NOTES
- Van Doren, Carl, ed. Letters and Papers of Benjamin Franklin and Richard Jackson, 1753–1785 (Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society, 1947), p. 136, No. 26, Franklin to Jackson, Jan. 16, 1764.
- Ibid., pp. 139–141, No. 28, Feb. 11, 1764.
- Labaree, Leonard W., ed. The Papers of Benjamin Franklin (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1967), Vol. 11, pp. 42-47. All excerpts from the text of the pamphlet were taken from this source, pp. 47–69.
- Silence Dogood Papers, No. 8, July 9, 1722.
- Currey, Cecil B. Road to Revolution, Benjamin Franklin in England, 1765–75 (New York: Anchor Books, Doubleday & Co., 1968), p. 44.
- Ibid., p. 45.
- The very first in the list of nine grievances (Remonstrance), dated Feb. 13, 1764, and addressed to Gov. John Penn and the Assembly by spokesmen for the westerners, complained that while the residents of the three older, eastern counties (Philadelphia, Chester, Bucks) and Philadelphia itself, elected a total of 26 members to the Assemlly, those in the five newer, western “Frontier counties” (Lancaster, York, Cumberland, Berks and Northhampton) were allowed to elect only ten. However, “no significant complaints of underrepresentation arose until the Indian incursions of 1763–64 led to a belief in the exposed counties that the Assembly was indifferent to the interests of those areas,” says Labaree, op. cit., Vol. 11, pp. 80-82, explanatory note, and esp. footnote 4, p. 82. In the first meeting between the Paxton Boys and a group of clergymen, on Feb. 6, in Germantown, the latter were given a list of the frontiersmen's grievances, soon after printed in a pamphlet, in part entitled A Declaration and Remonstrance of the distressed and bleeding Frontier Inhabitants of the Province of Pennsylvania…. (Labaree, Vol. 11, p. 80, footnote 1) Most of the Complaint is of the “excessive Regard manifested to Indians beyond his Majesty's loyal Subjects,” as against the indifference of the authorities to the protection of white settlers and the loss of life and property among them. This they attributed to “the Villany, Infatuation and Influence of a certain Faction that have got the political Reigns (sic) in their Hand and tamely tyrannize over the other good Subjects of the Provincel… And must not all well disposed People entertain a charitable Sentiment of those, who at their own great Expense and Trouble, have attempted, or shall attempt rescuing a labouring Land from a Weight so oppressive, unreasonable and unjust?” (Labaree, Vol. 11, explanatory note, p. 81)
- In the Feb. 13, 1764, Declaration and Remonstrance, grievance No. 5 stated that frontier inhabitants wounded in the defense of the province were not, but should be, cared for and cured at public expense; and No. 7 demanded that no trade be permitted with the Indians until they returned those they held captive, “Numbers of our nearest and dearest Relatives.” (Labaree, Vol. 11, p. 82).
- On one occasion, Feb. 7, 1764—representatives of the Paxton Boys were allowed to look over the Indians at the barracks to see if they could recognize any of the reputed killers or enemies, but found none. Labaree, p. 74, and footnote 4 on that page.
- Letter to R. Jackson, Feb. 11, 1764. See footnote 3.
- In early January, Gov. Penn had arranged, as Franklin says in his Jan. 16, 1764 letter to Jackson, to send them for safety into the Jerseys. They were refused admission, however, and had to be returned to Philadelphia, Labaree, Vol. 11, p. 69, where they were housed in a barracks. In March, when the tension had gone out of the situation, they were transferred to a site on the Susqushnna River. By then, however, small pox and other diseases had reduced their number to 83.
- With regard to the division of opinion in the city, and province, Labaree states: “Public opinion soon became sharply divided. For once nearly all the proprietary officials, with the more substantial among their adherents, and the members of the ‘Quaker Party,’ with their supporters both within and outside the Assembly, stood together in shocked and vigourous denunciation of the massacres.” On the other side were people living in the western and nothern counties, many of the less well-to-do residents of Philadelphia, and some adherents of such religious bodies as Presbyterians and Lutherans, partly due to their long-standing hostility to the Quakers and Moravians, “who had been known for years as the chief friends of the Indians.” See Labaree, op. cit., p. 44.
- Franklin was the author of the very first Militia Act of Pennsylvania in 1755, “and obviously felt strongly on the matter.” Labaree, Vol. 11, p. 76, footnote 7.
- Currey, op. cit., p. 45.
- Franklin's pamphlet was one of some 63, dealing with either the massacres, or the march of the Paxton Boys on Philadelphia, or both. Labaree, Vol. 11, p. 43, footnote 3.
- It is nowhere clear precisely what source Franklin went to for the details he supplies to his account. Labaree surmises that it was the Wrights, Susanna, James and John Wright of Hemphill, on the Susquehanna, about 10 miles from Lancaster, who were old friends of Franklin and of Shehaes. This is because he found one writer, Thomas Barton, an Anglican clergyman in Lancaster, who attacked Franklin's pmaphlet, asking in one passage “who would give this Gentleman so very particular an account,” and apparently alluding to (and ridiculing) the Wrights by saying the account “was pick'd up from among a Parcel of old Papers in a Hop-Garden or a Hempfield (I forget which) upon Susquehanna.” Labaree, p. 52, footnote 6.
- Labaree, op. cit., p. 53, footnote 8.
- One of Franklin's pamphleteering opponents, author of The Conduct of the Paxton Men, ended his pamphlet with the sentence: “In short, it appears that the (white frontiersmen) would have been safe in any Part of the known World—except in the Neighbourhood of the RELENTLESS and OBSTINATE quakers of Pennsylvania!” Labaree, p. 66, footnote 6.
- Labaree, op. cit., p. 47.
- Ibid., pp. 72–73.
- Brooke Hingle, “The March of the Paxton Boys.” William and Mary Quarterly III (October, 1946) No. 4, pp. 461–486. This reference: p. 476.
- Labaree, op. cit., p. 73.
- Van Doren, op. cit., 140–141.
- Ibid., p. 140.