The ticking Quaker scenario
...the pacifism of the Quakers was raising serious moral problems, especially when the Indians began routinely slaughtering settlers on Pennsylvania's western frontier... The settlers, mostly non-Quaker Germans, were growing increasingly alarmed at the lack of protection. They thought it the most fundamental duty of the legislator to defend his people.
...In 1755, the Delaware Indians, urged by the French, initiated a series of bloody massacres... The Quakers were shocked by attacks from a tribe they thought was friendly. At first, the council in Philadelphia responded by denying that the attacks had occurred. Once the facts were undeniable, it argued that unfair treatment of the Indians must have provoked the massacres. They refused to appropriate any funds for defense, even after the horrific bloodbath of 1756. Instead of an armed regiment, the Quaker assembly created a commission to make sure the settlers were treating the Indians fairly. This provided little comfort for the frontiersmen seeing their wives raped and butchered, their children scalped, their crops destroyed, and their homes burned to the ground.
...The Quakers remained unimpressed, even when desperate German settlers rioted in the streets of Philadelphia demanding action on the part of the assembly. Less concerned with the responsibilities of government than whether the laws they passed violated their religious beliefs, Quaker intransigence grew even more rigid as the evidence continued to mount refuting the notion that the Delawares were a peace-loving tribe.
...The social respectability that the Quakers in London had achieved had dissipated, as news of the border massacres reached Europe. The London "Friends" urged the Pennsylvania Quakers to give up government so that they could avoid some blame for the bloodletting by the Indians, and the embarrassing military conquests by the French. On June 4, 1756, six leading Quaker assemblymen handed in their resignations.
...The Quakers were further disgraced when it became apparent that Quaker opposition to violence translated into their refusal to fight for American independence. In addition to being ridiculed as cowards, they were subjected to charges of treason... Despite the ultimate impracticality of the Quaker tradition, without it the American Revolution probably would have been quite different. It would have been very difficult to explain exactly what it was Americans were fighting for if the Quakers had not in fact implemented William Penn's political philosophy: specifically, that government has no right to use force against individuals to serve the purposes of the community. Quaker rule provided the needed historical precedent. http://www.leaderu.com/orgs/cdf/ff/chap13.html
...In 1755, the Delaware Indians, urged by the French, initiated a series of bloody massacres... The Quakers were shocked by attacks from a tribe they thought was friendly. At first, the council in Philadelphia responded by denying that the attacks had occurred. Once the facts were undeniable, it argued that unfair treatment of the Indians must have provoked the massacres. They refused to appropriate any funds for defense, even after the horrific bloodbath of 1756. Instead of an armed regiment, the Quaker assembly created a commission to make sure the settlers were treating the Indians fairly. This provided little comfort for the frontiersmen seeing their wives raped and butchered, their children scalped, their crops destroyed, and their homes burned to the ground.
...The Quakers remained unimpressed, even when desperate German settlers rioted in the streets of Philadelphia demanding action on the part of the assembly. Less concerned with the responsibilities of government than whether the laws they passed violated their religious beliefs, Quaker intransigence grew even more rigid as the evidence continued to mount refuting the notion that the Delawares were a peace-loving tribe.
...The social respectability that the Quakers in London had achieved had dissipated, as news of the border massacres reached Europe. The London "Friends" urged the Pennsylvania Quakers to give up government so that they could avoid some blame for the bloodletting by the Indians, and the embarrassing military conquests by the French. On June 4, 1756, six leading Quaker assemblymen handed in their resignations.
...The Quakers were further disgraced when it became apparent that Quaker opposition to violence translated into their refusal to fight for American independence. In addition to being ridiculed as cowards, they were subjected to charges of treason... Despite the ultimate impracticality of the Quaker tradition, without it the American Revolution probably would have been quite different. It would have been very difficult to explain exactly what it was Americans were fighting for if the Quakers had not in fact implemented William Penn's political philosophy: specifically, that government has no right to use force against individuals to serve the purposes of the community. Quaker rule provided the needed historical precedent. http://www.leaderu.com/orgs/cdf/ff/chap13.html