The Pamhlet War Over the Paxton Boys
IN THE WINTER OF 1763-64 a group of Pennsylvania frontiersmen known as the "Paxton Boys" marched toward the city of Philadelphia to capture a handful of Indians the colony's Quaker leaders had supposedly brought there for protection following an earlier Paxtonian attempt on their lives. The "march" was soon called off, but in its aftermath both the Paxtonian supporters and their Quaker opponents took their cases to the press. The occasion prompted Philadelphia printers to pour out a truly astonishing amount of pamphlet literature, unprecedented in quantity and variety. Sixty-three pamphlets appeared, along with, or included in them, ten political cartoons, the earliest of their kind in the colonies. A number of pamphlets went through several editions, with some reprinted at a variety of different shops and at least one, An Address to the Inhabitants Conniving at the Massacre of the Indians^ going through four editions. All told, more pamphlets were generated by the Paxton Boys' activities than by any previous Pennsylvania issue, including the 1755-56 crisis over Quaker reluctance to participate in the French and Indian War, or the controversial Sugar Act enacted the same year the march occurred. The Paxton polemics, pro and con, made up a fifth of the 335 publications (including government documents) printed in Pennsylvania in 1764 and were largely responsible for a 40 percent growth over the previous year's total, enough to move Philadelphia ahead of Boston in the number of items published annually. The forms the printed pieces took were remarkable for their style and variety. Ranging from gentle nips to vitriolic bludgeoning, from biting satire to deadly doggerel, they employed countless formats, songs and plays, essays,