Pennsylvania Pacifists and the American Revolution

From a blog entitled The Way of Improvement Leads Home, posted Sept 6: Pennsylvania Pacifists and the American Revolution

ABC News is running a story about a July 11, 1775 broadside written by the Lancaster County Committee of Correspondence, urging German immigrants, many of whom were pacifists with religious objections to the American Revolution, to give money to support the patriot cause. (HT: Tom Van Dyke). Those whose "religious scruples" prevented them from taking up arms were urged to contribute toward the "necessary and unavoidable" expenses of the town.

There were several broadsides of this nature published in Pennsylvania at the time of the Revolution. The commonwealth, of course, was filled with German immigrants of the Anabaptist persuasion.

For example, On May 29, 1775, the Lancaster committee published a warning for those who were persecuting their pacifist neighbors:

The Committee having received information, that divers persons, whose religious tenets forbid their forming themselves into military associations, have been mal-treated, and threatened by some violent and ill-disposed people in the County of Lancaster, notwithstanding their willingness to contribute chearfully to the common cause, otherwise than by taking up arms: This Committee duly considering the same, do most heartily recommend to the good inhabitants of the County, that they use every possible means to discourage and prevent such licentious proceedings, and assiduously cultivate the harmony and union so absolutely necessary in the present alarming crisis of public affairs.... (accessed at Early American Imprints).

A few years ago I had a student write a very good paper on one of these broadsides. They provide a very different window into the way the Revolution played out in local communities, especially those with large numbers of religious pacifists.