USA > Pennsylvania > Pennsylvania, colonial and federal : a history, 1608-1903, Volume Two > Part 6
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Revolutionary Campaigns
the practices and plunder by the late invaders, slavery would die out.
Mrs. Fergusson of Græme Park, whose mother had been a stepdaughter of Sir William Keith, had communicated to Wash- ington a letter written after the British had taken Philadelphia by the Rev. Jacob Duché, beseeching Washington to return to his allegiance to the King of England. After the arrival of the com- missioners for effecting an accommodation based upon England retaining sovereignty, she communicated to Joseph Reed the statement of Governor Johnstone that if a reunion of the two countries were effected through Reed's influence, that gentleman could command £10,000 and any Colonial office in the King's gift, to which Reed replied that the King of Great Britain had nothing within his gift to tempt him. Reed was elected in 1778 one of the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania.
On December 1, 1778, Reed was chosen President of the Council, receiving 61 votes, Bryan receiving only one, and James Read of Berks county one. Bryan was re-elected Vice-President, Joseph Hart receiving only one of the 63 votes.
Depredations by British and Indians and Tories on the Sus- quehanna induced the government of Pennsylvania to apply to Congress, and that body to order Washington to send a punitive expedition. Troops began to gather in April, 1779, at Wilkes- Barre, and Sullivan, to whom Washington confided the command of those to ascend the North Branch, made a road from Easton to Wilkes-Barre and marched with four regiments and Procter's artillery to the latter place in June.
On June 22, 1779, the Council issued a proclamation com- manding a number of inhabitants of Pennsylvania, rather insig- nificant persons who had joined the British army either when in Pennsylvania or after it had gone to New York, to surrender themselves for trial on August 5.
At the end of July Sullivan with over 3,000 men went along the Susquehanna to Tioga Point. General Hand from Lancaster
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county, Pennsylvania, had part of the command. Thomas Proc- ter, whose artillery was now in the Continental service, took charge of 214 boats, which safely transported the provisions. New York troops joined Sullivan on August 21, and on the 26th he started from Tioga Point up the Chemung. In a short time he drove the Indians out of about thirty villages, which he de- stroyed, including the capital of the Senecas. The Americans were on half rations. Shreve was left in command of 250 men at Fort Sullivan at Tioga Point, built between the two rivers. Here the expedition returning arrived on September 30, and from this point it moved back to Wilkes-Barre and afterwards the Con- tinentals joined Washington's army.
Before Sullivan had started on his campaign, but when he could detach none of his troops, about 100 British and 200 Indians made a raid to the West Branch, and captured Fort Freeland and destroyed it, letting, however, the women within it go to North- umberland and Sunbury. A relieving party, arriving too late, was surrounded and half of the number killed. Boon's Fort had to be evacuated. Even Bedford county was in terror from the inroads of the savages. Colonel Daniel Brodhead in Septem- ber went up the Allegheny and destroyed towns of the Senecas and Muncys.
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CHAPTER IV.
CIVIL AFFAIRS UNDER THE CONSTITUTION OF 1776
W HATEVER may be said against the Constitution of 1776, no other, nor any colonial charter, has ever placed at the head of Pennsylvania such able and distinguished men as Joseph Reed, John Dickinson, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Mifflin, who, with Thomas Wharton and William Moore, made up the succession of Presidents of the Supreme Executive Council. As hostilities ceased or service for the nation allowed a return home the first men in the community except Quakers and others disaffected took part in the local government. Thus Rob- ert Morris, who, although voting against independence, signed the Declaration and labored for its fruition, who, when Congress fled to Baltimore in December, 1776, was chairman of the com- mittee left at Philadelphia, and for some weeks, according to Sumner's Life of him, "may be said to have carried on all the work of the Continent," retired from Congress in the fall of 1778 under the provision for rotation in office and was then elected to the Assembly. He was at various times again chosen before and after as Superintendent of Finance; he. indeed, provided the ways and means for carrying on the war. In the winter of 1778-9 at- tacks upon Morris made some persons doubt his integrity in his former transactions for the public, while at the depreciation of Continental money, that is the rise of prices in the only circulating medium, the populace, which, by what was essentially mob law, had enforced the non-payment of Parliamentary taxes, turned its
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attention to the more biting question of extortion for the neces- saries of life. A public meeting of citizens of Philadelphia May 25, 1779, appointed a committee to fix prices on the first day of every month and to investigate cases of monopolizing, and through this Morris was held up to public obloquy for large profits on the retail sale of a cargo. Thus the most distinguished personage then in the government of Pennsylvania was discredited and was no counterpoise to Reed, who was now sitting in John Penn's chair with an influence like Galloway's over his rustic colleagues, while Morris was, as it were, the successor of William Allen in politics, being now the rich man.
