1764, Sir William Johnson, British superintendent of Indian Affairs in the Northern Department, told Penn he was concerned that the incident would “stagger the affections” of the Iroquois (Colonial Records 130). In fact, repercussions from the massacre continued for years. At treaty sessions, the Iroquois repeatedly cited the fate of the Conestogas as a reason not to trust white negotiators.
  
  Other Indians living in Pennsylvania’s white settlements never trusted the government to sanction the Paxton Boys or to protect other Indians. Many Lenape immediately fled the state. Hannah Freeman and other Indians living in Chester County moved to a Quaker community in New Jersey. An Indian named William Peters told Samuel Hunter at Fort Hunter, north of Harrisburg, that he feared for his safety after the massacre and the march on Philadelphia.
  
  The Moravian missionary John Heckewelder reported that the Lenapes believed Indian-settler relations had been poisoned because the Conestogas’ “blood ran in streams into our (treaty council) fire, and extinguished it so entirely, that not one spark was left us whereby to kindle a new fire” (Heckewelder 80). A group of Lenapes that had moved to Ohio declined aid from the Continental Congress early in the Revolutionary War because they feared the government might “protect” them as it had the Conestogas.
  
  These Indians clearly recognized the significance of the decision by British authorities, Pennsylvania’s governor, and Lancaster County’s magistrates not to pursue the murderers of the Conestogas. The time for killing any and all Indians, it was clear, had been extended to all seasons.
  
  The wounds of the 1763 massacre never have healed, although multiple efforts have been made at reconciliation. In recent years, various groups have apologized for the actions of the Paxton Boys and the ineffectual leaders of the Lancaster community. They have lamented the utter failure of the judicial system.
  
  In 2003, a group of Lancaster County Mennonites and evangelicals met with representatives of the Iroquois from New York. The Mennonites guided the Iroquois on a tour of sites associated with the Conestogas. They asked for forgiveness for their ancestors’ sins of killing Indians and stealing their land. The Iroquois forgave the Mennonites and the two groups embraced.
  
  In 2010, a meeting of reconciliation was held at First Presbyterian Church in Lancaster. Representatives of Mennonite, Quaker, Presbyterian, and other churches acknowledged to several Indian groups that early Pennsylvanians were wrong to break treaties and kill the Conestogas. For the first time, Presbyterians acknowledged the role of their predecessors in the massacre. And, for the first time, a Lancaster official acknowledged fault. Mayor Rick Gray expressed his distress that previous town leaders did not protect those they had pledged to protect.
  
  Most recently, in the spring of 2016, a bishop from Lancaster County’s Amish settlement met with representatives of a dozen Indian tribes. The bishop and two other Amish men apologized for the way their ancestors treated Native Americans and took their land. In an emotional session, both groups shed tears. The reconciliation process continues.
  
  This essay is based on a book by Jack Brubaker, Massacre of the Conestogas: On the Trail of the Paxton Boys in Lancaster County. To learn more about Brubaker, visit the Creators page.
  
  Further Reading
  • Elder Collection, Dauphin County Historical Society, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
  • Heckewelder, John. History, Manners, and Culture of the Indian Nations, Philadelphia: 1876.
  • Loskiel, George H. History of the Mission of the United Brethren among the Indians in North America. Trans. Christian Ignatius La Trobe. London: Printed for the Brethren’s Society for the Furtherance of the Gospel: 1794.
  • Minutes of the Provincial Council of Pennsylvania (Colonial Records). Pennsylvania Archives.
  • Mombert, Jacob. An Authentic History of Lancaster County in the State of Pennsylvania, Lancaster, 1867.
  • Proud, Robert. The History of Pennsylvania in North America. Vol. 2. Philadelphia: Zachariah Poulson Jr., 1798.
  • Shippen Papers. American Philosophical Society and Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.
  • Watson, John. Annals of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania. Vol. 2, Philadelphia: 1884.
• 1 media/1717 first map showing Indiantown_edited-1.jpg 2018-02-12T21:09:01-08:00 Historical Overview 6 Will Fenton image_header 319000 2019-08-04T06:45:03-07:00 The Paxton Massacre
  The conclusion of French-Indian War promised to halt the frontier violence that had ravaged the Pennsylvania and Virginia borderlands. After France ceded most its territorial claims in North America to Britain in 1763, a coalition of Indian nations attacked British forts and outposts in the Great Lakes and Ohio Country. The attacks began with the Ottawa warrior Pontiac’s siege of Detroit that spring. The siege inspired the Delaware and Shawnee to engage in similar attacks in the Ohio Country. Although the event would be later known as Pontiac's War (1763-66), in reality Pontiac was only one among many Indian leaders involved in this loosely coordinated offensive.
  
