Interpreters out on the street of old city philadelphia, and imagine what life was like under british rule. One of the big agendas of this event is to present the fall of 1777 in a complicated way. To show that for many of the people who remain in the city that winter, this was an occupation, but maybe it was a liberation from many in their perspective. They read about in the period being liberated from the tyrannical usurpation of an arbitrary congress, which is maybe something we could all aspire to. laughs so we do this with Living History Program in part because people come to museums to learn in all different ways, to encounter the real things of history, to have a Human Experience and connect with it, and one way that we bring it to life is with Living History Programming, with first person programming like some of you might have witnessed in our new theatrical programme where richard st. George stormed into the room, guns blazing in the spring of perhaps 1798, at the end of his life but maybe he doesnt know that yet. We also do these larger living history events and i have to say it really is a pleasure to introduce the set of speakers because i have benefited enormously from a strain of recent sala mothership that reexamines what life was like in occupied cities like new york and charleston, boston and philadelphia and as many of you may know the last concentrated work on these subjects is perhaps 40 years old, the most recent work on the philadelphia occupation, john w. Jacksons book, is almost half a century old and it reads quite well but that is an enormous gap in historical scholarship, so folks like learn to fall and Erin Sullivan, kim not, doing exciting recent young historical work about how complicated life was in the midst of the revolutionary war. For those people that they studied, as often as those people might have thought about military occupation and ideology in the big picture of the war, they were almost as often occupied by everyday concerns like lost cows and lost pocketbooks, by blanket seizures from the army, and then the british army that you can read one of the diary of elizabeth. The specificities of life made it more complicated by new populations of soldiers. So here is philadelphia as you were here for example, there had never been a substantial military presence but in the fall of 1777, 10,000 people flee the city and suddenly thousands of british soldiers, loyalist, civilians, repopulate the city and transform what it was like for perhaps nine months. I think, it is a great opportunity to introduce these two scholars and to give their work some great attention, they are really looking forward to taking your questions about the complexities of their subject, and i want to just take a few minutes to introduce both of them. Doctor Erin Sullivan earned his ph. D. At Temple University right here in philadelphia, he work with some of you in this room and others. He recently published an absolutely brilliant book that i tell people about all the time because i think the real genius of excellent historical writing is not just getting the facts right, or riding a short piece, but somehow constructing something that is hundreds of pages long that lulls you into a sense of security because you think it is about one thing and then it sneaks up behind you like the british in some of the battles that we have been talking about and surprises you, so as i read errands his work, i was thinking there was a pretty pro british work, hes been a lot of time convincing me they were good guides, and this is how it would look for some people, and very subtly, about halfway through the book, the british arrived in philadelphia, they go from being this kind of distant, nuisance, kind of ideological, envious party for the subject and philadelphia to suddenly being very present in their lives in the second half of the book proves to you that the british warrant that desirable of a governing force either, and by the time you have traveled with him through nine months of British Occupation you realize that the obvious course was not patriotism or loyalty, the obvious course was disaffection which is the title of his book, the disaffected. The most obvious situation to be in was a noncommittal middle ground, in which most people avoided or flipflopped or tried to avoid taking stakes with either party. I think erins work, just an enormous amount of humanizing the British Occupation presenting it as problematic as it would be in the period and shows us that by the time the british left in june, people were not very excited about it but they werent very disappointed about it either, and that helps us think about the rest of the revolutionary war and its legacy with philadelphia and beyond, in really new ways. Our second speaker, doctor lauren duval, now at the university of oklahoma got her ph. D. At American University of washington d. C. , and i first encountered laurens work in the form it took when she was a resident for a variety of programs here in philadelphia and beyond and im really excited to see her eventual book project because as i was telling them earlier, i am using it as kind of boot leg conference papers for a while and sharing around this Third Generation media, and i think it is really going to explode our understanding of life in these cities, especially because it focuses on gender and domestic space, so many of you are familiar with some of the figures in philadelphia, the occupation like elizabeth drink, or a quaker who lived maybe only three blocks from here, who spent the winter as the newly independent head of her household because her husband henry has been exiled to the last place you would always want to be exiled to, winchester, virginia. Lot of great bedandbreakfast there but not many in 1777, when you read the work and then lawrence theres an incredible scrutiny of that work, it makes to reconsider what it meant to be in a city of woman that was occupied by british army that not only included male soldiers but also german and british and American Camp followers