Virginia was induced to accede to Pennsylvania's proposition to appoint commissioners to adjust the boundary. Pennsylvania appointed Bryan, Rev. Dr. John Ewing, and Rittenhouse; Vir- ginia, James Madison and Robert Andrews. These met on Au- gust 31, 1779, and agreed that Mason and Dixon's line should be extended due west five degrees of longitude from the river Dela- ware for the southern boundary of Pennsylvania and that a me- ridian line drawn from the western extremity thereof to the north- ern limit of the State should be the western boundary. The As- sembly of Pennsylvania ratified this on November 19, but Vir- ginians proceeded to Fort Burd and occupied it. Congress rec- ommended peace and the restoration of the status at the breaking out of the Revolutionary war. In March, 1780, the Assembly of Pennsylvania resolved to eject intruders under claims from other States, and authorized the President or Vice-President of the Council to raise companies for the internal defence of the fron- tiers. In a letter to the State's delegates in Congress, a contrast is made between the services of Pennsylvania and Virginia in the common cause : "We have raised troops only to oppose the com- mon enemy instead of being employed to make con- quests. The staple commodity of the State has been locked up by a general embargo for the benefit of the United States, to the entire stagnation of all trade, while the staple of Vir-
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Under the Constitution of 1776
ginia has had a free and general exportation. The loans of this State have greatly exceeded every other." Afterwards Virginia ratified the agreement and the southern line was so run in 1784 and the western afterwards.
Joseph Reed was the first Chief Magistrate of Pennsylvania who was a Presbyterian. He was not a Scotch-Irishman, but of a New Jersey family, and native of that colony, one of a group of lawyers whom the importance of Philadelphia had attracted thither just before the breaking out of the Revolution, Jared In- gersoll, Jonathan Dickinson Sergeant, and others, who soon be- came very prominent, and the sons of some of whom became even more prominent. It is noteworthy that the leading members of the Philadelphia bar before Horace Binney were with three or four exceptions born outside of the State. David Lloyd, John Moore, Andrew Hamilton, William Assheton, Tench Francis, and John Moland were natives of the British Isles. Chew, Galloway, and Edward Tilghman were born in Maryland and Dickinson in Delaware. Edward Shippen was the last great lawyer of the old régime : he was born in Pennsylvania, and so was William Lewis, a Chester county boy, who held almost the first place among the practitioners immediately following the Revolution, including James Wilson the Signer, from Scotland, Jasper Moylan from Ireland, and Alexander James Dallas from Jamaica. Binney was the son of an army surgeon from Boston who settled in Philadel- phia during the Revolution.
When some of the suspected traitors were put on trial, James Wilson became counsel for the defence. Mckean, the Chief Jus- tice, afterwards Governor of Pennsylvania, a Presbyterian of Scotch-Irish descent, was a superior lawyer who gave a legal theory to the results of the war, and although a rough patriot was a just judge. The acquittal of several of the accused angered the militiamen of Philadelphia. An attack was made by two hun- dred men with cannon upon Wilson's house at Third and Walnut streets, afterwards known as "Fort Wilson," which with the loss
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Pennsylvania Colonial and Federal
of one killed and two wounded was defended by a number of his friends, Morris, Clymer. Burd, and other conservatives, gathered there with him in anticipation of an attempt to do him bodily injury. The First Troop supported him in this little civil war. Some of them, including David Lenox, afterwards president of the United States Bank, charged upon the mob and scattered it. Lenox's house in Germantown was surrounded by a mob at night, but he was saved by fellow troopers. For a time all the defend- ers of Fort Wilson were in danger of their lives from the sympa- thizers with the killed or wounded assailants.
