```"The autumnal glories all have pass'd away!
````The forest leaves no more in hectic red
```Give glowing tokens of their brief decay,
````But scatter'd lie, or rustle to the tread,
```Like whisper'd warnings from the moldering dead.
````The naked trees stretch out their arms all day.
```And each bald hill-top lifts its reverend head
````As if for some new covering to pray."
`````Mrs. E. C. Kinney.=
[Illustration: 9255]
HE sun was shining in its noontide glory when I crossed the great
Trenton Bridge over the Delaware to Morrisville, and reined my horse to
the right into the Falsington road, for Philadelphia, twenty-eight miles
distant. Unlike a summer rain, the storm developed no new beauties in
the fields and orchards, but "a mantle dun" continued to overspread the
landscape, and a cold north wind was heralding the approach of winter. I
was now in the fertile region of "old Bucks" * in Pennsylvania, and
with a loose rein traversed the gentle undulating country over which
the Continental battalions often marched and countermarched. It was the
anniversary of the evacuation of New York by the British--the departure
of the last hostile foot from [[November 25, 1783]] our free shores.
The mind, laden with the associations of the place and hour, its
soul-stirring thoughts kept me such entertaining company, that the sun
went down, and I entered the suburban district of Kensington, in the
"Northern Liberties" of Philadelphia, before I was fairly conscious that
a dozen miles had been traveled. It was but little more than four hours'
journey with my strong and vigorous horse.
After leaving Falsington, the traveler obtains frequent glimpses of the
Delaware and its white sails, on the left. The several small villages on
the way (Falsington, Hulmeville, and Frankford being the largest) bear
marks, in their dwellings, of considerable antiquity, if that word
may properly be applied to American edifices. Many of them are small,
steep-roofed stone houses, with little windows and wide doors, built
before the war of the Revolution broke out, and presenting a great
contrast with the New England villages, which seem as if just finished,
with the white paint scarcely dry. It was almost sunset when I arrived
at Frankford, quite a large town upon the Tacony Creek, five miles
northeast of
* Tradition currently reports that the renowned Indian chief Tamene, or
St. Tammany, was buried near a spring about three and a half miles
west of Doylestown, in this county. He was an unequaled chief among
the Delawares. Heckewelder says that when Colonel George Morgan, of
Princeton, visited the Western Indians, by order of Congress, in 1776,
he was so beloved for his goodness, that the Delawares conferred upon
him the name of their venerated chief. Morgan brought back to the whites
such glowing accounts of the qualities of that ancient chief, that in
the Revolutionary war he was dubbed a saint, and his name was placed
on some calendars. He was called by politicians, St. Tammany, and
established as the patron saint of republican America. Tammany societies
were organized, and Tammany halls dedicated, and on the 1st of May (the
festival of the saint), meetings of the societies were held. "On that
day," says Heckewelder, "numerous societies of his votaries walked
together in procession through the streets of Philadelphia, their hats
decorated with bucks' tails, and proceeded to a handsome rural place
out of town, which they called the wigwam, where, after a long talk,
or Indian speech, had been delivered, and the calumet of peace and
friendship had been duly smoked, they spent the day in festivity
and mirth." The Tammany Society of New York is yet in existence. Its
meetings are held regularly at Tammany Hall, on the east side of the
City Hall Park.
[[[Revolutionary Events at Frankford.--Kensington.--Arrival in
Philadelphia.--Christ Church and its Sounding-board.]]]
{248}Philadelphia. Here the Americans kept quite a strong picket, during
the occupation of Philadelphia by the British in 1777--8, after the
battles of Brandywine and Germantown. Near here was stationed the fine
corps of light infantry guards under Colonel Twistleton (afterward Lord
Say and Sele); and here, also, the active partisan corps called the
_Queen's Rangers_, under Lieutenant-colonel Simcoe (afterward Governor
of Canada), was recruited, and disciplined by actual service.
In November, 1777, the Rangers, in concert with Major Gwyn, attempted
to surprise the American post at Frankford. They approached the town
cautiously, and rushing in, expected to secure prisoners and booty; but
the patriots had temporarily withdrawn. Some days afterward, another
attempt to take the post was made. An American officer and twenty men
were made prisoners. They were raw and undisciplined militia. Each man
had the countersign, _Richmond_, written with chalk in his hat that
he might not forget it. Soon after capturing these men, a patrol of
cavalry, under Major Gwyn, which had pursued a party toward Bristol,
came retreating in great confusion. They had been attacked, both in
front and rear, by a troop of horsemen under Count Pulaski. Thoroughly
alarmed, the whole British force at Frankford crossed the Tacony, and
returned in haste to Philadelphia.
Parties of the _Queen's Rangers_ were almost every day at Frankford,
where the Americans did not keep a fixed post. Simcoe had trained his
men to quick and energetic movements with the bayonet, and his standing
order was, "Take as many prisoners as possible, but never destroy life
unless absolutely necessary." On one occasion, a patroling party of the
Rangers approached Frankford undiscovered by an American sentinel at the
bridge. They were so near that they might easily have killed the guard,
but a boy was sent to warn him to run for his life. He did so, and
no more sentinels were posted there afterward; "a matter of some
consequence," says Simcoe, "to the poor people of Philadelphia, as they
were not prevented from getting their flour ground at Frankford Mills." *
Passing through a portion of the Kensington suburb of Philadelphia,
its mud and wretchedness, its barking dogs and squalling babies, where
society seems in a transition state from filth to cleanliness, and
consequently from vice to godliness, I wheeled down Second Street, amid
its glowing shops, and reined up at _Congress Hall_, just as the last
hue of daylight faded away. It was Saturday night, a season as welcome
to the traveler as a "cross day" in the calendar to the faithful. I was
in Philadelphia' the city of brotherly love; the quiet Sabbath near; a
glorious harvest of Revolutionary reminiscences spread out around me,
inviting the pen-sickle to reap for my garner; and the broad and sunny
South, its chivalry and its patriotism, beckoning me onward. Busy
thought kept sleep at bay until midnight.
The Sabbath morning dawned brilliant and frosty. As I went up to
worship in the venerable _Christ Church_, around which cluster so many
interesting associations of the past, I felt that it was a two-fold
sanctuary--a sanctuary of religion and of patriotism. The exterior is
the same as it was when the later colonial governors and officers of
state--when Washington and Franklin--when Congress and the officers of
the Continental army went there to worship; but the interior has been
greatly changed by that iconoclast, _improvement_--that breaker of the
images which patriotism delights to worship! One vestige of the olden
time remains untouched--the pulpit _sounding-board_, the indispensable
canopy of the old pastors.=
```"That sounding-board, to me it seem'd
````A cherub poised on high--
```A mystery I almost deem'd 1````Quite hid from vulgar eye
```And that old pastor, rapt in prayer,
```Look'd doubly awful 'neath it there."
`````--E. Oakes Smith.=
* Simcoe's Military Journal, page 28. At that time the Philadelphians
were dependent chiefly upon the Frankford Mills for their flour. It was
with the pretense of going thither for flour, that Lydia Darrah left
Philadelphia and hastened to the American camp at Whitemarsh, apprised
Washington of an intended attack upon him, and, by her patriotic
vigilance, doubtless saved the American army, under the
commander-in-chief, from destruction or captivity. This circumstance is
noted on pages 301--302.
[[[The Grave of Dr. Franklin, and others.--His early-written Epitaph.--
Description of Christ Church]]]
{249}Within its wall-inclosed grave-yard in the rear is the dust of
many of the early and distinguished citizens of Philadelphia, the most
renowned of whom was Dr. Benjamin Franklin.
[Illustration: 9257]
His grave is beside that of his wife, and daughter (Mrs. Bache), in
the northwest corner of the yard. "I wish," he said in his will, "to be
buried by the side of my wife, if it may be, and that a marble stone
be made by Chambers, six feet long, four feet wide, plain, with only a
small molding round the upper edge, and this inscription:=
`````"Benjamin
`````and Deborah
`````Franklin.
`````178--"=
His wishes were complied with. The date on the stone is 1790. * In the
same inclosure General Mercer, who was killed at Princeton, was first
buried; also Major-general Charles Lee, whose aversion to burial with
Dissenters has been noticed. Standing amid its graves, and overshadowed
by the venerable church, the American feels that he is upon consecrated
ground indeed--consecrated by something holier than the voice of man
setting it apart as a resting-place for the dead.
Here, wide open, is a broad page of our national history; let us sit
down this still Sabbath afternoon and peruse a portion of it preparatory
to a ramble on the morrow.
On the beautiful banks of the Delaware **--the Indian's
_Mack-er-isk-iskan_--dwelt for ages the powerful tribes of the Lenni
Lenapes ***--the Original People. They claimed the broad land from the
Hudson to the Poto-
* As early as 1727, when Franklin was only twenty-two years of age, he
wrote the following epitaph for himself:
The Body of
Benjamin Franklin,
Printer,
Like the cover of an old Book.
Its contents torn out
(And stripped of its lettering and gilding),
Lies here, food for worms.
But the work shall not be lost,
For it will (as he believed) appear once more
In a new and more elegant edition,
Revised and corrected by
The Author.
* This epitaph was first printed in a Boston newspaper (the New England
Courant), established and printed by Dr. Franklin.
** This name was given to the bay and river in honor of Lord De la Ware,
who was Governor of Virginia in 1611.
*** This has been sometimes used as a generic term, and applied to all
the tribes of the Algonquin family.
**** This view is from Second Street, looking northwest. It was built
at various periods. The first (western) end was erected in 1727; the
eastern or front portion was raised in 1731; and a small steeple was
reared in 1753-4. A small church edifice was built upon its site in
1695, and the later edifice was raised around the old one while worship
continued in it. The bell of the old church was hung in the crotch of
a tree near by. The new church was furnished with an organ in 1729. The
design of the church was made by Dr. John Kearsley, an eminent physician
of Philadelphia. In 1752-3 it was proposed to build a fine steeple upon
the church, and, in order to raise funds lor the purpose, a lottery
was established--"a scheme to raise £1012 10s. to finish the steeple
to Christ Church, and to purchase a ring of bells, and a clock." The
"Philadelphian Steeple Lottery" was successful, and the structure, as
it now appears, was finished in 1754. A chime of bells, weighing eight
thousand pounds, was purchased in England, at a cost of $4500. These
bells were taken down from the steeple by the commissary general, on the
approach of the British to Philadelphia in 1777. and conveyed to Trenton
for safety. They were returned, and hung again after the enemy evacuated
the eity. Watson, in his Annals of Philadelphia, says that these bells
were first tolled on the occasion of the funeral of Governor Anthony
Palmer's wife, the mother of twenty-one children, all of whom died of
consumption. On the top of the steeple is a miter, hearing the following
inscription: "The Right Reverend William White, D.D., consecrated Bishop
of the Episcopal Church of Pennsylvania, February 4th, 1787." The miter
is four feet in circumference at the bottom, and has thirteen holes in
it, indicative of the number of the original states. Bishop White was
one of the first chaplains of the Continental Congress, and the first
bishop of Pennsylvania. It is related that when he was a boy, living
next door to a Quaker family in Market Street, he used to play with
their little daughter. She often said, when she grew up, that Billy
White was born for a bishop, for she never could persuade him to play
any thing but church. He would tie her apron around his neck for a gown,
and stand behind a chair for a pulpit, while she, seated before him on a
low bench, was to be the congregation.