  After 1763, Indians resumed their attacks on the Pennsylvania frontier. Fearing new raids on their Paxtang settlement (a suburb of what is today Pennsylvania’s capitol, Harrisburg), a group of Scotch-Irish militiamen targeted a peaceful Conestoga Indian (Susquehannock) town outside of Lancaster. The origins of the reservation date back to 1701, when William Penn had signed a treaty with them, promising them friendship and protection. The Conestoga had peaceably inhabited the area for three generations. During that time, the community had good relations with the provincial government and traded with colonists.
  
  The “Paxton Boys” sought to expunge the Conestoga—and any other Indians they could find—from the Pennsylvania colony. Because the inhabitants were unarmed, they were easy targets for the mob. On December 14, 1763, they marched on Conestoga and murdered all the residents they could find, six in total, and torched their cabins. After the colonial government determined that the killings ought to be classified as murder, Pennsylvania Governor John Penn announced a reward for the Paxtons’ capture and placed the remaining Conestoga in the custody of the Lancaster jailhouse. The Paxton Boys broke into the facility and murdered another fourteen Conestoga, including women and children. They desecrated the victim's bodies and vowed to march on Philadelphia, where Moravian Indians from the Susquehanna were being sheltered. The Paxton Boys were met in Germantown, six miles outside Philadelphia, by a delegation led by none other than Benjamin Franklin, who persuaded their leaders to enumerate their grievances in Declaration and Remonstrance, which sparked a vigorous debate about the authority of the colonial government.
  
  Critics contended that in murdering the Conestoga, the Paxtons had flouted the government’s agreement with the natives, and in pursuing them in the Lancaster jailhouse they had defied the rule of law. One critic argued that "malice and party-spirit" motivated the Paxtons and their sympathizers. He advised: "Let the Friends of Pennsylvania lay aside the animosities which have been raised and maintained by the wicked and weak."
  
  For their part, Paxton apologists held that the pacifist principles of the Quaker-dominated Assembly had long kept the government from protecting the lives of borderlands settlers. "It is an inexpressible Absurdity," wrote one apologist, "that a warlike People should be governed by Persons of Quaker Principles, and especially in Time of War."
  
  Critics and apologists rushed to shape popular opinion using pamphlets, which were produced from one or more sheets of paper printed on both sides and folded in halves, thirds, or fourths. Thanks to simplicity and economy of these materials, pamphlets could be produced quickly and in great volume. The Paxton debate comprised more than one-fifth of the Pennsylvania colony’s total printed material in 1764, making it one of the most important pamphlet wars of the colonial period.
  
  Below Contents, you will find six historical overviews that will introduce some of key contexts for understanding that debate.
  
  First, Kevin Kenny, professor of history at Boston College, frames the Paxton massacres as both bloody and symbolic acts in "Peaceable Kingdom Lost: The Paxton Riots." In slaughtering Conestoga on government property, the Paxton Boys repudiated William Penn's "holy experiment." Kenny's essay was the first I solicited and edited because I wanted an essay that would foreground the role of Quaker settlement practices in the Paxton debate.
  
  Next, historian Michael Goode provides a short overview of Pontiac's War in "Pontiac's War and the Paxton Boys," an excerpted essay that originally appeared on The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia.
  