The new powers of Pennsylvania determined to suppress the College of Philadelphia, then under the control of a "disaffected" provost and of Morris, Willing, and John Cadwalader and some "disaffected" as trustees, and to establish in its place a great edu- cational institution reflecting the dominant political party and con- trolled by the public ; a conception which gives some respectability to a measure started, it would seem, as a matter of spite against fellow patriots. After Reed had been re-elected President, and William Moore elected Vice-President, Bryan being now in the Assembly, the Assembly on November 27, 1779, passed an act re- incorporating the college and its academy and charity school with a new set of trustees, calling them the Trustees of the University of the State of Pennsylvania, among whom were the President and Vice-President of the Supreme Executive Council, Speaker of the Assembly, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and Judge of the Admiralty ex-officio, and also the senior ministers of nearly all the religious denominations. The Supreme Executive Coun- cil was authorized to appropriate portions of the confiscated estates to the support of the institution. A Presbyterian minister, Rev. Dr. John Ewing, now became its head.
All the confiscations by which lesser men were punished are cast into the shade by the great Divesting Act. On the same day that the college was reformed, the Proprietary family were de- prived of their lordship of the soil of Pennsylvania, their unlo-
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Under the Constitution of 1776
cated and unappropriated lands and the quit rents which had been reserved outside of their manors. This destruction of the great- est private estate in America, of an estate which could it have been preserved until the present day would have been enviable even by the greatest of American plutocrats, was a natural result of the war, and was necessary. In the doing of it, the representatives of military democracy showed moderation. They saved to the Penns all manors which had been surveyed for them prior to July 4, 1776, and the quit rents reserved out of lots sold from those manors ; and moreover for fear that John Penn the elder and John Penn the younger, reduced to the position of well-to-do gentle- men, were not sufficiently provided for, or had been despoiled of too much, there was voted to the heirs and representatives of Thomas and Richard Penn the sum of £130,000 sterling, payable after the end of the war. Of course this was not the equivalent of what had been taken; and in consideration of such losses the British government for over one hundred years paid to the repre- sentative of the Proprietaries an annuity of £4,000, and has re- cently commuted it for a principal sum.
The majority of those in Pennsylvania who supported the declaration that all men had an inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness were, after all, consistent, and Bryan. who seems to have disregarded these rights even to the point of maliciousness in the great business of preserving and defending the new government, carried through the Assembly in 1780 the gradual abolition of slavery. The Quakers partly forgot their woes on hearing of an act of which they so much approved.
On November 14, 1781, William Moore, after two years as Vice-President, was almost unanimously elected to succeed Joseph Reed, who had been three years President. General James Pot- ter was chosen Vice-President by 38 votes against 28 for James Ewing.
On November 7, 1782, John Dickinson was elected President by 41 votes over Potter, who received 32, and James Ewing was
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elected Vice-President by 39 over Potter, who received 34. At the end of Dickinson and Ewing's first year they were unani- mously re-elected.
Congress having at the request of both Connecticut and Penn- sylvania appointed a commission to decide the title to Wyoming and vicinity, the commissioners met at Trenton on November 12. They decided never to give the reasons for the determination they should make and to announce that determination as unanimous, and then on December 30, after hearing argument, determined that the jurisdiction and pre-emption of the territory belonged to Pennsylvania. This was not intended to decide the private rights to the soil, and four of the commissioners wrote to President Dickinson urging the keeping of the peace until these private rights could be determined, the fifth commissioner suggesting an act of the Assembly for confirming all acquired under Connecticut. Dickinson issued a proclamation asking the Pennsylvanians to forbear until action by the Assembly or the courts, and the As- sembly stayed all writs until the end of its next session. In 1787 the Assembly confirmed the title of all who had settled before the decree made at Trenton who should make claim before Frederick A. Mühlenberg, Timothy Pickering, and Joseph Montgomery, commissioners. Pennsylvania claimants losing some lands by the proceedings under this act, it was repealed on April 1, 1790. Finally in 1799 the whole matter was compromised by an act under which compensation was to be made to Pennsylvania claim- ants.
