Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies

quakers and the american revolution

“The Revolutionary movement,” explains Sydney V. James, “brought new attacks on Quakerism and . . . almost invariably gave anguish to Friends.”⁶ This “anguish” derived largely from the difficulties Quakers faced when trying to maintain their commitment to pacifist principles while the rest of the country was at war. Quakers believed that “God had directed the establishment of . . . Quaker ‘testimonies’ against war,” and that they must abstain not only from participating in violent, war-like behavior themselves, but also from providing any kind of support that could enable the violence to continue.⁷ They believed that a fundamental part of belonging to the Society of Friends meant being a pacifist and, as James explains, “pacifists could not comply with the new demands for taxes and militia service.”⁸ Further, as historian Robert F. Oaks points out in his article on challenges the Society of Friends faced during the Revolutionary period, Quakers also adopted the [End Page 30] “annoying and potentially damaging habit” of refusing to accept the new Continental currency, believing that the currency was “‘emitted for the purpose of war.”⁹

The outbreak of the American Revolution thus forced Quakers, many of whom were actively involved in their communities and local governments, to decide between adjusting their religious, pacifist principles to accommodate the circumstances of the time, or completely refusing to compromise, thereby incurring the distrust of their Patriot neighbors and risking even more drastic consequences. In the end, just as they had during the French and Indian War, the vast majority of Quakers in Pennsylvania refused to compromise their principles during the American Revolution. This set the stage for the public and the Revolutionary government to level suspicion- and resentment-fueled accusations against Quakers in the years to come.¹⁰

The Quakers’ troubled relationship with the Patriot movement began as early as the Stamp Act crisis in 1765, when they started to believe that the movement would inevitably become aggressive or violent. Despite whatever sympathies they may have held with the Revolutionary movement and its followers, Quakers were forced to condemn the more belligerent threats and actions beginning to be associated with it. “On principle,” James explains of the Quakers, “they condoned resistance to government only when that resistance was conscientious and passive.”¹¹ This belief reflected not only Quaker commitment to pacifism, but also a related obligation they felt they had to follow the government God had chosen to lead over them. The Society of Friends held this stance throughout the Revolutionary period, but adhering to it became increasingly more complicated for them as the Revolutionary movement escalated into an all-out war for independence these beliefs prompted a decade later.

In February 1777 Quakers gathered at the Society of Friends’ Yearly Meeting of Sufferings in Philadelphia to compose and publish an epistle that the Continental Congress later described as “seditious” and used as evidence against the Exiles.¹² It acknowledged the great difficulty and anguish that the Revolutionary movement had brought to the Society of Friends, explaining how pressure from their neighbors and, in the case of some Quakers, personal desire to assist in the war effort resulted in great temptation to depart from the community. Despite these challenges, the epistle went on to admonish Quakers to remain steadfastly dedicated to their religious principles no matter the consequences. The document also condemned the “arbitrary injunctions and ordinances of men, who assume to themselves the [End Page 31] power of compelling others, either in person or by other assistance, to join in carrying on the war . . . by imposing tests not warranted by the precepts of Christ, or the laws of the happy constitution, under which we and others long enjoyed tranquility and peace.”¹³

In this manner, the authors asserted that the Revolutionary government’s attempts to force Quakers to participate in or otherwise support the war, such as new laws requiring oaths of loyalty or attempts by the Continental Army to commandeer supplies or equipment from Quakers, were not condoned by the principles of liberty they still believed in. Specifically, they claimed that the government’s actions did not comply with Pennsylvania’s “happy constitution,” or William Penn’s 1701 Charter of Privileges, which functioned as the constitution of colonial Pennsylvania until 1776 when the Penn family lost its power. Many Quaker beliefs went into the creation of this charter, and it included a declaration that “no Person or Persons, inhabiting in this Province or Territories, who shall confess and acknowledge One almighty God . . . shall be in any Case compelled to do or suffer any Act or Thing, contrary to their religious Persuasion.”¹⁴ Consequently, the epistle’s authors argued that the Society of Friends could and should “stand fast in [their] liberty” to refuse to abide by laws forcing them to compromise their religious beliefs. “Let not the fear of suffering, either in person or property,” admonished the epistle, “prevail on any to join with any work or preparation for war.”¹⁵

Together with Quakers’ repeated refusals to support the war as the fighting began in earnest in 1775 and continued for the next several years, this epistle provoked a great deal of resentment and distrust from the Patriot leaders. This was particularly acute toward rich and prominent Quakers like Israel Pemberton, known as the “King of the Quakers” for his incredible wealth, status, and influence among the Society of Friends, who could easily have afforded to provide substantial and much-needed support to the Patriot cause.¹⁶ Although the official Quaker stance was as equally against supporting the British war effort as it was against the Patriot effort, many Patriots interpreted Quakers pacifism as veiled loyalism. For instance, John Adams despised and mistrusted the Friends, and fought bitterly with those who sympathized with their pacifist views in the Continental Congress in 1775 and 1776. Adams had wanted Congress to send troops and supplies to his home state of Massachusetts during that time period, but men sympathizing with the Quakers insisted on attempting to reconcile with Great Britain instead.¹⁷ When Adams heard through his work in Congress [End Page 32] about the Quaker Exiles, the charges against them, and their claims that they were neutrals he bitterly remarked of all Quakers: “American Independence has disappointed them, which makes them hate it. Yet the Dastards dare not avow their Hatred to it, it seems.”¹⁸

