Volume 2, Chapter 14, The Paxton Boys
Hardly had the war ended when internal trouble as well as trouble with the Indians erupted
in Pennsylvania. It must be pointed out that the Quakers reaped the reward of their past
policy. Even the frontier Quakers were left untouched by the rampaging Indians. In the
midst of border fighting with Indians, a group of over fifty Scotch-Irish frontiersmen from
From Paxton, in Lancaster County, suddenly decided to take a leaf from the book of seventeenth-century
Massachusetts and Virginia, and to massacre peaceful and friendly Indians.
A tiny group of some twenty peaceful Conestoga Indians, seven men and the rest women and
children, had long been settled in the county.
It was easier for the brave lads to butcher these few Indians than to battle their enemies
On December 14, 1763, the Paxton Boys, led by Matthew Smith and Lazarus Stewart, slaughtered
and scalped eight of the defenseless Conestogus.
Their only excuse was a vague suspicion that they might have been aiding the enemy.
Governor John Penn asked for their arrest.
In reply, the Paxton boys murdered the remaining Indians who had vainly been placed in jail
to guard their safety.
Not content with this outrage, the Paxton boys marched on Philadelphia in pursuit of
some peaceful, neutral, and Christian Moravian Indians who had gone there.
The poor Moravians had been set upon several months before by a band of Scotsmen, and several
men and women had been murdered.
When the murderers were in their turn ambushed and killed, the entire Moravian Indian community
was blamed, and the Ulster Scots decided to annihilate these Indians.
The terrified Indians fled to the Moravian town of Nazareth, but the Assembly decided
to disarm them and move them finally and forcibly to Philadelphia.
The one hundred and forty-odd Indians were, for their pains, jeered and cursed at every
At Philadelphia, soldiers successfully defied the governor's orders and refused to admit the Indians to the barracks.
Finally, almost lynched by a mob, but protected by a cordon of Quakers, the Indians found a camp near the city.
The Moravian Indians were shipped to New York by the frightened Philadelphians, but the governors of New York and New Jersey
But the governors of New York and New Jersey ordered the refugees out of their provinces,
and the hapless Indians were forced to return once again to Philadelphia.
Now marching several hundred strong, the Paxton boys thundered that they would slaughter not
only all the Moravian Indians, but also any Quakers who might stand in their path.
Under such provocation, the Quakers of Germantown rose up in arms to block the invaders' way.
and Formed Volunteer Militia, again under Franklin's aegis.
Certainly the situation was enough to stretch absolute pacifism to the breaking point.
While the Indians were successfully defended, after several days on the brink of conflict,
Franklin was treating the Paxton boys rather as citizens to be forgiven,
with grievances to be pondered, than as murderers.
Furthermore, Governor Penn and the Council added to the climate of official complicity
by placing a bounty on Indian scalps.
The Paxton boys disbanded and left for home after unchecked terrorization and plundering
of the citizens of Philadelphia.
As for the Moravian Indians, they were forced to remain for a year in the Philadelphia barracks
while negotiations were being completed.
There a third of the Indians died from smallpox before they could finally return home.
Following the march of the Paxton boys, there ensued a furious pamphlet war between the
two sides.
The Ulster Scots blamed Quaker pacifism for the colony's troubles with the Indians, while
the pro-Quaker writers noted that the peace policy with the Indians had succeeded for
One significant point of grievance, unrelated to the Indian affairs, was raised in the Declaration of Grievances, submitted to the government by two leaders of the Paxton Boys, Matthew Smith and James Gibson.
This point, heading the list of grievances, was the under-representation in the Pennsylvania
Assembly of the frontier counties relative to the older areas nearer Philadelphia.
In a democracy, the natural inherent tendency is to over-represent older areas and under-represent
the new, unless there is, as in colonial Massachusetts, a built-in method for enlarging representation
for the New Areas, and then the older areas naturally wish to maintain their advantage
and explosive sectional conflict can ensue unless the apportionment is swiftly adjusted
to the new pattern of population.
This tendency had been born out in Pennsylvania.
The five Western frontier counties, Lancaster, York, Berks, Northampton and Cumberland, had
But an allotted representation of little more than one-third that of the eastern areas,
Philadelphia City, Philadelphia County, Chester and Bucks, whereas the representation according
to the number of eligible voters should have been about equal.
To a large extent, moreover, this meant over-representation of Quakers and under-representation of the
Scotch-Irish.
The Eastern counties had no intention of relinquishing their domination of Pennsylvania politics.
One Quaker leader remarked with horror that the frontiersman's demands would enable them
to return a majority of the Presbyterian friends for representatives.
One of the Scott pamphlets summed up the Eastern reaction as the resentment of men who see
and their darling power endangered.
As the pamphlet agitation mounted, Philadelphia was again threatened with another Paxton-style
invasion, and many Philadelphians were beaten up when traveling through western counties.
Two more events or trends of significance in early 18th century Pennsylvania may here
be mentioned.
One was the withering away, as in Massachusetts, of mercantilist attempts to confer monopoly
privileges on artisans of Philadelphia. While there had been attempts around the turn of
the century to restrict competition by law in these trades, enforcement of the regulations
broke down as the century progressed.
The second important event was the final settlement of a long-standing boundary dispute stemming
from charter conflicts between Pennsylvania and Maryland.
After repeated aggressive attempts by Maryland to acquire Pennsylvania territory, the Crown
finally decided in favor of Pennsylvania in 1750, with the Pens also keeping proprietorship
of Delaware against Maryland claims.
The Boundary Line was surveyed and finally completed by Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon
in 1767 and ratified by the Crown two years afterward.