  In the wake of Pontiac's War and the Paxton massacre, Pennsylvania frontiersmen united to assert themselves against enemies in their own mist: the white businessman and government officials suspected of abetting Indian enemies. In "One Year Later: The Black Boys of 1765," historian Jay Donis explores how, unlike the largely Scots-Irish and Presbyterian Paxton Boys, the Black Boys appealed across colonial borders to a diverse ethnic constituency.
  
  Historian Judith Ridner and literary scholar Scott Paul Gordon attend to wealth of documents that circulated during the Paxton debate. While scholars have traditionally focused on the many pamphlets that Paxton critics and apologists published throughout 1764, Ridner explores the political utility of visual materials, including engravings and political cartoons, in her brief essay, "Passion, Politics, and Portrayal in the Paxton Debates." Meanwhile, in "Print and Place in the Paxton Crisis," Gordon argues that manuscript materials allow researchers to glimpse the politics of those who lacked access to printing presses, most especially borderlands settlers, but, to a lesser but still significant extent, the Susquehannock and their allies.
  
  Jack Brubaker, author of the Massacre of the Conestogas, shares a granular account of the Paxton expedition drawn from magistrates, colonial record books, and correspondence—many of which are available in Digital Paxton. Perhaps of most value to educators, Brubaker's "The Aftermath of the Conestoga Massacre" connects the past to the present by describing recent efforts towards commemoration and reconciliation.
  
  Darvin Martin extends Brubaker's work by historicizing the site of the first massacre in "A History of Conestoga Indiantown." Far from some random target, Conestoga Indiantown occupied a central place in Native American-colonial relations in the eighteenth-century mid-Atlantic. Similar to Brubaker, Martin makes the past present by mapping the reservation’s historical deed onto modern property boundaries.
  
  Finally, this pathway concludes with my first attempt at what may eventually serve as a more capacious framework for understanding the Paxton massacre.  With "A New Looking-Glass for the the 1764 Paxton Pamphlet War" I seek to place that print in lineage that extends from the Seven Years' War through the Northwest Ordinance. My hope is that this more expansive framework will enable students and scholars to de-emphasize urban polity and to attend to records from previously marginalized voices.
  
  Each essay is edited to ensure that it’s thesis-driven, jargon-free, and accessible to students. At the same time, each piece maintains the features of a scholarly essay: a bibliography of secondary research, attribution of primary source materials, and contextual notes where relevant.
  
  Each essay is also self-contained. That is, if a reader were only interested in the history of Conestoga Indiantown, she could read Martin's essay, use its links to explore the Digital Paxton collection, and perform additional research using the two-dozen linked resources listed below further reading. 
  
  To continue to these key historical contexts, follow the path listed below Contents. If you want to contribute to the project, connect with the editor through the Contact page.
• 1 2019-12-04T11:19:19-08:00 Where are their Voices? 5 Julian Perrin image_header 2019-12-10T06:24:32-08:00 Students will use the graphic novel Ghost River: The Fall and Rise of the Conestoga to give voice to Leni Lenape, Conestoga, and Moravian Indians by analyzing primary source materials from the Paxton massacres and 1764 pamphlet war. This lesson provides a pedestal for students to explore colonial bias and stereotypes. Students will use primary sources to develop an historical understanding of how local Native peoples were excluded from colonial records of the incident.
  
  Essential Questions:
  • How were the voices of local Native Americans suppressed or excluded from the 1764 pamphlet war?
  • How were local Native Americans stereotyped in primary source materials?
  • How do printed materials (e.g. political cartoons) compare to unpublished materials (diaries)?
  • How were the Native Americans interned in Philadelphia used to sway public opinion against Paxton critics such as Benjamin Franklin and the Quakers in the Pennsylvania Assembly?
  • How does Ghost River give voice to those Native peoples?
  
