The Black Boys Rebellion, Smith's Rebellion or Allegheny Uprising, was an armed uprising in the Province of Pennsylvania between March 5 and November 18, 1765. The nine-month uprising began when a wagon train loaded with illegal "warlike goods" was discovered at Pawling's Tavern (south of Greencastle, Pennsylvania). Alarmed by the train's contents, citizens led by James Smith intercepted and destroyed the goods (valued at over $1 million in today's currency) at a mountain pass near Sideling Hill. The numerous clashes afterwards involved more destruction, firefights, arrests, a kidnapping, legal maneuvers, a court trial, a two-day siege, and one casualty.
The Conococheague settlement
When the French and Indian War ended in 1763, the French surrendered the vast territory known as New France to the British. The Indigenous peoples previously aligned with the French began to see their power and influence wane. In an effort recover this influence, the Odawa war chief Pontiac united various Indigenous tribes in the Ohio Country and the Great Lakes region to prevent encroachment by European colonists. Numerous forts were captured and the conflict spread into western Pennsylvania and the Allegheny Mountains.
Centered in the valley of the Allegheny Mountains was the Conococheague Settlement, comprising land that straddled Conococheague Creek from western Maryland into south-central Pennsylvania. Settling this backcountry wilderness were Scotch-Irish and German immigrants. This land had been inexpensively offered by the Pennsylvania government, but the settlers were unaware that they served as a buffer between Indigenous territory and the more affluent settlements to the east. When Pontiac's warriors attacked frontier homesteads, killing their inhabitants, fear gripped the region much like in the early days of the French and Indian War.
When the year 1764 began, it looked as if the frontier of Pennsylvania had entered a peaceful interlude. Pontiac's forces had been defeated at the Battle of Bushy Run in August 1763. Colonel Henry Bouquet was negotiating with the Indigenous nations of the Ohio Country and it appeared that any Europeans taken captive during the French and Indian War would soon be returning to their homes. In order to prevent future conflict, Britain instituted a series of laws under the Royal Proclamation of 1763. Under these laws, Native Americans were forbidden to receive "war-like" trade items such as muskets, knives, tomahawks, gunpowder, and alcohol; and British subjects were forbidden to settle beyond the Proclamation Line, a line of demarcation that ran through the middle of present-day Pennsylvania and established the official edge of western expansion.
In June 1764, hostilities again enveloped the region. On June 26, 1764, four Lenape warriors entered a log schoolhouse near present-day Greencastle and massacred ten children and their schoolmaster, Enoch Brown. Before arriving to the schoolhouse, they had encountered a pregnant woman, Susan King Cunningham, near Fort Loudoun. She was beaten to death, scalped, and the baby was cut from her body. These events horrified the German and Scots-Irish communities.
James Smith and the Black Boys
In want of protection, frontier settlers looked for men capable of defending them against Indigenous raids and raised funds to establish a company of rangers to protect the settlement. The rangers' leader was a twenty-eight-year-old Scotch-Irish immigrant by the name of James Smith. As a teenager, James Smith joined a road-cutting crew in 1755 in response to the French and Indigenous threat. He was one of James Burd’s men, responsible for hacking out a road to support General Edward Braddock's invasion of western Pennsylvania. One day, on work detail, he was captured by an Indigenous scouting party, taken to Fort Duquesne, and made to run the gauntlet. Surviving the beating, he was adopted into a Mohawk family and lived with them for five years until escaping back to the Conococheague in 1760.
As an expert on Indigenous ways, notably survival and combat, Smith was an obvious choice to lead the company in the defense of the Conococheague in 1763. Smith chose two men, also former captives, to serve as his subalterns. Roughly 35 German and Scots-Irish men volunteered and were trained in the Indigenous manner of fighting. Each man supplied their own personal weapon, either a musket or rifle. Smith had them dress "uniformly in the Indian manner, with breech-clout, leggings, moccasins and green shrouds... In place of hats we wore red handkerchiefs, painted our faces red and black, like Indian warriors." Once equipped and trained, Smith's rangers set off on trails towards the enemy. It would be ten months before they returned. During their time away the Conococheague settlement remained relatively untouched by the violence of Pontiac’s Rebellion, while homesteads as far east as Carlisle were attacked.
Origin of the name
James Smith and his men referred to themselves (in letters of the time) as the "Loyal Volunteers" or as the "Sideling Hill Volunteers". The only mention of Smith's men as "the Black Boys" appears in the August 20, 1765 deposition of Sergeant Leonard McGlashan of the British Army's 42nd (Royal Highland) Regiment of Foot who wrote: "we were fired upon warmly for some time by the Black Boys..." The name may have been coined by the Highlanders. "Black Boys" could also have referred to the town of origin (Black's Town), however, that is unlikely because the town was known as Smith's Town after William Smith, a Justice of the Peace and a relation of James, bought the town's properties from James Black in 1759. James Smith's men did paint their faces red and black and were observed with "black'd" faces in March and May 1765. The Black Boys dropped the practice when remnants of black smudge behind the ears became grounds for arrest.
