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Gc 974.8 P387p 37737
PUBLIC LIBRARY .FORT WAYNE & ALLEN CO., IND.
GENEALOGY COLLECTION
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 01144 9268
GC 974.8 P387P
PENNSYLVANIA IN AMERICAN HISTORY
BY HON. SAMUEL WHITAKER PENNYPACKER, LL.D.
President of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania President Judge of the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas No. 2, 1896-1902 Governor of Pennsylvania, 1903-1907
PHILADELPHIA WILLIAM J. CAMPBELL 1910
COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY SAMUEL WHITAKER PENNYPACKER
I N his history of the United States, Vol. I, p. 114, Henry Adams wrote: "In every other issue that concerned the Union, the voice which spoke in most potent tones was that of Pennsylvania"; and again: "Had New England, New York and Virginia been swept out of existence in 1800, democracy could have better spared them all than have lost Pennsylvania."
All of the papers contained in the present volume are the outcome of special studies, and almost exclusively are based upon original sources of information. In the main these sources are found among the vast and important collections of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, an insti- tution which has done much in the elucidation of the history of the country.
If the effect of the book should be to call wider attention to what has been here achieved, and to cause any of the people of this state to have a better appreciation of that achievement, its pur- pose will have been accomplished.
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CONTENTS
Anthony Wayne - -
- - -
I
Congress Hall - - - - - 8 1
The Purchase of Louisiana - - I27
George Washington in Pennsylvania - 144
Pennsylvania and Massachusetts - - - 172
German Immigration - -
-
- 195.
The Capture of Stony Point - -
- 208
The Dutch Patroons of Pennsylvania
-
226
High Water Mark of the British Invasion - 257
Matthew Stanley Quay - -
- . 280
The Dedication of the Capitol -
-
306
The Pennsylvania Dutchman and wherein he has excelled - - -
-
- 309
Johann Gottfried Seelig - - - 319
Sower and Beissel - - -
- - 327
The War of the Rebellion - - - 364
Gettysburg - -
- - - -
381
26th Pennsylvania Emergency Infantry -
385
The Origin of the University of Pennsylvania
408
The University of Pennsylvania in its Relations to the State -
- 433
ANTHONY WAYNE
" Egregias animas quae sanguine nobis hanc pa- triam peperere suo, decorate supremis muneribus."
[An address delivered at Valley Forge, June 20th, 1908, at the dedication of the equestrian statue of Major-General Anthony Wayne, erected by the Commonwealth.]
A T the close of the unsuccessful campaign of 1777, which had resulted in the capture by the British under Sir William Howe, of Philadelphia, the capital city of the revolted colonies, Washington, in writing, requested the opinions of his generals as to what should be his military policy during the approaching winter. One of them, a brigadier, then thirty-two years of age, after making a full review of the situation, recommended for the
* This study was prepared mainly from original letters of Wayne and the other generals of the Revolution in the library of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
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army either a camp at Wilmington, "or hutting at the distance of about twenty miles west of Phila- delphia." The commonwealth of Pennsylvania, after the lapse of one hundred and thirty-one years, in the presence of the descendants of the men who fought the battles of the Revolution, to-day erects this equestrian statue in bronze, in memory of him who so accurately forecasted, if he did not deter- mine, the encampment at Valley Forge. She pre- sents him to mankind as a soldier who participated with honor and unusual éclat in nearly every import- ant engagement from Canada in the north to Georgia in the south throughout that struggle, and as the capable general-in-chief of the army of the United States, who later, amid vast difficulties and in personal command, brought to a successful result what has proven to be in its consequences one of the most momentous wars in which the country has ever been engaged.
Anthony Wayne had other and earlier associa- tions with the Valley Forge. Within four miles of this camp ground, in the township of Easttown, in the county of Chester, he was born, and from here in 1758 he hauled the hides bought by his father at
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the store in connection with the forge where the family of Potts hammered out their iron.
His grandfather, Anthony Wayne, went from Yorkshire, in England, to Ireland, where he fought in the battle of the Boyne among the forces of William III, and he afterward emigrated to Penn- sylvania.
