Thomas Mifflin (88)

Thomas Mifflin (10 January 1744–20 January 1800) was a merchant, politician, and military officer, and a member of the American Philosophical Society, elected in 1768. Born in Philadelphia, he graduated from the College of Philadelphia in 1760 and worked in the counting-house of APS founder William Coleman. Following a visit to England and France from 1764 to 1765, he founded a mercantile business. Mifflin led Pennsylvania’s resistance to imperial taxation, serving on committees to oversee the non-importation of goods impacted by the Townsend Duties. On the strength of these commitments, he was elected to the Pennsylvania Assembly in 1772 and to the First and Second Continental Congresses. He then accepted appointments in the Continental Army, including aide-de-camp to George Washington, quartermaster-general, colonel, brigadier-general, major-general, and member of the Board of War. Mifflin found success on the battlefield at Princeton and Trenton but was accused of corruption and conspiring against Washington. By 1778 he had resigned his military commissions and returned to politics. Back in the Assembly, Mifflin opposed the radical state constitution of 1776. He was elected president of the Confederation Congress, where he succeeded in ratifying the Treaty of Paris in 1784. He also served as president of Pennsylvania’s Supreme Executive Council (1788–1790) and as a delegate to the federal Constitutional Convention of 1787, and he presided over the Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention in 1790. Mifflin was elected the state’s first governor by an overwhelming majority that year and then re-elected in 1793 and 1796. As governor, he balanced state and federal sovereignty during events like the Erie Triangle crisis and Whisky Rebellion and, despite adopting the pro-French stance associated with Thomas Jefferson’s Democratic-Republicans, supported defensive preparations when war with France loomed in 1789. He died during a final term in the Pennsylvania Legislature in 1800. (PI, ANB, DNB, DAB)