Unfortunately for them, the Society of Friends’ attempts to strengthen and unify their community in response to the hostility from the Patriots only resulted in a significant degree of internal strife. In Philadelphia, Quaker leaders’ main strategy for increasing unity was through stricter enforcement of religious rules. Given that Israel Pemberton, the most influential among these leaders, was determined to maintain the community’s neutrality and keep “the Society, so far as possible, uncontaminated by the radical demonstrations” of their Patriot neighbors, the stricter enforcement of rules meant that Philadelphia Quakers who indicated even a small degree of support or preference for the Patriot side risked community condemnation or disownment.¹⁹ This more stringent enforcement led not only to fractioning among the Quakers—with a small group of “Free Quakers” eventually breaking off from the Society of Friends to actively support the Revolution—but also to the Patriots charging that the Society “maintained uniformity by evil coercion, and was incompatible with American liberty.”²⁰

accusations against the quaker exiles

By the summer of 1777, therefore, Patriot leaders and supporters already held negative views of the Society of Friends. At this point, suspicion and tension grew even more heightened as the people of Philadelphia became aware that they were “threatened with an immediate invasion from a powerful army.”²¹ The British army began an extensive campaign to capture the capital city of Philadelphia in the early summer of 1777, and by August of that year, the Continental Congress and the government of Pennsylvania knew an invasion was imminent. Philadelphia was an important city for the Patriots both strategically and symbolically, and many in the Continental Army believed that an American victory was almost impossible if the city were lost to the British. Throughout the summer months of 1777, both Congress and the government of Pennsylvania found themselves resorting to drastic measures in an attempt to save the city from British invasion and occupation. At the direction of both government entities, militia leaders made frantic efforts to recruit more men to their ranks; government officials transported valuable [End Page 33] supplies out of the city to more secure locations; and men preparing to fight tore lead pipes from houses to melt down and use for ammunition.²²

In addition to these preparations, the Continental Congress also issued an order to the Revolutionary governments of Delaware and Pennsylvania on August 26, 1777, demanding that those states cause all persons who were “notoriously disaffected, forthwith to be apprehended, disarmed, and secured, till such time as the respective states think they may be released without injury to the common cause.”²³ The government considered “disaffected” persons, that is, persons who had not yet proven their loyalty to the Patriot cause, dangerous because they believed they may be loyalists in hiding. So this order, motivated largely by concerns expressed by war leaders like George Washington, was primarily intended to provide for the arrest of loyalist spies, and to prevent the British from receiving intelligence or other support from area residents once they invaded.²⁴

The Continental Congress and the nation were in a state of high stress and apprehension when they received a letter from Patriot General John Sullivan that same day. In this letter, Sullivan reported finding a collection of suspicious papers in abandoned luggage on Staten Island. Among these papers was a letter signed by “the British Army” and addressed to “The Spanktown Yearly Meeting of the Society of Friends,” containing a set of questions related to the Continental Army troop movements and plans. The questions appeared as a numbered list:

1. 1. Where is Washington? what number of men or cannon?

2. 2. Where is Sterling? what number of men or cannon?

3. 3. Where is Sullivan? &c.

4. 4. Where is Dayton and Ogden? what number?

5. 5. Whether there by any troops passing or repassing?

6. 6. Intelligence from Albany.

7. 7. Intelligence from Philadelphia.

8. 8. Be very particular about time and place.²⁵

Attached to this letter was a response addressed to “the British Army” containing vague answers to several of the questions in the first letter, this time signed by the “Spanktown Yearly Meeting.”²⁶ Already predisposed to be suspicious of Quakers, the Continental Congress hastily interpreted these papers as proof that a substantial number of Quakers were conspiring to pass intelligence on to the British. Congress did not take the time to verify the [End Page 34] authenticity of the papers, even though several elements of them such as the fact that the letters were unsubtly signed “the British Army,” together with the fact that no one in Congress had heard of the Spanktown Yearly Meeting and many Quakers and non-Quakers alike insisted the meeting did not exist, suggested that the papers could be forgeries.

Instead of taking the time to verify the papers, Congress immediately referred them and General Sullivan’s report to a congressional “committee of three” comprised of John Adams, William Duer, and Richard Henry Lee, tasking the committee to read the papers and decide what should be done in response to them. The committee revealed its recommendations to Congress two days later on August 28, 1777, writing:

The several testimonies which have been published . . . and the uniform tenor of the conduct and conversation of a number of considerable wealth, who profess themselves to belong to the Society of people commonly called Quakers, render it certain and notorious that those persons are with much rancor and bitterness disaffected to the American cause. That as these persons will have it in their power, so there is no doubt it will be their inclination, to communicate intelligence to the enemy.²⁷

Further, despite the fact that there was no proven or obviously implied connection between these documents and its authors, the committee connected the Spanktown letter to the epistle published at the Yearly Meeting of Sufferings at Philadelphia in February 1777, calling the latter a “seditious publication.”²⁸ Using the Spanktown letters together with the epistle as evidence, as if they were obviously authored by the same persons, the report concluded:

