Pennsylvania’s Colonial Militia and the Founding of a Frontier Identity

An anomaly among Britain’s North American colonies, Pennsylvania initially lacked an organized militia in its engagement with Native Americans or with other imperial powers, focusing its energies instead on diplomacy and trade with such groups in the early decades of its colonial existence. During the period known as The Long Peace, extending from the 1680s through the 1740s, Pennsylvania established friendly relations with local Indian tribes that enabled the colony to expand territorially and to prosper economically. The Quakers who founded the colony and dominated its politics deemed a militia not only immoral but also impractical to Pennsylvania’s fortunes. Virtually defenseless, frontier communities in Pennsylvania suffered an onslaught when the colony’s former long-time Indian allies and trade partners joined the French in their war against Britain, in what became the French and Indian War (1754-63). Desperate to protect the frontier, the Pennsylvania assembly passed a militia act in 1755. Though the act proved futile as a tool for military defense (it forbade militia service lasting longer than three days), the militia allowed frontier communities to organize for the first time, frontiersmen took an increasingly active role in maintaining and advancing their own social and political interests. The desire to defend themselves during the French and Indian War and subsequent Pontiac's Rebellion (1763-65) fashioned Pennsylvania's diverse frontier population into a coherent frontier culture. Frontiersmen deployed the organizational power of the colonial militia to defend their own interests against, first, the Pennsylvania assembly, and shortly after against the British on the eve of the American Revolution.