union township civilian defense fire department

However, by the time of Pennsylvania’s colonial charter in 1681, militia practices ran counter to the pacifist tenets of the region’s Quaker leadership, and militias mostly disbanded. In the earliest days of European settlement in the Delaware Valley, colonists formed militias of able-bodied men to guard their settlements against other imperial powers, Native Americans, and pirates. During the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794, President Washington assembled an army of over twelve thousand men, most of whom were volunteer militiamen from Pennsylvania and New Jersey, to oppose tax resisters in western Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania’s volunteer militia was activated during some of the nascent republic’s earliest political struggles.

As the nature of conflicts changed, so too did residents’ roles in home-front defense, from colonial-era militiamen to the sandbaggers who confronted coastal storms. Philadelphia, the Place that Loves You Backīecause of Greater Philadelphia’s position as a political, cultural, and economic hub, the region’s residents have often found their daily lives deeply affected by times of national crisis. Civil defense, generally defined as local voluntary programs designed to protect civilian life and property during times of conflict, has taken many forms: militia, home defense, civilian defense, civil defense, and in the early twenty-first century, emergency response.

Union township civilian defense fire department