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Galloway, Joseph -1803

Loyalist; born near West River, Anne Arundel co., Md., about 1730; was a member of the Pennsylvania Assembly in 1764, and at one time speaker and, with Franklin, advocated a change of the government of Pennsylvania from the proprietary to the royal form. A member of the first Continental Congress, he was conservative in his views, yet his line of argument in his first debates tended towards political independence. He proposed a plan of colonial government, which was rejected. It contemplated a government with a president-general appointed by the King, and a grand council, chosen every three years by the colonial assemblies, who were to be authorized to act jointly with Parliament in the regulation of the affairs of the colonies. Parliament was to have superior authority, with a right to revise all acts of the grand council, which, in turn, was to have a negative in British statutes relating to the colonies. This plan was, at first, favorably considered by many in the Congress; but it was rejected, and not permitted to be entered on the minutes of the journal.

It has been asserted that Galloway was a voluntary spy for the British government. His conduct through the session, viewed in the light of subsequent history, appears insincere and disingenuous. He was one of the most bitter Tories who misrepresented the colonies in England, to which he fled when his principles were discovered and denounced. He quailed before Samuel Adams, the stern Puritan and patriot, and cordially hated him because he feared him. “Though by no means remarkable for brilliant abilities,” wrote Galloway, “he is equal to most men in popular intrigue and the management of a faction. He eats little, drinks little, sleeps little, and thinks much; and is most decisive and indefatigable in the pursuit of his objects. He was the man who, by his superior application, managed at once the faction in Congress at Philadelphia and the factions in New England.”

After the question of independence began to be seriously agitated, Galloway abandoned the Whig, or republican, cause, and was thenceforward an uncompromising Tory. When the British army evacuated Philadelphia, in 1778, he left his country, with his daughter, went to England, and never returned. He died in Watford, Hertfordshire, Aug. 29, 1803.

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