[[[The Natives on the Delaware and Schuylkill.--The Delawares--Their
Character portrayed by William Penn.]]]
{250}mac as their grand council-house. While they called themselves the
_original people_, they repeated the tradition that at some remote age
their ancestors came from beyond the Mississippi, conquering, on their
way, the more civilized nations, whose monuments are so profusely
scattered over the rich valleys westward of the Alleghany Mountains.
They were divided into three principal tribes, the _Turtle_, the
_Turkey_, and the _Wolf_. The two former occupied the northern portions
of New Jersey north of the Ptaritan, extending from the Hudson across
the Delaware into Pennsylvania, and are known to the whites as the
_Minsi_ division; the latter, known as the _Delawares_, inhabited the
southern portions of New Jersey and the entire valley of the Schuylkill.
* Their settlement extended up the Susquehanna and Delaware Rivers, and
they had a local council-fire at the Minisink flats, above the Delaware
Water-gap. When these tribes first became known to the English, they
were tributary to the Five Nations of New York, who applied to them the
scornful epithet of "women." They were forbidden to sell lands or
make war without the consent-of their conquerors, and were reduced
to absolute vassalage. In the course of time, however, the [[1650]]
Delawares were enabled to throw off the yoke of the conquerors. At
Tioga, in 1756, the great Teedyuscung extorted from the chiefs of the
Six Nations an acknowledgment of the independence of his people.
When the whites first visited the Delaware with a view to settlement,
the Lenni Lenapés, broken into many small tribes, were scattered along
the shores of the river on either side. ** They received the whites with
open-handed hospitality. "In liberality they excel," wrote William Penn.
"Nothing is too good for their friend. Give them a fine gun, coat, or
other thing, it may pass twenty hands before it sticks. Light of heart,
strong affections, but soon spent. The most merry creatures that live;
feast and dance perpetually. They never have much, nor want much. Wealth
circulates like the blood--all parts partake; and, though none shall
want what another hath, yet exact observers of property." Penn drew a
charming picture of their hospitality, their liberal distribution of
presents when received, and the universal happiness that prevailed among
them; and then, with the hand of
* The two most noted chiefs of the Delawares at the time of our
Revolution, was Captain White Eyes and Captain Pipe. The former became
chief sachem in 1776, and espoused the patriot cause. He was a firm
friend to the missionaries, and earnestly desired the conversion of his
people to Christianity, and the enjoyment of the accompanying blessings
of civilization. He died of the small-pox, at Philadelphia, in 1780.
Captain Pipe secretly favored the British at the opening of the
Revolution, but the vigilant White Eyes frustrated all his plans for a
while. The Delawares at length became divided, and most of them, under
Captain Pipe, joined the British. We have met these chiefs once before
(page 264, vol. i.) and shall meet them again when we consider the Indian
war of the Revolution beyond the Alleghanies.
** The Assanpink Indians were at the Falls of the Delaware (Trenton);
the Rankokas and Andastakas at Christina Creek, near Wilmington; the
Nishaminies near Bristol; the Shackamaxons about Kensington; the Mantas,
or Frogs, near Burlington; the Minseys, or Minisinks, at the Forks
of the Delaware: and three or four other tribes were in New Jersey,
Maryland, and Virginia. A few Mingoes were among these.
[[[First Settlements on the Delaware by the Dutch and Swedes.--Troubles
with the Indians.--Gustavus Adolphus.]]]
{251}truth, holds up this record of the curse which boasted civilization
carries with it as continually as its own shadow: "Since the Europeans
came into these parts, they are grown great lovers of strong liquors,
rum especially, and for it exchange the richest of their skins and furs.
If they are heated with liquors, they are restless till they have enough
to sleep; that is their cry, '_Some more, and I will go to sleep;_' but,
when drunk, one of the most wretched spectacles in the world."
In 1609, Captain Henry Hudson, then in the service of the Dutch East
India Company, touched near Cape May, at the mouth of Delaware Bay, but,
finding shoal water, put to sea, and soon afterward sailed through
the Narrows into New York Bay. The Dutch established a trading-post on
Manhattan Island, now New York. The establishment increased, and in
1621 the Dutch West India Company was formed. In 1623, this company took
formal possession of the country discovered by Hudson, including the
Delaware, or South River, as they called it, in contradistinction to the
North River, now the Hudson. The foundation of New Amsterdam was laid,
and Captain Jacobus May was sent to take possession and colonize in the
most southern part of New Jersey. He gave Cape May the name it still
bears. Near where Gloucester, in New Jersey, now stands, he built
Fort Nassau. This was the first white settlement on the shores of the
Delaware, but it was not permanent. In 1631, Captain David Pieterson
de Vries entered the Delaware River with two ships and about thirty
colonists. He was associated with Godyn, Bloemart, and Van Rensselaer,
wealthy Dutch _patroons,_ establishing a permanent settlement on
the Delaware for the purpose of cultivating tobacco and grain, and
prosecuting the whale and seal fishing. He built Fort Oplandt, near
Lewiston, Delaware. DeVries returned to Holland, and when he came back,
in 1632, his colony was destroyed. The arms of Holland, emblazoned on a
piece of tin, had been raised upon a pole. An Indian stole the metal
to make a tobacco-box of it. Osset, the commander, quarreled with the
Indians, and the latter fell upon the colonists, while at work in the
fields, and butchered every one of them. De Vries made peace with the
tribe, but, finding Fort Nassau deserted, and the whole settlement
a desolation, he left the bay forever; for, before the Dutch could
re-establish their power, the patent granted to Lord Baltimore,
proprietor of Maryland, gave them an English competitor for the lower
portions of the territory on the west side of the Delaware.
The discoveries of the Dutch in the New World soon attracted the
attention of the enlightened Gustavus Adolphus, king of Sweden. He
conceived a scheme for planting a Swedish colony in America, an idea
suggested and heartily seconded by William Usselinx, a wealthy and
enterprising Netherlander. A commercial company was formed; the stock
was open to all Europe, and Gustavus pledged four hundred thousand
dollars to the enterprise. Slavery was repudiated as a disadvantage to
the proposed colony. "Slaves," they said, "cost a great deal, labor
with reluctance, and soon perish from hard usage. The Swedish nation
is laborious and intelligent, and surely we shall gain more by a free
people with wives and children." America seemed to them a paradise, and
Gustavus suggested that the proposed colony might prove an advantage
to all oppressed and persecuted Christians. At that moment Germany, and
indeed Protestant Christendom, was menaced with a total subversion of
the principles of the Reformation; and against the increasing power
of the pope--a power composed of religious influence and imperial
soldiers--Gustavus took the field. All other considerations were, for
the moment, absorbed by this one movement; and yet the idea of planting
a free colony in the New World held a conspicuous place in the mind of
the Swedish monarch. At Nuremberg, only a few days before the battle of
Lützen, where he lost his life, he recommended the great scheme, "the
jewel of his kingdom," to the Germans. His views were warmly seconded by
Oxenstiern, the eminent statesman, who controlled the political affairs
of Sweden during the minority of Queen Christina.
In 1638, a colony of Swedes from Gottenburg, under the command of Peter
Minuits, a former governor of New Amsterdam, arrived in the Delaware,
and landed at Cape Henlo-
* See page 391, vol. i.
[[[Extension of Swedish Settlements.--Opposition of the
Dutch.--Stuyvesant's Conquests.]]]
{252}pen. Charmed with the beauty of the place, they called it Paradise.
They approached the Indians with kindness, and purchased from them their
lands upon the Delaware from Cape Henlopen to the falls at Trenton,
and named the region New Sweden. They built a church and fort on the
Minquaas, or Mingoes (now Christiana) Creek, where Wilmington now
stands, and there laid out a town. The Dutch claimed a title to all this
region by virtue of prior discovery and settlement, and Governor Keift
protested against this intrusion. Other emigrants came; some from
Maryland, who settled near the Schuylkill, and others from New Haven,
who established themselves on the Jersey shore. These Keift promptly
expelled, but did not disturb the Swedes.
John Printz succeeded Minuits as governor in 1643. With him came John
Campanius, from Stockholm, as chaplain for the colony. They came in
the ship _Fame_, accompanied by two war vessels, the _Swan_ and the
_Chantas_. Governor Printz selected Tinicum Island, * at the mouth of
Darby Creek, for a residence. There he built a strong fort of hemlock
logs, and a church, and beautified the neighborhood with orchards and
pleasure-grounds. Quite a village of fine houses, for the times,
sprung up, and New Gottenburg, as it was called, was for some years the
metropolis of New Sweden. Emigrants continued to arrive in considerable
numbers from Old Sweden, and they scattered neat dwellings and
cultivated acres all along the Delaware, from the present Wilmington to
Philadelphia.
In 1651, the Dutch determined to maintain their power on the Delaware,
and erected Fort Kasimer, on the south of Minquaas Creek, now the
site of New Castle, in Delaware. Printz protested, and also built
Fort Elsinberg on the Jersey shore, near the mouth of Salem Creek. The
garrison was soon put to flight by a foe more numerous and annoying
than Indians or Dutch, and the place was significantly named
_Mosquitoesburg_.
John Claudius Rising, or Risingh, succeeded Printz in 1652. Risingh was
more belligerent than his predecessor, and captured Fort Kasimer, either
by storm or stratagem, in 1654, hoisted the Swedish flag over it,
and called it Fort Trinity. Sven Schute, a bold Swedish warrior, was
appointed to the command of its garrison. This act excited the ire of
the Dutch at New Amsterdam, and in 1655 Governor Stuyvesant, with seven
ships, and six or seven hundred men, went up the Delaware, took all
the Swedish forts, and desolated New Gottenburg, on Tinicum Island.
The Swedes obtained honorable terms of capitulation, and the settlers
prospered under the Dutch rule. The Indians remained the firm friends of
the Swedes; and when the Dutch attempted to prevent a Swedish ship with
emigrants from passing up the Delaware in 1656, the natives interfered,
and the _Mercurius_ sailed up unmolested. The Dutch and Swedes continued
to occupy the Delaware in common for nine years, the former possessing
the political authority. In 1664, Charles the Second, of England, having
granted a charter to his brother James, the Duke of York, for the whole
of the New Netherlands, including the Dutch and Swedish settlements on
the Delaware, the English conquered the whole country, and changed the
name of New Amsterdam to New York. Lord Berkeley and Sir George Carteret
obtained a grant of the province of New Jersey from the Duke of York in
1665. The latter was appointed governor, and Bergen and other portions
of East Jersey began to be settled. That province was divided into East
and West Jersey in 1676. 'Lord Berkeley transferred his half of West
Jersey, in 1677, to John Fenwick, in trust for Edward Billinge, both of
them Quakers. Becoming embarrassed, Billinge transferred his interest
to trustees, for the benefit of his creditors. William Penn was one of
those trustees, and thus he became interested in the settlements in the
New World. Between 1676 and 1680, the eastern shore of the Delaware,
from Burlington to Salem, became quite populous with Quakers, who came
chiefly from Yorkshire in England.
Admiral Sir William Penn, the father of the founder of Pennsylvania,
left, at his death, claims to a considerable amount against the crown,
for his services. His son, with the two-
* This is the island upon which the lazaretto now stands, and is not the
low, sandy island in the middle of the Delaware above.