The treaty of peace with Great Britain prohibited any future confiscations, and provided that any persons could come to the United States, and remain twelve months unmolested in their endeavors to obtain restitution. Such of the opposers of inde- pendence as remained in Pennsylvania gradually resumed the standing natural to their abilities and family connections, and when a political party was formed on the side of the mercantile interests it was glad of alliance with them, and when the first
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Under the Constitution of 1776
President of the United States established in Philadelphia what has been called "the Republican Court," the gay world embraced those who fifteen or twenty years before would have formed the social circle of Livingstons, Schuylers, Lees, Randolphs, and Izards visiting the city.
The Censors provided for in the Constitution of 1776 were chosen in 1783. Frederick A. Muhlenberg, afterwards Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, presided at their meeting. After a committee had pointed out the defects of the Constitution itself, the majority, including Anthony Wayne and Arthur St. Clair, unable to obtain the consent of two-thirds so as to call a convention to amend it, issued an address to their fellow citizens, asking them to consider the committee's report and to in- struct the minority to enable a change to be made. The Censors adjourned until June I. Eighteen thousand names appeared on a petition against a convention. On September 16, 1784, by 14 to 8, the Censors declared that there did not appear to be any ab- solute necessity to call a convention.
On October 23, 1784, at a treaty between the "Thirteen Fires," as the Indians called the American Confederation, and the Six Nations, the "Quaker State" bought the land within its boundary of its right of pre-emption not formerly purchased by the Proprie- taries. This enormous tract extended from Tioga Point to the western boundary of Pennsylvania and from the New York line to the West Branch, the lower Allegheny, and the Ohio.
Benjamin Franklin succeeded Dickinson in the fall of 1785 and Charles Biddle succeeded James Irvine, who had been Vice- President a year. In two years Biddle was succeeded by Peter Mühlenberg, the preacher who turned general. He resigned, and his second year was finished out by David Redick. Franklin served three years.
Thomas Mifflin, who, after his military service, held the exalted position of President of the Continental Congress when Wash- ington resigned the command of the army, was President of the
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Pennsylvania Colonial and Federal
Supreme Executive Council from November 5, 1788, until the Constitution of 1790 went into effect. George Ross was his Vice- President.
Congress having arranged to satisfy Pennsylvania's need for an outlet on Lake Erie, a purchase of the tract so to be ceded by the United States was made from Cornplanter and other Indians in 1789.
When with the consent of Pennsylvania a new Constitution for the United States, framed by a convention which met in Phil- adelphia, had been adopted and was going into effect, the Assem - bly in obedience to a changed popular sentiment arranged for the people of the Keystone State through a convention to overthrow its first democratic Constitution without waiting for the choosing of another Council of Censors to call the convention in the pre- scribed way. The men chosen to this convention included Mifflin, McKean, Wilson, Hand, William Lewis the lawyer, and William Findley, as well as Albert Gallatin and Timothy Pickering, with men subsequently better known, as Simon Snyder and Joseph Hiester. Mifflin presided. On September 2, 1790, was dated the result of their labors, a frame of government like that to which every State in the Union has now become accustomed, with a Governor elected directly by the whole people, and a legislature of two houses, the members of both being chosen by the voters of districts based more or less upon population. The new Governor was elected that fall, and on December 21. 1790, Mifflin as such superseded the Supreme Executive Council.
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CHAPTER V.
