Effects of Pennsylvania’s Post 1755 Western Expansion on its Policy System; Land Development, the Vandalia Fiasco, and Rough and Tumble Inter-Provincial Competition in Western PA

A Context for the Reader

In our Virginia chapter, we discovered that Virginia by the time of the American Revolution had evolved into “two Virginias”: the core eastern counties settled as early as 1607, and the relatively new or young western (Shenandoah Valley) counties, settled by newly arrived German and Scots Irish. As we now know, these new settlers came to Virginia by way of Philadelphia and New Castle Pennsylvania. These new immigrants-chain migrants were in both instances settled outside the eastern core county’s evolved policy system, with its oligarch-elite political culture. Virginia’s core policy system coped with the challenges of integrating these newcomers–nd their political cultures–into their policy system, the principal goal of which was not to disturb the hegemony of the plantation elite, while creating a source of revenue for stressed plantation economics. They did so by suppressing the vote of the newcomers, principally through malapportionment of western counties, and the insertion of plantation elites by means of succession (sons and daughters got estates), or estate homes for the elites themselves. The structural mechanism Virginia used was the privately-owned and managed land development company, which by the infusion of publicly granted land became in essence quasi-government instruments. They also for the most part adopted a favorable climate for immigrant homesteading, low taxes and land rents with considerable autonomy for the Germans. Scots Irish, more mobile and renter prone, were more or less left to their own devices.

Pennsylvania’s core policy system, unlike Virginia’s was at war with itself. To be sure Virginia domestic elites and its royal governor enjoyed a tension-filled relationship, but Virginia’s royal governors had found a partial solution: go native. That solution would wear very thin after the Stamp Act (1765), but governor-legislative relationships were largely workable, and despite some generational change evident in the Enlightenment period, the Tidewater political elite was reasonably cohesive and shared a common economic base. Not so Pennsylvania, of course. Its diverse economy, the development of an exceedingly large urban community with a vibrant port and global trade coexisting with homestead and plantation agriculture, of itself created a fractured policy agenda and contributed to much more complex policy system.

The problem for Pennsylvania western settlement, however, was that western settlement had been the preserve, more or less, of the Proprietary which was the sovereign for the colony, and which held in its title all unsold land (i.e. mostly western land by this time). The Propriety controlled city/town building,  the individual land sale process, and through its justices of the peace, held a disproportionate sway over a good deal of local policy-making. Whatever its power status in Philadelphia, in the west the Proprietary was a powerful actor. The legislature, a late-comer to western settlement policy had since 1748 been incrementally inserting itself into western settlement affairs. This insertion, however, until 1755 aftermath had been checked by the heavy duty involvement of the pious Quakers in the matter of Indian relationships  and the requirement for formal negotiated cession or land sale with the Native Americans. Overall this had checked the Penn Proprietary in the early years, but had deteriorated by 1737 to the point that the Proprietary was dominant and had embraced a policy of negotiating, not with resident tribes, but with the Iroquois their supposed hegemonic masters.

Perhaps worse, the structure of the Penn Proprietary was inherently faulty, and almost from its start had degenerated into a legislative-Proprietary civil war, which never was resolved. We have spent many a module providing proof how basic political structures and institutions had defied consensus, and that the dominant political culture (not shared by the Proprietary by the 1750’s) included a third rail (war-pacifism-self-defense) that among other features, was not likely to be sustainable in western, trans-Allegheny settlement. The transformation with the Quaker Party, and within the Quaker elite, after Braddock’s 1754 defeat, finally deactivated that problem. Still the civil war between Proprietary and Legislature was now more intense than ever, and after 1755 was being fought over in London as well as within the Legislature.

Pennsylvania faced the same basic problem as Virginia: western settlement meant immigrant inflow that was beyond the control of the core eastern and southern three counties. The combination of sub-regional German/Scots Irish  political cultures that haunted Virginia’s core Tidewater oligopoly, haunted the polarized eastern Pennsylvania core. By the 1740’s Pennsylvania’s core eastern counties had been dealing with immigrants for twenty years. Despite periodic disruptions, both immigrant groups had settled in clusters, with Germans more prevalent. Scots Irish in the core counties tended to be indentured, or laborers in Philadelphia; Germans were primarily landed householders in hinterland settings, but a vibrant and successful German entrepreneurs had broken into and established a noticeable presence in the Philadelphia merchant and shopkeeper sectors. But the key reality was that by the 1740-1750, Quakers were a minority in the core counties and Philadelphia,, and were fast becoming minority in the new counties admitted before 1760. They were a very weak minority in the western counties.

In the course of those two decades, the Quaker Party incorporated the eastern resident Germans into their electoral coalition, adjusted to the withdrawal of pious Quakers, and greatly reshaped its oligopolistic elite in the Assembly. The German vote was critical to the Quaker Party victory over the Proprietorship in Northampton County in 1757 and 1758 and that meant opposition to the Penn Proprietorship. Somewhat by default by default, Scots Irish drifted toward the Proprietorship but that loose, almost informal alliance exerted minimum impact on the eastern core counties, but extraordinary impact on the western hinterland counties. By the end of the French and Indian War, 1783, with the frontier and trans-Appalachian potentially opening up to relatively safe settlement, the dominance of the east in the overall Pennsylvania policy system was stressed, but not threatened. What was most apparent in the post-war was the two sub-regions had separate policy agendas, and the continued strength of the eastern core representatives in the Assembly inhibited western success for its priorities in the Assembly. One example of this disparity is the fate of Indian trade legislation in the Assembly during the war.

Obviously a regulated Indian trade bill would provide both opportunity for economic growth, urbanization, and most important a path favorable to Native Americans, who in return would be presumably more willing to desist from the warpath and contentious neighboring relations. The Assembly had tried to respond with its version of an Indian trade initiative very early in the war. Governor Morris refused to sign the legislation, largely because it (like the paper money income) excluded the Proprietary and the Executive Branch from its administration and receipts. As such Indian trade legislation got caught up with the Assembly determination to manage Pennsylvania affairs, and a plank in its movement to oust the Proprietorship from its sovereign position. As one would expect, as the war progressed, and after the 1758 Treaty of Easton, setting up favorable trade with the resident tribes dovetailed nicely with military stabilization of the frontier, and advocates from the British army advocated on its behalf. They wanted their forts to become certified and subsidized trading posts–forts like Fort Pitt. In 1757, the bill was defeated once again, and another try was made in November of that year, which under pressure from the army a small 1,ooo pound sum was authorized to Fort Augusta to promote Indian trade as a tool to prod the tribes away from the French (and Virginians).

Once again in 1758 a larger Indian trade initiative passed the Assembly, and once again the gubernatorial logjam reappeared. Governor Denny after months of haggling signed legislation that included Assembly rights to name commissioners who were administer the program–providing none were elected officials. Franklin took advantage of this, and secured the appointment of secular Quakers in the merchant community, enhancing his own position, therefore, within the Quaker Party. The 1758 legislation (cleverly named the Indian Trade Act of 1758) established public (provincial) stores (in frontier locations) which would sell goods to Indians at reasonable (set/regulated) prices–setting a floor for pricing of private transactions with the Indians. Sale of liquor was prohibited. Franklin, who by this time was in England, discovered the London Board of Trade was uncomfortable with this de facto state monopoly, and through shrewd arguments was able to convince them such trade was to their advantage as well as Pennsylvania’s. Accordingly, by 1759, Pennsylvania had set up a provincial government program to trade with Native Americans–this is, of course, a forerunner of a series of future post-Revolutionary War initiatives. [99]  Theodore Thayer, Pennsylvania Politics and the Growth of Democracy, 1740–1776, pp.60-62.

In the late 1740’s and in the 1750’s and 1760’s, settlement moved west and threatened to cross the Allegheny Mountains toward Pittsburgh and Maryland–contested land, which by 1755 the French and their Indian allies, held what proved to be temporary sway, with chronic attack, settlement massacres that mostly involved, at least mobilized Scots Irish created a western borderland that was in flames. In short, Pennsylvania’s immigrant relationship was not Virginia’s, being considerably more evolved and complex. By 1755, without any doubt, the Germans had wiggled themselves into the fabric of the dominant Quaker Party, and were in a position to exercise some influence on behalf of the ethnic compatriots in the west (balanced, of course, by an unwillingness to be taxed for western defense).

By the early 1750’s Penn’s approach was greatly stressed, and over the 1750’s the pious Quakers reasserted themselves, at first through the Quaker Party and the Legislature, and after 1755 played an independent third party role in Indian negotiations. That further fragmentation of western settlement policy-making, in the midst of the French and Indian War, certainly created confusion, but as we shall find, some opportunity for problem-solving. The three-party (plus two sets of Indian negotiators, a conflicted British colonial policy, and competition from Virginia, and the French, of course) created an unanticipated vacuum into which the two competing western county settler political cultures (Scots Irish and Germans) could inject themselves, other indirectly (the Germans) or in anomic rebellion or support for policy positions more compatible with the Proprietary than with Quakers or the Legislature. If Thomas Hobbes had ever been looking for a case study of his proverbial “war of all against all” this western settlement policy nexus during the late 1750’s and 1760’s would have been it.

