PHILADELPHIA’S FIRST CITY TROOPS DIE IN DEFENCE OF THE LIBERTY BELL
I come now to the point in my narrative where I ceased to be merely a
reporter of stirring events, and began to play a small part that Fate had
reserved for me in this great international drama. Thank God, I was able
to be of service to stricken America, my own country that I have loved so
much, although, as correspondent of the London _Times_, it has been my
lot to spend years in foreign lands.
Obeying instructions from my paper, I hastened back to the United States,
where important events were pending. Von Hindenburg, after his Trenton
victory, had strangely delayed his advance against Philadelphia--we were
to learn the reason for this shortly--but, as we passed through Savannah,
we had news that the invading army was moving southward against General
Wood’s reconstructed line of defence that spread from Bristol on the
Delaware to Jenkintown to a point three miles below Norristown on the
Schuylkill.
The next morning we reached Richmond and here, I should explain, I said
good-bye to the rescued lieutenant, an attractive young fellow, Randolph
Ryerson, whose home was in Richmond, and whose sister, Miss Mary Ryerson,
a strikingly beautiful girl, had met us at Charleston the night before in
response to a telegram that her brother was coming and was ill. She
nursed him through the night in an uncomfortable stateroom and came to me
in the morning greatly disturbed about his condition. The young man had a
high fever, she said, and had raved for hours calling out a name, a
rather peculiar name--Widding--Widding--Lemuel A. Widding--over and over
again in his delirium.
I tried to reassure her and said laughingly that, as long as it was not a
woman’s name he was raving about, there was no ground for anxiety. She
gave me her address in Richmond and thanked me very sweetly for what I
had done. I must admit that for days I was haunted by that girl’s face
and by the glorious beauty of her eyes.
When we reached Washington we found that city in a panic over news of
another American defeat. Philadelphia had fallen and all communications
were cut off. Furthermore, a third force of Germans had landed in
Chesapeake Bay, which meant that the national capital was threatened by
two German armies. We now understood von Hindenburg’s deliberation.
In this emergency, Marshall Reid, brother-in-law of Lieutenant Dustin,
the crack aviator of the navy, who had been aboard the _Pennsylvania_,
volunteered to carry messages from the President to Philadelphia and to
bring back news. Reid himself was one of the best amateur flying men in
the country and he did me the honour to choose me as his companion.
We started late in the afternoon of August 17 in Mr. Reid’s swift Burgess
machine and made the distance in two hours. I shall never forget our
feelings as we circled over the City of Brotherly Love and looked down
upon wrecks of railroad bridges that lay across the Schuylkill. Shots
were fired at us from the aerodrome of the League Island Navy Yard; so we
flew on, searching for a safer landing place.
We tried to make the roof landing on the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel, but
the wind was too high and we finally chanced it among the maples of
Rittenhouse Square, after narrowly missing the sharp steeple of St.
Mark’s Church. Here, with a few bruises, we came to earth just in front
of the Rittenhouse Club and were assisted by Dr. J. William White, who
rushed out and did what he could to help us.
Five hours later, Reid started back to Washington with details of
reverses sent by military and city authorities that decided the
administration to move the seat of government to Chicago without delay.
He also carried from me (I remained in Philadelphia) a hastily written
despatch to be transmitted from Washington via Kingston to the London
_Times_, in which I summed up the situation on the basis of facts given
me by my friend, Richard J. Beamish, owner of the Philadelphia _Press_,
my conclusion being that the American cause was lost. And I included
other valuable information gleaned from reporter friends of mine on the
_North American_ and the _Bulletin_. I even ventured a prophecy that the
United States would sue for peace within ten days.
“What were General Wood’s losses in the battle of Philadelphia?” I asked
Beamish.
“Terribly heavy--nearly half of his army in killed, wounded and
prisoners. What could we do? Von Hindenburg outnumbered us from two to
one and we were short of ammunition, artillery, horses, aeroplanes,
everything.”
“Who blew up those railroad bridges and cut the wires?”
“German spies--there are a lot of them here. They sank a barge loaded
with bricks in the Schuylkill just above its joining with the Delaware
and blocked the channel so that ten battleships in the naval basin at
League Island couldn’t get out.”
“What became of the battleships?”
“Commandant Price opened their valves and sank them in the basin.”
“And the American army, where is it now?” I asked.
“They’ve retreated south of the Brandywine--what’s left of them. Our new
line is entrenching from Chester to Upland to Westchester with our right
flank on the Delaware; but what’s the use?”