That as the seditious paper aforesaid originated in the city of Philadelphia, and as the persons whose names are under mentioned have uniformly manifested a disposition highly inimical to the cause of America, therefore . . . Resolved, That it be earnestly recommended to the Supreme Executive Council of the State of Pennsylvania, forthwith apprehend and secure the persons of Joshua Fisher, Abel James, James Pemberton, Henry Drinker, Israel Pemberton, John Pemberton, John James, Samuel Pleasants, Thomas Wharton, Sen., Thomas Fisher (son of Joshua), and Samuel R. Fisher

(son of Joshua).²⁹ [End Page 35]

The full set of names appeared in neither the Spanktown letters nor the epistle, and Congress never explained how it chose these specific persons to be arrested in any of its records. Only John Pemberton could be directly tied to either document, since he signed the epistle in his capacity as the clerk for the Yearly Meeting. The other persons listed were not directly tied to the documents, but they were all widely known to be leaders in the Philadelphia Quaker community who, like Israel Pemberton, were committed to maintaining neutrality in the war and staunchly refused to lend their support to the Patriot side. Many of them were also prosperous merchants, making their refusal to help the Revolutionary cause even more egregious in the Patriots’ eyes. This suggests the committee selected these men for arrest not because the committee members possessed specific evidence against each man individually, but because the men happened to be the most well-known and wealthy members of the Philadelphia Quaker community, against the entirety of which the committee and Congress already held strong suspicions.³⁰ As John Adams wrote to his wife about his work on the committee: “We have been obliged to attempt to humble the Pride of some Jesuits who call themselves Quakers, but who love Money and Land better than Liberty or Religion. The Hypocrites are endeavoring to raise the Cry of Persecution . . . but they cant succeed.”³¹

The Continental Congress quickly decided to carry out the recommendations of the committee, and they charged the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania—the executive arm of Pennsylvania government, which coordinated with Congress and other states to deal with the day-to-day tasks of running the war in Pennsylvania—to arrest the Quakers whom the committee had selected.³² Further strengthening the hypothesis that these men were chosen for arrest based more on their status as leaders within the staunchly neutral Philadelphia Friends community rather than any specific evidence against them, Congress recommended the council arrest not only the Quakers specifically listed in their order, but also “all persons, as well among the people called Quakers as others, who have in their general conduct and conversation evidenced a disposition inimical to the cause of America.”³³ In this manner, Congress targeted Quakers in Pennsylvania for arrest, but called upon the idea of “the cause of America,” or the cause of American liberty and independence, in order to justify doing so.

The Supreme Executive Council followed Congress’s recommendations, ordering the arrest of not only those eleven men in Congress’s list on September 1, 1777, but also of thirty other men not originally listed. These [End Page 36] additional men were selected for arrest after several individuals trusted by the government were invited to meet with the council and assist in “forming out a list of persons dangerous to the state, who ought to be arrested.”³⁴ Similar to the thinking of the committee and to Congress, the council justified its actions against these men by calling on the idea of the American cause of liberty and saying their words and dispositions endangered that cause. As the council wrote in the arrest order, “Such persons are deemed inimical to the cause of American liberty.”³⁵

After being arrested during the first few days of September, the men were all confined at the Philadelphia Mason’s Lodge. On September 3 Congress acknowledged hearing about the arrests, recording from the council’s report, “the Council have taken up several persons inimically disposed towards the American States.”³⁶ Congress also noted the council’s particular concern about its prisoners, recording the council’s belief that “few of the Quakers among these are willing to make any promise of any kind.”³⁷ Given Congress’s distrust of the Quakers, they wanted these prisoners removed from the state and “secured at some place remote from the army of the enemy” so they would be unable to pass intelligence to the British or assist them in any other way.³⁸ In accordance with this goal, Congress decided to send the prisoners to Virginia, since that state was well outside the main theater of war in 1777 and its residents were known to be particularly zealous Patriots. On September 3 Congress issued a decree: “Congress approve[s] of the Quaker prisoners being sent to Virginia . . . with regard to the other prisoners mentioned in their letter, Congress leave it to the Supreme Executive Council, to do with them as they in their wisdom shall think best.”³⁹ In this manner, Congress and the council agreed to single out the Quaker prisoners as particularly suspicious and dangerous, and Congress indicated its own indifference as to the fate of other prisoners who were accused of the same charge.

On September 5 the council issued an order that “such persons now confined in the Lodge, as shall take an oath or affirmation of allegiance to this State, shall be thereupon discharged.”⁴⁰ This oath was required for release of all the prisoners in the Lodge, not just the Quakers, and similar oaths were frequently required of people for various reasons throughout the Revolutionary War. The Quakers among the prisoners in the lodge still protested that this order was designed to target them, however, because swearing oaths of allegiance, which the Quaker community called “tests,” was well known to be against their beliefs. The Quaker prisoners argued that requiring the oath could not possibly serve any legitimate purpose, and instead must [End Page 37] have been designed to justify keeping them imprisoned while allowing others to go free. “How will the public be secured by our taking either of the tests you have proposed?” they asked, making the point that an oath of allegiance would not actually protect the public or their cause, since a true loyalist spy could simply lie in order to be released.⁴¹ “That men of bad principles will submit to any tests to cover their dangerous and wicked purposes,” they continued, “is evident to all who have been conversant in public affairs.”⁴²