 

We won’t even mention the failure to institutionalize debt paper money issuance as a means to finance government activities, including war and western settlement-self defense, had made Pennsylvania government involvement in western policy making a quixotic, volatile, time-consuming stalemate. The stalemate had brought in an independent charismatic political “opportunist-messiah” Benjamin Franklin, who by this point was arguably a dominant power in the Legislature and popular opinion. Franklin’s avowed policy obsession by 1755 was to remove the Penn Proprietary, replace it with a royal governor, and have Pennsylvania settle its western domains. Who was to replace the Penn Proprietary in “managing” western settlement was not on the table at this point.

If the Pennsylvania policy system was not in control of western settlement, a  side feature of the French and Indian War was that not only were the French, but Virginians were also in contention to own or dominate Pennsylvania’s trans-Allegheny. “You ain’t in Virginia now my dear” (or depending if Virginia were successful in its Pennsylvania land claims, “yes you are in Virginia”). What the reader might suspect, in the post-1755 period, with British victory in the 1758 Forbes second expedition, the 800lb. gorilla, the British Colonial Office/Privy Council would have its own ideas on who owned Pennsylvania’s disputed trans-Allegheny land, and that would not be a pleasant surprise for either Pennsylvania nor Virginia.

Overview: Dynamics in Implementing Indian Relations and Land Development Strategies: Effects of a Policy System in Crisis and Emergence of a New Culture

From early 1755 on, Pennsylvania housed elements of one or another British army. The second, formed under the command of General John Forbes arrived in numbers after December 1757.  It was destined to be, by first expedition standards, a huge force: 1,700 British regulars and 6,000 colonial militia. Logistics and supply requirements were immense, and again western settlers were ill-motivated to assist the expedition by selling to the army their wagons and horses. As the army massed, it simply said put, unable to move across mountains and wilderness beyond. The 1758 debt issuance bill struggled through the political process, and again the Legislature capitulated on the Proprietor land tax issue. Almost all of 1755, and 1758 were consumed by military campaigns fought exclusively in Pennsylvania’s Pittsburgh eastern Ohio Valley region. Forbes chose a new route into the wilderness, and used Braddock’s road sparingly–meaning he constructed his own as he went along. Braddock’s route was, he feared, profoundly laced with land speculation schemes of the officers/politicians that supported it. Forbes, chronically ill during the campaign, followed in the army’s rear as it hacked a road  through the autumn of 1758; he died soon after his victory, in Philadelphia in March, 1759 and is buried there at Christ Church. His victory, little noticed in the history books, was positively impacted by the Pennsylvania-Quaker Indian negotiations which commenced in mid-summer 1756 and continued off and on to October 1758, climaxing in the Treaty of Easton.

European, soon to be American, migration into periphery hinterland continued during this tumultous and bloody period. Much of it continued south into other colonies, soon to be states. Pennsylvania was exporting their immigrants to fuel population growth of rival states, in some measure because it couldn’t get its act together policy-wise, and because its location made it ground zero in the French competition for North America. Trans-Allegheny was a political vacuum, a bloody and volatile vacuum. Nobody had proverbial “site control” and as illogical as it sounds, migration in the form of squatters  constantly moved in and inflamed tensions. This meant that Native American lands were still being “seized”, and the bifurcated Iroquois-local tribes distinction, made a choice available to picking either the British or the upstart French who were seriously exerting influence (along with the Spanish in the lower colonies) in Pennsylvania’s northwest frontier (around Pittsburgh). All this, however, did little to deter the formation of new settlements, and a Pennsylvania steady push into its interior. Up to this time the Penn Proprietary had largely managed the western settlement, and that management, what Franklin referred to as its “landlord” function, had largely failed by 1755. Franklin and others had their own idea of how “future” western settlement should proceed–and so did the British Colonial Office. In the elongated two decades that followed 1755

Heretofore, Quaker Indian policy regarding land and land development had kept “a lid” on Indian conflict while Europeans took over and settled into Native American lands. By 1756 that strategy of relatively peaceful western settlement was pretty much over. Indian relations and negotiation we will soon discover gave way to Indian fighting, as Pontiac’s Rebellion greeted the Pennsylvania and British victors in the immediate aftermath of the successful end of the French and Indian War. To the victors belongs the spoils, and that meant more war and seized lands. The period of the war witnessed a radical change in how Pennsylvania settled the western counties, and that too affected its policy system and subsequent state policy system.

The Penns, who were a constant in these negotiations and western land sales on balance were less interested in ameliorating resident Indians demands and insecurity than acquiring as much land as they could from the hegemonic Iroquois, and then selling that land quickly for the best price to immigrant settlers. As any need arose, however, for expenditure of funds for self-defense, infrastructure (forts and roads) and settlement formation, the Penns remained determined to continue as untaxed as possible. Paying any taxes of their unsold inventory of land was their key hot button by 1755, and next was their unwillingness to step to the plate to contribute fiscally toward paying of Indian negotiations, western defense, and infrastructure. As Benjamin Franklin characterized the Proprietary, they were profit-seeking landlords and less a colonial sovereign power.

As discussed, Pennsylvania’s Indian negotiations in the mid-1750’s were not unlike the proverbial Congress of Vienna in 1815. The Legislature in all is Quaker Party glory was represented, as was Thomas Penn and his Proprietary allies, and now added to the list was the pious Quaker and its Quaker-German “Friendly Association for Regaining and Preserving Peace with the Indians by Pacific Measures”. A worthwhile tangent is the Quakers tied in western Germans into their Indian negotiations–and that had favorable implications in German-Quaker Party politics back east. The Penn folk considered the Quaker position and advocacy for the Indians as hostile and opposed to their position–and in the larger context of the ongoing fight in London to remove the Penn Proprietary, they assume the Quakers/Germans had joined that effort.

The war on top of the nearly five year stalemate on paper money, unleashed the wrath of western settlers on their political leaders–the wrath turned into impotence due to the malapportionment of the western counties in the Legislature (at this point the west sent ten representatives to Philadelphia, the eastern counties twenty-six) [99] .https://explorepahistory.com/story.php?storyId=1-9-6&chapter=2. The crisis did engineer a compromise from Thomas Penn who agreed to contribute financially to the defense of the colony–while still disputing any tax on his unsold land. The 1756 compromise empowered Governor Morris, to build a string of forts along the Blue Mountains (the Delaware Water Gap in the Poconos) to the border of Maryland. They didn’t stop resident tribe attacks, and in return these attacks generated a corresponding retaliation from Pennsylvania Europeans on Indian villages and isolated groups. The newly appointed Governor Morris formally declared war on these tribes, placed a bounty on their scalps. That aggressive, obviously non-Quaker compliant policy, activated the pure Quakers and they demand a role in the negotiations from then on.

Their leader, Israel Pemberton demanded Governor Morris send a formal request to a resident tribe, the Delaware, requesting a peace conference. For a variety of reasons Morris was willing to use the Quakers as an intermediary, and not at all convinced the Indians would respond positively so that there appeared to be little downside to the request. The Delaware, however, hard-pressed by the Morris threat of full war against them, and wary that some Iroquois would intervene, sent a delegation to Easton to wait for a hoped for Pennsylvania delegation. Morris negotiators and Pemberton (accompanied by an additional twenty pure Quakers) met with the Delaware. While nothing except a gift exchange came out of the meeting, it was viewed as a good start and another meeting was scheduled for October 1757. By that time the pure Quakers were formally organized into an association whose purposes were to restore Quaker values and practices into Indian negotiations, and were asserting that the deterioration in these relationships had been caused by deviance from them by the Proprietors. [the struggle against the Proprietors was in full fury at that time]. The Delaware leadership recognizing the opportunity to milk a fractured Pennsylvania delegation [Pemberton may have been briefing them] picked up the anti-Proprietor cudgel, and in the middle of the council attacked the proprietorship and the land practices after the Walking Treaty as responsible for the war.

 

Left out of the discussion was the Scots Irish settlers, and their position was closest to the Proprietary. The Quaker Party moderate and pacifistic in tone and whose fiscal conservatism in regards to western expenditures did little to motivate any support from the Scots Irish. Outliers, the Scots Irish hovered over the negotiation process, still raiding Indians, and squatting where they could–keeping alive resident Indians fear of losing more land, and a constant stream of blood feuds and counter reprisals. Franklin, off in London, was of little help, observing in letters that “I do not believe that we shall have a firm peace with the Indians till we have well drubbed them” [99] Joseph E. Illick, Colonial Pennsylvania: a History (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1976), p. 214. It would appear those negotiation campfires were surrounded by not-so-happy campers who had left their marshmallows back home. It also rained a lot.

As the negotiations dragged on, they involved William Johnson and Croghan, with their strong ties to the Iroquois, who used the negotiations to fabricate a restoration of their fractured Confederacy. The inclusion of the Six Nations meant a dual negotiation with Iroquois hegemony and resident Indians, but for the first time the latter was seriously involved in the negotiations. The Association, led by Pemberton, had by this time concluded the primary irritant was the treatment of the resident Pennsylvania tribes, the ones who were displaced by land sales, by the Iroquois and the Penn Proprietary. The Quakers couldn’t do much about the Six Nations, but they could bring Penn and his western allies to heel. The effect was to bring resident tribes into the discussion and negotiations–at the expense of internal division within the Pennsylvania delegations, and Pemberton actually taking over significant element of the negotiations as spokesman for the resident Indian tribes. Suffice it to say this cumbersome and awkward negotiation process came together at Easton PA in October 1758–overlapping with Forbes hacking his way to Fort Duquesne.

