USA > Pennsylvania > Pennsylvania, colonial and federal : a history, 1608-1903, Volume One > Part 40
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The Assembly of Pennsylvania October 17, 1767, wrote to the agents of the province in London, requesting them to give the earliest intelligence of every new measure or regulation proposed or to be proposed in Parliament whereby the liberties of America in general or of this province might in the least be affected or con- cerned, and to accede to or oppose it as they should think it bene- ficial or injurious. The instructions also involved the prosecu- tion of the movement to change the government of Pennsylvania, in case the charter and legal rights and privileges of the Assem- bly could be preserved; also the application, on the passing away of all danger of the American Assemblies being deprived of the right of issuing bills of credit, for a repeal of the statute forbid- ding said bills from being a legal tender in Colony debts ; also perseverance when judicious in the effort to procure the liberty of importing wine, fruit, and oil directly from Portugal instead of
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through England ; also an effort to relieve sugar from the British West Indies imported into Pennsylvania and thence sent to Eng- land from the duties laid upon French sugars, as had been or- dered by a recent statute.
In 1767, surveyors named Mason and Dixon ran the final boundary line between Pennsylvania and Maryland, a line des- tined to become very important in the history of the United States as marking the cleavage between free soil and the slave States. All to the south of it came to be known as Dixie.
In 1767, Parliament, acting upon the principle which it had affirmed of its right "to bind the colonies in all cases whatsoever," levied duties on paper, glass, etc., payable in America on the im- portation of those articles. In November appeared the first of the "Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania to the Inhabitants of the British colonies," the authorship of which gave John Dickin- son so much of his celebrity. They were republished in every colony, also in London, and afterwards, translated into French, in Paris. Dr. Franklin, Dickinson's former enemy, wrote the pre- face to the London edition; while the people of Boston in a town meeting voted their thanks. The Farmer's Letter No. I began : "My Dear Countrymen. I am a farmer, settled, after a variety of fortunes, near the banks of the river Delaware, in the province of Pennsylvania. I received a liberal education, and have been engaged in the busy scenes of life; but am now convinced that a man may be as happy without bustle as with it. My farm is small; my servants are few and good; I have a little money at interest; I wish for no more; my employment in my own affairs is easy; and with a contented, grateful mind, undisturbed by worldly hopes or fears, relating to myself, I am completing the number of days allotted to me by Divine goodness." As every man ought to espouse the sacred cause of liberty to the extent of his powers, he offered some thoughts on late transactions, praying that his lines might be read with the same zeal for the happiness of British America with which they had been written. He had
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observed that little notice had been taken of the Act of Parliament for suspending the legislation of New York. This was punish- ment for non-compliance by the Assembly of that province with a former act requiring certain provisions to be made for the troops. To compel the colonies to furnish articles for the troops
Upright Spinning Wheel
Used by the early German settlers. From the Danner collection
was, he proceeded to show, but taxation in another form, and New York was being punished for resisting such taxation. In Letter II, the Farmer took up the Act granting duties on paper, glass, &c., which he deemed a most dangerous innovation upon the old practice of imposing duties merely for the regulation of trade. Parliament had a right to regulate the trade of the col- onies : but here it was avowing the design of raising revenues 1-36
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from America ; a right, which, America felt, was inherent in her own representatives. This taxation was attempted by the device of levying duties on certain articles exported to the colonies. The effect of this was clearly pointed out. Great Britain had prohibited certain manufactures in the colonies, and had pro- hibited the purchase of such manufactured goods except from the Mother Country. "If you once admit that Great Britain may lay duties upon her exportations to us, for the purpose of levying money on us only, she then will have nothing to do but to lay those duties on the articles which she prohibits us to manu- facture-and the tragedy of American liberty is finished." It would be taxing the articles wherever used.' And it made no difference whether the duties were to be paid in England or America. In Letter III, the Farmer explained that there were other modes of resistance to oppression than any breach of the peace, and deprecated, as Dickinson did ever afterwards, any attempt to make the colonies independent. "If once we are sep- arated from our mother country, what new form of government shall we adopt, or where shall we find another Britain, to supply our loss. Torn from the body to which we are united by religion, liberty, laws, affections, relation, language, and commerce, we must bleed at every vein." In the subsequent letters, the dangers to American liberty were expatiated upon, the objections an- swered, and the people urged to make a stand for themselves and their posterity peaceably, prudently, firmly, jointly. "You are assigned by Divine Providence, in the appointed order of things the protectors of unborn ages, whose fate depends upon your virtue. Whether they shall arise the generous and indisputable heirs of the noblest patrimonies or the dastardly and hereditary drudges of imperious taskmasters, you must determine."