As a result of this order, nineteen of the men being held at the Mason’s Lodge were released, leaving a group of twenty-two Quakers confined at the lodge alone. In the first few days of their confinement, they attempted to obtain their release through traditional legal means by requesting a hearing. On September 4, the Supreme Executive Council acknowledged receiving the Quaker group’s request. “As freemen,” the council recorded in its minutes, “they claimed the right of being heard in their defense before the council.”⁴³ The council denied the hearing, however, answering the request by writing, “The Council has ordered this arrest in consequence of a recommendation of Congress, and they do not, at present, think proper to hear [them].”⁴⁴ When the Quakers then sent a remonstrance to Congress immediately thereafter, Congress responded on September 6 by resolving, “That it be recommended to the Supreme Executive Council of the State of Pennsylvania to hear what the said remonstrants can allege, to remove the suspicions of their being disaffected or dangerous to the United States.”⁴⁵ Clearly, Congress and the council were in disagreement or at least confused about which government body had authority over the group at the lodge and which body was responsible for holding a trial.

Congress’s recommendation should have sorted out at least some of this confusion by making it clear that they considered the council responsible for holding a hearing. Instead of working with Congress to dispel the confusion by complying with their recommendation, however, the council repeated their refusal to hold a hearing, claiming, “The Council has not time to attend to that business, in present alarming crisis.”⁴⁶ Given how adamantly they refused to hold the hearing, the council’s deference to Congress on the matter of the Quaker prisoners cannot be attributed to confusion over jurisdiction alone. The council was also reluctant or unable to hold a hearing, whether they thought they had authority or not. The council wanted to keep the Quaker prisoners under arrest for a multiplicity of reasons, including their particular distrust of Quakers, and their heightened fear of British spies in the face of imminent invasion. But the lack of reliable evidence against the [End Page 38] imprisoned group, together with the valuable time and money a hearing would require, made the council unwilling to hold one.

Given the council’s refusal to hold a hearing, Congress was forced to attempt to dispose of the matter themselves, writing on September 8: “It would be improper for Congress to enter into any hearing of the remonstrants . . . therefore, as the Council declines giving them a hearing, for the reasons assigned in their letter to Congress, that it be recommended to the said Council to order the immediate departure of such of the said prisoners . . . to Staunton, in Virginia.”⁴⁷ With this recommendation, Congress purposefully avoided taking responsibility for the Quaker prisoners’ arrest and banishment themselves, while also recommending their removal to Virginia as a means of getting them out of the way without releasing them or granting their right to hearing. Thus, on September 8, 1777, the council agreed to Congress’s final recommendation and ordered that the Quaker prisoners “be, without further delay, removed to Staunton, in Virginia.”⁴⁸

The Revolutionary government justified these unusual decisions regarding the Exiles by focusing on the danger the Exiles supposedly presented to the cause of American liberty and independence. For instance, when defending its order that the Exiles be removed to Virginia, the council used their refusal to swear an oath of loyalty to the Patriot cause to claim that the Exiles had “refused to promise to refrain from corresponding with the Enemy,”⁴⁹ making their refusal to swear the oath sound much more suspicious and dangerous to the Patriot cause. Further, the council declared:

As persons who have uniformly manifested by their general conduct and conversation a Disposition highly inimical to the cause of America . . . [they] do thereby renounce all the privileges of Citizenship, and that it appears they consider themselves as subjects of the King of Great Britain, the Enemy of this, and the other United States of America, and that they ought to be proceeded with accordingly.⁵⁰

This presentation of the Exiles and their characters enabled the council, with support from Congress, to justify suspending the Habeas Corpus Act on the day they were informed that the Quakers had obtained writs of habeas corpus. This act guaranteed that a prisoner could, through obtaining such a writ from a judge, demand that the official imprisoning him or her bring the prisoner before a court. At court, the prisoner could then argue for release by asserting that the imprisonment was illegal or unjustified. When the council [End Page 39] suspended the Habeas Corpus Act, the Quaker prisoners lost their right to demand this court hearing, and they were left with no legal recourse for what they viewed as their illegal and unjust imprisonment.⁵¹

This decision was highly controversial even among some staunch supporters of the Revolution. The Habeas Corpus Act was viewed as a fundamental safeguard of liberty and an essential protection against the kind of tyranny and arbitrary execution of law that Patriots so greatly feared, so many were shocked when the council chose to suspend the act. The Chief Justice of Pennsylvania and outspoken advocate of the Patriot cause, Thomas McKean, for instance, expressed alarm and distress over the decision to suspend the act. McKean was the judge who, despite his support of the Patriot cause, had allowed writs of habeas corpus to be drawn up for the twenty Quaker prisoners in the Free Mason’s Lodge. Upon hearing of the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, he immediately wrote to John Adams that he had been “informed that some of the Members of Congress are dissatisfied with my allowing writs of habeas corpus for twenty persons confined in the Freemasons Lodge in Philadelphia.”⁵² He went on to express his surprise over their dissatisfaction, and his dismay over habeas corpus being suspended, writing, “The habeas corpus Act forms a part of the Code of the Pennsylvania Laws, and has been always justly esteemed the palladium of liberty. . . I am anxious . . . that you will be so kind on proper occasions to explain this matter.”⁵³