and their children and how that aspect of this life in this period really mattered. So, i should also note that her work recently won an exciting prize, has an award in the william erie quarterly, and its so well deserved this recognition for this exciting train of scholarship. With that, i will let you know that it will be doctor Aaron Sullivan first and then doctor lauren duval, they will both take questions after each of their programs and i would ask you to join me in welcoming Aaron Sullivan. Thank you. Thank you to the museum, for putting on this well wonderful event but im grateful every year when the philadelphia weekend rolls around, i care about that event very much. Im glad the people of the museum care about it too. I feel obligated to begin this talk today with a warning of sorts. You should know, that at one point over the next 45 minutes i will briefly be exposing you to images of donald trump and hillary clinton, i will also at one point, not so much advocate for, but suggest that you consider an act against the United States. And all of this will somehow be tied back to the American Revolution and into the British Occupation in philadelphia, because that is really what i like to talk about, those nine months in 1777, and 1778 when the british occupied the city, and made it their headquarters in america. Now of course, as a historian, i use that moment to take simple things and make them complicated. Because real life is complicated, this is the real past and its complicated, thats what historians do, we complicate things. We like to tell stories. So let me tell you a somewhat complicated story that begins on the eve of the British Occupation of philadelphia. Tyler gave us some spoilers here but i am going to press ahead anyway. We have elizabeth and henry drinker, who many of you are familiar, with a revolutionary couple in philadelphia they didnt live far from here. They have a beautiful two story home, they can see the river. Elizabeth likes to say that she had room enough in the city. They had such an elegant room, a backyard, a stable and flowering trees every summer. Covering the area in red and white blossoms. They were quakers. Which is why we have their silhouettes rather than actual portraits. Portraits was seen as vain, silhouettes is okay. And like many quakers they were pacifist. So when the war broke out they wanted to avoid being involved in any way. And the goal was that whatever side eventually won they would continue on with their family, their, fate their business, just as they had before. Empire or independents. They did not think it would make that big of a difference. They were going to find that being an involved is more difficult than they. Thought on december 2nd, 1777, henry drinker is at work in his parlor. He is working from home that day because he is feeling kind of ill. But also because his youngest son and names it. Who he refers to as little henry. He has eight years old and is second away that involves violent meeting and worms and things you do not want to know about. Deathly ill. Henry is at home on december 2nd when he was arrested as an enemy of the state. Three men from the government, the State Government not to be confused with the colonial government, arrive and arrest henry for, in their words, having evidence against the cause of america. Henry and elizabeth will object and say that they have done no such thing. And to, even if they have it is not a crime according to pennsylvaniass brand new state constitution which promises that the people have a right to freedom of speech and of writing, and publishing their thoughts. Their objections will go unheeded, henry will be arrested. He will never be charged with a crime, he will never have a hearing before a judge or a court. At one point to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court said on his behalf that the government was must early summer, charge him for a crime, not only will the government refused to follow this order they will then pass a law saying that in the case like hand me drink or there will henceforth be immune from judicial interference. They will make that law retroactive. Shortly after his arrest, henry and about 20 others, mostly kick quakers and pacifists. Well be exiled to virginia. Two of them will die there before they can come home. Their families and children including elizabeth and little henry will be left to fend for themselves in philadelphia and even as the british invade and occupy the city. The story goes on, what happens to elizabeth and the city isnt necessarily fascinating. Along the way of trying to get henry back she makes a very good impression on George Washington. You should know that little henry is okay. He is better. Thats not important to this presentation but i didnt want you to worry. The real question we are going to talk about today, is why does this happen . Why does the new independent government with the full knowledge of the Continental Congress see someone like henry as an enemy and a threat . The short answer is of course that it its complicated because the path is complicated. But we can begin to consider it by asking, what do we do with henry drinker in the context of the revolution . How do we define, him how do we categorize him . What categories exist . Under simplest homes we can say this is a conflict in which america tries to be independent from great britain. So there are the americans and the british. And if we wanted to reenact the revolution we could divide it all. Up we could go down the middle and say you will be the americans and you will be the british. Those are two sides and you can fight it out. But we know right away that that is too simple. Because not all americans opposed british rules. There are those who supported the side of the empire. So some of you americans will actually be on that side. But of course not everyone in america was a british colonists to begin with. There are people here before and they served on both sides. Some people on our british side will be the mohawks, and over here