The Trials of Allegiance examines the law of treason during the
American Revolution: a convulsive, violent civil war in which
nearly everyone could be considered a traitor, either to Great
Britain or to America. Drawing from extensive archival research in
Pennsylvania, one of the main centers of the revolution, Carlton
Larson provides the most comprehensive analysis yet of the treason
prosecutions brought by Americans against British adherents:
through committees of safety, military tribunals, and ordinary
criminal trials. Although popular rhetoric against traitors was
pervasive in Pennsylvania, jurors consistently viewed treason
defendants not as incorrigibly evil, but as fellow Americans who
had made a political mistake. This book explains the repeated and
violently controversial pattern of acquittals. Juries were
carefully selected in ways that benefited the defendants, and
jurors refused to accept the death penalty as an appropriate
punishment for treason. The American Revolution, unlike many
others, would not be enforced with the gallows. More broadly,
Larson explores how the Revolution's treason trials shaped American
national identity and perceptions of national allegiance. He
concludes with the adoption of the Treason Clause of the United
States Constitution, which was immediately put to use in the early
1790s in response to the Whiskey Rebellion and Fries's Rebellion.
In taking a fresh look at these formative events, The Trials of
Allegiance reframes how we think about treason in American history,
up to and including the present.
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