Portal:Philadelphia/Selected article archive/17

Independence Hall in the 1770s.

The Pennsylvania Mutiny of 1783 (also known as the Philadelphia Mutiny) was an anti-government protest by nearly 400 soldiers of the Pennsylvania Militia in June 1783. The militiamen, veterans of the Revolutionary War, surrounded Independence Hall demanding that the state legislature, meeting on the second floor, pay them their long-overdue wages. The United States Congress, meeting on the first floor, felt threatened and demanded that John Dickinson, President of the Executive Council of Pennsylvania, remove the soldiers by force, which he refused to do. The noisy protest resulted in Congress vacating Philadelphia (for Princeton, New Jersey), and illustrated the need for the national capital to be in a district under federal control.