The Six Nations were overrepresented, and Johnson and Croghan were also in attendance. Also there were the resident Delaware tribes and their chiefs. An estimated 500 Native Americans representing fourteen tribes were grouped around the Easton campfires. The Pennsylvania delegation included the Governor as well as Norris and others in the Legislature-Quaker Party. The Penn Proprietary were represented by Peters and Penn’s nephew, John Penn. The Treaty, such as it was, did conclude that the Appalachian Mountains would be the boundary beyond which white settlement would not occur–not that anyone could enforce that decision, or intended to. Penn was forced to surrender his 1754 land sales, which he did, which somewhat pacified the resident Delaware whose chief had made a passionate appeal gaining some much needed credibility with his tribe [99] https://thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/easton-treaty  // https://soar.wichita.edu/handle/10057/15339.

There was, if one was patient, on unexpected consequence: after the war, the British Colonial Office took the decision to demarcate the boundary between Indians and western settlers seriously, as it was an important element in the decision to issue the 1763 Proclamation Line. The Treaty, however, did not resolve the dispute between the Iroquois and the resident Delaware and other resident tribes. Nor did it stop western settlement by immigrants, once the Fort had been retaken. More negotiations were to follow, and in 1763 Pontiac’s Rebellion took shape. Still the Treaty did make General Forbes job much easier. As to whether the tribes should ally with the French or English in the soon to be battle of Fort Duquesne, there was no formal decision–but in the immediate aftermath, both resident tribes, and especially the Iroquois, moved to the sidelines and did not come to the aid of the now beleaguered, outnumbered, and very hungry French inside the Fort.

Consequently, the Forbes expedition was quite successful. The French were driven out of Pennsylvania, and Fort Pitt anchored her western periphery area, bringing a measure of stability–at least through to the onslaught of Pontiac’s Rebellion (after 1763). General Forbes is credited with naming the hotly contested fort Fort Pitt in 1758, and that date is accepted today as the initial founding of Pittsburgh. The city developed slowly, although there was much land speculation. Until the Revolution, a bit more than a decade later, it was pretty much a fort and trading post. That changed during the Revolution as western settlement in general took off–more on that latter. By the end of the Revolution (1783) “there were fifty or more houses … and one might guess that there were five hundred inhabitants … [described by one traveler] “was infested by “a Combination of pensioned Scoundrels” [99] Leland D. Baldwin, Pittsburgh: the Story of a City, 1750-1865 (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1937 (1790 edition), p. 104.

Forbes Victory Achieved. the Old Problems Reappear: Pennsylvania Policy-Making Resumes its Old Tricks

The desperate western county situation following Braddock’s defeat begrudgingly forced the Legislature, Thomas Penn and his parade of deputy governors to make compromises in crisis moments. But even in this desperate period, the basic outlines of the old crises (sans Quaker pacifism) never went away. Paper money, who got to spend its interest derived revenue, what was the issuance be spent for, and whether it would be paid for by a land tax from which the Proprietary was not exempted, still were tossed about. Deputy governors still vetoed legislative bills, but at the last moment, often with British soldiers lurking in the governor’s closets, or salaries were finally paid, was a solution found. Usually the Legislature caved, providing an exemption to Penn from the land tax. It soon became evident the initial limited tax of 1755 was a one-time-only–and not a permanent settlement of the land tax. Needless to say, Franklin meeting with Penn at Penn’s home in London did not solve the issue and further incensed Franklin, and widened the chasm between the two. There was no escaping the reality that the paper money/debt issuance/currency nexus was a permanent annual feature that awaited each new legislature and Deputy Governor.

Forbes victory and capture of Fort Pitt reignited western migration, settlement of western counties, and land sales/speculation/squatters. No longer were the Appalachians the barrier they were just a few years previously. Forbes’ road provided access and homesteads followed its course into the interior. Still there was no hiding the devastation among previous homesteads and the accompanying economic depression that his the frontier. In 1759 the Legislature approved a special relief act which authorized the Legislature’s Loan Office to make more and larger loans to displaced homesteaders. The Privy Council, however, once aware of the initiative, declared it as illegal because it was “economically unsound”–shades of Herbert Hoover. So intense was the plight of these western settlers that the Proprietors canceled quitrents in these years, and the Legislature abated any interest on loans previously issued–and they provided a tax abatement as well. The Brits in London also reimbursed Pennsylvania war expenses, freeing up the Legislature’s revenues for these necessary programs and expenses.

By 1762, with the French and Indian War drifting to its conclusion, relations with Native American tribes who supported the English or at least withheld attack on them began to deteriorate. In 1762 Sir William Johnson, the Superintendent of the Colonial Offices North American Indian Affairs, held as legal the infamous, derisive  and humiliating 1737 Walking Land Purchase, a clear message was sent to resident tribes that the British may have spoken falsely and were not going to live up to the promises made in the 1758 Treaty of Easton, and in subsequent iterations of that treaty. The Proprietor, of course, benefited, and Johnson explained his decision in a way to question not the Proprietor, but the Legislature and its Quaker members. By the 1760’s it was clear the French were on the way out, not only from the Ohio Valley but Canada as well, resident tribes, and northern Native American tribes knew they had lost their alternative to the British–that they had better figure out how to deal with them, and whether their promises were sincere. The most critical of these promises was General Amherst’s 1760 commitment to them that the Appalachians would be the boundary beyond which English settlement would not be permitted, and the Native Americans would be in title. He also pledged to eject squatters from these lands–a vital point in that the Indians would not be required to do so themselves, bringing on yet another conflict with the settlers.

The Johnson ruling alerted the Legislature to the reality that in the western counties, and any new lands that the war would bring, the “landlord” Proprietor would potentially receive the lion’s share, and that the differential in power between the Proprietor and the Legislature in western counties and the trans-Appalachian hinterland was going to work to the disadvantage of the eastern county-based Quaker Party and the Assembly majority. That the decision was looked with favor by western settlers, both Scots Irish and German, who had bought this land and now had title to it, further sharpened the contrasting interests of the east and west. It seemed the generosity the Legislature had shown to the western counties and their displaced and depressed homesteaders a year or two back was either forgotten or discounted. It also reminded the Legislature that its traditionally limited role in Indian affairs was further challenged by Johnson and the London Colonial Office who were exerting more influence as British victory became apparent.

In short, by 1763 the Assembly was increasingly more anxious over its interests and authority over its western counties, and conversely the western counties were pressing harder to have their interests and needs served by the Legislature. Given that the Legislature was pressing London to remove the Penn Proprietorship, the Proprietorship did not waste an opportunity to politicize these tensions and unanswered and unsatisfied needs. Having said all this, it was also increasingly apparent that Indian tribes on their border were drifting away from them, becoming more distant, wary, if not hostile. By the time in 1763 that the Treaty was signed, the west had once again become a tinder box, and both frontier resident and eastern powers-that-be were anxious not to create any situation that could bring on war. Terms for trade at the trading posts were relaxed, and laws were passed to discourage trans-Appalachian hunters, and crimes against Indians were considered as Pennsylvania crimes, subject to Pennsylvania punishment. The Legislature approved large sums for gifts to the tribes, and for ransom for those kidnapped during previous raids. But by 1763 all this seem to no avail. Around Pittsburgh in particular, it was ever more clear that trouble was brewing. When in May 1763, it became known the French had surrendered the Ohio Valley and lands east of the Mississippi to the English, the tribes realized a decision point had arrived. In June, along the frontier, a number of raids, followed by surprise attacks on English forts occurred. Pontiac’s War had begun.

Pontiac’s War, Proclamation Line, Paper Money and the Paxton Boys

Pontiac’s War

Whenever historians believe that Pontiac’s War began, as far as Pennsylvania’s official policy system took note of it was in the May-June 1763. It was hard not to take note of the war because in a surprise attack Pontiac and his allied tribes attacked the British fort-line (comprised of fourteen forts in all) along the entire Pennsylvania-New York frontier. Nine forts fell and were taken over with captives by the Indians. Raids commenced and within a matter of months, Pennsylvania’s British commander-in-chief, Col. Henry Bouquet, over 600 settlers were killed. In a masterful understatement, the Pearl Harbor-like attack was then described as a “sudden Interruption” (their capitalization) which caused a “rude shock” and “terrible consternation” [99] Colin Calloway, p. 176. Fort Pitt, the key to Pennsylvania’s trans-Appalachian frontier, held on–but isolated as it was it hung on in as desperate a condition as any Hollywood movie could create. Smallpox broke out, and previous to Lord Amherst’s instructions, its defenders gave Indian peace negotiations blankets taken from the smallpox hospital. Bouquet, in the style of future western movies, assembled a relief force and in colonial, not British manner, pushed his British troops forward, slowly, cautiously in a fashion that demonstrated the British army learned something from Braddock’s defeat.

For the most part, with the major exception of the Seneca, the tribes in revolt were those we have labeled as “resident tribes”–i.e. not Iroquois, and rather the tribes that had been displaced by western settlement. The Seneca’s, it might be added, had broken from the Iroquois Confederation and its Covenant Chain. This should not obscure the magnificent achievement of assembling and sustaining a multi-tribal assault against the strategic positions held by the British army. This was an incredible departure from raiding of isolated settlement and individual travelers. That the attack was well-executed is testified to nine forts being seized. After seizing the forts, raiding commenced along the frontier. In Pennsylvania, there was little in the form of colonial militia at hand, and so Pennsylvania’s trans-Appalachian settlers scrambled and fled as fast as they could back to secure eastern hinterland settlements.

