148. The Paxton Boys: The Underground History of American Education by John Taylor Gatto from archive.org

The Paxton Boys 

How the decisive collaboration in which Quaker men of wealth felt driven by 
circumstance to seek protection from the Established Church of England happened in the 
months after Braddock's army was cut to pieces on October 16, 1755, is a fascinating 
story. The western frontier of colonial America promptly exploded, after the British 
defeat. Delawares and Shawnees attacked across western Pennsylvania, burning all forts 
except Pitt. By November they were across the mountains and the Susquehanna, and in 
January the whole frontier collapsed. Settlers fled, many running on until they reached 
Philadelphia, "almost crazy with anxiety." Scots-Irish Presbyterians on the Monongahela 
blamed their trouble on rich Philadelphia Quakers controlling the legislature who had 
prevented levies for frontier defense. 



An unauthorized Presbyterian militia hastily assembled, the notorious Paxton Boys, 
whose columns proceeded to march on Philadelphia! I can hardly do justice here to that 
lively time, except to remind you that Pennsylvania to this day is divided East/West. The 
net upshot of Braddock's fatal hauteur was to send Scots-Irish Presbyterians on the 
warpath against Quakers and to drive important Quaker interests into Tory arms for 
protection from their fellow Pennsylvanians. 

Thus at the very moment British authority and rigid class attitudes came into question for 
many Americans, conservative Quakers, conspicuously wealthy and in control of the 
mainstream press, became its quiet proponents. "I could wish," said Thomas Wharton 
(for whose Quaker family the business school is named at Penn), "to see that Religion 
[Anglicanism] bear the Reins of Government throughout the Continent." In the exact 
decade when Americans were growing most fearful of the rise of an American civil 
episcopate, these Friends "cheered the news of the growth of Anglicanism," according to 
Jack Marietta, the Quaker historian. So the dormant seeds for a delayed Anglican revival 
were buried in Pennsylvania/New Jersey/Delaware soil right from our national 
beginnings. And Philadelphia 

Soldiers For Their Class