III

Jack and Peter were at the meeting-place on Locust Street next morning,

although each only brought a heavy stick as his weapon of defense.

Jack's father had refused to let his son have the musket, saying that he

would be much more apt to harm himself with it than to injure an enemy.

Mrs. Black had not only forbidden Peter to handle anything that would

shoot, but had intimated that she thought Governor Evans and all the

people who went to his militia meeting were behaving much more like

savages than like good Christians. So the boys had to put up with the

hickory sticks for weapons, though each carried a sling and a pocketful

of pebbles, which might be useful for long-distance fighting.

Gregory was there with his gun, and the three friends stood under the

shade of a maple and waited for the rest of the volunteer army to

appear. A few men and boys were lounging out in the road, apparently

more interested in watching what was going to happen than in taking part

in it. "Where are our gallant soldiers?" said Gregory, with a grin.

Jack counted the men who had come, with their muskets, into the field.

"Six besides us," he announced.

"That'll make a good-sized army," said Gregory, a twinkle in his eye.

There were only the six others at the meeting-place when Governor Evans,

his secretary, and Mr. Hackett arrived. The governor looked disgusted.

He muttered to his two companions. Then he beckoned the seven men and

the two boys toward him. "So this is Philadelphia's volunteer militia,

is it?" he said. "These are the troops I could count on to defend our

homes from an enemy?" Then his angry brow softened. "I don't blame you,

my good friends. You are doing your best. But I shouldn't like to

express my opinion of your fellow-townsfolk."

The governor turned to Hackett "I might as well disband the militia, eh?

The night-watchmen of the town will furnish as good defense."

"Unless you choose to keep your army of seven men and two boys to shame

the worthy citizens," suggested Hackett.

"You can't shame them!" snorted Governor Evans. "Their heads are made of

pillow-slips stuffed with feathers; and goose-feathers at that!" He

looked again at the volunteer soldiers. "My secretary will take your

names," he said, "and I'll know who to call on if I need help. Many

thanks to you all."

As they were leaving the field Hackett came over to Gregory and the two

boys. "I suspected your good people would act like this," said he.

"Though I'd no idea that only seven men would put in an appearance. I'll

have to wash my hands of your Quaker colony. I never saw anything to

equal it. The Saints keep you from trouble! I doubt if you'll be able to

keep yourselves out of it."

Now Gregory was a little nettled at the other's superior manner. "We've

been able to keep out of it so far," he retorted, "and I don't see but

what charity toward others mayn't keep us out of it in the future.

William Penn is a just man, and has bade us act justly toward all

others. We hoped to leave fighting and all warlike things behind us when

we left Europe. Because there's been fighting in Massachusetts and

Virginia is no reason why there should be such matters here."

"So you think Penn's colony is different from the others, do you?" asked

Hackett.

"I think you and your Cavalier friends in Maryland are more eager to

draw your swords than we are here," said the shrewd shoemaker.

"Now, by Jupiter, I think you're right!" agreed Hackett, with a laugh.

"Every man to his own kind. I much prefer Lord Baltimore to your good

William Penn. I've seen enough of your worthy Quaker tradesmen. I must

get back to Chesapeake Bay."

Jack and Peter, sitting on the steps of Mr. Felton's house that

afternoon, saw a number of men who worked on the river-front go past in

the street, guns in their hands. There were five or six in the first

group, then a few more, then a larger number. There were small farmers

from the southern side of the town, there were servants, there were

negroes. None of those who went by appeared to be of the wealthy, Quaker

class. "Where are they going?" Jack asked presently.

"Let's go find out," suggested Peter.

The boys followed the groups, which grew in size as men from other

streets joined in the current. They went to Society Hill on the

outskirts of the town. There a crowd had already gathered, some with

firearms, some without. The boys pushed their way through the crowd

until they reached the front edge. There they heard one speaker after

another addressing the throng. The speakers all declared that they would

go to the governor, ask for weapons, and tell him they were ready to

march against the enemy whenever he should give the order.

Nearly seven hundred men met on Society Hill that day and volunteered

for military service. Perhaps the word had gone around that the leading

men of the colony had failed to meet the governor, and these men meant

to show that there were some at least he could rely on. However that

was, this gathering shamed the other meeting, and when it broke up it

sent its delegates to report to Governor Evans.

The boys stopped to tell Gregory Diggs what they had seen.

"Aye," said Gregory, when he had heard the type of men who made up this

second meeting, "wealth and position make men timid. And then Quakers

are over-cautious folk. I know how it is. I found it hard enough to

shoulder my gun and make up my mind to join the militia. Like as not I

wouldn't have volunteered at all if you two boys hadn't seemed to shame

me into it. But that's the way it is, our good, respectable folk won't

fight, and the only ones the governor can rely on are the poor and the

down-at-heels, and a penniless shoemaker and two boys. Master Hackett

was right about Penn's province."

At his home Jack told his father of the day's happenings. "And I'm very

much surprised our friends and neighbors didn't help Governor Evans

better," he concluded.

"Only seven at one meeting, and a great many at the other?" said Mr.

Felton. "Well, that shows our friends aren't very warlike, doesn't it,

Jack?"

"But I think they ought to be," protested the boy.

"So does Governor Evans," agreed Mr. Felton. "And it's my opinion that

he and that truculent friend of his, Charles Hackett, planned this whole

scare just to see how warlike the people of Philadelphia are. I think he

arranged to have that messenger arrive from Maryland with that story

about the French frigates. It's true enough they landed at Lewes, but

they did little harm there beyond taking a few cattle and some wood and

water they needed. I don't believe they had the slightest intention of

coming up the river to Philadelphia. But it gave the governor a good

chance to see what the people would do if the French had been coming."

