The Trials of Allegiance

Although we tend to think of the American Revolution as an act of treason against Great Britain (which it was), revolutionary Americans regularly employed the law of treason against those people perceived as aiding the British. But, in revolutionary Pennsylvania, juries did something astonishing; they regularly acquitted people accused of treason. The Trials of Allegiance explains why: the juries were carefully selected in ways that benefited the defendants,and jurors did not believe that the death penalty was the appropriate punishment for treason. The American Revolution, unlike many others, would not be enforced by the gallows.