From the Native American perspective, Pontiac’s War was somewhat unique and a departure from previous Indian wars. First and foremost, while Pontiac had for years previous urged an alliance from all this different tribes, Indian military leadership was still tribal, and Pontiac’s chief military contribution was coordinating the surprise attack, i.e. the timing of multiple individual actions. There was no “master plan” but Pontiac’s initial assault of Fort Detroit in April served as the trigger for a series of attacks on forts by other tribes, creating in essence an echelon attack that encompassed the entire British frontier line. Probably the most significant Indian victories were the taking of New York’s Fort Niagara, and the ambush of its relief force in September, 1763 (Devils Hole). Pontiac maintained a siege of Fort Detroit until October, when after he finally realized there would be no help from the French.

From that point on the British were able to recapture lost forts, and with the arrival of newly-recruited colonial militia (Pennsylvania sent an initial militia force of about 700 in the late 1763 summer which secured the fall harvest for many homesteads). Bouquet’s relief force, one of a number of British military expeditions along the frontier, hung on against a combined tribal assault at Bushy Run in August (1763). The hard-fought, desperate battle was won by the British, and little more than a week later, August 21, they relieved Fort Penn. Fort Penn was not the major battle zone, as Pontiac’s initial assault was at Fort Detroit, which was the most critical battle zone of the brief war. The raids continued well into the summer of 1764–with Pennsylvania and Virginia frontiers taking the brunt of the attacks.

In the fall of 1764, separate peace treaties were negotiated with tribes, as the British with colonial militia consolidated their expeditions. Resistance continued until 1765 in the far-west Illinois areas, during which our friend George Croghan laid the groundwork for a final treaty with Pontiac in July 1766. Pontiac’s War in my sincerely humble opinion was not a Native American victory, nor am I comfortable in calling it a military stalemate. While it did foreshadow a more significant future war led  a half century later by Tecumseh, Pontiac’s War did lead to a significant, if temporary, aftereffect: a more sincere British Indian colonial policy that attempted to make the Appalachians the border of Indian-Colonial nations. That policy was anchored by the ill-timed but well-known Proclamation Act of 1763, which because of Pontiac’s Rebellion had little effect or consequence until the frontiers had been stabilized around 1765. The Proclamation Act, while not an economic development initiative, did exert considerable impact on economic development in the American colonies–and from the perspective of the American Revolution, now only a brief decade in the future, the Act was arguably the initial application of a rethought post-French and Indian War British colonial policy that has not received the prominence in causing that Revolution it deserves.

the 1763 Proclamation Act

It was truly a treaty that was global in reach and just as path-breaking (given World War II did not end with a single specific treaty) as the great Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I–and set in motion WWII as did the 1763 Paris Treaty. The Treaty market the beginning of an era that would eventually result in the British Empire of Queen Victoria fame. That is simply known, if known at all today, as the Proclamation Line is testimony to the fate of history in the hands and minds of those who have not lived it. Perhaps a good starting point is that the United Kingdom after October 1760 had a new King: our future adversary, George III. He was twenty-two. The early years of his reign were characterized by considerable political instability and partisanship (Whigs and Torys). By my count there were three prime ministers between October 1760, and the 1765 Stamp Act. The behind-the-scenes maneuvering and the “decentralization” of UK policy-making, outflanked the young king, but provided nothing but autonomy and opportunities for those with access. That Britain won the war was one thing, but that it entered into a strategy to “win the peace” would prove quite another. As we shall later see in other modules, British political and even economic instability continued for a generation.

Officially know as the Royal Proclamation Act of 1763, in America it was called simply the Proclamation Act. From the King’s and Parliament’s perspective it was the first major administrative guide to the New World areas recently ceded to the United Kingdom by the 1763 Treaty of Paris, the treaty which ended the French and Indian War. The Treaty signed in February ceded immense lands held by France and Spain to the UK; such territory included French Canada, a great deal of central North America (much of the land purchased in the Louisiana Purchase), East and West Florida, and importantly the incredible valuable West Indies and French territory taken since 1749 in India. This was truly a landslide of land that gave British policy-makers pause.

Everyone knew this was a game changer, but …. Opportunity, yes! Glory, yes! But complex and expensive, YES. After eight full years of war, Britain wanted a timeout, and it wanted as few problems as possible as it digested its new acquisitions. British Decision-makers had seen it coming. They made key decisions as to demand both the West Indies and Canada, and knew the latter, a settled Catholic French colony, included with it responsibility for managing Indian tribes who were formerly their enemies. A draft of the Act was in place before the Treaty was signed and the policy-making process wasted no time in getting it approved, and then signed by the King.

Franklin (in London) had directly entered into the British debate on what to do in North America. As early as 1759, after the Forbes victory. In 1760 he wrote his “the Interest of Great Britain Considered with Regard to her Colonies, and the Acquisitions of Canada and Guadaloupe“. His core position was that Britain should take possession of Canada, expelling the French from the North American continent–only by doing so would both the Colonies and Britain be secure from French and Indian attack. In Franklin’s mind the removal of the French was closely tied to French proclivity in using the Indians to destabilize and devastate the colonial frontier. It was the French who were behind the massacres and frontier raids. Moreover, if future European wars were to occur, the North American colonies would always be the backdoor by which opponents could compromise British security. The only need for some assistance was to maintain trading posts with the tribes, but the preferred option was to entrust that responsibility to the colonies themselves. No standing army need be required [99] Verner W. Crane, Benjamin Franklin and a Rising People (Library of American Biography, Edited by Oscar Handlin, Little, Brown & Company, 1954), pp. 93-7.

Franklin’s pamphlet generated a response from “a Remarker” who took the opposition position in several key areas. First the standing army in the Colonies would be needed precisely because the removal of the French as a threat would allow for them to assert greater independence from Britain both economically and politically. No matter what Franklin said, the infrastructure and military security of North America would bear expenses and America should share in its own defense. The Remarker feared the Colonies would develop its own manufacturing base and compete with British manufacturers and shipping. Moreover, new immigration could and would increase American population and push America into the interior–causing renewed war with Indian tribes. Franklin issued his counter to the Remarker, by implying the Colonies, with their incessant parochialism and bickering, would never be in a position to compete with Britain, and that increased population was only a new market the British could satisfy [99] Verner W. Crane, Benjamin Franklin and a Rising People (Library of American Biography, Edited by Oscar Handlin, Little, Brown & Company, 1954), pp. 93-7. As to which, Franklin or the Remarker, was more prescient, I will leave to the reader.

Almost from the beginning, however, British decision-makers assumed correctly, the new territory would require a standing British army of size; that it had not maintained such an army in the century they were at war, was not lost on the English colonists who also correctly reasoned the army was meant for them as well as the Native Americans. Half the British army was stationed on the frontier, but the other half was not. Quartering a British army was now on the colonial policy agenda.  And they had no intentions of paying for an army meant to keep them in place. The British in the debate period, felt the need for the standing army lay with the colonial frontiersmen–not with the Native Americans. “White settlers and traders …. aggressively pushed into [Indian reserved lands], and prevented [any] accommodation between British and the Ohio Indians. These “Frontier People” sought not accommodation with the Ohio Indians, but their removal. Compromise never entered their thought, and magnanimity never governed their actions. [Citing General Gage] Frontiersmen were ‘the very dregs of the people’ and ‘lawless banditti’ … a “Sett of People … near as wild as the country they go in, or the People they deal with, & by far more vicious  & wicked’” [R. Douglas Hurt, The Ohio Frontier: Crucible of the Old Northwest, 1720-1830 (Indiana University Press, 1996), p. 55. It would, it seems appear, British decision-makers were under no illusion about the the post-victory trends they potentially faced, and  had no special love for he English emigrants who populated the colonial frontiers.

The Royal Proclamation Act was more than an imaginary line drawn on a map. For North America it declared the French areas as a fourteenth Colony: Quebec, and did the same for its Florida Territory. from London on the fate of future North America. , and it specified an imaginary line which we have metaphorically labeled the Appalachian Mountains, which run from New York through Georgia and border just north of Florida (which remained Spanish). The creation of “Canada” meant from the Thirteen Colonies perspective there now existed within the British colonial structure a rival, a conflicting set of needs and interests with which they had to contend; that list included religion, which by the terms of the Treaty meant Great Britain had to recognize the legality of Catholicism in the New World. To Presbyterian, Baptist and Anglican Protestants this was no small matter–and it opened up a opportunities for expanding our political culture. It also did little to establish a shared identity between Quebec and the thirteen colonies; in the eyes of the latter, the former was now a former political and religious enemy who spoke a different language and who had for a century fueled border wars with North American tribes.

And then there was this imaginary line divided the inhabitants of the colonies, frustrated their economic and personal ambitions, and if anything, intensified their hostility to the Indians, while managing to raise fears of Native Americans for the trust they had placed on the British.

To the Native American tribes, the Treaty and the Proclamation Line was an ambiguous affair at best. Did it mean that sovereignty over these new lands was British? Had the tribes lost their sovereignty over their former lands? Were Native Americans and the lands they held now part of the new British Empire? If so did they “own” or have legal right to these lands? Those questions still haunt modern day Canada. No wonder the threat of a Proclamation Act had partially motivated Pontiac’s War. The Delaware had been promised their share of this land by General Forbes when he took Fort Pitt, and the earlier 1758 Treaty of Easton essentially did the same. Had those promises been broken?