  Objectives:
  • Describe the representation of local Native Americans in primary source materials.
  • Use contrasting primary and secondary sources to understand the perspectives of both colonialists and Native Americans. 
  • Use primary sources (a painting, political cartoon, and diary) to better understand a secondary source (Ghost River).
  • Develop structured and coherent writing that uses textual evidence to make an argument about the Native Americans involved in the Paxton incident.
  
  Grade Level: Grades 9 and 10
  
  Standards:
  • CC.8.6.9-10.C: Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.
  • CC.8.6.9-10.H: Draw evidence from informational texts to support analysis, reflection, and research.
  • CC.8.5.9-10.F: Compare the point of view of two or more authors for how they treat the same or similar topics, including which details they include and emphasize in their respective accounts.
  • CC.8.5.9-10.I: Compare and contrast treatments of the same topic in several primary and secondary sources.
  
  Historical Background:
  
  Excerpt from Kevin Kenny, Peaceable Kingdom Lost:

  The Paxton Boys, frontier militiamen on an unauthorized expedition, struck Conestoga Indiantown at dawn on December 14, 1763. "Fifty-seven Men, from some of our Frontier Townships, who had projected the Destruction of this little Commonwealth," Benjamin Franklin wrote in his Narrative of the Late Massacres in Lancaster County, "came, all well-mounted, and armed with Firelocks, Hangers [a kind of short sword] and Hatchets, having travelled through the Country in the Night, to Conestogoe Manor." Only six people were in the town at the time, "the rest being out among the neighboring White People, some to sell the Baskets, Brooms and Bowls they manufactured." The Paxton Boys killed these six and burned their settlement to the ground.
  
  The Conestoga people lived on a 500-acre tract, which William Penn had set aside for them seventy years earlier, near the town of Lancaster, one hundred miles west of Philadelphia. By 1763 only twenty Conestoga people were living there—seven men, five women, and eight children.
  
  After the murders, local magistrates removed the remaining fourteen residents to the Lancaster jail and workhouse for their safety, but on December 27 the Paxton Boys rode into that town to continue the attack they had started two weeks earlier. Fifty men, "armed as before, dismounting, went directly to the Work-house and by Violence broke open the Door," Franklin reported, "and entered with the utmost Fury in their Countenances." Within a matter of minutes they had slaughtered the fourteen individuals sheltering at the workhouse, including the eight children.
  
  The Paxton men were fully aware of the symbolic and political significance of their actions. They murdered unarmed, peaceable Conestoga people to make the point that all Indians were the same. And they slaughtered the Conestogas on government property in broad daylight. In perpetrating the massacres, they repudiated the settlement policy of William Penn.

  
  Excerpt from Scott Paul Gordon, Christian Indians

  The armed frontiersmen who marched to Philadelphia in February 1764 planned to murder 140 Indians gathered in barracks in the city's Northern Liberties. Most of these Indians were Christians, having lived in the Moravian mission towns of Nain and Wechquetank in Northampton County. Provincial authorities decided to “order the Moravian Indians down to Philadelphia” in November 1763, as Governor John Penn wrote, because “the people of Northampton County … were determined to cut them all off” (John Penn to Richard Penn). These individuals were joined by other Native Americans from Wyalusing, an Indian town on the Susquehanna River. Except for their leader, John Papunhunk, who had been converted by Moravian missionary David Zeisberger, the Wyalusing Indians were neither Moravian nor Christian. The Paxton Boys' Declaration and Remonstrance clearly identified the different groups gathered in Philadelphia: “Some of these Indians now in the Barracks of Philadelphia are confessedly a part of the Wyalusing Indians, which Tribe is now at War with us; and the others are the Moravian Indians, who [are] living amongst us under the Cloak of Friendship.”
  
