Galloway, Joseph [key], c.1731–1803, American Loyalist leader, b. West River, Md. Galloway was a prominent lawyer with an interest in commerce and in speculation in Western lands. He entered the Pennsylvania assembly in 1756 and soon joined Benjamin Franklin in petitioning the king to abolish the proprietary government of the Penns. As speaker of the Pennsylvania assembly (1766–75) he attempted to conciliate between the colonies and the British government; he believed that the growing conflict could be settled by legal means, especially by a written constitution for the empire. Galloway served as a delegate to the first Continental Congress and proposed a plan for union between the colonies and Great Britain. Unable to maintain neutrality in the American Revolution, he joined Sir William Howe after the British occupied Philadelphia and acted as civil administrator during the British occupation of the city. Later (1778) Galloway went to England and became the spokesman of American Loyalists there.
See study by B. H. Newcomb (1972).
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