In December, Sir William Johnson feared an immediate rup- ture with the Indians, and Gage offered Penn the assistance of troops for the civil officers who might undertake the removal and punishment of the intruders of whom the Indians complained.
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Penn explained that in the severity of winter it was impracticable to oblige the people to move from Red Stone creek and Cheat river to the interior parts of Pennsylvania, and it was unadvisable to attempt it before the spring. The Assembly, being appealed to by Penn for a better law and an appropriation to remove the intruders, invited George Croghan and Dixon, the surveyor, be- fore them. The testimony of Croghan given January 7, 1768, was that last September the Six Nations informed Sir William Johnson that the Senecas were greatly dissatisfied because the boundary agreed upon three years before had not been confirmed, and the lands on the side next to the colonies not paid for, while Virginians had settled upon those lands, and nineteen Seneca warriors had been killed when on their way to fight the Chero- kees. The Senecas intended to lay their complaints before a meeting of the Delawares, Shawanees, Chippewas, Potowotamies, and Tawas, at which it was designed to form a confederacy be- tween the northern and western Indians. The Senecas had com- plained, although not recently, of the Conestoga murder : they were a revengeful people. The Assembly, expressing a willing- ness to pass the bill desired, in a message suggested that the In- dians remembered the Conestoga murder, and might feel better disposed towards this province if the murderers should be brought to justice, and urged that the boundary line of the white man's country be speedily established, and so far from the present set- tlements as to give a region for the frontiersmen to settle and hunt in with impunity. After saying this, the Assembly was vindicated by the receipt of a letter from Sir William Johnson to Galloway acknowledging that the murder of the Conestogas, still fresh in the memory of the Indians, was giving them much pain, and suggesting that the province make them some present on ac- count of it at the coming congress. Accordingly 3,000/. were raised for removing their present discontent. Meanwhile, on January 10, 1768, Frederick Stump, of German descent, being visited at his house by five drunken Indians, put them to death
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after endeavoring in vain to induce them to go away, and the next day, to cover up his action, went to two cabins fourteen miles off. and killed the woman, two girls, and child whom he found there, and, concealing the bodies in the cabins, burned those down. Stump and the boy in his employ, who had actually killed one woman, were arrested, but about eighty persons with arms and tomahawks forcibly rescued them out of the jail at Carlisle, giv- ing as a reason that a number of white men had been killed by Indians since the peace, and the latter had not been brought to justice. An act was passed on February 3, making the settling on land not purchased by the Proprietaries from the Indians pun- ishable with death. A very important provision was that the of- fense should be triable in Philadelphia.
In long messages the Assembly blamed Governor Penn for the supineness of the magistrates, they being his appointees, in the disorders on the frontier, and said that it was an easy step from the murder of Indians to the murder of the King's subjects, and triumphantly expressed the conviction that "the powers of government vested in the feeble hands of a Proprietary Governor are too weak to support order in the province or give safety to the people."
On February 20, the Assembly requested the agents in Lon- don to co-operate with those of other colonies if they should make application for a repeal of the duties on paper, glass, etc. This was before the arrival of the circular letter from the House of Representatives of Massachusetts.
During the spring, after various conferences, among others one by Croghan at Fort Pitt with many chiefs and chief warriors of the Six Nations, Delawares, Shawanees, Muncys, and Mo- hicans, in all 1, 103 men, women, and children, the Indians were duly appeased with explanations and presents.
On July 30, 1768, a meeting of citizens at the State House in Philadelphia adopted resolutions against importing any of the goods subject to duty by the recent act of Parliament. After -.