  These Christian Indians were confined at the Philadelphia barracks and on Province Island from November 1763 until March 1765. Many prominent citizens visited them, including Governor John Penn and Anthony Benezet, and mobs threatened them. They tried, as much as possible, to live as a congregation as they had in Nain and Wechquetank. Moravian missionary couples, Bernhard Adam and Margaret Grube and Johann Jacob and Johanna Schmick, lived with them. The diaries kept by these missionaries record regular services, communions, lovefeasts, births, and baptisms. Sadly, these diaries are also filled with deaths and burials. Fifteen Indians died in May and June 1764, and twenty more died the next month: in all, fifty-five Moravian Indians were buried in 1764 in Philadelphia's Potter's field. The Paxton Boys did not reach the Christian Indians in February 1764, but the confinement that their threats precipitated turned out to be more deadly than their guns and sabers.

  
  Materials:
  • Ghost River: The Fall & Rise of the Conestoga (print or digital edition)
  • Excerpts from Ghost River (34-36; 45-47)
  • Franklin and the Quakers (political cartoon and transcription) 
  • Excerpts from Diary of the Indian Gemeine in the Barracks of Philadelphia, Final Draft (Jan. 24 - Dec. 31, 1764)
  
  Procedure:
  
  Warm-up: Write-Pair-Share (10 minutes):
  • Show image of Benjamin West's Penn's Treaty with the Indians (1771-72) and ask students to write and reflect on: 
    • How are the colonists portrayed in this painting?
    • How are the native peoples portrayed in this painting?
    • What might have been Benjamin West's agenda for creating these portrayals?
  
  Notes for the Teacher: Penn's Treaty with the Indians (1771-72) was commissioned by William Penn's son Thomas Penn. It depicts the meeting of William Penn and the Quakers, members of the Leni Lenape tribe, and merchants in Shackamaxon along the Delaware River.
  • Divide students into pairs and have them share their responses with partners.
  • Reset class and ask volunteer pairs describe their responses.
  • Guide students to understanding about how images can shape popular understandings of peoples and histories.
  • Refer to image of page 46 from Ghost River to introduce the lesson's objective.
  
  Guided Review: Mini-Lecture (5-10 minutes):
  • Review chronology of the Paxton incident using Ghost River and historical background excerpts.
  
  Notes for the Teacher: The Paxton pamphlet war features dozens of political cartoons, pamphlets, and broadsides. Engravers like James Claypoole, who created Franklin and the Quakers, used these materials to attack their political opponents and influence popular opinion. This image depicts Benjamin Franklin conspiring with his political allies, the Quakers in the Pennsylvania Assembly, to arm their enemies, the Native American had attacked the colony during the Seven Years' War. It should be noted that the "Christian Indians" that the Paxton mob murdered (the Conestoga people) did not participate in any of that violence.
  
  Activity (20 minutes):
  • Break students into two groups (A and B) based upon their original Write-Pair-Share pairings.
  • Group A will analyze the political cartoon Franklin and the Quakers (1764) and pages 36-40 of Ghost River. Students will draw connections between the political cartoon and the graphic novel using these questions:
    • How are Native Americans stereotyped in the political cartoon?
    • Why might the voices of local Native Americans have been suppressed or excluded from the political cartoons and pamphlets that circulated in the 1764 pamphlet war?
    • How does Ghost River give voice to those Native peoples?
  • Group B will analyze excerpts from Diary of the Indian Gemeine in the Barracks of Philadelphia, Final Draft (Jan. 24- Dec. 31, 1764) and pages 36-40 of Ghost River. Students will draw connections between the diary and the graphic novel using these questions:
    • How do the diaries describe the experience of Moravian Indians interned in Philadelphia? How does that experience contrast with Benjamin West's idyllic scene (Penn's Treaty with the Indians)?
    • How do these diary entries give voice to the interned native peoples? Who gives voice to those peoples?
    • How does Ghost River represent the experience of interned Lenape and Moravian Indians?
  
  Notes for the Teacher: The Diary of the Indian Gemeine in the Barracks of Philadelphia was recorded by Moravian missionaries who accompanied the Lenape and Moravian Indians interned in Philadelphia. These excerpts are recorded in German, and they have been transcribed and translated in order to make them accessible to the students. These excerpts describe their relocation from Province Island (where the Philadelphia Airport currently resides) to the Philadelphia Barracks (in what is today Northern Liberties).
  