Despite McKean’s letter and any other such expressions of distress that Congress or the council may have received, however, the council demonstrated its extreme determination to avoid offering the prisoners a hearing by proceeding with the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act. As a result, the Quakers’ writs of habeas corpus were invalidated, and no obstruction to them being removed to Virginia remained. Thus, on September 11, 1777, the twenty-two Quaker prisoners were removed from the Mason’s Lodge to begin their journey to Virginia. ⁵⁴ As the Quaker prisoners—now the Quaker Exiles—later recorded in their diary, they were “compelled, some by actual force, and some by force being admitted, to take seats in a number of wagons, and were driven through the city . . . a spectacle to the people.”⁵⁵

On the same day the Quakers were removed from the city, the Continental Army met the British army in battle on the Brandywine Creek near Chadds Ford. The fighting was close enough to Philadelphia that firing could be heard from the city, and rumors quickly spread that the Continental Army was outnumbered and outmatched. By midnight [End Page 40] the same day, the Continental Army had been badly beaten and forced to retreat. In the days that followed, the city was scoured to remove any useful supplies that remained, and the council and Congress fled the city along with thousands of others. After some maneuvers and relatively minor encounters with the Continental Army, the British army marched into Philadelphia unopposed on September 26, successfully taking over the city despite all the American government’s attempts to prevent them from doing so.⁵⁶

the exiles protest their imprisonment

The refusal of both the Congress and the council to recognize the Quaker Exiles’ right to a hearing forced them to resort to other, nontraditional means in order to obtain their release. Unfortunately for the Exiles, however, few other means existed. Besides continuing to request a hearing from the government, their only other options were to enlist the help of a powerful official to help them, or to attempt to sway public opinion in their favor. They had pursued the former option by writing to the council and Congress early after their arrest, hoping to sway members of those government bodies directly. When this strategy did not produce a prompt response, however, the Exiles decided they needed to resort to a different strategy. Thus, despite the Revolutionary public’s longstanding distrust of the Society of Friends, they decided they must turn to the court of public opinion to appeal for their release.

To accomplish this, the Exiles published written arguments in a variety of press mediums, such as newspapers, broadsides, published letters, and pamphlets, in order to reach as wide an audience as possible. Community leader Israel Pemberton led the publishing efforts, and paid Philadelphia publisher Robert Bell to print the work, help distribute them, and have other newspapers reprint them. This began almost as soon as the Exiles were arrested, with their works growing in vehemence and outrage as they were repeatedly denied a hearing and their writs of habeas corpus were eventually ignored. All of the works they published before their exile were compiled and published in a fifty-two-page pamphlet entitled An Address to the Inhabitants of Pennsylvania. Israel Pemberton and others brought many of these pamphlets along with them to Virginia to distribute along the way. They attempted to continue publishing works while they were in exile, but their productivity was limited because their mail was closely monitored by their guards. They [End Page 41] were usually only able to send additional works to be published when they convinced visitors to personally deliver mail for them. As they remained in exile, however, their earlier works became more widely distributed, resulting in increased public attention to their case even as they were unable to frequently publish additional works.⁵⁷

The Quaker Exiles also carefully and strategically planned their argument in these publications. Instead of emphasizing their religious right to refuse to swear oaths of allegiance in these publications, which they knew would not be persuasive to a largely non-Quaker audience, the Exiles chose to argue that the Revolutionary government’s decision to ignore their rights and liberties went against everything the Patriot cause supposedly stood for. They asserted that their plight called the Patriot leadership’s own commitment to the “cause of American liberty” into question, and thereby should worry and concern all American citizens who professed themselves to be on the side of liberty rather than tyranny.

As many historians of the American Revolution have discussed, the “cause of American liberty” being referred to by Congress, the council, and the Exiles themselves was a complex, multifaceted concept. Although these historians usually agree about the general content of this Revolutionary rhetoric, they often disagree over the precise origins of the ideology that drove it. Clinton Rossiter and Daniel J. Boorstin, for example, argue that Revolutionary ideology grew more out of America’s unique colonial experiences and popular will than out of European or American intellectual traditions, leading to an emphasis on liberty and rights in that ideology. Scholars like Caroline Robbins advance the opposite perspective, placing emphasis on the centrality of English philosophers and political thinkers—and the importance they accorded to the concepts of liberty and rights—to the development of Revolutionary ideology. Finally, historians like Bernard Bailyn and Gordon Wood argue that Revolutionary ideology grew out of a true blend of English radical Whig political thought, philosophical sources, and the influence of the American experience.⁵⁸

Despite these differences of opinion on what factors served as the most influential origins of Revolutionary ideology and rhetoric, however, these scholars agree that Revolutionary ideology was influenced by multiple sources. Together, these sources came together and comprised a mix of ideas emphasizing the importance of liberty, rights, freedom from tyranny, and the nonarbitrary execution of law. As Bailyn explains, “The ideology of the [End Page 42] American Revolution was a blend of ideas and beliefs . . . focused on the effort to free the individual from the oppressive misuse of power, from the tyranny of the state.”⁵⁹