So crushing was the supremacy of the invaders that there was no further
thought of resistance in Philadelphia. The German army was encamped in
Fairmount Park and it was known that, at the first sign of revolt, German
siege-guns on the historic heights of Wissahickon and Chestnut Hill would
destroy the City Hall with its great tower bearing the statue of William
Penn and the massive grey pile of Drexel and Company’s banking house at
the corner of Fifth and Chestnut streets. Von Hindenburg had announced
this, also that he did not consider it necessary to take hostages.
There was one act of resistance, however, when the enemy entered
Philadelphia that must live among deeds of desperate heroism.
As the German hosts marched down Chestnut Street they came to
Independence Hall and here, blocking the way on their sorrel horses with
two white mounted trumpeters, was the First City Troop, sixty-five men
under Captain J. Franklin McFadden, in their black coats and white
doeskin riding-breeches, in the black helmets with raccoon skin plumes,
in their odd-shaped riding boots high over the knee, all as in
Revolutionary days--here they were drawn up before the statue of George
Washington and the home of the Liberty Bell, resolved to die here,
fighting as well as they could for these things that were sacred. And
they did die, most of them, or fell wounded before a single one of the
enemy set foot inside of Independence Hall.
Here is the list of heroes who offered their lives for the cause of
liberty:
Captain J. Franklin McFadden, First Lieutenant George C. Thayer, Second
Lieutenant John Conyngham Stevens, First Sergeant Thomas Cadwalader,
Second Sergeant (Quartermaster) Benjamin West Frazier, Third Sergeant
George Joyce Sewell, William B. Churchman, Richard M. Philler, F. Wilson
Prichett, Clarence H. Clark, Joseph W. Lewis, Edward D. Page, Richard
Tilghman, Edward D. Toland, Jr., McCall Keating, Robert P. Frazier,
Alexander Cadwalader, Morris W. Stroud, George Brooke, 3d, Charles
Poultney Davis, Saunders L. Meade, Cooper Howell, C. W. Henry, Edmund
Thayer, Harry C. Yarrow, Jr., Alexander C. Yarnall, Louis Rodman Page,
Jr., George Gordon Meade, Pierson Pierce, Andrew Porter, Richard H.
R. Toland, John B. Thayer, West Frazier, John Frazer, P. P. Chrystie,
Albert L. Smith, William W. Bodine, Henry D. Beylard, Effingham Buckley
Morris, Austin G. Maury, John P. Hollingsworth, Rulon Miller, Harold M.
Willcox, Charles Wharton, Howard York, Robert Gilpin Irvin, J. Keating
Willcox, William Watkins, Jr., Harry Ingersoll, Russell Thayer, Fitz
Eugene Dixon, Percy C. Madeira, Jr., Marmaduke Tilden, Jr., H. Harrison
Smith, C. Howard Clark, Jr., Richard McCall Elliot, Jr., George Harrison
Frazier, Jr., Oliver Eton Cromwell, Richard Harte, D. Reeves Henry, Henry
H. Houston, Charles J. Ingersoll.
It grieved me when I visited the quaint little house on Arch Street with
its gabled window and wooden blinds, where Betsey Ross made the first
flag of the United States of America, to find a German banner in place of
the accustomed thirteen white stars on their square of blue. And again,
when I stood beside Benjamin Franklin’s grave in Christ Church Cemetery,
I was shocked to see a German flag marking this honoured resting-place.
“Benjamin and Deborah, 1790,” was the deeply graven words and, beside
them under a kindly elm, the battered headstone of their little
four-year-old son, “Francis F.--A delight to all who knew him.” Then a
German flag!
I began to wonder why we had not learned a lesson from England’s
lamentable showing in 1915. What good did all our wealth do us now? It
would be taken from us--had not the Germans already levied an indemnity
of four hundred millions upon Philadelphia? And seized the Baldwin
locomotive works, the greatest in the world, employing 16,000 men? And
the Cramp shipbuilding yards? And the terminus at Point Breeze down the
river of the great Standard Oil Company’s pipe line with enormous oil
supplies?
Philadelphians realised all this when it was too late. They knew
that ten thousand American soldiers, killed in battle, were lying in
fresh-made graves. They knew that the Philadelphia Hospital and the
University of Pennsylvania Hospital and the commercial museum buildings
nearby that had been changed into hospitals could scarcely provide beds
and nurses for wounded American soldiers. And yet, “What can we do?” said
Mayor George H. Earle, Jr., to me. “New York City resisted, and you know
what happened. Boston rioted, and she had her lesson. No! Philadelphia
will not resist. Besides, read this.”
He showed me a message just arrived from Washington saying that the
United States was about to sue for peace.
The next day we had news that a truce had been declared and immediately
negotiations began between Chicago and Berlin, regarding a peace
conference, it being finally decided that this should take place at Mt.
Vernon, in the historic home of George Washington, sessions to begin
early in September, in order to allow time for the arrival of delegates
from Germany.