Prisoners of Congress

In 1777, Congress labeled Quakers who would not take up arms in support of the War of Independence as “the most Dangerous Enemies America knows” and ordered Pennsylvania and Delaware to apprehend them. In response, Keystone State officials sent twenty men—seventeen of whom were Quakers—into exile, banishing them to Virginia, where they were held for a year.Prisoners of Congress reconstructs this moment in American history through the experiences of four families: the Drinkers, the Fishers, the Pembertons, and the Gilpins. Identifying them as the new nation’s first political prisoners, Norman E. Donoghue II relates how the Quakers, once the preeminent power in Pennsylvania and an integral constituency of the colonies and early republic, came to be reviled by patriots who saw refusal to fight the English as borderline sedition. Surprising, vital, and vividly told, this narrative of political and literal warfare waged by the United States against a pacifist religious group during the Revolutionary War era sheds new light on an essential aspect of American history. It will appeal to anyone interested in learning more about the nation’s founding.

“Norman Donoghue's Prisoners of Congress brings to life one of the most important and compelling events of the American Revolution in Philadelphia. It is an untold story of national significance.”—Patrick Spero, author of Frontier Rebels: The Fight for Independence in the American West, 1765–1776, “Anybody interested in the tensions between politics and religion, a matter so urgent to us today, should read Donoghue’s account of the Quaker exiles. Almost novelistic in its compelling narrative, this study marshals familiar and unfamiliar sources to recover the story of America’s first political prisoners.”—Scott Paul Gordon, author of The Letters of Mary Penry: A Single Moravian Woman in Early America, “Far from a niche story, Prisoners of Congress is a meticulously researched book with enormous present-day relevance. It reveals important truths about American political and religious institutions before, during, and after the Revolution and shines a startlingly new and important light on familiar people, places, and themes.”—Sarah Crabtree, author of Holy Nation: The Transatlantic Quaker Ministry in an Age of Revolution, “Norman Donoghue has given us what is likely to be the definitive account of a largely forgotten but significant episode of the American Revolution. Elegantly written and based on exhaustive research, Prisoners of Congress illustrates the tensions between religious liberty and dissent, on one hand, and fears of invasion and subversion, on the other, that have been present from the founding of the American republic.”—Thomas Hamm, Earlham College, “Donoghue's book is not only an exceptional examination of a little-known episode during the War of Independence, but also a cautionary tale for our divided times.”—Max L. Carter, William R. Rogers Director of Friends Center and Quaker Studies (emeritus), Guilford College

Norman E. Donoghue II is an independent historian of American Quakerism based in Philadelphia.