“For the Security and Protection of the Community:” the Frontier and the Makings of Pennsylvanian Constitutionalism
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“FOR THE SECURITY AND PROTECTION OF THE COMMUNITY:” THE FRONTIER AND THE MAKINGS OF PENNSYLVANIAN CONSTITUTIONALISM DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Nathan Ross Kozuskanich, M.A. * * * * * The Ohio State University 2005 Dissertation Committee: Approved by Professor Saul Cornell, Adviser Professor John Brooke __________________________________ Professor Margaret Newell Adviser History Graduate Program ABSTRACT Although we know a great deal about the social and political history of Pennsylvania, we know surprisingly little about its first state constitution. Admittedly, the Pennsylvania constitution was acknowledged to be an anomaly by some leading figures within the Founding generation. Still, Pennsylvania saw one of the most important experiments in constitution-making in the Anglo-American world and effected one of the true revolutions in American history. One cannot grasp the radicalism of 1776 without making sense of the coming of the Revolution in Pennsylvania and its peoples’ bold experiment in constitutional government. This dissertation unites a top down and bottom up approach to constitutional history and offers a comprehensive understanding of the 1776 Pennsylvania constitution. For the Security and Protection of the Community places the constitution within the context of the latter half of the eighteenth century and sees it as a continuation of trends begun in the French and Indian War, not as an anomaly of the Revolutionary era. The men who wrote the constitution understood civil society in Lockean terms, namely that its sole purpose was to protect life, liberty, and estate, but these ideas were adapted to the realities of colonial life on the frontier. Since, as Locke argued, the power to preserve natural rights had been placed “into the hands of the community,” every member of that community needed to participate in its defense. ii Indeed, any man whose life, liberty, and estate were protected by civil society was required to contribute to that safety. It was this vision that became reality in 1776. iii Dedicated to Andrea, Ross, and Blair iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to thank my advisers, Saul Cornell and John Brooke, for reading drafts, offering advice (as their title suggests), writing letters of recommendation, and answering the hundreds of emails I sent over the last five(ish) years. I thank Margaret Newell for offering two writing seminars and providing me with invaluable input for several of the chapters herein. Many thanks to Doug Palmer, Matt Masur, Alison Efford, John Maass, and Dave Dzurec for participating in dissertation reading groups and offering quality feedback. I am indebted to the people and institutions that saw enough value in my research to offer me fellowships: Jim Greene of The Library Company of Philadelphia, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, and Richard Ryerson of the David Library of the American Revolution. I am also grateful to the Department of History, the Graduate School, and the College of Humanities at OSU for the internal summer funding that made it possible to transform archival research into actual chapters. I would especially like to thank the Graduate School for awarding me a Presidential Fellowship that allowed me to finish my dissertation. Lastly, I thank Andrea, who left the Great White North and all its glory to become a Buckeye. v VITA 2 July 1975 ……………………………….... Born – Warren, Ohio 1998 ………………………………………...B.A. History, Queen’s University, Canada 2000 ……………………………………….. M.A. History, Queen’s University, Canada 2000 – present ……………………………... Graduate Teaching Associate, The Ohio State University PUBLICATIONS Research Publication 1. “Who Ever Proclaimed War With Part of a Nation, and Not With the Whole?:” The Paxton Riots and Perceptions of Civil Society in Pennsylvania” in The Journal of Scotch-Irish Studies 2 (Fall 2004), 45-63. 2. Review of Theda Perdue, “Mixed Blood” Indians: Racial Construction in the Early South in Southern Historian 25 (Spring 2004), 106-107. 3. Review of Thomas Goebel, A Government by the People: Direct Democracy in America, 1890-1940 in Southern Historian 24 (Spring 2003), 107-108. 4. “Five Civilized Tribes,” in Stanley I. Kutler et al, eds. Dictionary of American History. Third edition. vol. 3. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2002. 5. Review of Edward J. Cashin, William Bartram and the American Revolution on the Southern Frontier in Southern Historian 22 (Spring 2001), 87-88. 