The Philadelphians, having outgrown the primitive “Towne House”
that had served the community’s needs since 1709, undertook in
1729 to erect an Assembly building commensurate with the growing
importance of the province. A dozen years later the new State House
was completed, including the dignified chamber now famous as the Hall
in which the Declaration of Independence was discussed and received
its first signatures. Another decade passed before sufficient funds
were available for the rearing of a frame steeple on the south side
of the building, “with a suitable place thereon for hanging a bell.”
To grace this steeple and call together the Provincial Fathers,
whose meeting-place was in one of the rooms below, it was decided
after prolonged discussion that a bell be ordered from England. A
letter dated November 1, 1751, was forthwith dispatched from the
Superintendents of the State House to the Colonial agent in London,
asking that he purchase “a good bell, of about two thousand pounds
weight, the cost of which we may presume may amount to about one
hundred pounds sterling, or, perhaps, with the charges, something
more.… Let the bell be cast by the best workmen, and examined carefully
before it is shipped, with the following words well shaped in large
letters around it, viz:
‘By order of the Assembly of the Province of Pennsylvania, for
the State House in the city of Philadelphia, 1752.’
And underneath,
‘Proclaim Liberty through all the land, to all the inhabitants
thereof.--Levit. XXV. 10.’”
Within a year a ship bearing the new bell was reported at the
water-front, and eager citizens thronged the pier hoping to see it.
The arrival of the State House bell, destined none knew to what
great mission, was the chief interest of that August day in Quaker
Philadelphia. To the chagrin of the Superintendents they were compelled
to announce a few days later that the long-looked-for bell had “cracked
by a stroke of the clapper without any other violence, as it was hung
up to try the sound.” Two “ingenious workmen” essayed to recast the
metal, to which a larger proportion of copper had been added, and in
April, 1753, artisans raised the “American bell” to its place in the
steeple. Later on it was cast again, because the metal composition was
now thought to contain too much copper. The result, we are told, was
but tolerably successful. However, this “new great bell” continued
in service for over sixty years. It announced the convening of the
Assembly and the courts, and for a time was used to summon church-goers
on Sunday.
The voice of the bell joined in joyful celebration with that of the
people when the odious Stamp Act was repealed; late in the year 1773
it witnessed the agitated remonstrances of the inhabitants against the
proposed importations of taxed tea. On September 5, 1774, the First
Continental Congress convened in Carpenter’s Hall, Philadelphia. It
convened again the following May in the State House, and paved the way
to the Declaration of Independence. When the Battle of Lexington was
reported on an April day, the State House bell summoned to the historic
enclosure called the “Yard” a company of eight thousand people,
determined to defend “with arms their lives, liberty and property,
against all attempts to deprive them of them.”
Matters were hurrying to the breaking-point when in June, 1776, the
State Assembly received the resolutions of the General Convention
of Virginia, which forecast in sentiment and wording the final
Declaration. Two days later the National Assembly, also in session
at the State House, took the first step toward the Colonies’ Magna
Charta when the resolution was read and seconded “That these United
Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states.”
A committee on the Declaration of Independence was chosen; July
second the “Resolution respecting Independency” was confirmed by
representatives of all the colonies except New York. For two days it
was debated, on the evening of the fourth day of July it was passed,
and the next day it was officially promulgated. On July eighth the
Declaration of Independence was read from a balcony in the State House
square, and the bell, which for a quarter of a century had awaited this
moment to fulfill the prophecy of its Biblical quotation, proclaimed
free and independent the Colonies of America.
The bell’s period of service was finally closed exactly forty-nine
years after that day of rejoicing, when in tolling for the death of
Chief Justice John Marshall its sides again cracked. It was then
removed from the steeple, and now remains a monument in Independence
Hall to the days when American Liberty was young.
PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION
ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR, VOL. 6, No. 10, SERIAL No. 158
COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC.
[Illustration: FROM A PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN IN INDEPENDENCE HALL.