Career.

Joseph Galloway was a born politician. By the 1760s he was perhaps the most powerful man in Pennsylvania after the proprietors, against whom Galloway made a direct attack. Though this failed, Galloway was speaker of the colonial assembly from 1766 to 1775, and in 1774 he was elected a member of the first Continental Congress. Galloway had too much faith that the disagreement between England and the colonies could be reconciled; in 1776 he broke with the patriot movement and joined British forces in New York. He returned to Philadelphia when British forces occupied the city, and he supervised the police and the port during the British occupation. When Philadelphia fell to the Patriots, Galloway fled with the British and lived the rest of his life in exile.

Background.

Joseph Galloway's father, Peter Galloway, was a wealthy Maryland merchant and farmer. A young boy when...