To maximize the effectiveness of their protests, therefore, the Quaker Exiles, many of whom were former politicians and local leaders who were intimately familiar with Revolutionary rhetoric, called upon this specific blend of ideas in order to strengthen their claim that the Revolutionary government was violating its own ideological commitment to preserving liberty by abusing its power. The Exiles were not the first, of course, to publicly point out contradictions between the Revolutionary government’s promises about liberty and its actions. Many Englishmen and American Loyalists in order to discredit the Patriot cause also accused the new American government of hypocrisy. British author Samuel Johnson, for example, pointed to Americans’ particular dedication to maintaining slavery as a prime example of the new nation’s hypocrisy, writing: “How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?”⁶⁰

In other words, such authors pointed to the Revolutionary government’s hypocrisy in political works aimed at discrediting the American government and the Patriot cause. Unlike these authors, however, the Quaker Exiles did not employ this strategy as a means of achieving political ends. Instead, they were one of the first groups to point out the contradictions between the Revolutionary government’s rhetoric and its actions as a legal defense strategy. Rather than simply refuting the specific accusations against them and allowing their legal case to be an issue that played out between just themselves and the American government, the Quaker Exiles used the Revolutionary rhetoric of liberty to broadcast their case as something relevant to all inhabitants of America, all with the goal of eventually achieving their own release.

The Exiles demonstrated their intention to appeal to Revolutionary ideals from the very beginning with their most widely published work, the pamphlet An Address to the Inhabitants of Pennsylvania, originally published in Philadelphia, but then reprinted a few months later in New York, London, Dublin, and various other cities in America.⁶¹ The pamphlet opens with a quote about liberty from Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu and better known simply as Montesquieu, an Age of Enlightenment political thinker whose works were commonly cited in Revolutionary literature, and whom Bernard Bailyn and Caroline Robbins [End Page 43] assert was highly influential in shaping the Patriots’ unique conception of liberty.⁶² The Exiles chose to quote the following passage from Montesquieu’s Spirit of Laws:

The political Liberty of the Subject, is a tranquillity of Mind arising from the Opinion of each Person has of his safety. In Order to have this Liberty, it is requisite that the Government be so constituted as one Man need not be afraid of another. When the Legislative and Executive Powers are united in the same Person, or in the same Body of Magistrates, there can be no Liberty; because Apprehensions may arise, lest the same Monarch or Senate should enact Tyrannical Laws to execute them in a Tyrannical Manner.⁶³

The Exiles used this quote to imply that Congress and the council were assuming too much power for themselves by making all the decisions in their case, rather than referring it to the courts. Further, they suggested that Congress and the council were using their unchecked power to make arbitrary, tyrannical decisions, and that their level of power presented a threat to the liberty of all men as a result. With this quote, therefore, the Exiles immediately established their situation as one intimately related to the concepts of liberty and tyranny in Revolutionary America, and they framed their argument in terms that would appeal to those who believed in the ideals of the Revolution.

The Exiles continued their appeal to Revolutionary ideals by asserting their claim to certain “natural” and unquestionable rights, and focused on stressing their right to a hearing, proclaiming, “Natural justice, equally with law, declares that the party accused should know what he is to answer to, and have an opportunity of showing his innocence.”⁶⁴ Given these principles of natural justice, the Exiles continued, “We therefore claim our undoubted right as freemen, having just sense of the inestimable value of religious and civil liberty, to be heard, before we are confined in the manner directed.”⁶⁵ Pointing out how this natural right to a hearing had been ratified in Revolutionary Pennsylvania’s Constitution of 1776, the Exiles reminded the public of how the Patriot leaders they supported had promised to uphold the very same right that Congress and the council were currently denying them.⁶⁶ Finally, they emphasized how the Revolutionary government’s current refusal to allow them a hearing was hypocritical, given Patriot leaders’ use of the same concept of “natural rights” to justify their objections to British rule. [End Page 44] “We would remind you,” the Exiles wrote in a widely published letter to the council, “of the complaints urged by numbers of yourselves against the Parliament of Great Britain, for condemning the town of Boston unheard, and we call upon you to reconcile your present conduct with your then professions, or your repeated declarations in favour of general liberty.”⁶⁷

Further, this framing of the Exiles’ plight as one that concerned all citizens of the new United States not only called upon the fear most Patriots held of their liberties being taken away, but also allowed them to portray their protests as being motivated by feelings of love and duty to their country, rather than just a simple desire to be released. As they wrote in a published letter to Congress, “By our love to our country . . . [we] are bound to remonstrate against your arbitrary, unjust, and cruel treatment of us, our characters and families, and against the course of proceeding you have chosen and prescribed; by which the liberty, property, and character of every freeman in America is or may be endangered.”⁶⁸ This argument allowed the Exiles to portray themselves as virtuous, concerned citizens, rather than the dangerous criminals the government accused them of being. It also cast their situation as one that pitted the people and true Patriots of America against the Revolutionary government in a fight over the people’s rights and liberties, and it placed the Exiles firmly on the side of the people in that fight. As the Exiles proclaimed, speaking of the Revolutionary government’s handling of their case: “[Our case] is the cause of every inhabitant, and may, if permitted to pass into a precedent, establish a system of arbitrary power, unknown but in the Inquisition, or the despotic courts of the East.”⁶⁹