[[[Charter granted to William Penn.--Emigrations. Arrival of Penn.--His
Biography. Annexation of Delaware.]]]
{253}fold motive of settling these claims and providing an asylum for
his persecuted Quaker brethren, applied to King Charles the Second for
a grant of land in the New World. He was successful, and on the 4th of
March, 1681, a charter was granted. The assent of the Duke of York
on the north, and of Lord Baltimore on the south, was obtained to
the provisions of the charter, and a province on the west side of
the Delaware, three degrees of latitude in breadth by five degrees
of longitude in length, was named by the kind's proclamation, as
well as[[April, 1631.]] in the charter, Pennsylvania, in honor of the
illustrious Admiral Penn.
[Illustration: 8261]
The proprietor immediately published "certain conditions or concessions"
to adventurers; and an association, composed principally of Quakers, was
formed at London and Bristol, called "The Free Society of Traders,"
who emigrated to America to purchase lands in the new province. William
Markham, a kinsman of Penn's, had been sent forward as his deputy to
take possession of the country and prepare for the colonists.
On the 30th of August, 1682, Penn, and quite a large number of
emigrants, chiefly Quakers, sailed in the _Welcome_, from England. They
arrived at New Castle on the 7th of October. The settlers of every kind
received the new proprietor with great joy, for the fame of his noble
and excellent character had preceded him. At Upland (now Chester) he
convened an assembly, where he made known his plans and benevolent
designs. His words were heard with delight, and the people flocked
around him with the affectionate feelings of children. The Swedes said,
"It was the best day they ever saw." At this assembly an Act of Union
was adopted, conformable to a deed which he had obtained, by which
the "three lower counties," Essex, Kent, and Sussex (now the State of
Delaware), were annexed to Pennsylvania. A few days afterward, Penn
proceeded to Shackamaxon (now Kensington, in Philadelphia), where he
entered into a treaty with the Indians, and established with them an
everlasting covenant of peace and friendship. This was the memorable
treaty held
* William Penn was born in London, October 14th, 1644, and in his
fifteenth year entered, as a gentleman commoner, a college in Oxford.
Brilliant talents and unaffected goodness characterized his early
youth. While at Oxford, he heard an itinerant Quaker preach, and was so
impressed with the doctrines which he taught, that he joined, with
other students similarly impressed, in withdrawing from the established
worship and holding meetings by themselves. He was fined for
non-conformity and expelled from college when he was sixteen years of
age. Parental discipline attempted to reclaim him, but in vain. He was
sent to France, where he passed two years, and became a very polished
young gentleman. He studied law in Lincoln's Inn until the breaking
out of the plague in London in 1665. He was sent to Ireland in 1666, to
manage an estate for his father, but, associating with Quakers there,
he was recalled. He could not be persuaded to take off his hat in the
presence of his father or the king, and for this inflexibility he
was expelled from his father's house. He became an itinerant Quaker
preacher, and made many proselytes. He suffered much "for conscience'
sake," sometimes by revilings, sometimes by imprisonments. He wrote
much, and preached with daily increasing fervor. In 1668 he wrote his
_No Cross, no Crown_; and in 1670 he was tried at the Old Bailey, but
acquitted by the jury. His father died soon afterward, leaving him a
very large estate, but he continued to travel, preach, and write as
usual. Having obtained a charter for a province in America, and settled
his government on a sure basis, he formed a plan for a capital city, and
named it Philadelphia--brotherly love. Two years after it was founded it
contained two thousand inhabitants. On returning to England in 1684,
he obtained the release of thirteen hundred Quakers then in prison. He
resided mostly in England, but visited his colony occasionally. He was
seized with a paralytic disorder in 1712, which terminated his life on
the 30th of July, 1718, at the age of seventy-three. His posterity held
his possessions till the Revolution. His last surviving son, Thomas
Penn, died in 1775.
[[[Penn's Just Dealings with the Natives.--Effect of his
Justice.--Treaty Monument.]]]
{254}beneath the wide-spread branches of a huge elm. "Under the shelter
of the forest, now leafless by the frosts of autumn," says Bancroft,
"Penn proclaimed to the men of the Algonquin race, from both banks of
the Delaware--from the border of the Schuylkill, and, it may have been,
from the Susquehanna--the same simple message of peace and love which
George Fox had professed before Cromwell, and Mary Fisher had borne to
the Grand Turk.
[Illustration: 8262]
The English and the Indian should respect the same moral law, should be
alike secure in their pursuits and their possessions, and adjust every
difference by a peaceful tribunal, composed of an equal number of men
from each race."
"We meet," said Penn, "on the broad pathway of good faith and good will;
no advantage shall be taken on either side, but all shall be openness
and love. I will not call you children, for parents sometimes chide
their children too severely; nor brothers only; for brothers differ. The
friendship between me and you I will not compare to a chain; for that
the rains might rust, or the falling tree might break. We are the same
as if one man's body were to be divided into two parts; we are all one
flesh and blood."
Treaty Monument. *
```"' Thou'lt find.' said the Quaker, 'in me and mine,
```But friends and brothers to thee and to thine,
```Who abuse no power and admit no line
````'Twixt the red men and the white.'
```And bright was the spot where the Quaker came
```To leave his hat, his drab, and his name,
```That will sweetly sound from the trump of Fame
````Till its final blast shall die.
```The city he rear'd from the sylvan shade.
```His beautiful monument now is made;
```And long have the rivers their pride display'd
````In the scenes that are rolling by."
`````Hannah F. Gould.=
The children of the forest were touched by the sacred doctrine which the
"Quaker king" avowed. They received the presents of Penn in sincerity,
and in hearty friendship they gave the belt of wampum. "'We will live,'
said they, 'in love with William Penn and his children as long as the
moon and the sun shall endure.'"
Thus was established the commonwealth of Pennsylvania, its foundations
laid deep and broad upon the sacred rules of truth and justice, the
cardinal principles of the Quakers, who formed the prime element of
the new state. That sect stood out in bold relief as exemplars of moral
purity in an age and among a people eminently licentious. The court,
the fountain-head of example, was wholly impure in morals, skeptical in
religion, and unscrupulous in politics. Unlike the other Puritan sects,
which gave royalty so much trouble, the Quakers taught morality more by
example than by precept; yet they were ever bold in the
* This monument stands near the intersection of Hanover and Beach
Streets, Kensington, on the spot where the celebrated Treaty Tree stood.
The tree was blown down in 1810, when it was ascertained to be 283 years
old. When the British were in possession of Philadelphia, during the
winter of 1778, their foraging parties were out in every direction for
fuel. To protect this tree from the ax, Colonel Simcoe, of the Queen's
Rangers, placed a sentinel under it. Of its remains, many chairs,
vases, work-stands, and other articles have been made. The commemorative
monument was erected by the Penn Soeiety. Upon it are the following
inscriptions: North side.--"Treaty ground of William Penn and the Indian
nation, 1682. Unbroken Faith." South side.--"William Penn, born 1644.
Died, 1718." West side.--"Placed by the Penn Soeiety, A.D. 1827, to
mark the site of the great Elm Tree." East side.--"Pennsylvania founded,
1681, by deeds of Peace."
[[[Character and Influence of the Quakers.---Founding of the
Pennsylvania Commonwealth, and of the City of Philadelphia.]]]
{255}avowal of their principles. Their benevolence was as extensive as
the round world; their plans designed no less than the establishment of
universal religion. No station was too exalted for their faithfulness to
reach. George Fox spoke boldly, face to face, to the king, as did Paul
before Agrippa; and he did not fail to catechise, by letter, even Pope
Innocent XI. No station was too low for their paternal care, and no
instrument too humble to be made useful as a preacher of righteousness.
"Plowmen and milk-maids, becoming itinerant preachers, sounded the alarm
throughout the world, and appealed to the consciences of Puritans and
Cavaliers, of the pope and the Grand Turk, of the negro and the savage.
Their apostles made their way to Rome and Jerusalem, to New England and
Egypt; and some were even moved to go toward China and Japan in search
of the unknown realms of Prester John." * Democracy, in its largest
sense, was their political creed. "We lay a foundation," said Penn, "for
after ages to understand their liberty as Christians and as men, that
they may not be brought into bondage but by their own consent; _for
we put the power in the people_." With such views he framed his
government; with the simplicity of honest truth and love he made the
treaty with the Indians. This treaty was not confirmed by oath, nor
ratified by signatures and seals; no written records were made, "and its
terms and conditions had no abiding monuments but on the heart. There
they were written like the laws of God, and were never forgotten." **
Kindness was more powerful in subduing than the sword, and justice had
greater weight with the Indian warrior than gunpowder. "New England
had just terminated a disastrous war of extermination; the Dutch were
scarcely ever at peace with the Algonquins; the laws of Maryland refer
to Indian hostilities and massacres which extended as far as Richmond.
Penn came without arms; he declared his purpose to abstain from
violence; he had no message but peace; and not a drop of Quaker blood
was ever shed by an Indian." *** They themselves were conscious of the
power of rectitude. "We have done better," they said, in the _Planter's
Speech_, in 1684, "than if, with the proud Spaniards, we had gained the
mines of Potosi. We may make the ambitious heroes whom the world admires
blush for their shameful victories. To the poor dark souls round about
us we _teach their rights as men._"
Near the close of 1682 Penn purchased lands lying between the Delaware
and the Schuylkill, at their confluence, for the purpose of founding a
capital city. Already the Swedes had built a church there; **** and the
situation was "not surpassed," in the estimation of Penn, "by one
among all the many places he had seen in the world." With great joy and
brilliant hopes they marked the boundaries of streets on the trunks of
the chestnut, maple, ash, and walnut trees of the original forest, and
gave them names derived from these natural landmarks. They called the
city Philadelphia--_brotherly love_--and with unexampled rapidity the
forest disappeared, and pleasant houses uprose upon the "virgin Elysian
shore." In March, 1683, the second Assembly of the province convened in
the infant city, and, at the suggestion of Penn, the original "form of
government" was so amended, that the "charter of liberties" signed by
him at that time rendered the government of Pennsylvania, [[August,
1684]] all but in name, a representative democracy. Penn soon afterward
returned to England, having first appointed five commissioners, with
Thomas Loyd as president, to administer his government during his
absence. Every thing went on prosperously, and nothing occurred to
disturb the quiet of the new state until 1691, when the "three lower
* Bancroft, ii., 337.
** Ibid., ii., 382.
*** Ibid., ii., 383.
**** Several years before the arrival of Penn, the upper Swedish
settlement on the Delaware erected a blockhouse at Wicaco, now the
district of Southwark. The block-house was converted into a church for
the convenience of the settlement, the port-holes serving for windows.
The first sermon was preached in it in 1677. This edifice stood upon a
pleasant knoll sloping to the river. North of it, where Christian
Street is, was an inlet, and beyond this was another knoll, on whieh
was ereeted the house of three Swedish brothers, Sven, Oele, and Andries
Swenson [Swanson], from whom Penn purchased the site of Philadelphia.