The British took the matter seriously and they made a concerted effort to make the Indians aware they had their interests in mind, that they knew the European settlers possessed ambition to settle in their land. That line they were told was meant to hold them back. The Act prohibited Europeans from buying land, and forbade individual Indians from selling it. Formal approval of the relevant tribe was required, and any sale of land required a permit from the English Indian Department, and that department held the preferential right to match the bid–which it did. All land sales therefore went into Crown possession. All disposition of Crown-owned land was its to make. For the time being there would be no more colonial-issued land grants, and those it had issued in the past were in a limbo, awaiting clarification. All applications for such land grants went no where (including Washington’s Mississippi Company). As such his Proclamation augured for a possible new relationship between Native Americans and the English–which also was not lost on the colonials.

John Stuart [its southern Indian agent] and the governors of the southern colonies met with nearly a thousand Cherokees, Creeks, Catawba’s, Chickasaws, and Choctaws at Augusta Georgia in November, and in the winter Sir William Johnson dispatched runners carrying copies of the document and strings of wampum across Indian country  summoning the tribes to a council. Two thousand Indians representing twenty-four [Native American] nations  from Nova Scotia to the Mississippi, and as far north as Hudson Bay, assembled at Niagara (New York) in the summer of 1764. Johnson read the provisions of the proclamation, and the Indians pledged themselves to peace. Gifts and wampum belts were exchanged to seal the agreement and usher in anew era of alliance equals based on mutual respect and interdependence[99] Colin Calloway, the Indian World of George Washington (Oxford University Press, 2018), p. 182.

Unspoken the 1763 Treaty of Paris, I might add, proclaimed the United Kingdom as the legitimate sovereign of the inhabitants and lawyers in the thirteen colonies, plus Quebec and Florida–and the reality was that included Native Americans as well as the English in the original thirteen colonies. Two decades later, at yet another Treaty of Paris, those very same lands were transferred from the British to the new national government of the United States, the Articles of Confederation, and from there in  1789 (Second) Republic of the United States (our present day government). In the British mind and in its legal system we were all English as far as sovereignty goes.

If so the lands stolen from Indians thereafter, including Andrew Jackson’s land grabs, were no longer sovereign “Indian” lands; any legal ownership of these lands had been forfeited by the 1763-4 Proclamation and the  1783 Treaty of Paris. For the most part, as an ally of the British during the Revolutionary War, the latter transfer  carried with it, IN THE MINDS of MANY AMERICANS AND PRESIDENTs, that the tribes held their lands at the discretion of the thirteen state governments that inherited the English rights asserted in the Proclamation Act. The National Government had title to those lands which were not yet states. but whose title was transferred to those states upon their establishment. If so they were now American lands to be disposed of as the American governments so willed. At the moment we do not need to take a position on the issue, but simply alert the reader that in the minds of most non Indian Americans at that time this line of reasoning was pervasive. If land was the economic unit that was fundamental to settling the American West than the legal and sovereign right to it is fundamental. Politically woke or not, I am “just saying”.

The thirteen colonies faced much the same dilemma as did the Native Americans. What was the status of royal grants and charters that created these provinces–and the various individual land grants (include Penn’s Proprietary) that had been made by the King? Just where was the western boundary at? The Appalachian Mountains? Did provincial land grants in the trans-Appalachian cease and lose legal validity? There were various provincial settlements in these regions, Fort Pitt being one, and others including the Ohio Land Company and Johnson and Croghan’s being others. In fact there were many and their status was unclear in 1763. Veterans of the French and Indian War had been awarded individual land grants in the trans-Appalachian (including George Washington).

The status of these would not be sufficiently defined until and after 1768 when a series of provincial agreements with the British defined colonial western borders (somewhat) and honored individual land grants. In any case, the legal sovereignty of these trans-Appalachian lands was in fact held by the “British Colonial Office” and that meant everybody from Native Americans, to land development companies, to individual purchase of land was subject to British ruling–not provincial. That Britain could set up new colonies/provinces in these areas was a very likely direction that Colonial Office could go? Had the American Revolution not intervened, North American western settlement would have been handled in London. From that perspective it may not be too surprising that the Proclamation Act motivated a lot of our Founding Fathers to gravitate toward Independence and not Confederation with Great Britain. Economics and economic development in North America rested ultimately on western settlement, as did personal fortunes of many Founding Fathers, including Washington, Jefferson, Morris, and our man on the white horse, Franklin.

Land development companies and private individual land “squatting” were the two dynamic institutions/practices disrupted by the Proclamation Line. From Thomas Penn’s perspective, the economic viability of the Proprietary was placed in question. He now faced boundaries which previously were question marks, and worse, the intentions of the new owners of the trans-Appalachian lands, the British in London, were unclear, and seemingly tending to set up their own land sales infrastructure that would certainly rival his. In either event he would not profit from lands in the Ohio Valley unless he could garner the support of London. Arguably, the chief loser in the colonies was the Virginia oligopoly land companies, the Ohio Land Company in particular.

By the middle 1760’s George Washington had assumed its de facto leadership; the Company hired a lobbyist to work in London and he attempted with no success to secure support for any development projects advanced. Washington himself submitted new land development charters/projects, the Mississippi Company and the Indiana Company with no success. Other Virginia land companies faced the same obstacles. The Proclamation put an end to the short golden era of Virginia elite’s land company movement–and that meant Virginia’s plantation owners were hard pressed to sustain their tobacco-based, or even wheat-planted plantations. The plantation economy was drifting into economic crisis, certainly decline. On the other hand, as we shall soon see, any colonial elites with access to British decision-makers may have been able to procure a charter and land grant in these British owned lands. An opportunity for “I see my opportunities and took advantage of them” scenario. In any event, if land development companies were constrained by British law, individual homesteaders were not–in that the trans-Alleghenies British law was as imaginary as the Line itself.

The reality “on the ground”  concerning the Proclamation Line was that nobody in London, never mind the provincial capitals of North America was effectively in any control over the trans-Appalachians–not even the Native Americans as Pontiac’s War proved. Isolated, across very difficult mountains without roads, and literally weeks, a month away from legal civilization these areas could be settled by anyone who wanted them, and had “the balls” to set up their homestead. That would be the Scots Irish by the way, and some Germans, English and Huguenots as well. The British Army entrusted with the task in relatively short order sent their memo to London as to the reality they could not enforce the Proclamation Act, and recommended left that function to the Native Americans. The Act was meant to be temporary, and did not prevent colonial Americans from entering these lands–only owning land. The Act in this sense was meant to “buy time” until the Colonial Office could work out some more permanent solution. In this module we will see that in future sections. But the effect, again “on the ground” was flux, a vacuum that invited opportunity to be seized–almost an invitation to try something and sort it out later. Not surprisingly, it generated a series of very serious, lengthy, and bloody wars with many Native American tribes. The history of the trans-Appalachian pre-Revolutionary War (and Revolutionary War) is not a peaceful one, although today is largely a forgotten one. That these wars played a major role in the evolution of political culture and the configuration of provincial policy systems, however, cannot be ignored. So let’s turn to the story of the Paxton Boys in Pennsylvania.

the Paxton Boys (January, 1764): Pissed off Country Boys or a Harbinger of the Future?

The French and Indian War ended in 1763, and accordingly the British army remained, primarily lodged at Fort Pitt through that time. The reader’s take away might be sensitivity to intrusion of war, military crisis, and the sustained presence of a large British/militia force, and the implications and impact it had. Resistance against “quartering” which is given great prominence later in Boston, did happen in Pennsylvania, and the need to provision and provide logistics to two army expeditions were especially disruptive, and, as we saw in our paper money/currency module, the complication and catalyst that war played on that transformative policy issue/institutionalization was huge, if not compelling. That Pennsylvania got in return was a rudimentary road/ , i.e. hacked trail into the Ohio Valley Fort Pitt, did not assume great importance for another half-century. The old Indian Warriors Trail instead morphed into the Great Wagon Road (implausibly it was so rough and mountainous that wagons could not be used for a generation or more). The Treaty nor the Proclamation Line stopped next to no one.

As we shall see, during the 1760’s Pennsylvania will pay more attention to western settlement, with the development of a politically-connected land company leading the way, and countering efforts by Virginia and Maryland–not to ignore New York–to settle that prized Ohio Valley region. Policy-wise, then, the Pennsylvania policy system had been sufficiently transformed to produce new initiatives and approaches to policy. Oh, I almost forgot: Benjamin Franklin returned to Pennsylvania from England in December, 1762, unsuccessful effort to replace the Penn Proprietary. His timing was fortuitous, at least from the western settlement policy-making perspective. From the start, even though the war was over and peace signed, trouble brewed in Pennsylvania.

 

The narrative describing the Paxton Brothers episode is fairly straightforward. After mid-June 1763 the Pennsylvania frontier erupted in a number of Indian raids and massacres. For many, victory in the war should have settled the Indian matter, but it obviously hadn’t, and so anti-Native American emotions were raised among many elements of Pennsylvania’s diverse population. Even in the core eastern counties it was evident and applied against a number of Delaware who had remained in clustered settlements in various areas. As anti-Indianan emotions intensified, these isolated and peaceful Indians bore the brunt of much resentment and suspicion they were  somehow assisting their cousins in the west.

