Peaceable Kingdom Lost: The Paxton Boys and the Destruction of William Penn's Holy Experiment

by Kevin Kenny

Book Overview

William Penn established Pennsylvania in 1682 as a "holy experiment" in which Europeans and Indians could live together in harmony. In this book, historian Kevin Kenny explains how this Peaceable Kingdom--benevolent, Quaker, pacifist--gradually disintegrated in the eighteenth century, with disastrous consequences for Native Americans.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195331508
• ISBN13: 9780195331509
• Release Date: July 2009
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 1.17 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.2" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

LANCASTER TOWN'S BLOODY HISTORY UNMASK"D

I live two farms west of the Conestoga Indian Town where the first killings occured. In Lancaster, nine, not five miles away as Kenny states, stands the wall of the workhouse where the second massacre took place. Right outside my shop's door. So I live on the two sites. Anybody who looks at this as a morally justifiable incident is outside the realm of ethical discourse. No verbal response is adequate. It's still interesting territory out here in Manor Township where I live, still woodsy and often poor along Indian Run. Indian Run winds down to the Conestoga and the Susquehanna's first portage up from the Chesapeake Bay, Safe Harbor, and on a little flat on that little creek stood their dwellings. Going north, over a couple of sharp ridges, you're right on the Lancaster Plain, sraight, flat shot to town. My house, 1729, was located to take advantage of the downriver fur trade (with the Indian Town a neighbor to collect furs rafted from the Susquehanna existing right down the creek) on the one hand and the unbelievably fertile land where the terrain slopes flat to farm. Even now, it's almost possible to eat with out work from a few acres. Everybody was here, French in the '80's, Quakers, Mennonites and Ulster Irish soon after. It's damn sad reading this to come up against once again the disgraceful conduct of the Euro's over here. By the time whitey made his real appearance out here a good strong site of prehistoric natives had already been reduced to a hundred or so by disease and intra-tribal conflict. The Quakers (often the still the goats in PA, imagine that...I'm one) come out pretty well, all told, I think. The main lesson from the book is almost Thucydides-like (I'm seriuos). Fiddling away at politics and allowing evil to work its first deeds unchecked, men of goodwill were pulled into a black place by that dangerous element which we will have with us even longer than the poor. Not maybe Thucydides' moral, but the moral of this book. This book is good from in every way, the author has a dry humor. Especially, if you're from the area, every bit of history is Pennsylvania Dutched-up and so its good to see a neutral work. I finally understand colonial Pa history politically. The details of the working out of that, again, provide a sad mirror for our times. Even the dogood radical left is there doing their thing under Isaac Pennington and again excoriated by everyone! It's an interesting moral excersize to put yourself there and asks "where would I have been?". Our local feeling about the killings at the workhouse is that they happened despite the locals. This book would have us believe otherwise. (If Indiantown WERE five, not nine miles from town and thus not in the dark "river hills" those Paxton Boys may have been sent to hell before they got there.)

peaceable kingdom

The information provided before purchasing was complete and accurate. The book was very readable, entertaining and believeable. It is a remarkable addition to American history for someone with an Ulster Scot background as I have

Peaceable Kingdom Lost

The book arrived in new condition, on time and I am almost finished reading this excellent book. Since I have been a lifelong Pennsylvanian, a Presbyterian and a history major this was an excellent slection.

Fine Book, Gives Both Sides on how Good Intentions Run Afoul of Reality

This is a fine scholarly book with an interesting thesis that would have been rated with five stars except for problems in repetition, source identification and for a little unevenness in presenting settler versus Indian atrocities. The author clearly identifies with the modern, politically correct approach by mentioning that the Paxton Boys were defended strongly in the nineteenth and well into the twentieth century. The clear meaning is that they can no longer be defended. Well, maybe not today since we no longer find our neighbors murdered, tortured and mutilated beyond belief by Indians and expect to be next at any time. The point is that the events in 1763 have to be viewed in the context of the intermittant warring situation and the fears and aspirations of people on the frontier in 1763, not in a peaceful and comfortable New York penthouse in 2009. The thrust of the work is that William Penn originally meant to establish a peaceable place on earth, perhaps even a utopia where everyone could realize their dreams, but conflict between the warlike Indians and the equally warlike Scotch-Irish Presbyterians forced the colony to face the political reality of competing peoples for the same land. This reality aided by the bumbling administration of the Penn heirs and Quaker party brought about the destruction of the Penn colony's peaceable kingdom. This thesis is accurate, and the story is compelling. The reader should remember that today we have diverse peoples competing for ever-scarcer resources, and politics have to be realistic above all to work out the problems. I need not remind other readers that this attitude is in very short supply at the present. There is much to learn from the example of the Penn colony. The Paxton Boys were Scotch-Irish Presbyterians living in the Susquehanna River valley and lived on the sharp edge of the divide between the secure Quaker towns in Pennsylvania and the Indians, mostly Delawares and the Iroquois confederacy of six nations. The Scotch-Irish were hated by the pacifist Quakers, Germans and English Anglicans, although later where they made up the bulk of the Continental Army and supplied the majority of Continental governors and most of the Continental general officers (also four of the first five Commander-in-chiefs of the United States Army), their efforts were seen in a somewhat different light. They had been persecuted greatly by the English, forced out of Scotland, and then Ulster, Ireland, in the 18th century by the English landlords and government policies. After centuries of conflict when they generally got the worst of the bargains, they were ready to fight anyone for land and a right to determine their own political and economic fates. First it was the Indians, then the Quakers who seemed to support the Indians against the Scotch-Irish, and in 1775 it was the British in general. When given the chance to point their rifles at Redcoats, they did so with relish. It is no exa