The Trials of Allegiance: Treason, Juries, and the American Revolution

Abstract

When colonists declared independence in 1776, they committed an overt act of treason. In Trials of Allegiance, Carlton F. W. Larson offers novel insights into how the American Revolution affected legal actions against those traitors by examining the logic and cases of treason in eighteenth-century Pennsylvania. After a thorough review of English treason laws and their transference to Pennsylvania, Larson turns to the colonial protests that preceded independence. Nascent revolutionaries insisted that their defiance of royal statutes was not traitorous, asserting instead that royal officials were being disloyal to George III. Independence then brought a “republicanization” of treason, as allegiance transferred from the king to the nation, and Pennsylvania mandated that inhabitants take oaths of loyalty to the United States or lose their lives, liberty, and property (p. 71). Following ratification of the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776, the state assembly authored a statute defining high treason and the lesser...