Finally, their arguments emphasized the stark contradictions between the Revolutionary leaders’ promises and their “arbitrary,” “tyrannical” actions. As the Exiles publicly wrote to the council, “From the professions you have repeatedly made of your love of liberty and justice, and the manner in which we have demanded our undoubted rights, we had reason to expect to have heard from you . . . but we find we were mistaken, and the complaints of injured freemen still remain unanswered.”⁷⁰ Further, the Exiles claimed that the council’s refusal to recognize their right to be heard, particularly when that right was ratified and protected by the Constitution of Pennsylvania, was tyrannical and hypocritical, given how Patriot leaders heralded such constitutions as offering superior protections of liberty than the British were willing to guarantee. “If, regardless of every sacred obligation by which men are bound to each other in society, and of that constitution by which you profess to govern, which you have so loudly magnified for the free spirit it [End Page 45] breathes,” the Exiles wrote again to the council, “you are still determined to proceed, be the appeal to the righteous Judge of all the earth, for the integrity of our hearts, and the unparalleled tyranny of your measures.”⁷¹

Therefore, throughout their published protests, the Quaker Exiles purposefully appealed to the Revolutionary ideals that American leaders promoted in their own rhetoric. They used those ideals not only to demonstrate how their own natural rights were being violated, but also to accuse Congress and the council of exercising arbitrary power in a tyrannical manner. They also claimed that for these reasons, their situation set a dangerous example for how the new government could treat all freemen, making their situation of concern to all American citizens. And finally, they emphasized how the Revolutionary government’s actions were hypocritical, given the Revolutionary leaders’ ideological promises about liberty and rights, and their frequent use of that ideology to justify overthrowing the British government. The Exiles’ protests, therefore, constituted a powerful appeal to the American public not only to support their release, but also to hold the Revolutionary government accountable for their arbitrary, duplicitous actions, for the sake of the rights and liberties of all American citizens.

public and government response to the exiles’ protests

The Exiles wrote open letters, protests, and remonstrances that were published, republished, or summarized in newspaper articles and broadsides in multiple cities, including Philadelphia, New York, Boston, New Haven, and Providence.⁷² According to Israel Pemberton’s biographer, Theodore Thayer, the group also hired a new publisher to translate their pamphlet An Address to the Inhabitants of Pennsylvania and republish it in German, in the hopes of gaining the sympathy of the large German population in Pennsylvania.⁷³ Given how widely their writings were distributed, the Exiles’ protests must have reached a fairly large audience.

Despite how widely the material was published, however, it is difficult today to find direct evidence of the American public’s reaction. Members of the general public published no newspaper articles or pamphlets reacting to the Exiles’ case that survive today, at least in English. Thus, either the American public did not take notice of or discuss the Exiles’ case at all, or they took notice of it and discussed it in ways that are largely invisible to historians today, like through gossip and rumor spread almost exclusively [End Page 46] through word of mouth. The lack of direct evidence of the public’s reaction to the Exiles’ case does not necessarily mean that the public did not have a reaction to it at all.⁷⁴

In fact, given the government documents that survive in the Pennsylvania Archives and the Papers of the Continental Congress, it is clear that some portion of the American public did notice the Quaker Exiles’ case and get upset about it, and that this portion was significant enough to catch Congress and the council’s attention. In their records for the winter of 1777–78, both government bodies took note of receiving multiple groups of petitioners seeking the Exiles’ release. In January 1778, for instance, Congress reported receiving a petition from six non-Quaker men demanding the release of the “Quaker men currently banished in Virginia.”⁷⁵ Similarly, the council also acknowledged receiving a petition in February 1778 from a different group of men, all of them belonging to the Society of Friends. This latter group of petitioners submitted a written protest, proclaiming that they “strongly desire[d]” that the council and Congress either release the Exiles or at least agree to grant them their right to a hearing.⁷⁶

The council and Congress initially responded to these petitioners by postponing consideration of the problem or denying responsibility for the Exiles’ fate. The council usually responded to public opposition by claiming that the Exiles were under the authority of Congress and, thus, the council could not be held accountable for their continued confinement. For instance, when the aforementioned petitioners met with the council in February 1778, the council records informing them, “The Arrest of said Prisoners, and their removal to Virginia, was at the request and under the direction of Congress, before whom that matter presently lies; That as to the other matters contained therein, they are not any of them contained within the power or authority of the Council.”⁷⁷ Congress, on the other hand, responded by asserting that the Exiles were prisoners of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Though there may have been real confusion between the council and Congress over which government body had authority over the Exiles, both bodies undeniably took advantage of this confusion by using it as an excuse to avoid responsibility and blame for the Exiles’ imprisonment in late 1777 and early 1778, as the members of the public began to openly oppose it.

Government records reveal that Congress and the council grew increasingly worried about the public’s perception of the Exiles’ case as time passed in 1778. They began to believe that their treatment of the Exiles was making the American government look bad, even to those who normally supported [End Page 47] the Patriot cause. As the council wrote a letter to Congress on March 7, 1778, “The dangerous example which their longer continuance in banishment may afford on future occasions, has already given uneasiness to some good friends to the independency of these states.”⁷⁸ The council believed that normally dependable Patriot supporters were growing “uneasy” because they were being influenced by the Exiles’ argument that their case presented a threat to the liberties of everyone else. The government started to fear that their handling of the Quaker Exiles’ case was upsetting the public enough that the Patriot cause would lose support. As a result of this fear, the council explained in that same letter that they now believed keeping the Quakers Exiles in Virginia was more dangerous than allowing them to return home, even though Philadelphia was still occupied by the British army. As the council explained in its letter, “Affairs of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania are so circumstanced as to admit the return of the prisoners sent from that State into Virginia, without danger to the commonwealth, or to the common cause of America.”⁷⁹