Isaac Wayne, the youngest son of the immi- grant, was the owner of a large tract of land in Easttown, which he cultivated and where he had a tannery, and he was beside much concerned in the political controversies of the time. The popular party, the opponents of the proprietary interests, elected him to the provincial assembly for several terms. He had a bitter quarrel with Moore of Moore Hall, an old-time aristocrat and pet of the governor, both colonel and judge, and he has the lasting distinction of being one of the characters portrayed in the Chronicles of Nathan Ben Saddi, 1758, one of the brightest and most spirited bits of literature the American colonies produced. St. David's Episcopal Church at Radnor, an ancient shrine where Parson Currie preached and starved, sung about by poets and written about by
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historians, owed very much to his earnest and loyal support.
Anthony Wayne, son of Isaac, looming up before us to-day, was born January 1, 1745, and grew to young manhood upon his father's plant- ation of over five hundred acres, and about the tannery, traces of which still remain. He had the benefit of a somewhat desultory education received from an uncle living in the country, and he spent two years in Philadelphia at the academy out of which arose the University of Pennsylvania. The bent of his mind even in boyhood was to mathematics rather than to literature. At the time of the French and Indian war, wherein his father had served as a captain, he was at an age when startling events make their strongest and most lasting im- pressions, and in his sport he discarded balls and marbles to construct intrenchments and engage in mimic battles. At the academy he studied survey- ing and determined to make that occupation the pursuit of his life. An elaborate and somewhat artistic survey of the township of Vincent, in Chester county, made by him in 1774, is pre- served in the library of the Historical Society of
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Pennsylvania, and his correspondence relating to military affairs is often illustrated with the plans which he drew.
In 1765, when in his twenty-first year, in asso- ciation with Matthew Clarkson; John Hughes, the stamp collector; William Smith, the creator of the university; William Moore, of Moore Hall; Joseph Richardson, captain in the French and Indian War; Benjamin Franklin; Israel Jacobs, afterward a mem- ber of Congress; and others of the leading men of the province, he participated in an effort to found a colony in Canada. One hundred thousand acres of land on the St. John's River and a tract of like ex- tent on the Peticoodiac River were granted to them. A town was located, lots were sold, and settlers were transported. Wayne went to Canada with Benjamin Jacobs as the surveyor for the company, and spent the summers of 1765 and 1766 there, but the enterprise resulted in failure, and at the time of his death he still owned his proportion of these lands. To some extent his activities found expres- sion in a civil career. In several of the conventions which took the preliminary steps leading up to the Revolutionary War, he as a delegate bore an active
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part ; in 1775 he was a member of the Committee of Safety; for three years he sat in the Assembly, and he was a member of the Council of Censors, and of the Pennsylvania Convention which ratified the Constitution of the United States. These pub- lic services, important as they may have been, were only incidental and subsidiary in determining the the value of the labors of his life.
With the first breath of the coming war blow- ing from the northward in 1775, the instincts of the soldier plunged him into the field and he or- ganized a regiment of "minute men" in Chester County.
On the 4th of January, 1776, he was ap- pointed Colonel of the Fourth Pennsylvania Regi- ment. This regiment, together with the Second and Sixth, was formed into a brigade under the command of General William Thompson, and hurried away to Canada. Montgomery had been killed, Arnold had been defeated in an assault upon Quebec, and that army badly needed help. The forces from far away Pennsylvania reached them on the 5th of June at the mouth of the Sorel, between Quebec and Montreal, whither they
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had retreated. Sullivan, who was in command, a week later ordered Thompson with 1450 men, all of them Pennsylvanians except a battalion from New Jersey under Maxwell, to attack a force of British estimated to be four hundred strong, at Three Rivers, forty-seven miles down the St. Law- rence. Instead of being a surprise, as had been expected, the effort resulted in an encounter with three thousand men under Burgoyne. After a march of nine miles through a swamp under fire from the boats in the river, with Wayne in the ad- vance, the gallant troops pushed their way up to the breastworks of the enemy, before unknown, and then were compelled to retreat. Thomp- son, Irvine and other officers had been captured; three hundred and fifty men had been lost, but Anthony Wayne had fought his first battle and received the first of many wounds, and they had "saved the army in Canada." Two days later he wrote cheerily "our people are in high spirits and long for another bout." Nevertheless the army was in full retreat to Ticonderoga, and already Wayne, left in command of the Pennsylvania troops, had found the place of danger. Wilkinson tells that
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Allen said to him, "Colonel Wayne is in the rear," and if anybody could render assistance, "he is the man," that he found "the gallant soldier as much at his ease as if he were marching to a parade at exercise," and that when mistaken for the enemy by Sullivan, he "pulled out his glass and seemed to enjoy the panic."