  Excerpts for Analysis:

  January 25: We began to settle in a bit. The things that we had left behind on Province Island came to us, although our good Indians missed many things, particularly axes, that had been stolen. In the evening, Br. Grube held a service in his own room.
  
  February 4: Br. Neusser and Ludwig Weiss visited us. We heard a lot of bad reports. In the afternoon, Captain Schlosser came and reported to us that we should move to the second story with the soldiers, because there were no keys if the rooms should be broken into. Because the order regarding the moving of the soldiers came so late, a great confusion arose between them and our poor Indians, who were chased from one place to another, particularly when a couple shots happened outside the barracks, so that everyone got alarmed and made ready to fight. We then had our hands full with our Indians, getting them in their lodgings, and quieting them.
  
  February 20: After the early service, first Br. Schmick and then his wife visited the Indians in their rooms, and they found several sick.

  Partner & Class Discussion (5 minutes):
  • Have students return to their partners from the first Write-Pair-Share exercise and share and record their responses to the two different primary source materials they examined (the diary and the political cartoon).
  • Ask pairs to answer a prompt and be prepared to share it with the class.
    • How were Native Americans represented in the two primary source documents?
    • Why might be these two documents tell such a different story about the Paxton incident?
    • How does Ghost River give Native peoples a voice?
  • Have volunteer pairs share their answers with the class.
  
  Assessment: Students will conduct research on their own by using either Digital Paxton or the Ghost River digital edition to find an additional printed, manuscript, or visual record that gives voices to the Conestoga, Lenape, or Moravian Indians. Students should justify their selections by describing how their records contrast with Benjamin West's Penn's Treaty with the Indians.
  
  You may also download a printable version of this lesson.
• 1 2017-03-28T17:11:16-07:00 Quakers in the Crosshairs: The Early Paxton Debate 4 image_header 2017-03-29T07:16:38-07:00 After the march on Germantown, Paxton leader Matthew Smith published Declaration and Remonstrance in 1764. Following him, other pamphleteers shaped public opinion, appropriating a variety of symbols from eighteenth-century material culture—especially masks and looking-glasses—and responding to one another anonymously and through pseudonyms.
  
  Paxton leaders and sympathizers appealed to the prejudices against Philadelphia Quakers and fears of frontier violence. Whereas critics challenged the Paxtons on rational, legal, and economic grounds, apologists conjured scenes of frontier violence to telescope the threat of Indian warfare.
  
  Apologists particularly assailed Friends, whom they characterized as opportunistic, or, worse, immoral, in their Indian-dealing. Citing stories of Friends enlisting in the Philadelphia militia during the Paxton march, critics charged that Friends would violate the Peace Testimony, to promote peace and active oppose war, on behalf of Indians, but not their fellow settlers.
• 1 2019-01-13T19:42:15-08:00 An Interview with the Paxton Boys: Assignment & Rubric 4 Montgomery Wolf and Eleanor Andersen plain 2019-02-09T14:07:59-08:00 Instructions
  You will work in small groups to create a podcast in which one host interviews a Paxton ally and a Paxton critic. The Paxton ally should state their demands, why they're making those demands, and their reactions to the outcomes of the violence. The Paxton critic should state their critique, why they think the Paxton ally is wrong, and their reaction to the Paxton violence. Like any good judge, the interviewer should remain skeptical and ask many thoughtful questions.
  
  Steps
  1. Read the assigned primary sources.
  2. Create an outline of what a Paxton critic and ally would say and how an impartial host would respond.
  3. Record your podcast with a computer or smartphone audio recording application. For example, Voice Recorder & Audio Editor (iOS) or Voice Recorder (Android) are free downloads. Your recordings should be 5-10 min.
  4. Submit your podcast via Google Drive.
  
