ABSTRACT
Benjamin Franklin became entangled in the bitter political divisions being exacerbated by increasing violence in western Pennsylvania. Franklin was the first to weigh in on the Paxton Boys, appealing to law, race, and masculinity in his anonymous A Narrative of the Late Massacres in Lancaster County. No one had been brought to justice for either the massacres in Lancaster or the march on Philadelphia, and for the assembly, the governors inability to enforce the rule of law was further proof of the ineffectiveness of proprietary government. In early February of 1764 several hundred primarily western Scotch-Irish Presbyterian men marched fully armed to Philadelphia to kill the Natives held there under Quaker protection. While an emerging New Ticket Presbyterian faction sought to oust pacifists from government, Old Ticket Quakers, who had long been in conflict with the proprietor, moved to make Pennsylvania a royal colony.
