Elizabeth and Henry Drinker of Philadelphia were no friends of the
American Revolution. Yet neither were they its enemies. The Drinkers
were a merchant family who, being Quakers and pacifists, shunned
commitments to both the Revolutionaries and the British. They strove to
endure the war uninvolved and unscathed. They failed. In 1777, the war
came to Philadelphia when the city was taken and occupied by the British
army.
Aaron Sullivan explores the British occupation of Philadelphia,
chronicling the experiences of a group of people who were pursued,
pressured, and at times persecuted, not because they chose the wrong
side of the Revolution but because they tried not to choose a side at
all. For these people, the war was neither a glorious cause to be won
nor an unnatural rebellion to be suppressed, but a dangerous and costly
calamity to be navigated with care. Both the Patriots and the British
referred to this group as the disaffected, perceiving correctly that
their defining feature was less loyalty to than a lack of support
for either side in the dispute, and denounced them as opportunistic,
apathetic, or even treasonous. Sullivan shows how Revolutionary
authorities embraced desperate measures in their quest to secure their
own legitimacy, suppressing speech, controlling commerce, and mandating
military service. In 1778, without the Patriots firing a shot, the
king's army abandoned Philadelphia and the perceived threat from
neutrals began to decline--as did the coercive and intolerant practices
of the Revolutionary regime.
By highlighting the perspectives of those wearied by and withdrawn from
the conflict, The Disaffected reveals the consequences of a
Revolutionary ideology that assumed the nation's people to be a united
and homogenous front.