Already he had made his mark. On the 18th of November General Schuyler gave him the command of Fort Ticonderoga, at that time, since the British had in view a separation of the country by an ad- vance from Canada, one of the most important of our military posts, and placed him at the head of a force of twenty-five hundred men. "It was my business," he says in one of his letters, "to prevent a junction of the enemy's armies . . . and to keep at bay their whole Canadian force."
He remained at Ticonderoga until April 12, 1777. His stay there covered that depressing period of the war prior to the battle of Trenton, during which Washington was defeated at Long Island, three thousand men were lost with Fort Washing- ton, and the main army, its officers retiring and its rank and file deserting, was threatened with entire
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disintegration. Difficulties accumulated around him. The terms of service of his soldiers expired, and to fill their places became almost impossible. Some of the soldiers, who came into camp from the Eastern States, on one occasion deserted the same night. Recruiting officers from the same part of the country were endeavoring to secure enlistments even in his own regiment. He was holding men three weeks after their terms of service were ended. Hearing that a company, claiming their enlistments to have expired the month before, were on the march for home, he halted them and called for their leader. A sergeant stepped to the front. "I presented a pistol to his breast. He fell on his knees to beg his life. I then ordered the whole to ground their arms," and they obeyed. A certain Josiah Holli- day endeavored again to incite them to mutiny, whereupon Wayne "thought proper to chastise him for his insolence on the spot, before the men," or as Holliday himself puts it, did "shamefully beat and abuse" him. The captain interfered and was placed under arrest for abetting a mutiny.
The garrison had dwindled in numbers and one-third of them were negroes, Indians and child-
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ren. The enemy were threatening his own home in distant Chester County, and the only comfort he could give his wife "Polly," the daughter of Bar- tholomew Penrose, was to tell her: "Should you be necessitated to leave Easttown, I doubt not but you'll meet with hospitality in the back parts of the Prov- ince," and yet never for an instant did he falter. He had studied the campaigns of Cæsar and Marshal Saxe, and he believed that too much attention was given to forming lines and too little to disciplining and manœuvering: that "the only good lines are those nature made," and that American liberty would never be established until the army learned "to beat the English Rebels in the field." He con- structed an abattis around the fort, octagons upon the top of an adjacent mount, built two new block- houses to render the station tenable and secure, and then he wrote to Schuyler asking to be sent to the South in order to meet "those Sons of War and rapine face to face and man to man." He added : "These worthy fellows [his Pennsylvania comrades] are second to none in courage. I have seen them proved and I know they are not far behind any reg- ulars in point of discipline. Such troops, actuated
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by principle and fired with just resentment, must be an acceptable and perhaps seasonable reinforcement to General Washington at this critical juncture."
