"Ready to act in defiance of Government": Colonial Philadelphia Voluntary Culture and the Defense Association of 1747–1748

Abstract

This article examines the Defense Association formed in Philadelphia in 1747–48, an extralegal militia that for a short time usurped governmental powers when the city feared attack during King George's War. It argues that the Defense Association was no aberration, that it must be understood as the fruition and extension of patterns of voluntary organization that had been developing in Philadelphia for twenty years. The Association, in turn, expanded the scope of what was politically possible through voluntary organization and carved out space for future extralegal organizing up to and including the Revolutionary groups of the 1770s.