To protect these harassed Native Americans, the Governor allowed the most vulnerable, the “Moravian” Indians near Bethlehem were relocated to Philadelphia. All that did was aggravate emotions, and determined not to let other such clusters be moved, a grouping of Scots Irish, under the leadership of Presbyterian pastor John Elder, called the ‘Fighting Pastor’, at Pextony Pennsylvania, they mobilized a “militia’ with Elder as its head and  on December 14 1763 attacked a cluster of Indians, mostly old, women and children at Conestoga Pennsylvania, present-day Millersville, outside of Lancaster. They killed six, scalped them, and burned their cabins. Conestoga Indians had lived there for generations, many, perhaps most were Christian, and were suffering from hard economic times. The Pextany militia, however, believed they were aiding and abetting the Indian uprising in the west. The Proprietary court, now managed by a new Deputy Governor, nephew John Penn, held an inquest and decided the Conestoga Indians had been murdered, and placed the survivors in protective custody. The now-called Paxton Boys, returned, broke into the enclosure, killing six more adults, scalping and dismembering them, and then killing eight children. A third attack in Lancaster, killed the survivors. Penn applied a $600 bounty on the Paxton Boys, but the local population supported and protected them–no one was identified or caught.

By this time, however, Pastor Elder had disassociated himself from the Boys. In January, a group of about 250-500 “Boys” gathered and headed for Philadelphia. While many were no doubt the Conestoga attackers, the considerably larger number suggested a political movement had been triggered, and this anomic rural insurrection had escalated from anti-Indian policy to much bigger matters. They threatened to kill specific legislators, as well as Isaac Pemberton and his Quaker treaty negotiators. By the time they got to Germantown, at the time a Philly suburb, it appears the number had been reduced to about 250, because many of the German contingent had thought better of the initiative. The hardcore that rode on were Scots Irish. In short, while not a coup, they were pretty much in insurrection against Pennsylvania legitimate government.

Benjamin Franklin, once again mounted his white horse (don’t take me literally), assembled a militia of sorts, and a delegation of some substance and simply met them in a tavern on the road, heard their grievances, and negotiated a compromise. A list was to be composed into a pamphlet and read to the Legislature (malapportionment was a key element of those grievances). Surprisingly, the Paxton Boys leadership backed away from further Indian retribution, in favor of presenting a formal petition before the Legislature. The centerpiece was that  “the West be given representation in the assembly proportional to its population. Describing the present situation as ‘oppressive, unequal, and unjust, the cause of many of our Grievances’ [99] Theodore Thayer, Pennsylvania Politics and the Growth of Democracy, 1740–1776, p. 87. With that agreed to, the Boys turned around and headed home. Was Franklin all that persuasive? Perhaps, but in back of him were three companies of Royal American soldiers (the elite of the colonial army). As agreed the pamphlet was read to the Legislature, which appalled by the actions of the Paxton Boys, devised a resolution demanding they be brought to trail for murder. The resolution was never brought to the floor for a vote because the Paxton insurrection had caused a substantial disruption and clamor in the western counties that the Legislature thought it best to not take an action.

Public opinion was decidedly against the Paxton Boys, the killings were regarded as savage and exceeded anything frontier Indians had done, and Franklin himself later wrote his opinion that the Paxton Boys were nothing but uncivilized savages. In many ways, Franklin, the dedicated and bitter opponent of Thomas Penn and his Proprietary, had “saved their bacon” and protected them from the erstwhile allies, the Scots Irish. Firm believers in “no good dead goes unpunished”, Franklin’s intervention made matters even worse between the two parties. The matter thus overlapped into the larger context of Pennsylvania politics. Finally, if pre-1755 Indian-Land Development/Western Settlement policy, had been dominated by Quaker pacifism, post-1755 Indian-Land Development/Western Settlement policy-making had seemingly replaced Quaker pacifism with western county political rights, and a suspicion that a larger “populist” revolt threatened the previously solidly entrenched Quaker Party and Penn Proprietary Provincial policy system. Indeed, then Governor John Penn wrote his uncle, Thomas that the people of Philadelphia ‘are as Inveterate against the Indians as the Frontier inhabitants”. He further asserted that ‘everyman in Cumberland County  was a rioter at heart, and that a thousand of the King’s troops could not bring one to trial’ [99] Theodore Thayer, Pennsylvania Politics and the Growth of Democracy, 1740–1776, pp. 87-8

Interestingly, what had been an “eastern” Scots Irish insurrection, had spread like a wildfire to the western counties, and in that far-flung hinterland, public opinion seemed decidedly in favor of the Paxton Boys. The distinction between the Scots Irish and Germans, the latter obviously being less volatile and more integrated into the policy system than the former also was evident. Say it another way, eastern elites and the supportive political culture were cohesive in their reaction to the Paxton massacres and in their demand for their trial; western populists were not, and were demanding the opposite. The fear of a “great anarchy” in the west paralyzed the reaction of the eastern elites–partially because they feared this “anarchy” gripped a goodly number of eastern “populists” as well [99] For support the reader is referred to Theodore Thayer, Pennsylvania Politics and the Growth of Democracy, 1740–1776, pp. 85-88; James G. Leyburn, the Scots Irish: a Social History (University of North Carolina Press, 1962, pp. 230-1; Joseph E. Illick, Colonial Pennsylvania: a History (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1976), p. 237-8. The Paxton Boys episode did sharpen and focus its fear of “anarchy” (Mob) and personify it in the Scots Irish–which BTW dovetailed nicely with their alleged ally, the Proprietary. Equally important, religious Quakers, the oft-times scapegoat for Pennsylvania’s failed Indian affairs, were particularly displeased with the Scots Irish and that further cemented the eastern county bias against them and the Penn Proprietary. “Fear of anarchy was not the only motive which compelled adherents of the Quaker Party to line up with Franklin for a change of government.  James Pemberton echoed the thoughts of many when he said that unless the province had a strong government, the Scots Irish Presbyterians would throw the colony into anarchy in hope of emerging as the political masters of the province [99] Theodore Thayer, Pennsylvania Politics and the Growth of Democracy, 1740–1776, p. 91.

 If December 1763 through February 1764 witnessed such turmoil and insurrectionary emotions among everyday Pennsylvania citizens, what would one suspect would happen when in March 1764, the British government approved what we today call “the Stamp Act”?

The Trans-Appalachian West After the Paxton Boys: Land Development, the Vandalia Fiasco, and Rough and Tumble Inter-Provincial Competition in Western PA

After Pittsburgh was retaken in 1765. Pennsylvania’s western counties finally had a measure of peace, if not security. The Penn Proprietary land-jobbing business plan was back in motion, and over the next few years several peace treaties considerably locked up land within Pennsylvania’s post-Proclamation Line boundaries. But the Penn Proprietary was restricted from land west of the Appalachians, and from this point on, Pennsylvania land was managed by the local officials of the British Board of Trade/Indian Affairs. Emigration into the Pittsburgh southern Ohio Valley area, while not exactly a flood, were steady, consisting mostly of Scots Irish. Immigration from abroad was increasing and during this period at its crest for the next decade. Land across from the Susquehanna River filled in.

In October, 1768 a trans-Appalachian land purchase (Treaty of Fort Stanwix), negotiated by Sir William Johnson with the Iroquois, with resident tribes again excluded, run from the borders of New York in the north, down in a slant to Pennsylvania’s southern boundary. The area, with few Iroquois, was permeated with European settlers, and with Pontiac’s defeat in the same year, could be called the nadir of resident Pennsylvania tribes. Two additional land sales (1784 and 1792), both conducted by post-colonial era policy systems, fleshed out the present-day boundaries of Pennsylvania. Defeat in Pontiac’s Rebellion greatly curtailed Native American resistance to trans-Appalachian settlement in Pennsylvania and the southern Ohio Valley. While the British army could not exercise effective site-control, it did at least establish who was formally in control and owner of unsettled lands outside of Pennsylvania. Still very much isolated, the southern Ohio Valley, now “owned by the British Colonial Office and managed by Sir William Johnson (and his deputy Croghan) lay outside the jurisdiction of the Pennsylvania legislature.

The threatened western settler unrest, so evident in the years of the Paxton Boys, gave way to greater events, like the Stamp Act and the succession of British legislation that thrust the American colonies into their drift to Independence. These events shifted the focus on western insurrection back to the east where urban mobs captured newspaper attention. The discontent of those mid-decade years did not go away, “Differences in national origin, religion, language, and especially social position, gave rise to distrust and jealousy in the minds of both easterners and westerners. Certain divergent economic interests [to be discussed in future modules] had also a tendency to produce sectional ill-feeling” [99] Theodore Thayer, Pennsylvania Politics and the Growth of Democracy, 1740–1776, p. 127. In the west, settlers went back to doing what they did best: migrate, and set up homestead or rebuild one destroyed in the past wars. During these years a good deal of Scots Irish immigration proceeded quickly out of southern Pennsylvania and headed to points south. Andrew Jackson’s father and mother entered (Andrew and Elizabeth) landed in Philadelphia (probably) sometime in 1765, and in 1767, our beloved Andrew, the future President, was born in South Carolina. These folk did some serious hoofing in those two years.