He received a commission as brigadier general February 21, 1777, and two months later Washing- ton, then in New Jersey, wrote to him, "Your presence here will be materially wanted." For nearly a year he had successfully maintained the post at Ticonderoga, which was surrendered almost as soon as he had departed, and had confronted the proposed advance of the army under Burgoyne, and now after "the charming Miss Schuyler" had made him a new cockade, he hastened to Morris- town to take command of the Pennsylvania Line in the army of Washington. Just as, within the mem- ories of some of us, who are here present, Pennsyl- vania during the War of the Rebellion, alone of all the States, had an entire division in the service, known as the Pennsylvania Reserves, in like manner there were in the Continental service, throughout the War of the Revolution, thirteen regiments, distinguished for their gallantry and efficiency in the many battles of that sanguinary struggle, which came from the same State, and were united into two divisions,
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designated as the Pennsylvania Line. Eight of these regiments were placed under the command of Wayne. Washington was then encamped on the heights of Middlebrook, whence he could look toward the Hudson on the one side and the Del- aware on the other, should Howe show a dispos- ition to move in either direction. He needed a general, active, alert and intelligent, with a force upon which dependence could be placed to cover the stretch of country between West Point and Philadelphia. He sent for Wayne and posted him in front, giving him charge of the pass on the most important road leading to and from the camp. Within three weeks an opportunity arose. A detachment of the British army advanced as far as Brunswick. Wayne made an attack upon these forces on the 2d of May, and after pushing them from one redoubt to another, finally drove them within their lines at Amboy. He reported to the Board of War: "The conduct of the Pennsyl- vanians the other day in forcing General Grant to retire with circumstances of shame and disgrace into the very lines of the enemy, has gained them the esteem of his excellency," and Benjamin Rush
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wrote: "The public have done you justice for your gallant behavior in checking the prowess of Mr. Grant." The brave soldiers who achieved this suc- cess and were so praised for their efforts had never received any uniforms except hunting shirts, which were then worn out, but it is a comfort to know that about this time Sally Peters sent to Wayne, by wagon, "a jar of pickled oysters," and he was enabled to buy three gallons and five quarts of Madeira wine. Graydon, who sought the camp, tells us that he "entertained a most sovereign contempt for the enemy," but that he, who had been accustomed to appear in exemplary neatness of apparel, was now dressed "in a dingy red coat, a black rusty cravat, and tarnished lace hat." Only dire necessity could have caused the condition of his attire, for he still maintained that "pride in a soldier is a substitute for almost every other virtue."
At last Howe, who had been waiting in the vain hope that Washington would cease clinging to the heights and would make the blunder of coming down on to the plain to fight him, determined upon an aggressive policy. On the 24th of July, Washington wrote to Wayne, "The fleet have just
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gone out of the Hook, and as Delaware appears to be the most probable destination, I desire you will leave your brigade, go to Chester and organize the militia of Pennsylvania." He gathered them to- gether into three brigades, probably three thousand in number, since one of them had thirteen hundred and fifty-six men, and put them under the command of John Armstrong, the hero of the famous battle and victory over the Indians at Kittanning in 1756. "Time at last sets all things even," and a descendant of Armstrong is here to-day, one of the commis- sioners charged with the duty of erecting this statue. The celebrated Elizabeth Graeme, whom Aunt Gainor, in "Hugh Wynne," called "that cat Bessie Ferguson," scratched at him after this fashion: "Two suttlers in the rear of your division inticed my slave with them, with my wagon and two very fine oxen . the heat of the weather and the violent manner the poor beasts were drove occa- sioned one of them to drop down dead."
He wanted to see his family, from whom he had long been separated-they were now not very distant-but an early battle was anticipated, and he had been peremptorily forbidden by Washington
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to leave the army and ordered to hasten at the head of his division to Wilmington. The duties of three generals were imposed upon him, and yet his thought not limited to their perform- ance was busy with plans for the campaign. He feared the enemy might reach the city by the fords near the Falls of Schuylkill, and in order to prevent such a contingency proposed to march for- ward and give them battle. On the 2d of Septem- ber he recommended to Washington that three thousand of the best armed and disciplined troops make a regular and vigorous assault on one of the flanks of the enemy, trusting to surprise for success, and added: "I wish to be of the number assigned for this business." The suggestion was not adopted, but a week later Howe pursued precisely this plan at Brandywine and won a decided victory. In that memorable engagement Wayne, with his division, was on the left, upon the east bank of the Brandy- wine, where Chad's Ford offered a means of cross- ing the creek. Throughout the entire day he maintained his position, preventing the advance of Knyphausen, and occasionally sending detachments to the opposite shore, but the right wing under
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Sullivan and Greene had been turned and crushed, and at sunset, finding that he was becoming en- meshed between Howe on the front and the fortun- ate Cornwallis in the rear, he in good order retired. The steadfastness on the left saved the right from entire destruction.