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wards arrived the Earl of Hillsborough's letter to Governor Penn, dated April 21, informing him that King George III considered the letter of the Speaker of the House of Representatives of Mas- sachusetts to be of a most dangerous and factious tendency, and that the Governor should exert his influence to prevail upon the Assembly of Pennsylvania to take no notice of it, and that the repeated proofs which that body had given of "reverence to the Constitution" left little doubt of its showing a proper resentment to this attempt to revive distractions; but if there should appear a disposition to give any countenance to the paper, it would be the Governor's duty immediately to prorogue or dissolve the House. Penn, starting for Fort Stanwix to assist in the treaty there, left this letter for the guidance of the Assembly, about to meet in his absence. The Assembly on September 16 resolved that the Gov- ernor had no authority to prorogue or dissolve, and it was the undoubted right of the Assembly to correspond with any of the American colonies to obtain by decent petitions to the King and Parliament redress of any grievances. On the 20th, a petition to the King, and the next day one to the House of Lords and another to the House of Commons were agreed to. These paraphrased in softer language, and adapted to the locality the letter from Massachusetts. That to the King spoke of the settlement of Pennsylvania when a wilderness with a view of enjoying that liberty civil and religious of which the petitioners' ancestors were in a great measure deprived in their native land, and also to ex- tend the British empire, increase its commerce, and promote its wealth and power. With inexpressible labor, toil, and expense, and without assistance from the Mother Country, that wilderness had been peopled, planted, and improved. It was conceived that by no act had the people surrendered up or forfeited their rights and liberties as natural born subjects of the British government ; but those rights had been brought over and were vested by inher- itance. The duties and taxes for the sole purpose of raising rev- enue imposed by Parliament upon the Americans, they not being
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represented in that body, and being taxable only by themselves or their representatives, were destructive of those rights and with- out precedent until the passing of the late Stamp Act. When- ever the King or his royal predecessors had had occasion for aids to defend and secure the colonies, réquisitions had been made upon the Pennsylvania Assemblies, "who ever with the utmost cheer- fulness and loyalty have granted them," said the petition, "and often so liberally as to exceed the abilities and circumstances of the people." The people of this colony were most zealously at- tached to the King's royal person. Under a grateful sense of his care and regard for them so often manifested, the petitioners begged him to take the premises into consideration, and grant such relief as to him should appear most proper. The Lords Spir- itual and Temporal, "hereditary guardians of British liberty," were told that the people of the province, gratefully sensible of their lordships' wisdom and justice in the repeal of the Stamp Act, had hoped to enjoy in all future time the right of granting aids to the Crown by their own representatives, and were greatly disappointed by an act imposing new duties, equally subversive of this right and tending to render their property most precarious and insecure. It was essential to the liberties of Englishmen that no laws be made to take away their property without their con- sent, and it was hoped that their lordships would not think any reasons sufficient to deprive the King's subjects in this colony of the privilege, so essential to their security and happiness, of dis- posing of their own property, and granting aids by their repre- sentatives in Assembly. Therefore, they prayed for such meas- ures as their lordships should think most proper to relieve them. The petition to the knights, citizens, and burgesses of Great Brit- ain in Parliament assembled repeated what had been set forth to the King, and said that should Parliament continue to exercise a power of imposing taxes upon the King's subjects not, nor ever able to be, represented in the House, their property and estates must become extremely precarious, as they would have no power.
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of judging of the propriety of the taxes, no check on the liberality in granting them, no opportunity of pointing out the easiest mode of imposing and levying them, or of explaining grievances, with- out which it was impossible for the most wise and just legislature to impose taxes with propriety and equity or with safety to those affected by them. Finally relief was prayed for the Americans against a grievance from which the people of Great Britain were exempted, a continuance whereof would, it was feared, create a distinction which must occasion a disunion of interest, sentiments, and affections attended with inconveniences and mischiefs to the trade and commerce of the British as well as American dominions. A letter to the agents in London explained that the petitions had said nothing about the expediency of the taxes as distinguished from the right to levy them. Were it constitutional, the present law was injurious to the Mother Country as well as to America. The colonies were prohibited by several acts of Parliament from importing the manufactures of Europe except Great Britain. If the heavy duties were continued, the Americans would from ne- cessity, interest, or convenience, set up manufactories, and cease from supplying their wants in the articles enumerated from Eng- land : so that, instead of the colonies being left "to their natural and proper business, the improvement and cultivation of their lands, and of course increasing the demand for British commodi- ties," the duty would operate as a bounty to manufacture the ar- ticles, to the great loss of the British merchant and manufacturer. Another objection, equally applicable to acts laying duties merely for the regulation of trade, was that the duties were to be paid in silver, which would soon make it impossible to pay them at all. and hence must prohibit importation. A third objection was the application of the revenue to the administration of justice and support of civil government. Should the Proprietaries continue to retain the appointment of the Governor and his salary be fixed, he would be rendered altogether independent of the people : and the payment of salaries to judges holding commissions at the
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pleasure of the Proprietaries, the universal landlords in Pennsyl- vania, would be attended with mischiefs obviated in England by the judges being commissioned during good behavior and holding for life. Furthermore the revenue was to be applied for these purposes in such colonies where it should be thought necessary. Thus Pennsylvanians would pay without their consent taxes which might be applied to the use of other colonies.