This building was noticed by Kahn in 1748; and Mr. Watson, in his Annals
of Philadelphia, (i., 148), says, "the original log-house was standing
until the British occupied Philadelphia, when it was taken down and
converted into fuel." A brick church was built upon the site of the old
block-house in 1700, and is still standing on Swanson Street, a little
distance from the navy yard.
[[[Secession of Delaware.--Penn's Difficulties.--His liberal
Concessions.--Pennsylvania Charter.--Penn's Heirs.]]]
{256}counties on the Delaware" already mentioned, withdrew from the
Union on account of some dissatisfaction with the proceedings of a
majority of the council. With the reluctant consent of Penn, a deputy
governor was appointed over them. Charles the Second died in 1685,
and his brother James, the Duke of York, ascended the throne. The bad
private character of James, his duplicity, and his known attachment to
the Roman Catholics, made him detested by a majority of the people of
England, and, three years after his accession, he was driven into exile.
His scepter passed into the hands of his daughter Mary and her husband
William, prince of Orange.
[Illustration: 0264]
William Penn was suspected of adherence to the cause of the fallen
monarch, and of secret efforts to effect his restoration. For this he
was imprisoned; and in 1692 his provincial government was taken from
him by Gov. Fletcher, of New York, under a royal commission. These
suspicions were speedily removed, and in 1694 Penn's proprietary rights
were restored to him.
Penn again visited his colony in 1699, but he did not find that
prevailing peace which gladdened his heart when he left it. Discontents
had arisen among the people, and they were clamorous for further popular
concessions. Ever intent upon the happiness of the people, he presented
them with a more liberal charter than the former ones. It conferred
greater powers upon the people, and the Assembly declared, in signing
it, that "they thankfully received the same from the proprietor and
governor, this twenty-eighth day of October, 1701." This charter
remained unaltered until the separation of the province from Great
Britain, and the adoption of a constitution in 1776. The delegates from
the lower counties had withdrawn from the general Assembly, and refused
allegiance to the new charter of the Union with Pennsylvania. Penn
labored to bind them harmoniously together, but without success, and in
1703 a total separation was agreed upon. From that period, Pennsylvania
and the "three lower counties," or Delaware, had separate Legislatures,
although the same governor continued to preside over both. A scheme was
now elaborating in the British cabinet to abolish all of the proprietary
governments in America, and Penn hastened back [[1701.]]to England to
oppose it. **
He never returned to America, but died in England in 1781, leaving his
interest in Pennsylvania and Delaware to his three sons, John, Thomas,
and Richard Penn (then minors), who
* This is a representation of the seal and signature of William Penn
attached to the Pennsylvania charter. The names of the subscribing
witnesses to the instrument are James Claypoole, Francis Plumsted,
Thomas Barker, Philip Ford, Edward Pritchard, Andrew Soule, Christopher
Taylor, Charles Lloyd, William Gibson, U. More, George Rudyard, Harbt.
Springett.
** The parting message of Governor Penn to the Assembly is a pattern
of brevity, and might be studied with profit by some of our chief
magistrates. It was communicated just before his departure for England,
and was as follows: "10th month, 15th, 1708. "Friends,--Your union is
what I desire; but your peace and accommodating one another is what I
must expect from you; the reputation of it is something--the reality
much more. I desire you to remember and observe what I say. Yield in
circumstances to preserve essentials; and being safe in one another, you
will always be so in esteem with me. Make me not sad now I am going
to leave you; since it is for you, as well as for your friend, and
proprietor, and governor, William Penn."
** Just before leaving, Penn granted a city charter to Philadelphia,
and Edward Shippen was appointed the first mayor. He appointed Andrew
Hamilton, of New Jersey, lieutenant governor of his province, and James
Logan secretary.
[[[Penn's Successors hostile to the Indians.--Popular Feeling against
the Proprietaries.--Dr. Franklin.]]]
{257}continued to administer the government--by deputies, most of
the time--until the Revolution. The commonwealth of Pennsylvania then
purchased all their interest in the province for five hundred and eighty
thousand dollars. *
It would be a pleasant and profitable task to trace the history
of Pennsylvania in detail, from the period of Penn's death to the
commencement of the war for independence, but our plan and limits forbid
it. Having taken a general view of the settlement and establishment of
the province, we must be content with a consideration of leading events
bearing directly upon the Revolutionary struggle.
John, a grandson of William Penn, and son of Richard, then one of the
proprietors living in England, was lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania
when the Stamp Act and kindred measures of government stirred up a
rebellious spirit in the colonies. The province was then engaged in
hostilities with the Delawares, Shawanese, and Seneca Indians, who
were committing dreadful atrocities on the western frontier. It seemed
necessary for Governor Penn to assume the attitude of an enemy toward
the people with whom his grandfather lived so affectionately; and it is
painful to contemplate the fact that he offered, by proclamation, in
the city of Philadelphia, a bounty for the capture of Indians or their
scalps! ** The war was successful; and in the autumn of 1764 the Hostile
[[July 1764]] Indians sued for peace.
Internal commotions now became more frequent, and ominous of political
disruption. For years the province had been agitated by quarrels between
the Assembly and the proprietors on the subject of prerogatives. The
popular mind was led by Dr. Franklin and his associates, who contended
that the proprietary estates should be taxed in common with other
property. The proprietors, resting upon the privileges of their charter,
resisted the measure, and in John Penn they had a powerful, because
interested, champion. All hope of a reconciliation through concession
being at an end, Franklin and others had previously proposed to
petition the king to purchase the jurisdiction of the province from
the proprietors, and vest the government directly in the crown. The
proposition was favorably considered by the people at large, and
the petition was accordingly drawn up by Franklin. It set forth the
increasing property, and, as a consequence, the increasing power of the
proprietaries, and the danger to be apprehended from the influence of
such a power in the state intervening between the crown and the people.
This was the first great step toward revolution in Pennsylvania--an
attempt to crush feudal power and remove all barriers between the
supreme governor and the governed. Many leading men, whose relationship
to the proprietaries, and attachment to things made reverend by age,
opposed the petition; but the Quakers, whose principles had been set at
naught by the successors of William Penn, were in favor of the measure.
Several successive Assemblies favored the proposition, and Dr. Franklin
[[November, 1764]] was appointed provincial agent to urge the measure
before the king. This
* The founder of Pennsylvania, by the expenses incident to the
establishment of his government, together with many acts of private
benevolence, so impaired his paternal estate as to make it necessary
to borrow $30,000, the most of which was secured by a mortgage on his
province. This was the commencement of the state debt of Pennsylvania,
now amounting to about $40,000,000.
** The bounties were as follows: "For every male above the age of ten
years captured, $150; scalped, being killed, $134; for every female
Indian enemy, and every male under ten years, captured, $130; for every
female above the age of ten years, scalped, $50!
[[[The Stamp Act.--Spirit of the People.--Party Rancor.--Franklin
Lampooned.--William Bradford.]]]
{258}was the beginning of the system of colonial agencies which so
efficiently aided the progress of the Revolution.
In Philadelphia, as in other commercial towns, opposition to the Stamp
Act was a prevailing sentiment. Intelligence of its enactment, and the
king's assent, produced great excitement; and, as the day on which it
was to go into effect approached, open hostility became more and more
manifest. Party spirit, at that time, was peculiarly rancorous in
Pennsylvania, and the political opposers of Dr. Franklin asserted that
he was in favor of the odious act. The fact that he had procured the
office of stamp-master for Philadelphia for his friend John Hughes (as
he did for Ingersoll of Connecticut), gave a coloring of truth to the
charge, and his family and property were menaced with injury. * He was
lampooned by caricatures ** and placards; but they had little effect
upon the great mass of the people, by whom he was admired and confided
in.
The store-keepers of Philadelphia resolved to cease importing British
goods while the Stamp Act was in force; the people resolved to abstain
from mutton, so that wool for the purpose of domestic manufacture might
be increased; and among other resolves concerning frugality in living,
they determined to restrain the usual expenses of funerals. Benjamin
Price, Esq., was buried in an oaken coffin and iron handles; and
Alderman Plumstead was conveyed to the grave without a pall or
mourning-dresses. When the commission for Hughes and the stamps arrived,
all the bells were muffled and tolled; the colors were hoisted half
mast, and signs of a popular outbreak appeared. The house of Hughes was
guarded by his friends; but the current of popular feeling ran so high
and menacing that he resigned his office. As in New York, the odious act
was printed and hawked about the streets, headed _The Folly of England,
and the Ruin of America_. *** The newspaper of William Bradford, ****
the leading printer in Philadelphia, teemed with denunciations of the
act; and on the
* His wife, in a letter written on the 22d of September! 1765, from
"near Philadelphia," informs him that a mob was talked of; that several
houses were indicated for destruction; and that she was advised to
remove to Burlington for safety. "It is Mr. S. S." she said, "that is
setting the people mad, by telling them that it was you that had planned
the Stamp Act, and that you are endeavoring to get the Test Act brought
over here." The courageous woman declared she would not stir from her
dwelling, and she remained throughout the election (the immediate cause
of excitement at that time) unharmed.
** In one of these, called The Medley, Franklin is represented among the
electors, accompanied by the Devil, who is whispering in his ear,
"Thee shall be agent, Ben, for all my realm." In another part of the
caricature is the following verse:
"All his designs concenter in himself,
For building castles and amassing pelf.
The public! 'tis his wit to sell for gain,
Whom private property did ne'er maintain."
*** Watson's Annals of Philadelphia, ii., 271.
**** William Bradford was a grandson of William Bradford, the first
printer who settled in the colony. * He went to England in 1741, and the
next year returned with printing materials and books. In December, 1742,
he published the first number of the Pennsylvania Journal, which was
continued until about the close of the century, when his son Thomas, who
was his business partner, changed its name to the True American. While
carrying on the printing business, he opened, in 1754, at the corner
of Market and Front Streets, "The London Coffee-house," and in 1762
a marine insurance office, with Mr. Kydd. His republican bias was
manifested during the Stamp Act excitement; and when the war of the
Revolution began, he joined the Pennsylvania militia. As a major and
colonel, he fought in the battles of Trenton and Princeton, and was
at Fort Mifflin, below Philadelphia, when it was attacked. After the
British army left Philadelphia, he returned with a broken constitution
and a shattered fortune. A short time before his death, a paralytic
shock gave him warning of its approach. To his children he said, "Though
I bequeath you no estate, I leave you in the enjoyment of liberty." He
died on the 25th of September, 1791, aged seventy-two years.
* His son, Andrew, was also a printer, and carried on business in
Philadelphia after his father had retired to New York on a pension
from government of sixty pounds a year. In a poetic effusion printed by
Keimer, the first employer of Dr. Franklin, in 1731, is the following
allusion to the Bradfords:
"In Penn's wooden country type feels no disaster,
The printers grow rich; one is made their postmaster.
His father, a printer, is paid for his work,
And wallows in plenty, just now, in New York.
Though quite past his labor, and old as my gran'mum,
The government pays him pounds sixty per annum."
[[[The Pennsylvania Journal.--Repeal of the Stamp
Act.--Rejoicings.--Dickenson's Letters.]]]