  Secondary Source
  • Pontiac's War and the Paxton Boys
  
  Primary Sources
  • A Declaration and Remonstrance
  • Franklin and the Quakers
  • The German Bleeds and Bears Ye Furs

  
  Download a printable version of this assignment sheet.

  Download a printable version of the grading rubric.

• 1 2016-09-17T08:53:08-07:00 Moravians 2 Scott Paul Gordon image_header 2016-11-07T05:34:31-08:00 In February 1764 the Paxton Boys marched on Philadelphia with the intention of murdering the Native American converts to the Moravian faith whom provincial authorities had gathered there. But the frontiersmen’s ambitions extended beyond the elimination of Christian Indians. The men returning from Germantown told Moravians in Hebron (now Lebanon, Lancaster County) that “they had killed all the Indians, five Quakers, and two Moravians in Philadelphia, and as proof, showed them the blood on their clothing” (Heisey 51). This report, though false, echoed threats that the Paxton Boys had made for months against white Moravians.
  
  Fresh from their slaughter at the Lancaster workhouse on December 27, 1763, the Paxton Boys rode to Lititz, a Moravian village eight miles north of Lancaster. There the riders shouted “God damn you, Moravians” and fired off a “volley of shots” before they left. Lititz’s minister, Matthäus Hehl, warned authorities in Bethlehem, the center of Moravian activity in Pennsylvania, that “the Paxtown group is evilly disposed towards Bethlehem.” He urged leaders to “be prepared and armed in prayer.” In early 1764, an old man, “one of the rebel leaders, whose grandson had been with the last expedition,” promised that “not one stone should remain upon another in Bethlehem” (Heisey 51). Bethlehem’s leader Nathaniel Seidel reported that “evil attacks against Bethlehem were in the works, and [rumors] say the nest that so long had the Indians by it must be totally destroyed” (Engel 185).
  
  The Moravian church was one of the eighteenth century’s most successful evangelical protestant groups. Thirty years after the church’s renewal in Germany in 1727, it had established mission stations in Europe, the Caribbean islands, Africa, Greenland, and across colonial America from Georgia to New York. At these mission stations, Moravian couples ministered to a community of Native Americans who had converted to Christianity or, in the West Indies, to a congregation of enslaved people. Moravians also established settlement towns such as Bethlehem and Lititz, places where only Moravians lived. In such places, Native Americans were considered spiritual equals. They lived, worked, worshiped, and were buried alongside white Moravians.
  
  In embracing Native Americans as equals, Moravians inspired the Paxton Boys’ suspicion and enmity. But the Paxton Boys leveled a more specific and explosive charge. Moravian Indians, they contended, had participated in raids against frontier settlements in Northampton County. (The one Moravian Indian, Renatus, who was sent from Philadelphia to Easton to stand trial for an October 1763 attack on a farmer named Stinton, was acquitted of these charges in summer 1764 and returned to Province Island.) The Declaration and Remonstrance claimed to have “Proof” that the “Moravian Indians were in confederacy with our open Enemies,” and a late February 1764 manuscript petition from Lancaster County residents broadened that accusation. That petition indicted “the Moravians at Bethlehem”—not just “Moravian Indians”—for “Corresponding with and … Supplying the Indians our Enemies with ammunition, and giving them Intelligence during [the] last war and this war.” “Bosom Enemies,” the petition added ominously, “are most dangerous.” The petition left no doubt that these German Moravians belonged in that category when it asked for “Satisfaction” against them.
  
  The manuscript petition did not specify how they might achieve that “Satisfaction” against Moravians. But the many threats issued by the Paxton Boys indicated what they envisioned. The Paxton Boys promised that the killings at Conestoga Manor and at the Lancaster workhouse were a prelude to violence yet to occur at Lititz, at Bethlehem, and at Hebron. The blood that they shed at each site advanced their vision of a secure Pennsylvania, ethnically cleansed of Indians—and of any group, including Moravians, with whom they allied.
  
  For more about Scott Paul Gordon, visit the Creators page.
  
