A State Divided

A State Divided Synopsis

Here, is the story of the revolution told from the side of the losers--the Tories or the disaffected--as it took place in Pennsylvania. Their disaffection was largely cause, however, not by loyalty to England and her king, but by local factors within Pennsylvania, such as religious and political divisions, personal antagonisms, and rivalries. This volume traces the development of that opposition as the mother country began to enforce a stricter colonial policy in the 1760s. Ousterhout focuses on the disaffected in the pre-war decade, showing their increasing apprehensiveness about the escalating colonial anti-British measures and their belief that those measures were causing, rather than responding to, the increasingly violent British actions. The volume further explores the punishments and harassments against the disaffected that were administered by local crowds as well as by legal agencies during the Revolutionary period.