y even produced able military
leaders: Colonel John Dickinson, General Greene, and General Mifflin in
the Continental Army, and, in the War of 1812, General Jacob Brown,
who reorganized the army and restored its failing fortunes after many
officers had been tried and found wanting.

There was always among the Quakers a rationalistic party and a party of
mysticism. The rationalistic party prevailed in Pennsylvania all through
the colonial period. In the midst of the worst horrors of the French and
Indian wars, however, the conscientious objectors roused themselves and
began preaching and exhorting what has been called the mystical side of
the faith. Many extreme Quaker members of the Assembly resigned their
seats in consequence. After the Revolution the spiritual party began
gaining ground, partly perhaps because then the responsibilities of
government and care of the great political and religious experiment in
Pennsylvania were removed. The spiritual party increased so rapidly
in power that in 1827 a split occurred which involved not a little
bitterness, ill feeling, and litigation over property. This division
into two opposing camps, known as the Hicksites and the Orthodox,
continues and is likely to remain.

Quaker government in Pennsylvania was put to still severer tests by
the difficulties and disasters that followed Braddock's defeat. That
unfortunate general had something over two thousand men and was hampered
with a train of artillery and a splendid equipment of arms, tools, and
supplies, as if he were to march over the smooth highways of Europe.
When he came to drag all these munitions through the depths of the
Pennsylvania forests and up and down the mountains, he found that he
made only about three miles a day and that his horses had nothing to eat
but the leaves of the trees. Washington, who was of the party, finally
persuaded him to abandon his artillery and press forward with about
fifteen hundred picked men. These troops, when a few miles from Fort
Duquesne (now Pittsburgh), met about six hundred Indians and three
hundred French coming from the fort. The English maintained a close
formation where they were, but the French and Indians immediately spread
out on their flanks, lying behind trees and logs which provided rests
for their rifles and security for their bodies. This strategy decided
the day. The English were shot down like cattle in a pen, and out of
about fifteen hundred only four hundred and fift