USA > Pennsylvania > Martial deeds of Pennsylvania, Vol. 1 > Part 2
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MARTIAL DEEDS OF PENNSYLVANIA.
and a perseverance akin to that of the greatest inventors and explorers, bored into the bowels of the earth, and lo! there gushed forth from the since famed third sand copious streams of this pun- gent, healing, mysterious fluid. The current thus diverted has gone the world over. It lights the ship upon the ocean, the cabin of the pioneer, and even the tent of the Arab. It spangles the head-light of the engine, and lubricates the many spinning wheels of the lightning train. It has well nigh restored a lost art in rivalling the far-famed Tyrian dye. Endless billows of this ele- ment seem to have accumulated beneath the hills and along the valleys of this now noted creek, and the lands fringing the Alle- gheny far down its stream. The production in the year 1872 was estimated at 6,500,000 barrels.
The territory of Pennsylvania, whose physical features and resources have been thus hastily touched, at the time it was first viewed by the eye of a European, was a wilderness, unbroken, save here and there by a precipitous rocky barren upon the moun- tain side, or where, fast by some crystal spring, the dusky son of the forest had erected his rude hut, and made an opening for the cultivation of a few vegetables and a little maize. The Lenni Lenapé, or the First People, called by the Europeans Delawares, held sway from the Hudson to the Potomac, and from the ocean to the Kittatinny hills. The Shawnese, a ferocious tribe, occu- pied the southwest, and along the centre were the Tuscaroras, originally driven from North Carolina and Virginia, who became one of the Six Nations, or Iroquois, and had their chief habitation between Champlain and the great lakes. William Penn, who came to know them well, writing to the Society of Free Traders in England an account of the country, thus describes them: "In liberality they excel; 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 circulateth like the blood ; all parts partake; and though none shall want what another hath, yet exact observers of property. . They care · for little because they want but little; and the reason is, a little contents them. In this they are sufficiently revenged on us.
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RÉSUMÉ OF PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY.
If they are ignorant of our pleasures, they are also free from our pains. They are not disquieted with bills of lading and exchange, nor perplexed with chancery suits and exchequer reckonings. We sweat and toil to live; their pleasure feeds them; I mean their hunting, fishing and fowling, and this table is spread every- where. They eat twice a day, morning and evening. Their seats and table are the ground."
The earliest visitors and settlers upon the Delaware were not men who had been driven from home by persecution, and who were seeking an asylum and a habitation in the New World, but who were attracted thither in the hope of gain. The whale fishery upon the coast, and the rich furs and skins which the In- dians brought and parted with for a few worthless trinkets, first excited their cupidity. Delaware bay and river were discovered and entered on the 28th of August, 1609, by Hendrich Hudson. By a general charter granted on the 27th of March, 1614, by the States General of Holland, the privileges of trade upon the Hudson and Delaware were given, and the merchants of Amsterdam and Hoorn fitted out several expeditions from which grew settlements at Albany, New York, and temporary ones-little more than trading posts for occasional visitation -- upon the Delaware. On the 3d of June, 1621, the Dutch West India Company was incor- porated, and under it settlement was strengthened upon the Hudson, but only trade upon the Delaware, the latter being as yet tributary to the former; one little colony planted there having been cut off and massacred in 1631.
In the spring of 1638, a company of Swedes and Finns, under charter of a Swedish West India company, granted by the illus- trious monarch of Sweden, Gustavus Adolphus, came in two small ships and settled on the south bank of the Delaware, the Dutch having for the most part occupied the north bank. Others fol- lowed, and for a time the little colony prospered. But the Dutch, who still held the northern bank, and kept a Vice-Governor there, finally undermined the Swedes in their trade with the natives, and compelled them, in 1655, by force of arms, to submit to Dutch rule. The Swedish colonists, however, remained upon the lands they had subdued, which they had come to look upon as their homes, and contributed to the rising state an element of
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MARTIAL DEEDS OF PENNSYLVANIA.
strength, intelligence, and virtue, as the best blood in Europe then flowed in the veins of the people who had been ruled by Gustavus.
