Knock down the broad brims

What happened

Philadelphia voted once a year, on 1 October, at the Court House in the middle of Market Street, and in 1742 rumor ran ahead of the day: the Quakers would bring unnaturalized Germans in from the country, and the governor's friends would bring sailors. Early that morning a man swore he heard sailors say they would knock down the broad brims. Mayor Clement Plumsted told nervous Friends the sailors had as much right at the election as the Dutchmen. At ten o'clock the sheriff opened the polls, and when Isaac Norris was named inspector, fifty to seventy sailors came marching from the Jersey Market with a huzza and swinging clubs. The sheriff handed out constables' staffs and the first charge was beaten off. The sailors regrouped, bricks flew, windows broke, and some Quakers bolted the Court House doors. Then armed Germans and Quakers, pacifism set aside, counterattacked and cleared the field, and the vote finished in peace. Fifty-four sailors and their leaders went to jail, and voters crossed out William Allen's name on their ballots. Rothbard says the magistrates who favored the proprietor deliberately failed to stop the raid and that the Quakers won both at the polls and in the streets. A party that had held its ground in the Assembly held it on the pavement too.