Prisoners of Congress by Norman E. Donoghue II
Written by Dee Andrews in the Book Review category and the Winter 2024 issue Topics in this article: American Revolution, Continental Congress, Norman E. Donoghue II, Philadelphia, Quakers
Prisoners of Congress
Philadelphia’s Quakers in Exile, 1777–1778
by Norman E. Donoghue II
Pennsylvania State University Press, 288 pages, hardcover $44.95
Norman E. Donoghue II’s exceptionally readable and richly sourced Prisoners of Congress is a long-needed scholarly treatment of the case of the “Virginia Exiles”: 20 Philadelphians, nearly all Quakers, “exiled” to house arrest in Winchester, Virginia, in September 1777 by the State of Pennsylvania and the Second Continental Congress. The reason? The Society of Friends’ peace testimony prohibited members from providing material support to armed forces or from swearing oaths of allegiance. The charges? There were none, beyond the unsubstantiated suspicion of cooperation with Gen. William Howe’s British forces about to occupy America’s most important city. The Exiles were held without benefit of habeas corpus until their release in April 1778.
Donoghue, an attorney-turned-historian, is especially well qualified to make the Exiles’ case, as he explores constitutional issues over freedom of conscience and the power of the state — which historians of the Revolution have largely ignored — with clarity and verve. The cast of characters, many of them related, includes the three powerful Pemberton brothers, Henry Drinker (whose wife Elizabeth kept an invaluable diary), accomplished scientist Thomas Gilpin Sr., and a young Miers Fisher among the Exiles; Thomas Wharton Jr., president of Pennsylvania (somewhat pro-Quaker); Thomas McKean, chief justice of Pennsylvania (anti-Quaker); Quaker-connected Thomas Paine and ex-Quaker Nathanael Greene; John Adams; and, of course, George Washington. Two of the Exiles died in Virginia. Two other Quakers who escaped exile were later executed by the state for treason. The Exiles’ wives-turned-emissaries also play a key role. Not least of all, the decision to punish Pennsylvania’s Quaker leadership without accountability marked, in Donoghue’s words, “the demise of William Penn’s holy experiment, a government begun in 1681 and led for nearly a century largely by men dedicated to Quaker values.”
The book includes a list of dramatis personae, illustrations, appendices, notes, bibliography and index. Highly recommended.
Dee E. Andrews
California State University, East Bay