prias suchls undfemdas
Sub unde almir me
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sad gefall der liebte
Old-fashioned German Shaving Dish
Photographed especially for this work by J. F. Sachse
At a general congress at Fort Stanwix held by Sir William Johnson with the Six Nations and the Delawares and Shawanees in October, 1768, Governor Penn being present, a general bound- ary line between those tribes and the middle colonies was estab- lished, and there was sold to the Proprietaries of Pennsylvania most of the central and all the western end of the present State excepting the small strip along Lake Erie. They paid 10,000 dollars for this, and 200 dollars to a Cayuga chief to be distrib- uted to those representing Sohaes murdered in the Lancaster.
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work-house in 1763 for their pretended claim to 500 acres in Conestoga manor. Certain tracts within the vast region were allotted to the members of the various regiments in the Provincial service. As a precaution against the return of the Connecticut claimants, there was surveyed for the Proprietaries at Wyoming the manor of Stoke, comprising 9,800 acres, with 6 per cent. allowance, upon the southeast side of the North East branch of the Susquehanna extending about equally above and below the mouth of Moses's Creek. Within this manor Charles Stewart induced Benjamin Shoemaker, John Van Campen, and others to take land, thereby, as was supposed, strengthening the Proprie- tary side in the county.
Almost the first act of the Assembly elected in 1768 was to order Doctor Franklin to purchase at a cost of not over Iool. sterling a reflecting telescope with a micrometer for observing the transit of Venus the 3d of June following. On February 10, 1769, 10ol. were granted to the American Philosophical Society towards defraying the expense of the observation.
On January 4, 1769, a considerable number of the inhabitants of Bucks county asked the Assembly to issue paper money in the old method upon mortgage of real estate, and promised to use it although it could not be legal tender. Similar petitions followed from the city and county of Philadelphia, from Bucks, Chester, Lancaster, York, and Berks. The House on the 19th, unani- mously resolved that long experience had manifested that the emissions of bills of credit theretofore made on loans to the people had answered the purposes of a circulating medium, greatly pro- moted the settlement of the colony, and increased its trade and commerce as well foreign as domestic, and that a further quan- tity issued on proper and solid funds was necessary. A bill was prepared for striking the sum of 120,000l. in bills of credit to be emitted on loan, but it failed to become a law because the Gov- ernor insisted upon, among other things, a voice in the disposition of the interest arising, and upon naming half of the trustees of the
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loan office. Accordingly no further issue of paper money was authorized until Feb. 26, 1773, when Lieutenant-Governor Rich- ard Penn had the seal affixed to an act to emit 150,000l. in bills of credit on loan.
The merchants of Philadelphia adopted non-importation reso- lutions in 1769 similar to the celebrated agreement of 1765. The first case infringing these was the arrival of a ship laden with malt in July. At a public meeting, at which the brewers of the city attended, and declared that they would not use it, a resolution was passed that no one should purchase or assist in handling it; so the vessel returned to England with its cargo.
