Posted on 11/24/2020 11:59:37 PM PST by CheshireTheCat
...Quakers who stuck by the sect’s pacifist teachings had a tough go of the American Revolution, often lumped in as Tories by patriots and subject to spasms of popular abuse, official writs confiscating their property, and other indignities from those who considered them “the unfriendly Quakers … notoriously disaffected to the cause of American Liberty.”† That same prejudice occasionally exposed Quakers to the severest punishments for perceived crimes.
Thus Morden, who presumably helped the British agent as a personal gesture of assistance, an everyday “crime” for which hanging was an extreme stricture: one hundred Continental dollars from Chamberlain’s press to the reader who can demonstrate that this was one of the 15 most treasonable acts committed behind American lines. But confronted with the request in a time of war, what was the neutral, pacifist choice?
“A man was hanged this morning,” one British officer’s diary recorded, “for piloting some people through the back woods, to the Indians. He was very old and left a wife and 9 children. His death was chiefly owing to his being a noted friend of Government.” (Cited by John Coleman in “The Treason of Ralph Morden and Robert Land,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Oct. 1955)
Dawson, meanwhile, had worked for the British during the city’s recent occupation by General William Howe and was one of many so-called Loyalists “attainted of High Treason” and stripped of property by the state. Still, the British had been gone more than two years by the time he hanged...
(Excerpt) Read more at executedtoday.com ...
I’m not sure where in PA this was but the locals in the
Susquehanna River Valley area turned their neighbors in so that they could be awarded with their land whether or not the man was guilty...
The frontier was moved west to the Susquehanna River in 1764...
My 5th great grandfather and his brothers and sister and their families moved out to that area Mehoopany, Tunkhannock just before the AR...they cleared the land, built cabins sowed their crops...because he had grown son’s my ancestor’s older brother Jean/John had 1.200 acre4s...lazy men were jealous so they falsely accused him of being a Loyalist...
John wasnt home when they came to arrest him and they entered his cabin...when they came out a few Indians were passing by and attacked them...one white man was killed...now they really had something to accuse him with and hang him for murder...it was his fault that the man was killed by Indians...on the Frontier which was full of hostile Indians...
The family fled for their lives north from PA to Canada and one of the rebels was rewarded with his land...much the same happened to the siblings and their families...all of them were falsely accused and lost their lands...
It didnt pay to be a pacifist and want to work your government granted land and feed your family in those days...You either joined the rebels and deserted your children or you suffered...
Because of this 2/3 of the settlers in the Up the River area of the Susquehanna River Valley (Wyoming County) ended up as Loyalists at first fighting to get their lands back...then joining Butler’s Rangers and other groups...
Bump
That’s a terrible thing, Nana, however, many of those “peaceable” Quakers relied on the Scots-Irish to fight their Indian wars whenever trouble arose, all the while morally preening and adopting the pose of pacifists. Yes, people are hypocritical.
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