AUTHOR TALK: PHILADELPHIA QUAKERS AND THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

Fleeing political upheavals in England for settlement in the New World, Quakers rose to unprecedented economic and political power in the Pennsylvania colony. However, the failure of the Quaker-dominated government to provide for defense in the wars from the 1730s into the 1760s was the beginning of their downfall. By the Revolution, their fortunes had waned, and they were brutally suppressed by their political foes. Several dozen influential Friends were exiled to Virginia without so much as a hearing, and Quaker farms and businesses were subject to depredations. Labeled dissenters by Loyalist and Patriot alike, they stood their ground, alone and isolated. Through the words of those who were there, author and historian Jeff Denman vividly describes the precipitous rise of the Philadelphia Quakers and their fall during the American Revolution.

Jeff Denman is a graduate of the University of Maine (BS) and the University of Connecticut (MA) and was a U.S. history and world geography teacher in Brookline, Massachusetts. He is the author of several articles on U.S. history and coauthor of Greene and Cornwallis in the Carolinas: The Pivotal Struggle of the American Revolution, 1780–1781 and John Quincy Adams, Reluctant Abolitionist.

We are excited to welcome author Jeff Denman back to the Forbes House Museum to discuss his book which will be published in March 2026!

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