In 1664, settlements upon the Delaware having in the mean- time been steadily growing, the English, who had always claimed the country upon the Hudson and all the intervening territory, took forcible possession, and appointed governors over both colo- nies, establishing rule in the interest of the British crown. Be- yond the persons of the governors and the forms of procedure, there was but little change in the constitution of society. In 1673, the Dutch rescued the government from the English, but only held it for a year, when it again passed, and now perma- nently, under the dominion of the latter. In the meantime many English Quakers, who had suffered sore persecutions at home, had come hither and settled in the Jerseys and south of the Delaware, and in 1672, George Fox, the founder of the sect, visited them, preaching and strengthening their faith. West New Jersey had, by purchase from the British Government, fallen into the hands of a Quaker by the name of Byllinge, who becoming bankrupt, was obliged to make an assignment of his property, and William Penn became one of the three. assignees. Penn was a Quaker, and had suffered for his faith; but that faith was founded in the inner- most recesses of his heart, and he quailed before neither principal- ities nor powers. He was steadfast as the rock to the promptings of duty, but not fanatical or bigoted. He had a clear insight of human nature-a man of great head and still greater heart. Difficulties, which smaller minds would have made fruitless war against, he may for the time have bent before, but never yielded to, and in the end was always triumphant. With such a man whatever responsibility might be assumed for another, it would be managed with the care of a personal matter. Hence, in executing the trust for his unfortunate friend, he threw his whole soul into it, and drew for the government of Byllinge's province in the New World a constitution conceived in the utmost liberality and wisdom.
Penn had another motive for regarding with interest the infant settlements. He knew by a bitter experience the trials to which the people of his faith were subjected, and he looked with a long-
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RÉSUMÉ OF PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY.
ing eye for some better country, some more favored habitation. where each man should have perfect freedom in the manner of his worship. His attention being thus called to settlements in America, he became possessed of an idea of founding a State on his own account, in new territory, hitherto unoccupied by civil- ized man. Penn's father had been an Admiral in the British navy. and in an engagement upon the Dutch coast had rendered signal service, the victory there gained securing to the British Govern- ment the possession of New Netherland, the name by which all territory claimed by the Dutch beyond the Atlantic was known. Besides a deep debt of gratitude for his heroism, the Crown owed the Admiral sixteen thousand pounds in hard money. Upon the death of the Admiral, the obligation passed to his son William, who now sought the payment of this claim in lands in the New World. King Charles, who was upon the English throne, lent a ready ear to this application, and "after many waitings, watch- ings, solicitings and disputes in council," says Penn, " my country was confirmed to me under the great seal of England. God will bless it and make it the seed of a nation. I shall have a tender care of the government, that it be well laid at first." By the terms of the charter, which was dated March 4th, 1681, it was to contain three degrees of latitude and five of longitude, west from the Delaware. On account of obscurity in the language in be- ginning the description of the boundaries, owing to ignorance of the geography of the country on the part of the royal secretary, a dispute arose about its southern limit, which lasted many years. It was finally settled in the interest of Maryland, result- ing in the serious curtailment of the grant. The limit thus agreed upon was subsequently traced by two surveyors, Mason and Dixon, who unconsciously made for themselves wide noto- riety, this ultimately marking the dividing line between freedon and slavery.
Penn wished that the country should be called New Wales; but the king, desirous of commemorating the name of the father, was inflexible in his purpose of naming it Pennsylvania. Penn also purchased from the Duke of York the counties of New Castle, Kent, and Sussex, lying south of the Delaware, now the State of Delaware, which thus became a part of Pennsylvania, and con-
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MARTIAL DEEDS OF PENNSYLVANIA.
tinued so till the year 1702, when a final separation took place.
Penn meditated deeply respecting the government he should establish. He knew by experience the evils of arbitrary power. His aspirations were to make authority in the spirit of religion, of goodness, and love. "I purpose, for the matter of liberty, I purpose that which is extraordinary, to leave myself and succes- sors no power of doing mischief, that the will of one man may not hinder the good of a whole country." In his advertisement for a Free Society of Traders, which was formed, he says : " It is a very unusual society, for it is an absolute free one, and in a free coun- try. Every one may be concerned that will, and yet have the same liberty of private traffique as though there were no society at all."
