1742 PHILADELPHIA ELECTION RIOT. Quakers Argue against the Dangers of Executive Branch Overreach.

An exceptionally scarce two-page printed broadside addressed To the Freeholders of the Province of Pennsylvania, written in the context of the October 1, 1742 Pennsylvania Assembly election — known as the Bloody Election, or the Philadelphia Election Riot of 1742.

Politics in Pennsylvania had long been dominated by the Quakers, but their control was increasingly threatened by the predominantly Anglican Proprietary Party, leading to growing tensions. The Proprietary Party hired armed sailors to disrupt the Quakers, who in turn were bringing unnaturalized German immigrants to vote. On election day, violence erupted between the two sides. A crowd of roughly eighty armed seamen and waterfront workers arrived at the polls, rushed the courthouse, threatened to level the building, shouted abuse at Quakers, and attacked their German supporters.

The present document is a Quaker-party political tract urging freeholders not to elect candidates aligned with the Governor and the Proprietary faction. It makes a sophisticated constitutional argument — that the Governor had accumulated too much executive power at the expense of the legislature and the people, warning that concentrating both legislative and executive power in the same hands would be "the very Essence and Definition of Tyranny,” making this a significant early articulation of the importance of the separation of powers, popular sovereignty, and the dangers of executive overreach that would become central to American Revolutionary ideology decades later. The language about liberty, tyranny, and the rights of freeholders is strikingly proto-Revolutionary.

Exceptionally rare with no examples located in the auction record or in the trade.

[Philadelphia Election Riots] A. B. To the Freeholders of the Province of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia. 1742/43. 2pp.

In a very good state, quarter folded with minor softness at folds. A very handsome example of this scarce American broadside.