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
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