{259}day preceding the one in which the law was to go in force, it
contained the emblematic head and "doleful" communication seen in the
engraving. *
[Illustration: 0267]
The repeal of the Stamp Act the following year produced great rejoicing
in Philadelphia. The intelligence of the repeal was brought by Captain
Wise. He was invited to drink punch at the Coffee-house, ** where a
gold-laced hat was given him, and presents were distributed among his
crew. The punch was made common; and many of the "first men played
hob-and-nob over their glasses with sailors and common people." The city
was brilliantly illuminated at night; a large quantity of wood was given
for bonfires; many barrels of beer were distributed among the populace;
and the next day the governor and mayoralty gave a feast to three
hundred persons at the State House gallery. At that feast it was
unanimously resolved by those present to dress themselves, at the
approaching birth-day of the king, in new suits of English manufacture,
and to give their homespun garments to the poor. The anniversary of the
king's birth-day, in June, was also celebrated with great displays
of joy and loyalty; and the people, in the plenitude of their good
feelings, did not heed the advice of Franklin and Richard Penn, "not to
exult as at a great victory."
When the British Parliament devised other schemes for taxing the
Americans, Pennsylvania, like Massachusetts and all the other colonies,
was aroused, and the rights of the American people were every where
freely discussed. John Dickenson sent forth his powerful "Letters of a
Pennsylvania Farmer," *** and the circular letter from Massachusetts,
recapitu-
* This is one third the size of the original, and gives a fac simile, in
appearance, of the device.
** The London Coffee-house, established, as we have seen, by William
Bradford ten years before, on the corner of Front and Market Streets,
was the daily resort of the governor and other public functionaries, and
there vendues were generally held. John Pemberton, a Quaker, owned the
house in 1780; and in his lease to Gifford Dally, he stipulated that
swearing should be discouraged there, and that the house should be
closed on "the first day of the week.'" This would be an excellent
clause in like leases at the present day.
*** See page 476, vol. i
[[[Firmness of Pennsylvania.--Tea Ships.--Destruction of Tea at
Greenwich.--Revolutionary Movements.]]]
{260}lating arguments against taxation, was received with loud acclaim.
Alarmed at the progress of opposition in the colonies, Hillsborough, the
colonial secretary, sent forth his countervailing circulars. Governor
Penn was instructed to enjoin the Assembly to regard the Massachusetts
circular as seditious and of a dangerous tendency, and to prorogue the
Assembly if they should countenance it. The Assembly, firm in the right
cause, practically asserted their privilege to correspond with the other
colonies, and they heartily seconded the proposition of Virginia for
a union of the provinces in a respectful petition to the king for a
redress of grievances. Leagues, non-importation agreements, committees
of correspondence, and other revolutionary machinery, such as were
zealously engaged in New England, were equally active in Pennsylvania;
and when the British government poured all its wrath upon Massachusetts,
Pennsylvania, in word and deed, stood up as the bold champion and
sympathizing friend of the New Englanders. Its course was more temperate
than its sister colony, but not less firm. While a convention at
Philadelphia recommended the people of Boston to try all lenient
measures for relief, they assured them that "the people of Pennsylvania
would continue firmly to adhere to the cause of American liberty."
In December, 1773, two of the "detested tea-ships" sailed up the
Delaware as far as Gloucester Point. There they were ordered to anchor,
and to proceed no further, at their peril. The authority acting on the
occasion was a committee from a meeting of full eight thousand persons,
then congregated in the State House yard. They allowed the captain
of one of the ships (the Polly) to go up to the city and witness the
manifested feelings of the people, by which he might determine which was
the wiser course to pursue, to persist in landing the tea, or to
weigh anchor for Europe. He chose the latter, and in the mean time
the consignees of the tea were all forced to resign. In November, the
following year, the brig Greyhound, bound to Philadelphia with a cargo
of tea, landed at Greenwich, on the Jersey shore. There the cargo was
discharged, and placed in the cellar of a house standing in front of the
market grounds. On the evening of the 22d, about fifty men, disguised
as Indians, took the chests from the cellar, piled them in a neighboring
field, and burned them. Suits were brought against some of the leading
young men who were engaged in this transaction, but the war breaking
out, and courts of justice being abolished or suspended, they were
abandoned. *
On the 18th of June, 1774, another meeting of at least eight thousand
persons convened in Philadelphia. The governor had been requested to
call a special session of the Assembly, but refused. ** John Dickenson
and Thomas Willing were appointed chairmen of the meeting: the whole
proceedings were revolutionary. They recommended a Continental Congress;
formed a committee to correspond with the counties and with the other
colonies in relation to the appointment of deputies to a general
Congress, and to solicit subscriptions for the sufferers at Boston. A
convention of deputies from all parts of the province was recommended,
and, as peaceably as it convened, the mass meeting adjourned.
[[1774]] A meeting of deputies from the several counties was held on the
15th of July, in which the kindred sentiments of loyalty and patriotism
glowed with intensity. They resolved "that they owed allegiance to
George the Third; that they ardently desired the restoration of their
ancient harmony with the mother country on the principles of the
Constitution; that the inhabitants of the colonies were entitled to the
same rights and liberties
* The following are the names of the leading young men who composed
this New Jersey Tea-party: Dr. Ebenezer Elmer, Richard Howell (afterward
major in the army and governor of the state), David Pierson, Stephen
Pierson, Silas Whitecar, Timothy Elmer, Rev. Andrew Hunter, Rev. Philip
Fithian, Alexander Moore, Jr., Clarence Parvin, John Hunt, James Hunt,
Lewis Howell, Henry Starks, James Ewing, father of the late chief
justice of New Jersey, Dr. Thomas Ewing, Josiah Seeley, and Joel
Fithian.
** In 1771 Governor John Penn returned to England, leaving executive
affairs in the hands of Andrew Hamilton, the president of the council.
In the autumn of that year, Richard Penn, a younger brother of John,
arrived with credentials as lieutenant governor. He held the office
until September, 1773, when John Penn returned, and resumed the reins of
government. It was during the latter part of the first administration of
John Penn, and those of Hamilton and Richard Penn, that the hostilities
in the Valley of Wyoming occurred, of which we have written in the first
volume.
[[[Members of Assembly instructed.--Quakers Opposed to the
Revolution.--"Testimony" of their Yearly Meeting in 1775.]]]
{261}within the colonies as subjects born in England were entitled to
within that realm, and that the right of representation in the British
Parliament was implied by the asserted power of the government to tax
them." The convention also adopted a series of instructions for the
Assembly about to convene, in which, in the strongest terms, colonial
rights were asserted. These were from the pen of John Dickenson, and,
though loyal in spirit, they were firm in resistance to the arm of
oppression. * When the Assembly met, these instructions were regarded as
binding, and were faithfully carried out. Joseph Galloway (who afterward
became a Tory), the speaker of the Assembly, Samuel Rhoades, Thomas
Mifflin, Charles Humphries, John Morton, George R-oss, Edward Biddle,
and subsequently John Dickenson, were appointed delegates to represent
Pennsylvania in the Continental [[July 22, 1774]] Congress, to assemble
in Philadelphia in September following.
We have seen that, from the founding of Pennsylvania, the Quakers held a
commanding social and political influence in the commonwealth.
Although this influence was much diminished at the commencement of the
Revolution, a large influx of Germans and adventurers from New England
having populated extensive districts of the province, their principles,
precepts, and practices had great weight with the public mind. They had
generally taken affirmative ground in the popular peaceable measures
adopted to procure redress of political grievances, and warmly approved
of the conduct of the first Continental Congress; but when an appeal to
arms became an apparent necessity, and the tendency of action in
popular conventions and legislative assemblies pointed to that dreadful
alternative, their love of order, and their principles of non-resistance
by force of arms, positively enjoined in their "Discipline," made them
pause. They held extra and protracted meetings, even till after
night, to determine what to do. There was a spirit abroad favorable
to enforcing a compliance with the letter of the American Association
recommended by the first Congress--an association designed to draw,
in strong lines of demarcation, the separation between the friends of
Congress and the friends of the king. To this spirit the Quakers were
opposed, because it usurped the dearest prerogatives of conscience,
and pronounced the exercise of honest opinions to be a political
misdemeanor. They not only paused, but cast the weight of their
influence into the scale of royalty, believing it to be the guardian of
law and order.
While a Provincial Convention was in session in Philadelphia, in which
the elo[[May, 1775]]quence of Thomas Mifflin, a young Quaker, was
urging his countrymen to a resort to arms, his sect, not sharing his
enthusiasm, were holding their yearly meeting in the same city. That
meeting, swayed in its opinions and action by James Pemberton, one of
the most prominent and sound men of his day, put forth its "Testimony,"
in which the members of the society were exhorted to withhold all
countenance from every measure "tending to break off' the happy
connection of the colonies with the mother country, or to interrupt
their just subordination to the king." ** From that time until the close
of the war, the
* "Honor, justice, and humanity," they said, "call upon us to hold,
and to transmit to posterity, that liberty which we received from our
ancestors. It is not our duty to leave our wealth to our children, but
it is our duty to leave liberty to them. No infamy, iniquity, or cruelty
can exceed our own, if we, born and educated in a country of freedom,
entitled to its blessings, and knowing their value, pusillanimonsly
deserting the post assigned us by Divine Providence, surrender
succeeding generations to a condition of wretchedness from which no
human efforts, in all probability, will be sufficient to extricate them,
the experience of all states mercifully demonstrating to us that, when
arbitrary power has been established over them, even the wisest and
bravest nations that ever flourished have, in a few years, degenerated
into abject and wretched vassals. To us, therefore, it appears, at this
alarming period, our duty to God, to our country, to ourselves, and to
our posterity, to exert our utmost ability in promoting and establishing
harmony between Great Britain and these colonies on a constitutional
foundation."
** The following is a copy of that document, taken from the Pennsylvania
Evening Post, No. 402: The TESTIMONY of the people called, Quakers,
given forth by a meeting of the Representatives of said people in
Pennsylvania and New Jersey, held at Philadelphia the twenty-fourth
day of the first month, 1775: Having considered, with real sorrow, the
unhappy contest between the Legislature of Great Britain and the people
of these colonies, and the animosities consequent thereon, we have, by
repeated public advices and private admonitions, used our endeavors
to dissuade the members of our religious soeiety from joining with the
public resolutions promoted and entered into by some of the people,
which, as we apprehended, so we now find, have increased contention, and
produced great discord and confusion. The Divine Principle of grace and
truth which we profess leads all who attend to its dictates to demean
themselves as peaceable subjects, and to discountenance and avoid
every measure tending to excite disaffection to the king as supreme
magistrate, or to the legal authority of his government, to which
purpose many of the late political writings and addresses to the people
appearing to be calculated, we are led by a sense of duty to declare our
entire disapprobation of them, their spirit and temper being not only
contrary to the nature and precepts of the Gospel, but destructive of
the peace and harmony of civil society, disqualifies men, in these times
of difficulty, for the wise and judicious consideration and promoting of
such measures as would be most effectual for reconciling differences
or obtaining the redress of grievances. From our past experience of the
clemency of the king and his royal ancestors, we have ground to hope and
believe that decent and respectful addresses from those who are vested
with legal authority, representing the prevailing dissatisfactions and
the cause of them, would avail toward obtaining relief, ascertaining
and establishing the just rights of the people, and restoring the public
tranquillity; and we deeply lament that contrary modes of proceeding
have been pursued, which have involved the colonies in confusion, appear
likely to produce violence and bloodshed, and threaten the subversion of
the Constitutional government, and of that liberty of conscience for the
enjoyment of which our ancestors were induced to encounter the manifold
dangers and difficulties of crossing the seas and of settling in the
wilderness. We are therefore incited, by a sincere concern for the peace
and welfare of our country, publicly to declare against every usurpation
of power and authority in opposition to the laws and government, and
against all combinations, insurrections, conspiracies, and illegal
assemblies; and as we are restrained from them by the conscientious
discharge of our duty to Almighty God, "by whom kings reign and princes
decree justice," we hope, through his assistance and favor, to be
enabled to maintain our testimony against any requisitions which may be
made of us, inconsistent with our religious principles and the fidelity
we owe to the king and his government, as by law established; earnestly
desiring the restoration of that harmony and concord which have
heretofore united the people of these provinces, and been attended by
the Divine blessing on their labors. Signed in and on behalf of the said
meeting, James Pemberton, Clerk at this time.
