Treason on Trial in Revolutionary Pennsylvania: The Case of John Roberts, Miller by David W. Maxey (review)

Treason on Trial in Revolutionary Pennsylvania is a short but dense work that seeks to reconstruct the trial and surrounding circumstances of the case against John Roberts, one of two Quakers hanged for treason in Philadelphia in November, 1778. By presenting for the first time surviving but previously unpublished notes from the Roberts trial—one set made by Thomas McKean as Chief Justice of Pennsylvania and presiding trial judge, and a second by an unidentified Quaker observer for the Philadelphia Meeting for Sufferings—author David W. Maxey brings to light new information that has bearing on the shape of communities, the complications of governance, and the boundaries of political allegiance during a complicated moment in Pennsylvania's history. Maxey's self-styled "contribution to local history" (5) also serves to consolidate knowledge of the Mill Creek Valley section of Lower Merion Township, a part of William Penn's original Welsh Tract that, as a no man's land between two armies, was uniquely affected by the British occupation of Philadelphia.

Yet, Treason on Trial is a solid study that does not live up to its full promise. Maxey hints at larger insights based in the "perspective obtained" from the trial notes (6): the scope of partisan conflict in the Philadelphia region; "how money, religion and political ambition had the capacity to influence conduct" (6); wavering concepts of allegiance under a new and radical regime; responses of the Society of Friends to the overt loyalism of its members; the legacy of communal estrangement left by the war (6-8). His book, however, trends strongly towards the particular, and the lawyerly. This granular effect is substantially heightened by a loosely chronological organization that lacks either a summary narrative outlining the events of Roberts's trial and execution or a clear overview of how Maxey's specific exegesis will contribute to a larger argument. Readers are forced to tease out the arc of the underlying story while simultaneously working through details of the various testimonies of witnesses and their probable implications for Roberts's guilt or innocence, or for the outcome of the trial. A stronger interpretive framework for the book would substantially enhance it.

Historians of Quakers and Quakerism during the Revolutionary era will, even so, find Maxey's attention to detail combined with a breadth of source material especially useful. (Scholars of the evolving American judicial system will similarly find much to like here.) The likelihood that John Roberts's troubles started when he become "too much moved" by the exile of Quaker leaders to Virginia (22), to the point where he sought direct intervention from the British army, is intriguing and deserves more exploration. Less helpful is a tendency to downplay the belief-based foundations of Quaker practices and communities in favor of something more mechanistic. This is especially the case in Maxey's treatment of the Meeting for Sufferings, which he sees as equally or more interested in "set[ting] the record straight about the failure of the condemned men to adhere to Quaker principles" (104) than in the men's spiritual welfare or the injustice they may have suffered. A more nuanced understanding of Quaker culture in this historical moment would enrich Maxey's interpretation of the surviving written record.

Treason on Trial reintroduces a difficult event in Pennsylvania and Quaker history at a time when scholars show renewed interest in loyalists and loyalism during the American Revolution. While it is probably not the last word on the larger meanings of the trial and hanging of John Roberts (or his co-religionist Abraham Carlisle), it is a significant contribution to scholarship, worthy of the close reading it requires.