  Further Reading
  • Katherine Carté Engel, Religion and Profit: Moravians in Early America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009).
  • Scott Paul Gordon, “The Paxton Boys and the Moravians: Terror and Faith in the Pennsylvania Backcountry,” The Journal of Moravian History 14, no. 2 (2014): 119-52.
  • John W. Heisey, ed., “Extracts from the Diary of the Moravian Pastors of the Hebron Church, Lebanon, 1755–1814,” Pennsylvania History 34, no. 1 (1967): 44-63.
• 1 2017-04-12T14:31:02-07:00 Podcasting the Paxton Boys 2 Montgomery Wolf image_header 2017-04-12T14:38:51-07:00 In this assignment, you will work in small groups to create a podcast of a “talk show” in which a host interviews members of the Paxton Boys. Each group will need to assign one host and one or two (depending on the size of your group) Paxton boys.
  • Step One: Write the script. Submit your script using Dropbox.
  • Step Two: Record a three- to five-minute podcast. Submit your podcast using Dropbox.
  
  Step One
  Using information from the textbook, lectures, and primary sources available in Digital Paxton, write a script in which a host interviews members of the Paxton Boys. Envision the setting as a radio or television talk show in which the interviewees want to convey their demands, what led to their demands, and their reactions to the outcomes. The host wants the guest to convey their opinions, but s/he may want, in the tradition of hard-hitting journalism, to expose flaws in their reasoning or to make connections to larger events.
  
  Step Two
  Edit your script and record a podcast using Spreaker. You may consult my Spreaker walkthrough for assistance.
   

  Skill Type	Historical Thinking Skill
  I. Chronological Reasoning	1. Historical Causation
  	2. Patterns of Continuity and Change over Time
  	3. Periodization
  II. Comparison and Contextualization	4. Comparison
  	5. Contextualization
  III. Crafting Historical Arguments from Historical Evidence	6. Historical Argumentation
  	7. Appropriate Use of Relevant Historical Evidence
  IV. Historical Interpretation and Synthesis	8. Interpretation
  	9. Synthesis

  Download a printable version of this assignment.

• 1 2017-03-29T06:10:49-07:00 Paxton Defense 1 plain 2017-03-29T06:10:49-07:00 Between February and March 1764, Paxton leaders and sympathizers crafted a defense of the massacre that appealed to prejudices against Philadelphia Quakers and fears of further frontier violence.

  Matthew Smith, Declaration and Remonstrance (Philadelphia, 1764).

  In exchange for disbanding at Germantown, Paxton leaders secured the right to broadcast their grievances in Declaration and Remonstrance. Their representative, Matthew Smith, read the essay as early as February 15, just a week after the marchers arrived in Germantown. Though written in haste, Smith’s grievances galvanized sympathizers who distrusted the friendly relations of Quaker and Susquehannock, and suspected that leaders intentionally withheld support from backcountry settlers. The syntactical repetition of “falsely pretended Friends” (the Susquehannock) and “falsely pretended Indian Friends” (Quakers) served to conflate Friendly Indian with Indian Friend.

  Anonymous, Apology of the Paxton Volunteers (Philadelphia, 1764).

  This unpublished, anonymous manuscript added visceral depictions of frontier warfare to Smith’s account. In place of native carnage (as in Franklin’s Narrative), the volunteers describe the mangled bodies of backcountry settlers. Whereas Declaration advocated for changes in settlement policies, Apology sought the vindication of the Paxtons.

  Thomas Barton, The Conduct of the Paxton Men (Philadelphia, 1764).

  Conduct marks a turning point in the pamphlet war. While the pro-Paxton pamphlet was originally published anonymously, it has since been attributed to Thomas Barton, an Anglican missionary from Lancaster. Barton synthesizes the apologist strategies of Declaration and Apology and provides a forceful response to Franklin’s Narrative. The pamphlet disparaged the reputation of the native victims, justified the conduct of the Paxton Boys using gratuitous scenes of frontier violence, and assailed the motives and pacifist principles of Quaker Assembly members.