** This Testimony gave offense to many Friends in Philadelphia who were
favorable to the patriots. Some left, and formed a separate meeting.
They built themselves a brick meeting-house at the southwest corner of
Fifth and Arch Streets; and others so far seceded as to form a military
company, under Captain Humphreys, which they called The Quaker Company.
[[[James Pemberton and others sent to Virginia.--Arrest and Removal of
Governor Penn and Chief-justice Chew.]]]
{262}Quakers, as a body, were friends of the king, though generally
passive, so far as public observation could determine. But in secret,
and through their "testimonies," they gave "aid and comfort to the
enemy."
[Illustration: 9270]
To such an extent did they exert their influence against the patriots,
that Congress thought it proper to recommend the executives of the
several states to keep a watch upon their movements. That body also
earnestly recommended the supreme executive council of Pennsylvania to
apprehend and secure the persons of eleven of the leading Quakers
of Philadelphia. * Among these was August 23, James Pemberton, whose
likeness is here given. He[[August 28, 1777]] remained two years in
Virginia, where he wrote a journal, a portion of which is published in
the "_Friends' Miscellany_," vol. vii.
Unlike other Tories, the Quakers were so passive that little positive
evidence of their acting against the patriots could be
* The reason given for this measure by Congress was, "that when the
enemy, in the month of December, 1776. were bending their progress
toward the city of Philadelphia, a certain seditious publication,
addressed "To our friends and brethren in religious profession in these
and the adjacent provinces," signed John Pemberton, in and on behalf of
the meeting of sufferings, held at Philadelphia, for Pennsylvania and
New Jersey, the 26th of the 12th month, 1776," was published, and, as
your committee is credibly informed, circulated among many members of
the society called Quakers, throughout the different states." The
paper originated in Philadelphia, and Joshua Fisher. Abel James, James
Pemberton, Henry Drinker, Israel Pemberton. John Pemberton, John James,
Samuel Pleasants, Thomas Wharton, senior, Thomas Fisher, and Samuel
Fisher, of that city, leading members of the society, were banished to
Fredericksburg, in Virginia. The Board of War was also instructed to
remove the Honorable John Penn, the governor, and Benjamin Chew, the
chief justice of Pennsylvania, thither, for safe custody.--See Journals
of Congress, iii., 290. The papers and records of the yearly meeting
of the Quakers of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, which were captured by
Sullivan, in an expedition against the Loyalist regiments living on
Staten Island, opposite Perth Amboy, gave Congress the first positive
proof of the general disaffection of the sect.
[[[Execution of Roberta and Carlisle.--Justice of their
Punishment.--Carpenters' Hall.]]]
{263}obtained; and very few of them, suffering from confiscation of
property or other penalties, became refugees at the close of the war.
John Egberts and Abraham Carlisle, of Philadelphia, members of this
sect, suffered death at the hands of the Whigs, in November, 1778.
[Illustration: 9271]
This act has been cited a hundred times as evidence against the claims
to the exercise of uniform humanity on the part of the patriots, and
magnified into a foul murder, justified by no plea of public expediency.
The facts prove otherwise; for if it was ever expedient to take the life
of a dangerous citizen, then Roberts and Carlisle suffered justly. While
they abstained from open hostility to the Revolutionary government, and
refused to bear arms for the king, they gave secret aid, far more potent
to the enemies of liberty. They were employed by Joseph Galloway and
his loyal friends as secret agents in detecting foes to the government.
While Howe had possession of Philadelphia, Carlisle granted permissions
to pass the lines, watched at the entrance of the city to point out
obnoxious persons coming from the country, and many were arrested
and cast into prison on his bare suggestion.. Under the meek garb and
demeanor of the Quaker was a Torquemada, exercising the functions of
an inquisitor general. When Howe ordered a detachment, under
Lieutenant-colonel Abercrombie, to go out upon the Frankford road, and
fall upon a party of American militia, who, he was informed, were lying
in the woods, Egberts and Carlisle, who would not _bear arms_ for the
wealth of the Indies, acted as guides in conducting Abercrombie to the
massacre of their countrymen. According to the rules of war and of state
policy, their execution was expedient and salutary in effect. It was
a subject for bitter vituperation on the part of the Tories, and even
those who would fain have saved them from death were charged with
dishonorable motives. "Governor Livingston went to Philadelphia," wrote
John Potts to Joseph Galloway, "and urged his endeavors to prevail on
the banditti in power there to save Roberts and Carlisle, not from
any principle of honor or conscience--you know him too well--but from
motives, as he thought, of policy." I think it may be safely asserted
that where one Tory lost his life at the hands of the Whigs during the
Revolution, fifty Whigs were slain in cold blood by the Tories. The
reason is obvious--a heart warmed with love of country is benevolent and
humane; its active opposers may fairly be presumed to be mercenary, and
consequently cruel.
The supper-bell has rung; let us close the chronicle for to-night, and
in the morning go out in search of localities made memorable by events
connected with our war for independence.
On Monday morning I visited [[November 27, 1848]]Carpenters' Hall, the
building in which the first Continental Congress held its brief session.
Having had no intimation concerning its appearance, condition, and
present use, and informed that it was situated in "Carpenters' Court,"
imagination had invested its exterior with dignity, its interior with
solemn grandeur, and its location a spacious area, where nothing "common
or unclean" was permitted to dwell. How often the hoof of Pegasus
touches the leafless tree-tops of sober prose when his rider supposes
him to be at his highest altitude! How often the rainbow of imagination
fades, and leaves to the eye nothing but the forbidding aspect of a
cloud of plain reality! So at this time. The spacious court was but a
short and narrow
* This building is constructed of small imported bricks, each alternate
one glazed, and darker than the other, giving it a checkered appearance.
Many of the old houses of Philadelphia were built of like materials.
It was originally erected for the hall of meeting for the society of
house-carpenters of Philadelphia. It stands at the end of an alley
leading south from Chestnut Street, between Third and Fourth Streets.
[[[Desecration of Carpenters' Hall.--Congress Hall.--Prevalence of a
Desire for Union.]]]
{264}alley; and the _Hall_, consecrated by the holiest associations
which cluster around the birthtime of our republic, was a small
two-story building, of somber aspect, with a short steeple, and all of a
dingy hue. I tried hard to conceive the apparition upon its front to
be a classic frieze, with rich historic triglyphs; but it would not do.
Vision was too "lynx-eyed," and I could make nothing more poetic of it
than an array of impudent letters spelling the words=
````C. J. WOLBERT & CO., AUCTIONEERS
````FOR THE SALE OF
````Real Estate and Stocks,
````Fancy Goods,
````Horses, Vehicles, and Harness.
[Illustration: 8272]
What a desecration! Covering the façade of the very Temple of Freedom
with the placards of groveling mammon! If sensibility is shocked with
this outward pollution, it is overwhelmed with indignant shame on
entering the hall where that august assembly of men--the godfathers of
our republic--convened to stand as sponsors at the baptism of infant
American Liberty, to find it filled with every species of merchandise,
and the walls which once echoed the eloquent words of Henry, Lee, and
the Adamses, reverberating with the clatter of the auctioneer's voice
and hammer. Is there not patriotism strong enough and bold enough in
Philadelphia to enter this temple and cast out all them that buy and
sell, and overthrow the table of the money-changers?"
The hall in which Congress met is upon the lower floor, and comprehends
the whole area of the building. It is about forty-five feet square, with
a recess in the rear twenty-five feet wide and about twelve feet deep,
at the entrance of which are two pillars, eighteen feet high. The second
story contains smaller apartments which were used by Congress, and
occupied by the society as committee rooms. In one of these, emptied of
all merchandise except a wash-tub and a rush-bottomed chair, let us sit
down and consider the events connected with that first great Continental
Council.
We have already, in former chapters, considered the causes which
awakened a desire in the colonies for a political union, and which
impelled them to resistance. For many years a strong sympathy had
existed between the several colonies, and injuries done to one, either
by the aggressions of the French and Indians, or the unkind hand of
their common mother, touched the feelings of all the others, and drew
out responsive words and acts which denoted an already strong bond
of unity. Widely separated as some of them were from each other by
geographical distance, and diversity of interest and pursuits, there
were, nevertheless, political, social, and commercial considerations
which made the Anglo-Americans really one people, having common
interests and common hopes. Called upon as free subjects of Great
Britain to relinquish, theoretically and practically, some of the
dearest prerogatives guaranteed to them by Magna Charta and hoary
custom--prerogatives, in which were enveloped the most precious kernels
of civil liberty--they arose as one family to resist the insidious
[[[First Movements toward a General Congress.--Election of
Delegates.--Names of the Representatives of each Colony.]]]
{265}progress of on-coming despotism, and yearned for union to give
themselves strength commensurate to the task. Leading minds in every
colony perceived the necessity for a general council, and in the spring
of 1774, the great heart of Anglo-America seemed to beat as with one
pulsation with this sublime idea. That idea found voice and expression
almost simultaneously throughout the land. Rhode Island has the
distinguished honor of first speaking out publicly on the subject. A
general Congress was proposed at a town meeting in Providence on the
17th of May, 1774. A committee of a town meeting held in Philadelphia on
the 21st, four days afterward, also recommended such a measure; and on
the 23d, a town meeting in New York city uttered the same sentiment. The
House of Burgesses of Virginia, dissolved by Lord Dunmore, assembled at
the Raleigh Tavern, * in Williams-burgh, on the 27th, and on that day
warmly recommended the assembling of a national council; and Baltimore,
in county meeting, also took action in favor of it on the 31st. On the
6th of June, a town meeting at Norwich. Connecticut, proposed a general
Congress; on the 11th, a county meeting at Newark, New Jersey, did the
same; on the 17th, the Massachusetts Assembly, and, at the same time,
a town meeting in Faneuil Hall, in Boston, strenuously recommended the
measure; and a county meeting at New Castle, Delaware, approved of it
on the 29th. On the 6th of July, the committee of correspondence at
Portsmouth, New Hampshire, expressed its approbation of the measure.
A general province meeting, held at Charleston, South Carolina, on the
6th, 7th, and 8th of that month, urged the necessity of such a Congress;
and a district meeting at Wilmington, North Carolina, held on the 21st,
heartily responded affirmatively. Thus we perceive that, within the
space of sixty-four days, twelve of the thirteen colonies spoke out
decidedly in favor of a Continental Congress, Georgia alone remaining
silent. ** The Massachusetts Assembly designated the 1st of September,
1774, as the time, and Philadelphia as the place for the meeting of
the Congress. *** Other colonies acquiesced, and at Philadelphia the
delegates convened.=
```"Now meet the fathers of this western clime,
````Nor names more noble graced the roll of Fame.