George Croghan The Royal Proclamation of 1763 forbade the trading of "war-like" trade items (guns, knives, tomahawks, gunpowder, lead, rum, whiskey, etc.) to Native Americans. Furthermore, British Indian Department agents such as George Croghan were forbidden to trade goods with Native Americans for profit or to receive land from them. Croghan, his trading partners, and the Philadelphia merchants who supplied the goods disregarded these restrictions.
Anticipating a change in trade policy that would again fully open trade with Native Americans, Croghan devised a plan to establish himself west of the Proclamation Line before other traders and speculators, with the potential to gain immense wealth through land speculation. As well as serving as a British Indian Department agent, Croghan was an entrepreneur and a businessman nicknamed "Big Business" by the Native Americans. His problem was how to get around the Proclamation's prohibitions against trading warlike goods.
British officers, led by Colonel Henry Bouquet, tasked Croghan with transporting diplomatic presents to Fort Pitt. Croghan secretly approached Baynton, Wharton, & Morgan of Philadelphia sometime in late 1764 with a proposal. The firm received goods by ship from Britain, kept warehouses, and sold goods at wholesale to businessmen who in turn would sell or trade goods to consumers on the frontier, both travelling merchants and shopkeepers in Carlisle. Croghan planned to transport £20,000 to £30,000 sterling worth of trade goods including rum and gunpower to Fort Pitt. He believed that there would be little reason to fear inspection in winter. By February 1765, Croghan's shipment of goods was ready to move.
Incident at Pawling's Tavern, March 5, 1765
On March 5, 1765, the wagon train loaded with goods approached Pawling's Tavern in Greencastle, Pennsylvania. Waiting to receive them were 81 horses with pack saddles and their drivers. Due to the rough terrain, pack horses were preferred as each could carry roughly 200 pounds of goods. This eighty-one pack horse "train" was four times larger than average and carried roughly eight tons of trade goods. During the transfer of goods, one of the packages fell to the ground, causing an onlooker to see the package's contents which he believed looked like scalping knives. Word spread from Pawling's Tavern to Greencastle and the surrounding area that Croghan's pack train was carrying illegal goods. When the pack train approached Justice William Smith's House in Mercersburg, a group of 50 to 100 armed citizens confronted them. These citizens requested that the drivers store the goods at Fort Loudoun until it could be confirmed that the Native Americans had signed a peace agreement and that the governor had opened trade. The pack horse drivers refused and proceeded on to McConnell's Tavern.
Pack train destroyed at Sideling Hill, March 6, 1765
In response, concerned citizens appealed to one of their own, James Smith, to take action. Smith gathered his former rangers and set out to intercept the pack train. About 1 o’clock on March 6, Smith and his men met the pack train at Sideling Hill, west of the Great Cove. Smith ordered the drivers to turn around and be properly inspected at Fort Loudoun. The drivers refused. Smith and his men then attacked the pack train, killed and wounded several horses, and burnt most of the trade goods. The drivers fled in the direction of Fort Loudoun.
Once at the fort, the pack horse drivers pleaded with the officer in charge, Lieutenant Charles Grant of the 42nd Foot, falsely claiming that highwaymen had destroyed the King's goods rather than admitting that they were transporting illegal trade goods. After being bribed by the trader in charge, Grant sent a patrol to the site of the attack. The patrol was ordered to bring back any goods that were not destroyed, and to make prisoners of anybody that they suspected were involved in the attack. McGlashan, leading a 12-man patrol of the 42nd Foot, arrived at Sideling Hill and discovered a pile of scorched goods and seven men who quickly ran off. The patrol pursued the men and was able to capture two. They then headed to a house at Great Cove where McGlashan believed the "rioters" had rendezvoused prior to the ambush. After questioning the occupants the patrol returned to Sideling Hill to recover any undamaged goods, but the only thing found not destroyed was a quantity of rum. Armed citizens later confronted the patrol resulting in McGlashan's men taking additional prisoners and seizing a number of weapons. On March 11, 1765, James Smith and 200 to 300 armed citizens surrounded the fort and forced Lieutenant Grant to release the prisoners. Grant refused to return the weapons and so began the nine-month rebellion.
Reaction Due to the massive financial losses incurred by businessmen who had funded the trading party, and the participation of the King's troops, word spread far beyond the borders of Pennsylvania. In a letter to Sir William Johnson, Superintendent of the British Indian Department, Major General Thomas Gage, Commander-in-Chief, North America, placed the blame on Croghan for "troubling his Head more about Trade than the Business he was employed in ... taking upon himself to enter into Leagues with Traders to carry up Goods in a Clandestine Manner.".
Benjamin Franklin, publisher of the Pennsylvania Gazette, was in London when he learned of the events from an associate from Philadelphia. In referring to earlier "riots" Franklin connected the Black Boys' actions to those of Paxton Boys a year earlier and called for punitive action: