Galloway, Joseph, 1731-1803

Joseph Galloway (1731—August 10, 1803) was an American Founding Father and politician who signed the 1774 Continental Association. He became a Loyalist during the American Revolutionary War, after serving as delegate to the First Continental Congress from Pennsylvania. For much of his career in Pennsylvania politics, he was a close ally of Benjamin Franklin, and he became a leading figure in the colony. As a delegate to the Continental Congress, Galloway was a moderate and proposed a Plan of Union which would have averted a full break from Britain. When that was rejected, he moved increasingly towards Loyalism.

Born near West River in Anne Arundel County in the province of Maryland, Galloway moved with his father to Pennsylvania in 1749 where he received a liberal schooling. He studied law, for a time alongside William Franklin, the son of Benjamin Franklin and later a fellow Loyalist, and he was admitted to the bar and began to practice law in Philadelphia. Galloway was a member of the Pennsylvania Provincial Assembly from 1756 to 1774 and served as speaker of the House from 1766 to 1774. Galloway was a member of the Continental Congress in 1774, where he proposed a compromise plan for Union with Great Britain which would provide the colonies with their own parliament subject to the Crown. The Continental Congress rejected it by one vote. He signed the Continental Association, while he was opposed to independence for the Thirteen Colonies and remained loyal to the king.

In 1775, the Assembly rejected Galloway's urging that it abandon its struggle for independence from Britain, so Galloway left the Assembly and the Congress. In the winter of 1777, he joined British General William Howe and accompanied him on his Philadelphia campaign. During the British occupation of Philadelphia, he was appointed superintendent of police and headed the civil government. He aggressively organized the Loyalists in Philadelphia, but the British army was driven out of the city in 1778 following France's entry into the war. The British army retreated to New York, and Galloway went with them.

In 1778, he fled to Britain with his daughter, never to return to the United States, becoming a leading spokesman of American Loyalists in London. The General Assembly of Pennsylvania convicted him of high treason and confiscated his estates. Galloway was influential in convincing the British that a vast reservoir of Loyalist support could be tapped by aggressive leadership, thus setting up the British invasion of the South. After the war, he spent his remaining years in religious studies and writing. He died a widower in Watford, Hertfordshire on August 10, 1803.