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.
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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