we have the own idea. The americans were on both sides. We should recognize that not everyone who came to america did so voluntarily or from europe. Slaved black men and women also served both sides in the war. The rhode island on one side regiment on the other. Most of them moved to the british side, as the british were the first and most consistent to offer liberty. Recently he read thought that everybody in revolutionary america was a man. Women were on both sides. Occasionally under arms. The most famous example here. But no country survives without hundreds or thousands of women. Women on both sides and if we want to be there were some french and haitian. But we can create a number of different categories, roles to play, we can put them on each side. And this is what we tend to do. Both we as historians and we as americans. We encounter a new category of people from the revolution and we ask ourselves which side do we put them on. And in the past we have been very slow to look at people who did not belong on either side. People who rejected both sides, neutral, pacifist, the apathetic people like the drinkers. So i refer to them here at in my book as the disaffected. People who lacked an affection for either of the two sides. You might understand this point. Are they really worth thinking about. They are definitely there, we have the drinkers most quakers fall under the category, if you look at historical literature as a whole you will come up with 20 to 40 of the population in this category. Throughout most of the war. So theyre definitely there. But if they dont pick a side if they are not committed to one side against the other, do they matter . Yes. They do. I wrote a book about them. So i think they matter. And im pleased to say that the museum thinks they matter. You can find all sorts of things about them downstairs. They are also referred to as the people between. And explaining why they matter, why would you look at them, why would you care about them. I like to reach for an analogy from the more recent past. So i want you to think back with me to a more recent time when the fate of america was being impacted. Forces in red and blue went to battle with one another to control the future of this nation. I warned you that this was going to happen. I come all the way back to the 2016 election. We all know that contemporary politics in the context of the revolution never goes badly. We have a revolution the democrat won the popular vote. We got the presidency we spent a great deal of time afterwards looking at graphs like this one. And we talked a lot about who are the people who voted on this side, into are the people who voted on that side. And especially who were the people who we expected to vote this way and voted on that side. We spent much less time looking at graphs that looked like this. And that green bar in the middle thats not vote for the green party. This represents the plurality of eligible voters who did not vote for either major party candidate. In most cases they did not vote at all. They sat out the election, they were the non participants. If we look at these people i think we can get some window into the mindset of the disaffected in the revolution. Its not a perfect analogy but it is a good place to start. So lets talk about these people. Here we go. We can recognize that they are the diverse in the reasons for setting out the conflict. Some of them were apathetic, they were deeply involved and cared very much. And yet they hated both options. They hated them so much they could not get behind either one. These people were not unified. There was no single Third Party Candidate in 2016. There was no single vision of the americas future in the 17 seventies which could have brought all the disaffected together under a third option. One of the things about not being unified is that your voices are quiet. There are certain rallying cries, certain banners you can get people to rally around, give me liberty or give me death, or god save the king, or make America Great again. Its very hard to get people to rally around the cry of i do not want to be involved. This is hard to sell. We can recognize that when we talked about the people we are not just talking about neutrality. As if they all way the to option and said they are exactly even. We are talking about people who are not willing to make any significant sacrifice for one side or the other. In an election that sacrifice is you have to get up and go vote. But the sacrifices involved in signing up for one side and the other in the seventeen hundreds could of course be much much higher. Maybe most importantly we can recognize that in both cases. These people are pivotal to understanding the outcome of the conflict, and to understanding what it was like to experience it. You could not understand the election of 2016, why it ended the way it did without looking at the people who did not vote and why. You could not understand what it is like to experience that election without talking about the experience of the plurality of americans who did not vote. And we should not try to understand the revolution without considering the experience of people who tried not to be involved. So let me tell you about some of those people. In this case two men, both known as benjamin, neither of them named franklin, you might have heard of him, i think we have all looked at this painting a lot. After the righthand side there, the depiction which has been noted it is almost but not entirely like actual clifton. Theyre doing a battle reenactment there tomorrow. So when youre down here you can go see them find it clifton. He was a chief justice of the Supreme Court of colonial pennsylvania arguably one of if not the most influential men. He was a friend of both George Washington and john adams. He was an outspoken opponent of british taxation. From the stamp tax on he did think that british was not empowered for what its doing to america. He was also a Firm Believer in order and Lawful Authority. And one of his last cases in the Supreme Court he