Pennsylvania Line Mutiny

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The Pennsylvania Line Mutiny was a mutiny of Continental Army soldiers, who demanded higher pay and better housing conditions, and was the cause of the legend and stories surrounding the American heroine Tempe Wick. The mutiny began on January 1, 1781, and ended with a negotiated settlement on January 8, 1781. The negotiated terms were finally concluded by January 29, 1781. The mutiny was the most successful and important insurrection of Continental Army soldiers during the American Revolutionary War.^[1]

During the winter, some of the mutinying soldiers also gathered food, supplies, and especially horses with the intention of traveling south to Philadelphia to march on Congress, which was then preparing to consider and ratify the Articles of Confederation, and to make their demands to Congress in person. However, there is no evidence that suggests that the soldiers intended to do physical harm or violence to any Congressman. When the mutiny broke out at Jockey Hollow, the Wick family estate, the soldiers famously tried to stop Tempe Wick, who was riding home to her sick mother on her horse Colonel. When the soldiers demanded that she surrender her horse, Tempe refused. When they again ordered her to dismount, she tricked the soldiers, and rode back to the Wick House, where she hid the horse.^[2]

Although the mutineers were upset with Congress and with their officers, they ultimately refused to defect to the British when British Army General Sir Henry Clinton made them an offer. The mutiny lasted until the end of January when the Supreme Executive Council of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania opened negotiations with the leaders of the mutiny. When the negotiations proved satisfactory, many of the soldiers returned to fight for the Continental Army, and participated in future campaigns. This mutiny inspired a similar insurrection by the New Jersey Line known as the Pompton Mutiny, but this time the outcome was not as favorable to the soldiers, and the officers reestablished order over the army after they executed several New Jersey soldiers for treason.^[3]