As the reader might remember from our discussion of Washington, the plans of land developers were greatly disrupted by the English takeover of the trans-Appalachian west. Virginia was ground zero for development of that now British owned territory; it had seized ahold of the commonly used late medieval land development corporation, and had stuffed it with land grants from either King or Virginia. Virginia did not particularly buy land from Native Americans, it assumed the land granted to them provided title, and the province of Virginia claimed land, which by extension terminated on the Pacific–wherever that was in the dark wilderness that lay before them. The French and Indian War ended those pretension and so land developers had to regroup. Pennsylvania’s owned land was in the hands of the Proprietor, and he would, sell his land to land development companies, or private individuals–but in 1763, his domain was restricted to the eastern slopes of the Alleghenies.

As to the trans-Appalachians, Britain’s new land grab meant the Privy Council had to figure out what to do with it, and in the meantime its Superintendent of Indians Affairs would manage. Johnson, and his second-in-command Croghan had land development plans of their own, and so did a raft of disrupted and hopeful new land entrepreneurs what had been torn asunder by the two wars. It didn’t take very long before several plans, put together mostly “in secret” reached the stage of attracting investment and incorporation. That required a land grant from the Board of Trade/Privy Council in London. Accordingly land development schemes made their way across the Atlantic to seek their fortune with the British government du jour–which as we start or story is head by Prime Minister Lord Hillsborough. One of those land schemes is most interesting from Pennsylvania’s perspective.

Land Development Companies/the Vandalia-Grand Ohio Corporation–Post Proclamation Line trans-Appalachian European settlement was an exercise in frustration for colonial land speculators and homestead settlers. The British Colonial Office and its Superintendent of Indian Affairs overnight became the czar of western hinterland development. Temporary or not, it set expectations for Native Americans that were doomed to be a long-term disappointment, and the Line itself could not be enforced, but made legal development impossible. Unfairly, at least to those affected, the Line effectively revoked previously legal land grants by provinces–often to veterans who fought in the recent wars–and bankrupted ongoing land development initiatives, and frequently the corporations themselves. Homebase of the disruption was Virginia, and Pennsylvania, caught in the Penn Proprietary nexus, had not yet produced any viable trans-Appalachian land development corporations. Ironically, however, with control over the contested lands in the hands of London-based officials, Pennsylvania was better placed to take advantage of any opportunities that opened up, in that it had lobbyists in London–and after 1765, Benjamin Franklin. Given the tumult in ongoing British politics at the time, and given the venality and closed decision-making characteristic of then current British elites, opportunities seeped into the byways of key decision-makers.

Pontiac’s War somewhat muted these frustrations and considerably slowed European settlement–while giving British officials time to figure out what their long-term disposition of these lands would be. By 1767-8, with peace incrementally restored, the frustrations and realities became painfully apparent. First General Gates, the British American commander in chief wrote home that he was unable to restrain settlers. “At present there is a total Dissolution of Law and Justice … amongst the People of the Western Frontier, and the Indians can get no satisfaction, but in their own way by retaliating on those who unhappily fall into their hands“. The prospect of widespread squatting of lands intensified land development speculators, who feared homesteaders would illegally assert claim to the best lands–and to the extent those provincial land grants which had been accepted and acknowledged by the Colonial Office (Washington’s veterans claims, for example), land development corporations could not evict these squatters, so best to commence their own surveying and asset claims–which BTW Washington did secretly [99] Alan Taylor. American Revolutions: a Continental History, 1750-1804 (W. W. Norton & Company, 2016), p. 77.

To compound matters, the British fiscal crisis prompted the Colonial Office to cut the Superintendent of Indian Affairs budget (including salaries and Indian gifts), and commission them to sell lands which were vulnerable to incursion by Europeans–without any input from Native Americans. Johnson was greatly upset by this, and knowing that the Ohio Valley was prime, devised a plan to peel off for sale a huge swatch extending to the Mississippi. He then requested London to approve the sale–but not before he made overtures to Franklin (who involved his son William, who at the time was royal governor of New Jersey) to assemble a proposal around an existing land development corporation (The 1768 Treaty of Fort Stanwix granted land to several still-born land development companies, consolidated into an amalgam “grant to suffering traders”, a principal leader of which was Pennsylvania’s Samuel Wharton, became unified into the “Indian Grant with the Indiana Company”. which itself was collapsed into “the Grand Ohio Company, which the Colonial Office grant this land, an overture which involved secret kickbacks to Johnson and Croghan. Franklin and son readily climbed on board, enlisted their own investors, and restructured the old land development corporation into a new entity. He then had to secure British support, to grease the wheels, for Privy Council and Parliament approvals. Now, if the reader enjoys opportunities, it gets interesting.

“In a bid to reduce imperial tensions, Franklin worked to reconcile colonial and British elites by uniting them [behind] one big big land-speculating company”. Knowing the Colonial Office wanted to offload vulnerable territory, he proposed a land grant of 20 million acres along the Ohio River, as a new colony/province, which he named in honor of the Germanic Vandals (to attract Hanoverian support, the Vandalia Company. Bringing onboard several influential and powerful political actors, such as the Walpole Brothers, he packaged the proposal and submitted it for approval by the Privy Council. The key to this approval was concurrence and support from the Prime Minister Lord Hillsborough. Franklin, sort of on the outs with Hillsborough, took a back seat and Wharton became the front man behind the deal. Hillsborough, however, privately saw this deal as benefiting his political opponents, and perceived correctly “the opportunities” flowing from the deal while recognizing it conflicted with his formal policy of restricting European settlement into the turbulent border. The opposition of General Gates also was a factor–Gates knowing the Indians would see this in a vastly different light.

Accordingly, the proposal was sent through a process of negotiation, detail-solution, and simply delay that stretched for years. Submitted in 1770, by 1772, the drift on the frontier had gotten so bad, General Gates evacuated twenty-two British frontier forts (including Fort Pitt), and the frontier was effectively wide open to homesteader squatters. To move the proposal along, Franklin met secretly with Hillsborough, asked him how he could speed up approval–to which Hillsborough, hoping to sabotage the proposal, told him to ask for more land ((which Franklin did). Again the proposal drifted for several more years because British officials considered the proposal as a land grab by British insiders. {To further complicate matters, Virginia Governor Dunsmore hoping to sandbag the Vandalia proposal, resurrected Virginia’s old land claims to the Ohio Valley, and launched an “invasion” with Virginia militia that seized Fort Pitt]–and started a war with the affected Indian tribes. Franklin left England in 1774, without any approval, and when Revolution commenced in 1775 the proposal went to sleep permanently.

Aside from the  “who’s on first” Abbott & Costello skit, that this immensely controversial, hugely flawed, and heavily tainted land scheme/grab stood on the threshold of approval for five years, it is now also apparent that while everybody was focused on the Stamp Act and a series of British navigation and trade legislature that aroused the eastern core provinces and coastal cities of North America, the frontier, like Nero’s Rome, burnt while London was fiddling. While the Revolutionary War is thought to have started with Lexington and Concord in April 1775, the frontier was already in insurrection at least a year before that–and the Native American tribes were in active resistance even before that.

As to holding back American settlement of the trans-Appalachian, that fiction was gone by 1770, as testified to by Gordon Wood: “The increased availability of land opened up opportunities for debtors, insolvents and others to escape their dependencies. Delinquent and insolvent tax reports of Augusta County Virginia (a lot of today’s West Virginia) show emigrants heading for various destinations, many further west into Kentucky, some to other parts of Virginia, and still others into Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Tennessee” [99] Gordon S. Woods, the Radicalism of the American Revolution  (Vintage Books, 1991)), p. 129. In fact, trans-Allegheny settlement had exploded to the extent that Daniel Boone opened up the Cumberland Gap, and thereby opened the way into Kentucky–whose future capital was named after the Massachusetts battle that had just occurred (i.e. Lexington). If the East and coastal cities took their time to assert autonomy, if not outright independence of the British, waiting as they did until the late spring of 1775, the frontier of North America had rung its war bell noticeably earlier. Integration of the western counties of the newly formed American states under the Articles, and Early Republic was to prove no easy matter, as the Regulator War, Shays Rebellion, and the Whiskey Rebellion (on top of numerous smaller less known insurrections) will support. After all, where there is opportunity, there’s trouble also.

Finally, the reader should take away from this succession of mélange of land development companies, the insight that the “land development company” in the northern trans-Appalachian Ohio Valley simply could not function in the legal limbo of the Proclamation Act. The anarchy it brought to the frontier create a world quite separate and distinct from that in the East, but it also affected the subsequent settlement of these future trans-Appalachian states (Kentucky, Tennessee, and Ohio). The failure of the Vandalia Company is a first order reason why Ohio became a state only in 1803, while Kentucky did in 1792, and Tennessee in 1796. In the later two areas, North Carolina and Virginia, open to land development companies, were able to garner their disproportionate share of European immigrants and settle areas adjacent to them.