```When Spartan firmness braved the wrecks of time.
````Or Rome's bold virtues fann'd the heroic flame.=
```"Not deeper thought th' immortal sage inspired
````On Solon's lips, when Grecian senates hung;
```Nor manlier eloquence the bosom fired,
````When genius thunder'd from the Athenian tongue."
`````Trumbull.**** =
On Monday, the 5th of September, fifty-four delegates, from twelve
colonies, assembled in Carpenters' Hall. (v) It was a congregation of
men, viewed in every important aspect,
* A drawing of the Raleigh Tavern, and also of the Apollo Room, in whieh
the Assembly met, will be found in another part of this work.
** Connecticut elected its delegates on the 3d of June; Massachusetts
on the 17th; Maryland on the 22d; New Hampshire on the 21st of July;
Pennsylvania on the 22d; New Jersey on the 23d; New York on the 25th;
Delaware on the 1st of August; Virginia on the same day; South Carolina
on the 2d; Rhode Island on the 10th; and North Carolina on the 25th.
*** See pages 510, 511, vol. i.
**** The author of M'Fingal. These lines are from his Elegy on the
Times, published while this first Congress was in session.
* (v) The following are the names of the members who composed the first
Continental Congress:
New Hampshire.--John Sullivan, Nathaniel Folsom.
Massachusetts.--Thomas Cushing, Samuel Adams, John Adams,
Robert Treat Paine.
Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.--Stephen Hopkins,
Samuel Ward.
Connecticut.--Eliphalet Dyer, Roger Sherman, Silas Deane..
New York.--James Duane, John Jay, Isaac Low, John Alsop,
William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Henry Wisner.
New Jersey.--James Kinsey, Stephen Crane, William
Livingston, Richard Smith, John De Hart.
Pennsylvania.--Joseph Galloway, John Morton, Charles
Humphreys, Thomas Mifflin, Samuel Rhodes, Edward Biddle,
George Ross, John Dickenson.
Delaware.--Cæsar Rodney, Thomas M'Ivean, George Read.
Maryland.--Robert Goldsborough, Samuel Chase, Thomas
Johnson, Matthew Tilghman, William Pann.
Virginia.--Peyton Randolph, Richard Henry Lee, George
Washington, Patrick Henry, Richard Bland, Benjamin Harrison,
Edmund Pendleton.
North Carolina.--William Hooper, Joseph Hughes, Richard
Caswell.
South Carolina.--Henry Middleton, John Rutledge, Thomas
Lynch, Christopher Gadsden, Edward Rutledge.
[[[Character of the first Continental Congress.--Its
Organization.--Peyton Randolph.--Charles Thomson.]]]
{266}such as the world had never seen. "For a long time," says the
eloquent Charles Botta, "no spectacle had been offered to the attention
of mankind of so powerful an interest as this of the present American
Congress. It was, indeed, a novel thing, and, as it were, miraculous,
that a nation hitherto almost unknown to the people of Europe, or only
known by the commerce it occasionally exercised in their ports, should,
all at once, step forth from this state of oblivion, and, rousing as
from a long slumber, should seize the reins to govern itself; that
the various parts of this nation, hitherto disjointed, and almost in
opposition to each other, should now be united in one body, and moved by
a single will; that their long and habitual obedience should be suddenly
changed for the intrepid counsels of resistance, and of open defiance to
the formidable nation whence they derived their origin and laws. *
The men who composed that first Congress were possessed of the purest
minds, the loftiest and most disinterested patriotism, and moral
characters without spot or blemish. Instinctively the people had turned
to their _best men_ for counsel and action when the crisis arrived; and
the representatives there assembled composed the flower of the American
colonies. "There is in the Congress," wrote John Adams, "a collection of
the greatest men upon this continent in point of abilities, virtues,
and fortunes." The sectional factions and personal ambitions, which
afterward disturbed the harmony and injured the character of the
Continental Congress, ** had no tangible shape in this first Assembly.
They felt, with all the solemnity of wise and virtuous men, the weight
of the momentous responsibility resting upon them. They knew that toward
them all eyes were turned, all hearts were drawn; that not only America,
but the whole civilized world, was an interested spectator of their
acts; and that for posterity, more than for cotemporaries, they held a
trust of value infinitely beyond human estimation. Impressed with the
consciousness of such responsibility, the delegates commenced their
labors.
[[September, 1774]] Congress was organized by the choice of Peyton
Randolph, *** of Virginia, as president, and Charles Thomson, **** of
Pennsylvania, as secretary. The credentials of
* Otis's Botta, i 128.
** In the opinion of Charles Thomson, who was Secretary of Congress for
fifteen consecutive years, no subsequent national Assembly during the
war could compare with the first in point of talent and purity. He
represents the Congress that sat at York, in Pennsylvania, while
Washington and his army were suffering at Valley Forge, as a body of
weak men compared to former delegations. It was in that Congress that
a faction favored the scheme for making Gates commander-in-ehief of the
army in place of Washington.
*** Peyton Randolph was a native of Virginia, descended from one of
its oldest and most respected families. Like other young men of the
aristocracy, he was educated in England. He chose the profession of the
law, and sueh were his talents that he was appointed attorney-general of
the province in 1756, at the age of twenty-seven years. In that year he
engaged, with one hundred gentlemen, to band as volunteers, and march
against the Indians on their Western frontiers. He was for some years
a member of the House of Burgesses of Virginia, and was at one time
its speaker. He was one of the delegates from Virginia in the first
Continental Congress, presided over that body with dignity, and was
elected to the presidential chair by the second Congress, the following
year. On account of ill health, he was obliged to resign his station on
the 24th of May, 1775, and return to Virginia. He afterward resumed his
seat in Congress. He died at Philadelphia, of apoplexy, on the 22d of
October, 1775, aged fifty-two years. The accompanying likeness of Mr.
Randolph I copied from a miniature by Charles Wilson Peale, in the
possession of his son, Titian R. Peale, Esq., of Washington City.
The original portrait from life, painted by Peale, is in the Congress
library; the miniature is a copy by the same artist. Mr. Randolph was a
Free-mason; the scarf seen across his breast is a part of the regalia of
a grand master. The portrait was painted for a lodge of the fraternity.
**** Charles Thomson was born in Ireland, in 1730, and came to Ameriea,
with his three elder brothers, in 1741. They landed at New Castle,
Delaware, with no other dependence than their industry. He was educated
by Dr. Allison, the tutor of several of the signers of the Declaration
of Independence. He was afterward a teacher at the Friends' Academy, at
New Castle. From thence he went to Philadelphia, where he obtained the
advice and lasting friendship of Dr. Franklin. He was called to the
responsible duty of keeping the minutes of the proceedings of the first
Continental Congress in 1774, and from that time until he resigned his
offiee, in 1789, he was the sole secretary of that body. He married
Hannah Harrison, the aunt of General Harrison, late President of the
United States. Mr. Thomson died at Lower Merion, Montgomery county,
Pennsylvania, August 16, 1824, aged ninety-four years. The likeness of
Secretary Thomson here given I copied from a portrait painted from life
by Charles Wilson Peale, and in the present possession of P. T. Barnum,
Esq., of New York. It agrees with the description of him given by the
Abbé Robin, who was attached to Rochambeau's staff. Alluding to those
who paid their respects to Roehambeau when he was in Philadelphia, he
says: "Among others, Charles Thomson, secretary of Congress, the soul of
that political body, came also to receive and present his compliments.
His meager figure, furrowed countenance, his hollow, sparkling eyes, his
white, straight hair, that did not hang quite so low as his ears, fixed
our thorough attention and filled us with surprise and admiration."
[[[Opening of the first Continental Congress.--Patrick Henry.--The First
Prayer in Congress.]]]
{267}the various delegates were then presented, and now came a pause;
who should take the lead? what measure should be first proposed?
They had come together from distant provinces, some instructed by the
power that appointed them, others left free to act as circumstances
should require.
[Illustration: 8275]
There was a profound silence, and deep anxiety was depicted upon every
countenance. No one seemed willing to break that silence, until a
grave-looking member, in a plain, is it?" A few, who knew the stranger,
answered, There was no more hesitation; he who startled the people of
colonial America, nine years before, by his bold resolutions against the
Stamp Act, and, a few months afterward, by the cry of "Give me liberty
or give me death!" now gave the impulse to the representatives of that
people in grand council assembled, and set in motion that machinery of
civil power which worked so nobly while Washington and his compatriots
were waging war with the enemy in the field.
[Illustration: 9275]
Two days afterward, another im-[[September 7.]] impressive scene
occurred. It was the _first prayer in Congress_, offered up by the
Reverend Mr. Duché. ** The first day had been occupied in the reception
of credentials and the arrangement of business; the second, in the
adoption of rules for the regulation of the session; and now, when about
to enter upon the general business for which they were convened, the
delegates publicly sought Divine aid. It was a spectacle of great
interest, for men of every creed dark suit of "minister's gray" and
unpowdered wig, arose. "Then," said Bishop White, who was present,
and related the circumstance, "I felt a regret that a seeming _country
parson_ should so far have mistaken his talents and the theater for
their display."
[Illustration: 6275]
But his voice was so musical, his words so eloquent, and his sentiments
so profoundly logical, that the whole House was electrified, and the
question went from lip to lip, Who is it? who It is Patrick Henry, of
Virginia!" *** John Adams thus wrote:
"When the Congress met, Mr. Cushing made a motion that it should be
opened with prayer. It was opposed by Mr. Jay", of New York, and Mr.
Rutledge, of South Carolina, because we were so divided in religious
sentiments--some Episcopalians, some Quakers, some Anabaptists, some
Presbyterians, and some Congregationalists--that we could not join in
the same act of worship. Mr. Samuel Adams arose, and said 'that he was
no bigot, and could hear a prayer from any gentleman of piety and virtue
who was at the same time a friend to his country. He was a stranger in
Philadelphia, but had heard that Mr. Duché (Dushay they pronounce it)
deserved that character, and therefore he moved that Mr. Duché, an
Episcopal clergyman, might be desired to read prayers before the
Congress to-morrow morning.' The motion was seconded, and passed in
the affirmative. Mr. Randolph, our president, waited on Mr. Duché,
and received for answer that, if his health would permit, he certainly
would. Accordingly, next morning, he appeared with his clerk, and in
pontificals, and read several prayers in the Established form, and then
read the Psalter for the seventh day of September, a part of which was
the 35th Psalm. You must remember this was the next morning after we
had heard the rumor of the horrible cannonade of Boston. It seemed as if
Heaven had ordained that Psalm to be read on that morning.
"After this, Mr. Duché, unexpectedly to every body, struck out into an
extemporary prayer, which filled the bosom of every man present. I
must confess, I never heard a better prayer, or one so well pronounced.
Episcopalian as he is, Dr. Cooper himself never prayed with such fervor,
such ardor, such correctness, such pathos, and in language so elegant
and sublime, for Congress, for the province of Massachusetts Bay,
especially the town of Boston. It had an excellent effect upon every
body here. I must beg you to read that Psalm. If there is any faith in
the Sortes Virgillianae, or Sortes Homericæ, or especially the Sortes
Biblieæ, it would be thought providential." Bishop White, who was
present, says that Washington was the only member who knelt on that
occasion.