Indicating that they shared the same fears, Congress discussed the council’s letter at length when they met on March 10. In that meeting, the congressional delegates took special note of the council’s assertion that the Quakers’ case set a “dangerous example” that was giving “uneasiness” even to loyal supporters of the Patriot cause, singling out that line in the council’s letter to be quoted verbatim in the meeting’s minutes.⁸⁰ Clearly, both Congress and the council were particularly concerned about the bad impression this case was giving to the Patriot public, and they worried it was driving some Patriots to rethink their dedication to the American cause. Congress’s concern about the Patriot public’s opinion of the Exile case must have been great because, after considering the council’s letter for six additional days, Congress ordered the Board of War to allow the Quakers to return home to Philadelphia on March 16, 1778.⁸¹ In the end, by Congress and the council’s calculations the danger presented by the public’s opinion of the Quakers’ case overrode the danger presented by allowing the Quakers to return home to a city occupied by the enemy, even though both government bodies had worked so hard to exile the prisoners in the first place because they so strongly desired to keep Quakers away from the British army.

The Quakers’ case forced the government of the United States to grapple, for one of the first times in its young history, with the challenge of balancing the ideal of liberty against the need to govern effectively and imprison potentially dangerous citizens. The government’s decision to [End Page 48] release the Exiles constituted an affirmation of its commitments to the principles of liberty, since it chose to do so despite the potentially negative and dangerous consequences. It was only through the Exiles’ use of the Revolutionary leadership’s own unique rhetoric of liberty, however, that the government was forced to come down on the side of liberty in this balancing act.

conclusion

The Exiles finally returned to Philadelphia on April 30, 1778, after almost eight months of imprisonment that included seven months of banishment in Virginia. Upon their entrance to the city, they found a large crowd gathered in the streets to welcome them back and to witness the spectacle of their release and return. As Elizabeth Drinker wrote upon her arrival in the city with her husband, “We set off after 8 o’clock . . . [and] were wellcom’d by many before, and on our entrence into the City. . . . We have had such a number of our Friends to see us this day, that it is not in my power to enumerate them.”⁸² The Exiles made a triumphant return to their home city, having succeeded not only in regaining their own liberty, but also in forcing the new United States government to remember and reaffirm its commitment to the Revolutionary ideal of liberty.

A few weeks later, on June 18, 1778, the British army evacuated Philadelphia after almost nine months of occupation and moved on to consolidate with the British forces in New York. Just fifteen minutes later, the cavalry troop of the United States’ Continental Army entered, and the city was quietly reoccupied by American forces. Throughout the rest of the war, Philadelphia remained firmly in Patriot hands, and the Exiles and other Philadelphia Quakers were forced to live under American authority again.⁸³ The Quaker community also continued to encounter similar problems and difficulties as they had before the Exiles’ arrest, but their situation did change and improve. The Exiles were still regarded with suspicion by many of their Patriot neighbors, and some of them, like Henry Drinker and Samuel Fischer, were arrested on various charges again.⁸⁴ Given the public outrage the Exiles’ protests had provoked, however, the Revolutionary government was more careful about respecting the rights of the Quakers in general, and the council even went so far as to exempt Quakers from the Test Act that required oaths of loyalty from Pennsylvanians. Further, these government policy changes, [End Page 49] together with the death of Israel Pemberton and thus the loss of his influence over the Philadelphia Quaker community, gradually led Quakers to be more open to the Revolutionary movement. As Sydney V. James explains, “Soon after the return of the exiles, the exemption of Quakers from the Test Act, and the death of Israel Pemberton (1779), the meeting for Sufferings began to speak in words which indicated that it accepted the Revolutionary government.”⁸⁵ Over time, the Quakers’ acceptance of this government, together with their engagement in benevolent war relief efforts, helped diminish the distrust directed at them by their fellow Americans.⁸⁶

Even more significantly the Revolutionary ideology and rhetoric of liberty employed by the Exiles and Patriots alike in 1777 and 1778 continued to be pervasive and influential in American society and politics. Several central tenets of this ideology were painstakingly considered in the process of composing and ratifying the Constitution over ten years later when the new government was carefully structured with its powers divided and balanced between branches in order to prevent the exercise of arbitrary power and protect the liberties of the people.⁸⁷ Of course, the Exiles cannot be credited with the perpetuation of this ideology on their own. Undeniably, however, instances like theirs that called upon the public’s belief in this ideology and forced the government’s leaders to reaffirm their commitment to it collectively played an important role not only in making this ideology pivotal to the course of the American Revolution, but also in making it central to American life and politics. Most significantly, they helped establish this Revolutionary rhetoric of liberty as a powerful tool that groups facing prejudice and being denied rights could use to demand that things change and that their rights be recognized. It allowed such groups to frame their struggle as one of concern to “every inhabitant,” rather than one that concerned members of that group alone. Therefore, whether or not the Revolution’s leaders were compelled more by the Exiles’ use of this rhetoric or the public pressure exerted on them as a result of their successful publishing campaign is moot. The Exiles’ development of this strategy as a successful means of arguing one’s case in America is significant on its own. [End Page 50]