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🪵 The Threshold

Extra-legal patriot committees overthrew Pennsylvania's assembly and pushed it toward independence.

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tagsja-picks, question, xref, causal_relationships, trade, singleton, category/causal-relationships

3 min read

Extra-legal patriot committees overthrew Pennsylvania’s assembly and pushed it toward independence.

Evidence

Even as the Pennsylvania Assembly began formulating its response to the resolution, Philadelphia’s self-proclaimed patriot committee (which by then had become something of an unelected parallel government) called a public meeting for May 20 outside the statehouse. On that rainy Monday, an estimated 7,000 people turned out to cheer a reading of the resolution and pass a series of ever more aggressive resolutions against the lawmakers who sat within earshot. Shouting their unanimous approval by voice vote to each measure, they denounced the assembly’s instructions as having “a dangerous tendency to draw this province from that happy union with the other Colonies which we consider as our glory and protection” and the sitting government as incompetent to meet “the exigencies of our affairs.” Finally, they voted to replace the assembly with a Provincial Convention to be “chosen by the People” and to direct Philadelphia’s patriot committee to invite deputies from similar bodies across the colony to a “Provincial Conference” to lay the groundwork for convening that convention. Republican rule had come to Pennsylvania with a radical cast. Working behind the scenes, Franklin backed the soft coup and served as the resulting convention’s president. After years of maneuvering, he had finally bested Dickinson and the pro-proprietorship faction. Because of the upheaval, Dickinson lost his seat in Congress and retired to his Delaware plantation. … Acting a week later in the name of “the people” even though not actually elected, the conference approved a “Declaration” on independence. It accused King George III of “an Accumulation of Oppressions unparalleled in History” from excluding colonists “from his Protection” through hiring “Foreign Troops to assist in enslaving” them to exciting “the Negroes to embrue their Hands in the Blood of their masters.” Underscoring its radical intent, the declaration leveled its charges against the king and cited Parliament only for concurring in his “arbitrary and unjust” acts. Avowing that the obligations of colonists to the king “are now dissolved” by his despotism and that “Loyalty to him is Treason against the good People of this Country,” the declaration concluded by expressing the willingness of the conference “to concur in a Vote of the Congress declaring the United Colonies free and independent States.” Pennsylvania had joined the revolution. — Edward J. Larson, Declaring Independence, 182

Categorization

  • QUESTION: The unelected provincial conference prefigures questions about popular sovereignty and the legitimacy of extra-legal bodies - an angle on how revolutionary-era actors justified acting ‘in the name of the people’ without election.
  • XREF: Parallels the course’s interest in how legal-political authority gets constituted and contested outside formal institutions. — connects to: Pennsylvania’s governance structure shaped its anti-independence stance — Edward J. Larson, Declaring Independence, 178; Factional coalitions inside Pennsylvania’s assembly blocked independence; Pennsylvania’s assembly formally barred its delegates from supporting independence — Edward J. Larson, Declaring Independence, 180 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

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