Quakers and Presbyterians
Religion was an important theme during the Paxton pamphlet war. The Scotch-Irish Paxton Boys and other frontiersmen were Presbyterians, whereas many Philadelphia politicians were Quakers. The Paxton Boys and their fellow Presbyterian sympathizers considered the pacifist city-dwelling Quakers to be weak, feminine, and unsympathetic to their problems on the frontier. The Presbyterians mocked the Quakers for their hypocrisy – taking up arms to defend themselves against the angry Paxton Boys who marched on Philadelphia, but opposing military aid for frontier people who were being attacked for settling on American Indian lands.
Meanwhile, the Quakers accused the Presbyterians of encouraging the brutal Scotch-Irish vigilantes’ violence against the friendly Susquehannock peoples. Different ideas about how white men “ought to behave” were demonstrated by this clash of “Presbyterian militancy” and “Quaker passivity” after the 1763 Conestoga Massacre.