On the 18th, Washington, then at Reading Furnace, on the French creek, in Chester county, and expecting to cross the Schuylkill river, de- termined to detach a part of his forces to harass the rear of the enemy, while he, with the main army, should defend the fords. Such a plan neces- sarily involved the separation of the army with a river between, the close proximity of the harassing force to the enemy, and the danger of an attack upon this force by overwhelming numbers. That such risks were not unrecognized is shown by the letter of Washington written from Pott's Grove, September 23d, before he had learned of the affair at Paoli, recalling the order and saying : "Should we continue detached and in a divided state I fear we shall neither be able to attack or defend ourselves." However, he selected Wayne for this dangerous service, gave him twelve to fifteen hundred men,
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and wrote to him on the 18th: " I must call your utmost exertion in fitting yourselves in the best man- ner you can for following and harrassing their rear," and saying further: "The army here is so much fatigued that it is impossible I should move them this afternoon." Evidently anxious, he the same day recites: " Having wrote twice to you already to move forward." Celerity and secrecy were both necessary for the success of such a venture. Un- happily these two letters referred to had both fallen into the hands of the enemy. This fact alone would have been fatal. Wayne, being informed that the British were about to march for the Schuylkill on the 21st, took a position on the high ground near Paoli, within four miles of the enemy, and there he established six pickets and a horse picket to patrol the road. At eleven o'clock on the night of the 20th, General Grey, with a much superior force, attacked him. He held the ground for an hour and saved his artillery, but lost one hundred and fifty men killed and wounded and had met with the only defeat of his career. A court- martial called at his request found that he deserved the " highest honor" as "an active, brave and vigil-
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ant officer." Rumor ran through the neighborhood that he had been killed, that he had been taken prisoner, and that his life had been saved through his hurry in putting on his coat with the red lining outside. That same night a squad of British marched to his house, thrust their bayonets into a huge box- wood bush that still grows and thrives in the yard, "but behaved with the utmost politeness to the women."
Not in the least daunted, at the council of war attended by twenty generals, held before German- town at Pennypacker's Mills on the 29th, he, with four others, was in favor of again giving battle. There can be little doubt that the spirit he dis- played at this time, as upon every other occasion, had its effect upon his companions and was influen- tial in bringing about that change to a more aggres- sive policy which led to the results at Germantown, Monmouth and Yorktown. "The enemy's being in possession of Philadelphia," he said, "is of no more consequence than their being in possession of the City of New York or Boston." On the eve of Germantown he wrote: "I have the most happy presage of entering Philadelphia at the head of
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troops covered with laurels before the close of the day." The value of such vitality to a defeated army at the close of a lost campaign cannot be overestimated.
At Germantown his division encountered and attacked the right wing of the British army to the east of the town, charged with bayonets, crying out for " Paoli and revenge," put the enemy to rout and pursued them for three miles, killing with little mercy those who were overcome. On the retreat of the Americans, after the check at the Chew House and the confusion caused by the fog, he was in the rear and with cannon and musketry brought to an end Howe's attempted pursuit. The British General Hunter, in his history, records: "General Wayne commanded the advance. . . . Had we not retreated at the time we did, we should all have been taken or killed. . . . But this was the first time we had ever retreated from the Americans," and he asserts that Howe, swept by passion, shouted, "For shame ... I never saw you retreat before," but the rattle of grape through the limbs of a chestnut tree under which he stood convinced him, also, of the necessity. Wayne's theory that the
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liberty of America would be secured when the British were taught respect upon the field of battle, was taking a concrete form. At eight o'clock that night, apparently unwearied by the great exertions of the day, he wrote to Washington, hoping for "their total defeat the next tryal, which I wish to see brought to issue the soonest possible." Two days later he wrote from Pennypacker's Mills a long letter to his wife, as remarkable as it was charac- teristic. He gave in detail the military movements of the battle, which evidently absorbed his thought. There was, nevertheless, one series of incidents, of minor importance no doubt to him if not to her, which had been overlooked. They suddenly occurred to him as he closed. "I had forgotten to mention that my roan horse was killed under me within a few yards of the enemy's front, . .. and my left foot a little bruised by one of their cannon shot. . . . I had a slight touch on my left hand.
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