The Susquehanna company, availing itself of the withdrawal of the Indians, and there ceasing to be any occasion for the inter- ference of Sir William Johnson, determined to prosecute its claims with vigor. At a meeting held at Hartford, Connecticut, Dec. 28, 1768, it was voted that forty persons upwards of twenty-one years of age, proprietors in the purchase, and approved by certain commissioners, proceed to take possession by the Ist of February, and two hundred more by the Ist of May ; that 200l. be appro- priated for materials and provisions for said forty ; that five town- ships be laid out each of five miles square, three townships on one side of the Susquehanna River, and two opposite them, the forty persons first coming to choose a township, which should be di- vided among them in addition to their shares in the rest of the company's property, the two hundred persons coming in the spring to receive the four other townships in addition to their shares, three shares in each township to be set apart for a Gospel minister and schools, the grant of the holdings to be conditioned upon oc- cupation and improvement for five years, and upon good behavior, and upon not holding any part of the company's land under pre- tense of any other title than the company's. All iron and coal were reserved for after disposal. Isaac Tripp, Benjamin Follett, John Jenkins, William Buck, and Benjamin Shoemaker were to superintend the affairs of the forty first coming, including the
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laying out of a road to the Susquehanna river; and upon the ar- rival of the whole two hundred persons, they might increase this latter committee to nine, who should then regulate the affairs of the settlers until further order, with power with the consent of a majority of the settlers voting at a meeting to expel and declare forfeited the right of any person among them for disorderly be- havior or being inconsistent with the good and interest of the company, unless the company on appeal should otherwise deter- mine. More than the forty person's were induced to set out with William Buck, who had been a member of the previous settle- ment : and they arrived at Nicholas Dupue's in the Minisink re- gion by Saturday, February 4, whence they were to start for Wyoming on February 6. Charles Stewart and John Jennings, the sheriff of Northampton, were at the latter place with a very few of the tenants of the manor, and wrote to Lewis Gordon, a justice, for warrants of arrest, and to John Penn for further or- ders. On Gordon's warrants, Jennings arrested Isaac Tripp, Vine Elderkin, and Benjamin Follett, who with over thirty, most of them armed, arrived before the 12th. Their companions de- clared that they would go back. Gordon bound over the three to keep the peace. The Governor of Pennsylvania wrote to the Governor of Connecticut : The consequence there- fore of these deluded People's persisting in their unwarrantable designs must be a scene of violence. I can not suppose that the government of Connecticut will encourage a procedure so unreasonable and illegal and it is under this expecta-
tion that I now apply to your Honor. When, in March, Jennings proceeded with a posse to Lachnawanack to de- mand peaceable possession of the land there, he found two houses built, one of them being a strong log house for defence, and the intruders ready to fight. Attempting to seize some of them, Jennings was struck twice, but, having forced one of the build- ings, and taken those who had retired to it, he received the sur- render of the rest, and started with thirty-one prisoners for
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Easton. Some escaped: the rest found bail. On May 12 one hundred and forty-six New England men and others, most of the company being on horseback, passed Charles Stewart's house, and encamped on the east side of the river, while it was expected that as many more would follow the next day, and also that about one hundred persons from Lancaster county, headed by James Mc- Clure, would cast in their lot with them. The Proprietary force at hand was then but twenty-four men, who were instructed not to shed blood with such overwhelming force against them. Gov- ernor Penn wrote to Colonel Francis at Augusta that to eject such numbers would require too large a body for the Proprie- taries to go to the expense of raising ; all that could be done was to retain what possessions their people had, in which those dwell- ing at Shamokin might be of assistance, and to prevent if possible any Pennsylvanians from joining the New Englanders. Francis led sixty men to Wyoming, and on June 22 demanded a surren- der, but as at least twenty strong log houses with loop holes for guns had been built, he withdrew without further hostilities. An agreement made at Easton that the New Englanders would leave, is mentioned in a letter from Governor Penn of August 24, as broken : the writs against those indicted were to be executed. In September, some of those who had been bound over for trial were convicted, and condemned to pay each a fine of Iol. and costs. In November, Amos and Nathan Ogden brought two hundred persons with a cannon to arrest those indicted for forcible entry. Then a compromise was effected and embodied in a written agree- ment reciting the expense upon those indicted of standing trial and the hardship of their going to jail if they could not get bail, and the desire of all parties to prevent shedding of blood and fu- ture quarrels between the tenants and purchasers settled at Susque- hanna under the Proprietaries, and those claiming under the Sus- quehanna company or Connecticut grant ; therefore it was agreed between John Jennings, Amos Ogden, and Charles Stewart, on behalf of the Proprietaries, and John Smith and Stephen Gardner,
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