The Pennsylvania Line Mutiny: 6th Pennsylvania Regiment Revolts at Morristown (1781)

January 1, 1781

On the night of January 1, 1781, roughly 1,500 soldiers of the Pennsylvania Line, including men of the 6th Pennsylvania Regiment, rose up against their officers at their winter encampment near Morristown, New Jersey. Furious over unpaid wages, inadequate food and clothing, and disputes over enlistment terms, the mutineers marched toward Philadelphia to demand redress from the Continental Congress. The uprising, the largest mass mutiny of the Revolutionary War, exposed the fragile state of George Washington's army after more than five years of war.

From the 5th Battalion to the 6th Pennsylvania Regiment

The unit that mutinied in 1781 traced its origins to December 9, 1775, when Pennsylvania authorities raised it in Philadelphia as the 5th Pennsylvania Battalion for service with the newly formed Continental Army. As the war expanded and army organization evolved, the unit was redesignated the 6th Pennsylvania Regiment and folded into the Pennsylvania Line, the collective term for Continental regiments raised by that state. Over the next several years, the regiment saw hard fighting across the northern and mid-Atlantic theaters. Its soldiers marched through the New York Campaign of 1776, endured the bloody repulse at the Battle of Brandywine on September 11, 1777, and fought again weeks later at the Battle of Germantown on October 4, 1777. The regiment survived the brutal winter at Valley Forge and returned to combat at the Battle of Monmouth in June 1778, one of the war's largest engagements. By January 1781, after more than five years of campaigning, many of the regiment's original recruits believed their enlistment terms had long since expired, while Continental currency had collapsed in value, leaving soldiers unpaid, hungry, and poorly clothed through another brutal winter encampment.

Mutiny at Morristown

On New Year's Day 1781, grievances boiled over. Roughly 1,500 enlisted men of the Pennsylvania Line, including soldiers of the 6th Pennsylvania Regiment, seized artillery, killed at least one officer, and marched out of their winter camp near Morristown, New Jersey, under improvised leadership. Their demands centered on unpaid back wages, insufficient rations and clothing, and, critically, confusion over whether three-year enlistments signed in 1777 and 1778 had already expired. Major General Anthony Wayne, commanding the Pennsylvania Line, attempted to halt the column but found his authority swept aside by the scale of the revolt. Rather than firing on his own troops, Wayne rode alongside the mutineers as they moved toward Princeton and then Trenton, working to keep the situation from dissolving into chaos or defection to the British. British commander Sir Henry Clinton, sensing opportunity, dispatched agents offering the mutineers back pay and pardons if they would join the Crown's cause. The soldiers, still loyal to the American cause despite their fury at Congress, turned the British emissaries over to American authorities, underscoring that their revolt was a labor grievance, not treason.

Negotiation and Aftermath

Congress, alarmed by the scale of the uprising, dispatched a committee including Pennsylvania President Joseph Reed to negotiate directly with the mutineers at Trenton and Princeton in early January 1781. The resulting settlement granted discharges to soldiers who could prove their enlistment terms had expired, along with promises of back pay, clothing, and provisions for those who remained. Ultimately, roughly half the Pennsylvania Line was discharged or furloughed, a significant blow to Continental Army manpower just as campaigning season approached. The mutiny's relatively lenient resolution stood in sharp contrast to a similar uprising weeks later among New Jersey Line troops at Pompton, which Washington ordered suppressed by force, resulting in the execution of two ringleaders as a deterrent. Soldiers who remained with the 6th Pennsylvania Regiment went on to serve at the Battle of Green Spring in Virginia in July 1781, part of the campaign that culminated in the British surrender at Yorktown that October. The regiment itself continued in service until it was formally disbanded on January 1, 1783, almost exactly two years after the mutiny, as the war drew to its close and the Continental Army began demobilizing.