Sending forward a deputy to assume and exercise authority over the colony, and commissioners who should treat for land and select a site for a great city, he made preparations to follow and take up his abode in the new State. Upon their arrival, the com- missioners, with the Governor and Surveyor-General, readily con- cluded a purchase of land from the Indians; but it was not so easy to find a suitable site for a city. Penn had been particular in pointing out the needful conditions. It must have ten thou- sand acres in a compact tract. " Be sure," he says, "to make your choice where it is most navigable, high, dry, and healthy ; that is, where ships may best ride, of decpest draught of water, if possible to load or unload at the bank or key's side, without boating or lightening of it. It would do well if the river coming into that creek be navigable, at least for boats, up into the coun-
try, and that the situation not swampy, which is best earths and seeing the botton
We can imagine the prc and down the Delaware, du told the search continued, travelling back and forth t down to the water's edge, post had been established, beginning of a little burg.
at least dry and sound, and by digging up two or three
these men as they moved up
.
. seven weeks in which we are to test the nature of the soil, he dense forest which reached re and there where a trading wedes and Finns had made the d, in Delaware county, now the
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RÉSUMÉ OF PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY.
old town of Chester, was one of these, and Penn had hoped that this might prove suitable for the purpose. But it was discarded, perhaps unwisely, as well as the ground above Bristol, afterwards the site of Pennsburg Manor, and that upon the banks of Poquessing creek. Finally, the present site of Philadelphia was adopted. It had not ten thousand acres in a compact body ; but it was between two rivers, the ground was high, and the river in front deep. It was called by the.Indians Coaquannock. Two or three families of Swedes had gained a foothold there, but it was still covered by a forest of lofty pines. The sites of great cities are generally governed by the necessities of trade and commerce, and their early growth has been without plan, streets taking the course of cow-paths, as in the city of Boston. It is recorded that Romulus, yoking a heifer with a bull, marked with a brazen plow- share the limits of his new city, making it comprise so much land as he could thus encircle between the rising and the setting of the sun. But with this exception, tradition preserves the record of no city having been so formally laid out.
Penn arrived in the colony in October, 1682, and after resting at Upland, ascended the Delaware in a small open row-boat, and when four miles above the mouth of the Schuylkill, where it pours its waters into the Delaware, he was pulled up the rugged bank by the Swedish settlers, and welcomed to the hospitalities of a gloomy forest, in time to become the gathering place of a great people, and the chief city of the continent. But when the site had once been determined, and had received the stamp of Penn's approval, its transformation was rapid. "There is noth- ing," says Bancroft, " in the history of the human race like the confidence which the simple virtues and institutions of William Penn inspired. In August, 1683, Philadelphia consisted of three or four little cottages ! The conies were yet undisturbed in their hereditary burrows; the deer fearlessly bounded past blazed trees, unconscious of foreboded streets; the stranger that wandered from the river bank was lost in the thickets of the interminable forest ; and, two years afterward, the place contained about six hundred houses, and the schoolmaster and the printing-press had begun their work. In three years from its foundation, Philadel- phia gained more than New York had done in half a century."
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MARTIAL DEEDS OF PENNSYLVANIA.
One of the first cares of Penn was to establish amicable rela- tions with the Indians. In his conferences and dealings with them he treated them as men, and they reciprocated his confi- dence. He made a purchase of land of them. It was known as the walking purchase. He was to pay a stipulated price for as much territory as could be walked over in three days. Penn was himself of the party, that no advantage should be taken by attempting a great walk. Commencing at the mouth of the Neshaminy, they walked up the Delaware. They proceeded leisurely, " after the Indian manner, sitting down sometimes to smoke their pipes, to eat biscuit and cheese, and drink a bottle of wine." In a day and a half they reached a spruce tree near the mouth of Baker's creek, a distance of thirty miles. Concluding that this would be all the land he would at present need, he pro- posed to stop there, and let the remaining portion be walked out at some future time. This was not executed until September 20th, 1733, fifty years later, when the Governor then in office employed three of the most expert walkers, one of them, Edward Marshall, walking in a day and a half eighty-six miles, a procedure which the natives took very unkindly.
