(Volume 2 -Very Clean)
Volume 2 -Very Clean
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Joseph Galloway was born at West River, Anne Arundel County, Maryland. He was the son of Peter Bines Galloway and his wife, Elizabeth Rigbie (or Rigby).
The family was prominent in trade and possessed large estates in Maryland and Pennsylvania.
During Joseph’s boyhood his father died, and shortly thereafter, he removed to Philadelphia where he studied law. He early rose to eminence at the bar and became one of the most popular pleaders of the time.
From 1769 to 1775, Galloway served as vice-president the American Philosophical Society.
The withdrawal of the Quakers from official positions in the government opened the way for his election as an assemblyman in 1756, a post which he held continuously until 1776 with the single exception of the year 1764-65.
His somewhat cold and austere nature did not win him the votes of the electors and he was kept in office primarily by the effective functioning of the Quaker political machine - although he himself was not a member of any Philadelphia meeting.
In the Assembly, he took a principal part in the legislative work arising out of the war with France and at once assumed a position of party leadership. His public career up to 1766 was that of a colonial politician and provincial statesman of ability. While he supported the war, he never lost an opportunity to advance the interests of his province and of the aristocratic merchant class to which he belonged.
In the hope of relieving the strain on Pennsylvania’s resources caused by the war, he joined with Benjamin Franklin in an attempt to tax the Penns’ located but unimproved lands and ultimately, with Franklin, petitioned the Crown to substitute royal control for the proprietary government.
This move, coupled with their activity in suppressing the Paxton riots and their continued denial of additional representation to the western counties, cost Galloway and Franklin their seats in the election of 1764.
With the reorganization of the British colonial system, Galloway appeared in the role of an imperial statesman and, while he jealously guarded the self-governing rights won by the colonies, he clearly saw the problems of empire.
From 1766 to 1775, he was annually elected to the speakership of the Assembly, a position of almost autocratic power. As chairman of the Assembly’s committee to correspond with the agents of the colony in London he endeavored to restore harmony between the colonies and the mother country.
He was selected to be a delegate to the First Continental Congress (1774), and agreed to serve on being permitted to draft the instructions of the delegation.
Galloway refused to be a delegate to the Second Congress and severely arraigned the First, in A Candid Examination of the Mutual Claims of Great Britain and the Colonies (1775).
Fearing for his safety in Philadelphia, he retired to the country, hoping to remain neutral in the impending conflict. Though he was passionately attached to his native soil, his conscience, legalism, and pride forbade his going over to the American cause, which he believed to be unjust.
Threatened, and in the belief that he could thereby assist in restoring a disorganized government and rescue America from herself, he fled to Howe, who found his services invaluable in the Philadelphia campaign. Upon the occupation of the city he became civil administrator, with the titles of superintendent of police and of the port.
Upon the capture of Philadelphia by the Continental forces, in 1778, he went to England with his daughter and there became the spokesman of the American Loyalists. He testified before Parliament on the conduct of the war and published pamphlets attacking Lord Howe and others for their incompetence.
To the very close of the Revolution, he worked to bring about an accommodation between the mother country and the colonies on the basis of a written constitution and labored to demonstrate the value of the imperial connection.
His estates in America were confiscated and he became largely dependent upon his British pension.
In 1793, his petition to the Pennsylvania authorities for permission to return was refused.
His last years were devoted to the service of fellow Americans in England and to literature. He died after twenty-five years of exile, and was buried in the churchyard of Watford, Hertfordshire.
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Galloway’s writings show that he had a good knowledge of the classics, history, and the political philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He was interested in science and philosophy.
Though of considerable wealth and interested in a number of Philadelphia mercantile houses and in land promotions in the West, he was driven by vanity to seek political office as the road to power and influence.
He sympathized with the government’s desire to raise a revenue in America but disapproved of parliamentary taxation and of many of the restrictions on American commerce. His legalistic mind compelled him to accept parliamentary supremacy, but he believed that certain parliamentary powers were being exercised unconstitutionally over the colonies.
Recognizing the existence of a large radical element in America, he nevertheless believed that the problem was basically constitutional and could be solved by a written constitution for the empire.
His feeling that all grievances would ultimately be redressed upon orderly petition gave him only contempt for the disorders of the time, and his conservative stand on the questions of the day earned him popular suspicion.
The treaty of peace came as a severe shock to the Loyalists, and Galloway voiced their despair and chagrin at the failure of British arms.
Galloway was a member of the American Philosophical Society.
On October 18, 1753, Galloway married Grace Growden, daughter of Lawrence Growden, one of the richest and most influential men of the province.
