Digital Paxton
While historians are well-acquainted with the Paxton Boys' riots (1763), the ensuing crisis of governance—litigated through print and waged by preeminent colonists such as Ben Franklin—has largely escaped the scrutiny of literary historians. Charging apologists of speaking against the Quakers to effect “malice and party-spirit or nonsense,” Philalethes advises, “Whatever factions may arise, and however loud the Drummers of faction may sound their noisy alarms; however they may attempt to drown the voice of reason and truth by their clamor; let the Friends of Pennsylvania lay aside the animosities which have been raised and maintained by the wicked and weak” (15). Others, like Thomas Barton, argue that while the Paxton massacres are troubling, the settlers’ precarious predicament arises from longstanding indifference of “City Quakers” (3). David James Dove goes so far to suggest that pacifist Friends have no business governing in warring times. “It is an inexpressible Absurdity,” writes Dove, “that a warlike People should be governed by Persons of Quaker Principles, and especially in Time of War” (9). In sum, pamphleteers use the approval and censure of the Paxtons to stake claims about colonial authority, settlement practices, and Pennsylvania governance.
Logistical barriers to access obscure that debate. The corpus itself is somewhat amorphous: John Raine Dunbar supplies twenty-eight pamphlets in The Paxton Papers (1957), whereas Alison Gilbert Olson identifies sixty-three and ten cartoons in “The Pamphlet War Over the Paxton Boys” (1999). The ambiguous distinction between pamphlets and political cartoons can also make it difficult to locate resources. Online access to pamphlets is largely ad hoc. Several pamphlets are available via the Internet Archive, and many more or searchable via Readex Early American Imprints. However, in both instances, readers must identify specific pamphlets to retrieve results, and, in the case of Readex, they will need to affiliate with an institution that has purchased access rights to the Evans series (Series I: Evans, 1639-1800). Finally, search-based discovery siloes pamphlets. That is, where pamphlets are available, it can be difficult to discern derivation (who responds to whom) and authorship (which writers employ which pseudonyms). This mode of access denies readers a sense of the contingency, exchange, and interplay of Paxton critics and apologists.
The Digital Paxton will aggregate, annotate, and contextualize pamphlets and political cartoons published throughout 1764 and housed at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and the Library Company. Unlike Dunbar’s book, the Digital Paxton will grow to accommodate pamphlets as they are identified and digitized. Moreover, the project will foreground the latest historiography via contextual contributions from leading Paxton historians. In addition to capturing the text of pamphlets, the Digital Paxton will enable readers to access scanned images of pamphlets, cartoons, and ephemera. Finally, whereas Dunbar’s rare text is inaccessible to many researchers, the Digital Paxton will be freely accessible to visitors of HSP’s Digital History Projects.
Visit the Updates page for a rolling timeline of announcements and updates related to the Digital Paxton.