One of the most interesting events in Pennsylvania history is the concluding of the Great Treaty of peace and friendship with the Indians, under the wide sweeping elm, known as the Treaty Tree, at Kensington, which has been made immortal by the paint- ing of West. There were no weapons of carnal warfare. Penn, in his plain garb and benignant countenance, and the noble chieftain, Taminend, were the central figures. The chiefs of tribes, with their counsellors, aged and venerable men, were dis- posed to right and left. In rear, in the form of a half moon, sat the young braves and some of the aged matrons; and farther back, in widening circles, were the youth. When the council fire had been lighted, and all was in readiness to confer, Taminend, putting on his crown, which terminated in front in a small horn, announced to Penn, through an interpreter, that the nations were ready to hear him. "The Great Spirit," says Penn, " who made me and you, who rules the heavens and the earth, and who knows the innermost thoughts of men, knows that I and my friends have a hearty desire to live in peace and friendship with you, and to
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RÉSUMÉ OF PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY.
serve you to the uttermost of our power. It is not our custom to use hostile weapons against our fellow creatures, for which reason we have come unarmed. Our object is not to do injury, and thus provoke the Great Spirit, but to do good. . . . I will not call you children or brothers only ; for parents are apt to whip their children too severely, and brothers sometimes will differ; neither will I compare the friendship between us to a chain, for the rain may rust it, or a tree may fall and break it; but I will consider you as the same flesh and blood as the Christians, and the same as if one man's body were to be divided into two parts."
To the words of Penn the Indians did not make immediate reply, but deliberated apart. When their answer was agreed to, their speaker, in the name of Taminend, who remained silent, taking Penn by the hand, pledged friendship, and said, with his expressive gesture, that the Indians and the English must live in peace and affection so long as the sun and the moon perform their courses. This treaty, simple in form, but emanating from the best impulses of the heart, was held sacred by the natives, and they treasured the words of Penn by means of strings of beads, or amulets; and Heckewelder, the Indian missionary and historian, says : "They frequently assembled together in the woods, in some shady spot, as nearly as possible similar to those where they used to meet their brother Miquon (Penn), and there lay all his words and speeches, with those of his descendants, on a blanket or clean piece of bark, and with great satisfaction go successively over the whole."
As we have already seen, the first settlers in the province were emigrants from Holland. Then came the sturdy Swedes, and now the English Quakers. The latter came in large numbers, many doubtless to better their fortunes, but more to escape oppression. As an illustration of the extent to which religious persecution was carried, it was estimated that 15,000 families had been ruined for dissent since the Restoration, that 5000 had died in the loathsome prisons, and that in 1686, through the intercession of Penn with King James, 1200 Quakers "were liberated from the horrible dungeons and prisons where many of them had languished for years." Of the character of the first element Bancroft says : "The emigrants from Holland were themselves
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MARTIAL DEEDS OF PENNSYLVANIA.
of the most various lineage; for Holland had long been the gathering place of the unfortunate. Could we trace the de- scent of the emigrants from the Low Countries to New Nether- land, we should be carried not only to the banks of the Rhine and the borders of the German Sea, but to the Protestants who escaped from France after the massacre of Bartholomew's eve, and to those earlier inquirers who were swayed by the voice of Huss in the heart of Bohemia. Its settlers were the relics of the first fruits of the Reformation, chosen from the Belgie provinces and England, from France and Bohemia, from Germany and Switzer- land, from Piedmont and the Italian Alps."