* See Watson's Annals, vol. i., 422. his wife on the 8th of September,
concerning that first prayer in Congress.
[[[Sessions with closed Doors.--Sympathy with
Massachusetts.--Declaration of Rights.--"American Association."--Mr.
Duché.]]]
{268}were there. In this service their creeds were forgotten, and the
hearts of all united in the prayer which flowed from the pastor's
lips; a prayer which came from a then patriot's heart, though timidity
afterward lost him the esteem of his friends and countrymen. *
The Congress resolved to sit with closed doors, for enemies were around
them with open eyes and busy tongues, and nothing was to be made
public without special orders. Having no means at hand to ascertain the
relative importance of the colonies, it was agreed "that each colony or
province should have one vote in determining questions." One of their
first acts was to express an opinion that the whole continent ought
to support Massachusetts in [[ a September 10.]] resistance to the
unconstitutional change in her government; (a) and they afterward
resolved that any person accepting office under the new system ought to
be held in detestation as a public enemy. (b) Merchants were advised to
enter into non-importation agreements;(c) and a letter was addressed to
General Gage, remonstrating against the fortifications on Boston Neck,
and his arbitrary exercise of power. (d) On the 11th of October, a
_Declaration of Colonial Rights_, prepared by a committee of two from
each province, was adopted, in which was set forth the grievances
complained of, and the inalienable rights of British subjects" in every
part of the realm. As a means of enforcing the claim of natural and
delegated rights, fourteen articles were agreed to as the basis of an
_American Association_, pledging the associate's to an entire commercial
non-intercourse with Great Britain, Ireland, and the West Indies, and
the non-consumption of tea and British goods. In one clause the slave
trade was specially denounced, and entire abstinence from it, and from
any trade with those concerned in it, formed a part of the association.
Committees were to be appointed in every county, city, and town, to
detect and punish all violations of it; and all dealings [[October 20.]]
* Mr. Duché was at that time an ardent Whig, but subsequently became an
enemy to his country. He was the son of a Huguenot, who eame to America
with William Penn. In youth he was a good orator, and, after taking
holy orders in England, he became a very popular Episcopal clergyman in
Philadelphia, his native eity. He was appointed chaplain to Congress on
the 9th of July, 1776, but resigned in October. When the British took
possession of Philadelphia, Mr. Duché, alarmed at the gloomy aspect
of affairs, forsook the patriot cause, and, in a letter to Washington,
endeavored to persuade the general to do likewise, and to "represent
to Congress the indispensable necessity of rescinding the hasty and
ill-advised Declaration of Independence." Washington transmitted this
letter to Congress, and Mr. Duché was obliged to leave the country. He
became a preacher in the Lambeth Asylum, where he was greatly respected.
He returned to America in 1790, and died in Philadelphia in 1794, aged
about sixty years. Mr. Duché was a man of much benevolence of character.
He gave the amount of his salary ($150), while chaplain of Congress, to
be distributed among families whose members had been slain in battle.
He married a sister of Francis Hopkinson, one of the signers of the
Declaration of Independence.
** This Declaration of Rights may be found in the Appendix.
[[[State Papers issued by Congress.--Debates. Diversity of
Opinion.--Dartmouth's Circular.--Joseph Galloway.]]]
{269}with such enemies of American liberty were to be immediately broken
off. One hundred and fifty copies of the Articles of Association were
ordered to be printed.
A memorial to the inhabitants of the several British-American colonies,
written by Richard Henry Lee, and an eloquent address to the people of
Great Britain, from the pen of John Jay, were adopted by Congress on the
21st. A petition to the king, drawn [[October, 1774]] by John Dickenson,
was approved of on the 22d. Short letters to the colonies of St.
John's Island (now Prince Edward's, Nova Scotia), Georgia, and the two
Floridas, inclosing the doings of Congress, and inviting them to join
the Association, were also adopted on that day; and on the 26th, the
last day of the session, they approved of an elaborate address to the
inhabitants of Canada. This was drawn up by Mr. Dickenson with his usual
ability. Having made provision for another Congress to meet on the 10th
of May following, * the first general council closed its session by
adopting a second humble petition to the king, and a vote of thanks to
the advocates of colonial rights in both houses of Parliament.
Congress was in actual session only thirty-one days out of the
eight weeks of the term, the remainder of the time being occupied in
preparatory business. It was a session of extraordinary activity, and
a great amount of business of vast importance was transacted,
notwithstanding many unnecessary speeches were evidently made. ** They
were certainly more to the purpose than are most of the harangues in
Congress at the present day, or, considering the diversity of opinion
that must have existed upon the sentiments of the various state papers
that were adopted, the session would have continued for several months.
We have no means of knowing what harmony or what discord characterized
those debates. The doors were closed to the public ear, and no reporters
for the press have preserved the substance of the speeches. That every
resolution adopted was far from receiving a unanimous vote, is very
evident; for we find, by the subsequent declarations and acts of
delegates, that some of the measures were violently opposed. Many
deplored the probability of an open rupture with the mother country, and
refused acquiescence in any measure that should tend to such a result.
Indeed, the sentiments of a large majority of the delegates were
favorable to an honorable reconciliation, and the Congress was
determined not to present the least foundation for a charge of rushing
madly into an unnatural contest without presenting the olive branch
of peace. Such was the tenor of its petitions and addresses; and every
charge of a desire on the part of Congress for a war that might lead
to independence rested solely upon inference. Galloway, *** Duane, and
others, even opposed the American Association;
* The following circular letter was sent to all the royal governors in
America, soon after the proceedings of the Continental Congress were
received in England. It was a "Bull" without horns, and did not alarm
the patriots. "Whitehall, Jan. 4th, 1775. "Certain persons stiling"
(sic) "themselves delegates of his majesty's colonies in America,
having presumed, without his majesty's authority or consent, to assemble
together, at Philadelphia, in the month of September and October last;
and having thought fit, among other unwarrantable proceedings, to
resolve that it will be necessary that another Congress should be
held in this place on the 10th of May next, unless redress for certain
pretended grievances be obtained before that time, and to recommend that
all the colonies in North America should choose deputies to attend such
Congress, I am commanded by the king to signify to you his majesty's
pleasure, that you do use your utmost endeavors to prevent such
appointment of deputies within the colony under your government;
and that you do exhort all persons to desist from such unwarrantable
proceedings, which can not but be highly displeasing to the king. "I am,
sir, your most obedient servant, Dartmouth.
** "Every man in this assembly," wrote John Adams to his wife, "is a
great man, an orator, a critic, a statesman; and therefore every man,
upon every question, must show his oratory, his criticism, his
political abilities. The consequence is, that business is spun out to an
immeasurable length."
*** Joseph Galloway was one of the most popular of the leaders in
Pennsylvania when the war of the Revolution broke out. He was once the
confidential friend of Franklin, and had worked shoulder to shoulder
with him against the proprietaries. He was elected a delegate to the
first Continental Congress. In that body he submitted a plan, as a
measure of accommodation, which seemed quite feasible. It proposed
a union of the colonies, with a grand council authorized to regulate
colonial affairs jointly with the British Parliament, each to have a
mutual negation on each other. * This plan was favorably received, and
on the question of its adoption it was rejected by a majority of only
one. The debates were very warm, and it was on this occasion that Samuel
Adams, regarding the proposition as a concession to tyranny, exclaimed,
"I should advise persisting in our struggle for liberty, though it were
revealed from heaven that nine hundred and ninety-nine were to perish,
and only one of a thousand were to survive and retain his liberty! One
such freeman must possess more virtue and enjoy more happiness than a
thousand slaves; and let him propagate his like, and transmit to them
what he has so nobly preserved." * Before the meeting of the next
Congress, Galloway manifested lukewarmness; and in 1776 he abandoned
the Whigs, and became the most virulent and proscriptive Loyalist of
the time. He joined the royal army in New York, where he continued until
1778, when, accompanied by his only daughter, he went to England.
There he remained until his death in September, 1803, at the age of
seventy-three years. His pen, for many years, was continually employed
in correspondence with Loyalists in America, and upon subjects connected
with the war. The prominent position which he at first held among the
Whigs, and his virulence against them after his defection, made him the
target for many an arrow of indignant wit. Trumbull, in his M'Fingall,
gave him some hard hits; and a writer in the Pennsylvania Journal of
February 5, 1777, thus castigates him with some lines, after saying to
the printer,
"If you think them severe enough, print 'em, egad I''
"Gall'way has fled, and join'd the venal Howe,
To prove his baseness, see him cringe and bow;
A traitor to his country and its laws,
A friend to tyrants and their cursed cause.
Unhappy wretch! thy interest must be sold
For Continental, not for polish'd gold.
To sink the money thou thyself cried down,
And stabb'd thy country to support the crown.
Go to and fro, like Lucifer on earth,
And curse the Being that first gave thee birth.
Away to Scotland and thyself prepare,
Coal dust and brimstone is their only fare;
Fit materials for such Tory blood,
Who wrong their country and deny their God.
There herd with Bute, Mansfield, and his brother;
Bite, twist, sting, and poison one another."
*** Galloway's estate, valued at $200,000, was confiscated by
Pennsylvania. A large part of it was derived from his wife. A
considerable portion was restored to his daughter.
* This plan is printed in Sabine's Lives of the Loyalists, p. 309.
[[[Opinions concerning the Adamses.--Sketch of Galloway's public
Life.--Disposition of his Estate.]]]
{270}and they regarded the Adamses as men not only too much committed
to violent measures by the part they had taken in Boston, but that they
were desperate men, with nothing to lose, and hence unsafe guides to
gentlemen who had estates to forfeit.
[Illustration: 9278]
And yet Galloway, when he became a proscriptive Loyalist, and one of the
most active enemies of the Republicans, was forced to acknowledge the
stern virtues of many of the patriots of that assembly, and among them
Samuel Adams. "He eats little, drinks little, sleeps little, and thinks
much," he said, "and is most indefatigable in the pursuit of his object.
It was this man who, by his superior application, managed at once the
factions in Congress at Philadelphia, and the factions in New England." *
The proceedings of this first Congress went forth to the world with all
the weight of apparent unanimity, and throughout the colonies they were
hailed with general satisfaction. The American Association adopted and
signed by the delegates was regarded by the people with great favor,
and thousands in every province affixed their signatures to the pledge.
These formed the fibers of the stronger bond of the _Articles of
Confederation_ afterward adopted, and may be considered the commencement
of the American Union.
* Galloway's Historical and Political Reflections on the Rise and
Progress of the American Rebellion: London, 1780. In this pamphlet
the writer handles Sir William Howe and other British commanders with
severity.
* Mr. Adams reiterated this sentiment when debating the resolution for
independence twenty months afterward.
** Just before he left Philadelphia he discovered that his daughter
was about to elope with Judge Griffin, who was afterward president of
Congress. This doubtless hastened his departure.
*** Murray, confidential secretary to the Pretender, Prince Charles
Edward.
[[[The State House.--Independence Hall.--Hancock's Chair.--Portraits of
Penn and La Fayette.]]]
{271}