"Most of the people believed it, or they wouldn't have hidden their

valuables, and so many of them run away," said Jack.

"Oh, yes, they believed it," assented Mr. Felton. "And I guess the

governor is thoroughly out of temper with most of us. But as a matter of

fact he didn't need any militia to protect us from a raid."

That was the truth of the situation, as Philadelphia found out a few

days later. The governor had laid a plot to find out what the people

would do if their town were threatened with attack by an enemy. He

thought that the Delaware River was insufficiently protected. He wanted

to form a strong militia. His ruse had worked; but to his disgust he

found that the more respectable and wealthy part of the community, the

Quaker portion, had no wish either to strengthen the defenses of the

Delaware or to enroll in a militia. His stratagem had at least taught

him that much about them.

The Quakers brought the goods they had hidden back to town; those who

had gone into the country returned to their homes as soon as it was

known that the French frigates had sailed down the Delaware to the sea

instead of up it to Philadelphia. They did not like Governor Evans for

the trick he had played on them. As the governor himself said, "For

weeks afterward they would stand on the other side of the street and

make faces at me as I passed by."

As a result of the governor's stratagem most of the Quakers in

Philadelphia signed a petition to William Penn, who was then in England,

urging him to remove Evans from the governorship. William Penn did not

like to do this. He had appointed Evans at the suggestion of some very

powerful men at the English Court, and he did not want to antagonize

them, or Evans himself for that matter, for so slight a cause. He wrote

a letter to Evans, however, mildly reproving him for the trick he had

played, and making it clear that he himself was no more in favor of

warlike measures than were the Quakers in his colony. Governor Evans

held his office for almost three years after this event, and was finally

called back to England for very different reasons.

Penn's province did have less warfare than the neighboring colonies,

partly because of the just way in which Penn and his settlers dealt with

the Indians, partly by good fortune. No enemy attacked Philadelphia. But

as men pushed out into the country west of the Delaware they began to

come into conflict with the Indians. Often these settlers were able to

protect themselves, but sometimes they felt that the men living securely

in Philadelphia ought to help them in their effort to enlarge the

province. After the defeat of the English General Braddock by French and

Indians in western Pennsylvania the settlers found the Indians more

difficult to handle. So the men of the frontier formed independent

companies of riflemen and fought in their own fashion. They demanded,

however, that the governor and General Assembly at Philadelphia should

aid them with supplies, if they were unwilling to furnish soldiers.

The Assembly in Philadelphia refused to send the supplies. The news

spread along the border, and the settlers, the mountaineers and

trappers, set out for the Quaker city on the Delaware. Four or five

hundred of them marched into town, men clad in buckskin, their hair worn

long, armed with rifles, powder-horns, bullet-pouches, hunting-knives,

and even tomahawks they had taken from Indians. Philadelphia was used to

seeing a few of such hunters on her streets, but the good people grew

uneasy at the appearance of so many of them at one time. The

mountaineers swaggered and blustered as they passed the quiet Quakers.

They let it be known that if the Assembly refused to vote them the

supplies they wanted they would take supplies wherever they could find

them.

Pressed by the frontiersmen, the Assembly finally voted the supplies.

Then the men in buckskin went back to hold the borders against the

Indians.

Later, however, Philadelphia received another visit from much more

unruly mountaineers. A large number of these men, known as the Paxton

boys, met a battalion of British regulars at Lancaster, demanded the

latter's horses and ammunition wagons, and told them that "if they fired

so much as one shot their scalps would ornament every cabin from the

Susquehanna to the Ohio."

The regulars didn't fire, and the mountaineers helped themselves to

everything they wanted and set out for Philadelphia. Some Indians were

being held as prisoners in the town, and the Paxton boys, growing

insolent with power as they saw British regulars and Quaker farmers

yielding to their orders, determined to make the people of Philadelphia

give the Indians to them. The mountaineers marched to the high ground of

Germantown, north of the town, nearly a thousand in number, and sent

their envoys to the town officers. The officers knew, quite as well as

Governor Evans had known before, that there was no militia sufficient to

take the field against the frontiersmen, and that the citizens would

never arm against them. The leading people of the town went to talk with

the Paxton boys, trying to persuade them to leave peacefully. Finally by

agreeing to give the mountaineers everything they asked, except only the

opportunity to massacre the captive Indians, the townspeople succeeded

in persuading their unwelcome visitors to leave. For long, however, the

men of the frontiers and the mountains looked on the people who dwelt

along the Delaware as a cowardly race, who had to be bullied before

they would do their share in protecting the province.

The governors of Pennsylvania were not always as fair in dealing with

their neighbors as the people were. When John Penn, grandson of William

Penn, held the office of governor he sent a gang of rascals to attack

men from Connecticut who had settled in the Wyoming Valley, which was

claimed by Penn as part of his province. The settlers had built homes

and planted crops in the Wyoming Valley, and they had no intention of

letting John Penn's mercenary troopers despoil them without a fight.

They built a fort, and defied the governor's soldiers. John Penn's men

had finally to retreat before their stubborn resistance.

The attack on the Wyoming settlers was in 1770, and only five years

later the men of Lexington and Concord fired the shots that were to echo

from New Hampshire to Georgia. In the war that followed Pennsylvania did

her part. Philadelphia, then the leading city of the colonies, became

the home of the new government. In the very street where Governor Evans

had urged the townsfolk to organize a militia to fight a few French

frigates, men went to Independence Hall to proclaim a Declaration of

Independence against the king of England. No one could have accused

Philadelphia in July, 1776, of a lack of patriotic spirit. The Liberty

Bell rang out its message to all, to the Quaker descendants of William

Penn's first settlers as well as to those of other faiths who had come

to his province since, and all alike responded to its appeal to proclaim

liberty throughout the world.