Penn remained in the colony but about two years, when he was called to England to settle, before the home Government, the southern boundary of his province with Lord Baltimore, and thus secure uninterrupted navigation of the Delaware, and to intercede with the king for his suffering brethren. Though many Quakers had emigrated to the colony, and for a considerable period held ascendancy in the Legislature, yet they were far from forming a majority of the population, and some of the Governors appointed by Penn, and even his sons, were of the established Church of England. Bitter contentions arose between the Quakers and the party hostile to them. It was alleged that pirates, taking advan- tage of a Government unsupported by the sword, ran into the bay and made war, from this as a base, upon helpless shipping, and that a colony so ruled invited attack. So loud was the clamor at Court, that in 1693, in the reign of William and Mary, the gov- ernment was taken from Penn and his deputies, and lodged in the hands of Benjamin Fletcher, Governor of New York. For two years it so remained ; but at the end of that time, being convinced that the character of Penn and his followers was misrepresented, his province was restored to him.
In 1699, he returned, apparently with the intention of spending the remnant of his days in the midst of his people. But before two years had elapsed, he found that the Crown was again dis- posed to dispossess him and appoint royal Governors. He accor- dingly hastily departed to defend his rights at Court, and never returned, being afflicted in 1712 with a stroke of paralysis, of which he died in 1718, his entire stay in America having been
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RÉSUMÉ OF PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY.
less than four years. During his last residence here he spent the greater part of the time in perfecting a new constitution and frame of government, it being under discussion in the council and in his own meditations for eighteen months. This was completed before he left, and is a noble monument to his genius. His presence in the colony was indeed short, but how vast has been his influence upon the subsequent growth and development of the Common- wealth ! . How he moulded laws and customs, sentiment and opinion, and set upon them his impress! How easy and resist- less was his sway over the natives of the forest, who, under the name of savages, in other colonies were found so difficult to treat with or subdue! His words were like those of the Saviour of mankind, and his great heart was moved by compassion and pity, tenderness and love, akin to HIis. Blessed be the name of Wil- liam Penn !
After his death his widow, Hannah Penn, a woman of great power of mind and strength of character, ruled in place of the Proprietor, as his executrix, selecting Governors and framing their instructions with the skill and foresight of a veteran diplomatist. Under her rule Sir William Keith administered the government, and it was in his time that an unknown youth came to Philadel- phia, who subsequently became a great power in the State, and the most honored for intelligence and virtue of any American of his day, Benjamin Franklin. William Penn had issue by his first wife, Gulielma Maria Springett, of three sons-William, Springett, and William, and four daughters-Gulielma, Margaret, Gulielma, and Letitia; and by the second, Hannah Callowhill, of one daughter-Margaret-and four sons-John, Thomas, Richard, and Dennis. In 1727, the British Court decreed, that after the death of William Penn, Jr., and his only son Springett, the Pro- prietor's interest in Pennsylvania passed by inheritance to the sons of the last wife, and they became joint proprietors. With these three, and John Penn, son of Richard, who was for a time Governor, the proprietary interest remained until the fourth year of the Revolutionary war, November, 1779, when the Colonial Legislature passed an act vesting the titles to their interest in the province, in the Commonwealth. The surviving proprietors returned to England, and the British Government, in considera-
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MARTIAL DEEDS OF PENNSYLVANIA.
tion of being unable to defend and vindicate their vested rights, gave them an annual pension of four thousand pounds, which is paid to their descendants to this day.
In the meantime the State was being rapidly improved. The territory itself was luscious, tempting cupidity, and many were the designs to pluck it. Maryland, from the first, grasped for its southern borders, and succeeded in gaining a goodly belt. Later, disputed jurisdiction occurred in the Cumberland Valley, wherein Maryland attempted to make still further gains, but was success- fully repelled. Still later, Virginia laid claim to the territory upon the Ohio, and was perfecting measures to assert authority, when it was discovered and foiled, but not until the Ohio Com- pany had gained a considerable foothold upon the soil. Finally, Connecticut came in upon the north, actually planted a colony in the Wyoming Valley, pointing to chartered rights for authority which antedated the grant of Penn, and calling upon the British Government to vindicate it. Town government after the Connec- ticut manner was constituted, and hostile collisions to defend it occurred. The claim was not settled until after the Revolution, when the Confederate Congress decided in favor of Pennsylvania.
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