With Vandalia’s demise, a goodly portion of Pennsylvania adjacent Ohio Valley lands eventually fell into the now-famous Northwest Ordinance of 1785 (7)–owned and managed by the Articles of Confederation, and after 1789 the present-day Early Republic U.S. national government. Virginia and North Carolina, however, were able to incorporate land development corporations–and settle lands–previous to the the Articles. While seemingly this land development limbo is rather insignificant today, it will have consequences in the early 1800’s when Pennsylvania, using the railroad, will attempt to “open up” Ohio to Philadelphia. Pennsylvania’s ability to favorably impact Ohio’s state decision-making was impaired by the rather diverse settling of Ohio, southern Ohio in particular. The winner in the railroad race, the Baltimore and Ohio, which hailed from the Tidewater Maryland and Virginia, had the advantage of following Tidewater migration patterns into southern Ohio–all of which will be considered in future chapters.

Still, if events moved east, Susquehanna River settlement in Pennsylvania’s central and southern counties, safely within Pennsylvania jurisdiction, demanded some attention to its transportation infrastructure

Transportation Infrastructure–Political Culture at Work–Road-building in Pennsylvania drifted down to the county level. With a rare exception, the Pennsylvania Turnpike, was not regarded as a provincial level concern. Most roads, river dredging, bridges and canals was left to counties to install and pay for. Accordingly, eastern counties handled their own infrastructures, linking each county to its port city–Philadelphia. As the west filled up the young western counties had considerably more distance and rugged terrain to deal with. In 1761, the Legislature passed legislation to improve the navigation on the Schuylkill, financed, however, by private subscription (lottery and small issue purchase such as a U.S. Savings Bond). Some provincial funds did make their way into this and other projects that followed this model. The sums were small, during 1772-73 the Legislature voted between 200 and 1000 pounds for several river navigation projects. Still requests for Legislative involvement in county transportation infrastructure projects lead after 1769, and given the relative low income of the west, those counties with a more affluent population were able to complete their projects, while others languished.

Proposals for canals, first appeared in number after 1770, and previous to the Revolution several had reached the planning stage, and in 1772 a proposal for a turnpike between the Susquehanna and Philadelphia (estimated cost 110,000 pounds) entered the policy fray. Pennsylvania’s immediate transportation problem at this point, was, amazingly Baltimore-which was mileage-wise and terrain advantaged closer than Philadelphia. While the Philadelphia port was preferred, local officials had to deal with cost of infrastructure. So western counties used their leverage of connecting to Baltimore to motivate eastern investment and Pennsylvania Legislative involvement:

Realizing that Philadelphians were worried about keeping their western trade, the West held the threat of going to Maryland as a club over eastern business interests. Western petitioners for better roads were instructed in 1770 to inform the Assembly ‘that the Marylanders have been among us, and say it is only 8 miles–but we dispise them with all their offers provided we receive proper incouragement (sic) from the Philadelphians”. [99] Theodore Thayer, Pennsylvania Politics and the Growth of Democracy, 1740–1776, p. 129.

Other projects followed this line of attack and in each it became evident that Maryland was indeed actively soliciting Pennsylvania access, and willing to provide support. In true business attraction spirit they developed counter arguments and collateral support to tear down Pennsylvanians natural reluctance to go through Baltimore than Philadelphia–a literature of some consequence supports the claim on inter-provincial competition–and the mileage of mid-twenties to Baltimore was correct. But then the specter of inter-county competition appeared in the Assembly. Northampton County countered that the province should assist its roads as a competing request from a trans-Susquehanna county asserted that “farmers west of the Susquehanna, were “lazy, licentious, and lawless [perhaps Scots Irish “shaming”]. Why should the province build roads into that region when the people there were scarcely able to support themselves, and had nothing to sell worth the mentioning”. Other “free-traders” made the case that the farmers should pay for their own infrastructure–that it was not a public expense: “Let the farmer carry his produce where he can make the most of it, without a partial regard to this or that province”. [99] Theodore Thayer, Pennsylvania Politics and the Growth of Democracy, 1740–1776, pp. 130-1. What may be surprising was the merchant community was receptive to provincial participation in these infrastructure projects for western counties “but the agrarian interests of Bucks, Chester, and Philadelphia counties [eastern core counties]. The farmers in these [counties] could control the assembly with their twenty-four representatives out of the thirty eight” [99] Theodore Thayer, Pennsylvania Politics and the Growth of Democracy, 1740–1776, p. 129. The effect of his sustained infighting was to limit the involvement of the province in county infrastructure projects, and in so doing limited the development of trans-Susquehanna western counties–and turn their attention to the overtures of the Marylanders. Economic development has not changed that much over the last 300 years.

This brief glimpse into Pennsylvania’s (and Maryland) post 1765  “internal improvements”–transportation infrastructure policy-making” suggests several observations. First, the bulk of our observation thus far has centered on the larger issues confronted by the Pennsylvania Legislature (war-pacifism-self defense, paper money and institutionization, taxing Proprietor land), but internal improvements, vital to economic and population growth should, I think, have been an important priority of provincial government. It obviously wasn’t. Where in all this is the Proprietor? Once he granted a charter to a settlement he simply granted it powers and processes to assume the burden of its own infrastructure–and left town. The Legislature, forced to recognize each town needed to be coordinated with neighboring towns, centered it in the county which was provided some limited capacity to coordinate/regulate local efforts and, the critical need, money, was thrust on the county, and young, relatively poor western counties scrambled to get what, if anything they could. What was interesting, if not surprising, was the eastern view of western deplorables, presumably Scots Irish, who simply were undeserving of public support. This overlaps precise with the resurgence of Scots Irish in their Proprietary-Presbyterian Party which arose during these years.

The Legislature held considerable powers to shape the county policy system, but it did not assume the responsibility to lead counties in addressing an provincial wide agenda. The agenda was left to the county, which by virtue of its tax collection responsibilities had some fiscal and planning capacity. Intra-municipal internal improvements were by charter handled by the town and were implemented in accordance with a local labor draft, and some limited taxes. In this way counties/towns constructed a road-river navigation 0f uneven quality. Commercial and serious passenger traffic, however, required by the late 1760’s more than what these levels of government could afford. The Legislature was drawn in to the strategy, it did not, however, lead the way. Thank god for Braddock and Forbes, without them there would have been no serious roads into the hinterland, and infrastructure would have been confined to river navigation. To balance this disinterestedness, it is worth note that its rival neighbor, Maryland, the province applying an aggressive business attraction strategy, did not feel compelled to invest in its transportation/road infrastructure either. Its advantage was basic; Baltimore was closer than Philadelphia in Pennsylvania’s growing southwestern counties. From dredging to facilities, Baltimore could not compete with Philly, nor were Maryland’s road of any distinction. There is no record that that “party-alliance” played any role in this strategy. More to the point in these troubled times, funding transportation infrastructure was pushed to the margins of the Legislature’s agenda.

Here we can see the intrusion of a low tax, limited government political culture and Pennsylvania’s decentralization, its reliance on lower levels for service delivery–a function that obviously included infrastructure. The Legislature was small in size, very part-time,, oligopolistic and malapportioned to benefit the core Quaker counties around Philadelphia; its vision did not extend much further until pressed by events. As Pennsylvania grew and moved west, the Legislature had little interest, and with exceptions felt no responsibility to assist local governments in projects, obviously beyond their capacity and resources. Even when threatened with future loss of economic growth through exporting immigrants or failure to connect its hinterland to its principal port, they did not devise a coherent response. Inter-county competition and presumably log-rolling benefited the counties with the most representatives, and the towns with best access to provincial legislators. This was not the exception in colonial America–we saw Virginia, its House of Burgesses nor its Council of State did much for Virginia transportation infrastructure. In Pennsylvania, which actually developed a large city, the Legislature was more active and involved–it met in Philadelphia-, but it set up its own set of local Philadelphia political structures and left them to the the own devices, having made them very accountable to their electorate.

 

 

 

Conclusion and Segue Way

A good deal of this change and disruption can be seen through the prism of economic development. Not all by any means, but a lot; and economic development being what it is (fundamental to the policy system’s economic base) in the form of western county settlement and town-building, with its consequent infusion of new populations and its construction of new economic bases, left a radically different colony/province/state in its wake. It was that newly remade Pennsylvania that hosted the First and Second Continental Congress, and that Pennsylvania wasted no time in becoming one of the earliest of the colonies to overthrow its colonial government and establish its Revolutionary War State (Policy System). That new Pennsylvania state inherited quite a bit from its older core Penn Quaker Proprietary Policy System, but it also carried with it the consequences of the western settlement that we will talk about in this module.

In this module we are beginning the transition from a colonial province to an American state. It is no accident that both played a role when Philadelphia once again hosted the Constitutional Convention, becoming in the mix the new nation’s leading commercial center, and seeming gateway into the Ohio Valley, the heart of the new nation’s trans-Allegheny interior. It is no accident that movement played a disruptive role in those counties, culminating in the 1793-6 Whiskey Rebellion, a rebellion so serious George Washington, then President, personally mounted his horse and led an army larger than he had in the key battles of the early Revolutionary War. That it also fueled the rupture of the Federalist Party, and was followed by a Jefferson-led political insurgency, the Democratic-Republic Party tosses yet to be explored hints that big things are afoot in “them there” Pennsylvania hills.

In any event, the future post-1800 Pennsylvania state policy system cast its lot, not with the Federalist commercial merchants of eastern Pennsylvania, but with the Jefferson Democratic-Republican Party, leaves one to wonder if, as Facebook personal relationships are often labeled, the Pennsylvania state policy system was “complicated”. It was-a heritage of the Penn Proprietary Policy System: bifurcated and polarized elites, and warring political structures, institutions and cultures found their way into Pennsylvania’s future.