6. Review of Mary Kemp Davis, Nat Turner Before the Bar of Judgment: Fictional Treatments of the Southampton Slave Insurrection in Southern Historian 21 (Spring 2000), 71-72. vi 7. Review of Wilma A. Dunaway, The First American Frontier: Transition to Capitalism in Southern Appalachia, 1700-1860 in Southern Historian 20 (Spring 1999), 63-65. FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: History vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract …………………………………………………………………………………...ii Dedication ………………………………………………………………………………..iv Acknowledgments ..……………………………………………………………………….v Vita ……………………………………………………………………………………….vi List of Maps ……………………………………………………………………………...ix Chapters: 1. Introduction ……………………………………………………………………….2 2. “Let Men be Good, and the Government Cannot be Bad:” Defense, Safety, and Responsible Government in Early Pennsylvania ………………………………..19 3. Challenging the “Fools” of the Assembly: The Case of Judge William Moore of Chester County …………………………………………………………………..70 4. “Who Ever Proclaimed War With Part of a Nation, and Not With the Whole?:” The Paxton Riots and Perceptions of Civil Society in Pennsylvania …………..103 5. “Violent Parties, and Cruel Animosities:” The Election of 1764 ……………...147 6. “Falling Under the Domination Totally of Presbyterians:” The Stamp Act and Townshend Duties ……………………………………………………………..188 7. The Centinel: Laying the Groundwork for Pennsylvania’s Revolution ……….232 8. “Gone to the State House Yard to Help Consult and Regulate the Forming of a Militia:” Associators and the Early 1770s………………………….…………..271 9. “Intimate Connections, References and Mutual Dependencies:” Civil Society, Natural Rights and the Drafting of the 1776 Constitution ……………………..311 10. Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………..367 Bibliography …………………………………………………………………………...371 viii LIST OF MAPS Map Page 1 Pennsylvania up to the Revolution ……………………………………………….1 ix 1 Map 1. Pennsylvania up to the Revolution CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION “We live in the age of political experiments,” John Adams wrote to his wife from Philadelphia in October 1776, “among many that will fail some, I hope will succeed.”1 One of the experiments Adams was certain would fail was Pennsylvania’s recently drafted state constitution, the most democratic document of its day and the most radical effort to recast constitutional ideals in the Revolutionary era. Despite Adams’ pessimism, understanding the people, events, and contexts that shaped the 1776 Pennsylvania constitution is crucial to our historical comprehension of the Revolutionary period. And yet, Pennsylvania constitutionalism has received relatively little scholarly attention since the 1930s, its significance often lost or subsumed by the genius of James Madison and the federal constitution. Although we now know a great deal about the social and political history of Pennsylvania, we know surprisingly little about its first state constitution. Our understanding of this document has been shaped on one hand by Adams’ pessimism, and on the other by Tom Paine’s radicalism.2 Admittedly, the Pennsylvania constitution was 1 John Adams to Abigail Adams, 4 October 1776 [electronic edition], Adams Family Papers: An Electronic Archive, Massachusetts Historical Society, http://www.masshist.org/digitaladams. 2 One of the most influential books on Paine’s influence on the Revolution is Eric Foner’s Tom Paine and Revolutionary America (New York, 1976). 2 acknowledged to be an anomaly by some leading figures within the Founding generation, and Adams mourned that under the new constitution Pennsylvania would be “rendered much less vigorous in the cause, by the wretched ideas of government, which prevail, in the minds of many people.”3 Indeed, controversy over the constitution dogged its history from the outset, and within a generation Pennsylvanians had revised the 1776 document. Still, Pennsylvania saw one of the most important experiments in constitution-making in the Anglo-American world and effected one of the true revolutions in American history. The story of how the constitution came to be begins not with Paine’s arrival or the convening of the Continental Congress, but in the violence of the mid-eighteenth century Pennsylvania frontier. One cannot grasp the radicalism of 1776, or make sense of the coming of the Revolution in Pennsylvania and its peoples’ bold experiment in constitutional government, without first understanding the 1750s. * * * * * * This dissertation unites a top down and bottom up approach to constitutional history and offers a comprehensive understanding of the 1776 Pennsylvania constitution. For the Security and Protection of the Community places the constitution within the context of the latter half of the eighteenth century and sees it as a continuation of trends begun in the French and Indian War, not as an anomaly of the Revolutionary era. Crucial to this endeavor is understanding not just Pennsylvania’s political culture, but also the constitutional problems that the men who drafted the document hoped to solve. When 3 John Adams to Abigail