CONDITIONS OF PENNSYLVANIA IN 1790
F OR seventy years following the close of the Revolutionary war the stream of history in Pennsylvania flows in a more smooth and an ever-broadening channel. The struggle for independence has been fought and won, but the revolution itself is going on; henceforth the military actors in that daring scene will devote themselves to less heroic and less trying tasks ; and as en- feebling age compels them to withdraw from daily toil, they find a solace in recalling the old days to interested friends and eager listening grandchildren. Once more with gleaming eyes they will tell of the midnight storming of Stony Point and the fight under the fierce July sun at Monmouth ; of the pitiless winter life at Val- ley Forge and the blood-stained march to Princeton; of the siege of Yorktown and surrender of Cornwallis; of the long, weary marches through the sickly regions of the South, and of the final shots fired at Sharon Springs in Georgia. One by one they will cease to tell the wonderful story until the last survivor has told it for the last time and then disappears forever from life's stage.
While growing old and passing away, their places are filled by a younger generation, eager to achieve fresh victories in the world of nature, production and commerce, and under the inspiring breeze of freedom they are to multiply in number and increase in wealth as no other people of ancient or modern times.
With the triumph of the Revolution even those who had been opposed to the movement speedily acquiesced, though many years
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elapsed before all the bitter memories engendered by the strife could pass away. Yet time was working its subtile and effective ministry ; the wounds of war were healing, and if the older ones could not wholly forget them, others were growing up who had not suffered. Self-interest also was a powerful eraser; every one believed that peace was final and that whatever else might happen, the old relation would never be resumed. As the sepa- ration was complete, all were alike interested in improving the new situation.
It is true that the future had not the settled aspect that, after more than a century of orderly government, now lies before us. Political discord and suffering had wrought their usual result and a federal constitution was adopted ; nor could it have come earlier or in an easier way. That a strong federal constitution was need- ful was as evident to the man of intelligence in 1776 as in 1789, but the dissentient forces were not ready to yield at the earlier time, hence the people continued to suffer for nearly fifteen years more before the hard argument of necessity induced effective action.
The party of the constitution and of the Revolution, brave and brilliant as had been its work, was not destined long to control the current of political events. It is true that a party which had emerged as victor in a great contest might, under ordinary con- ditions, be supposed to have strengthened its position immensely and perhaps might have made its future secure for a long period. Such is the ordinary teaching of history. Why, then, was the party of the Revolution so soon overwhelmed? Two reasons eas- ily account for that result. One was that the revolutionary party in Pennsylvania never constituted an actual majority, and ruled by the power of force rather than by the power of numbers. Again, by their strong course they were forming a cloud of wrath, the descent of which some day they knew was inevitable ; and by its fall none were more conscious than they of destruction. The most they could do, therefore, was to invent and use devices
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Conditions in 1790
for postponing the dreaded day. The election of Jolin Dickinson as president of the Supreme Executive Council, in 1781, was a loud note of warning. Though the constitutionalists regained power in 1784, they could not long delay the repeal of the test oath act, and with the restoration to the people of their full polit- ical rights, the dominant party began to tremble for its existence. At the opening of 1790 parties were on the eve of a momentous change. The old ones were crumbling, and ere long the material elements were to be combined into entirely different structures. Among the results of their dissolution and reformation, was the breaking down the memories of war and the leading of all to unite on new questions and new political experiments. The abatement
in influence of the Friends in politics was total. Their avowed principles of peace and reluctance to participate in the war of the Revolution completed the overthrow of their political influence. Thereafter they took no active interest in larger political affairs and attended to their private concerns, charities and other human- itarian efforts. Indeed their interest in men was perhaps increased by their withdrawal from public matters. The slave, whose con- dition had long engaged their attention, was the subject of still greater solicitude. While the American colonists were trying to break the shackles binding them to Great Britain, the Friends were trying to free the shackles of those in bondage, and before beginning a crusade with others, they started the movement among themselves. In 1774 the Pennsylvania Yearly Meeting took decisive action. A committee of thirty-four Friends, who had been appointed to consider what action should be taken, re- ported that those of their profession who were concerned in im- porting, selling or purchasing slaves and continuing them in bondage beyond the time limited by law or custom for white per- sons, "ought to be speedily treated with in the spirit of true love and wisdom and the iniquity of their conduct laid before them." If they were not brought to a proper sense of their injustice and willingness to do whatever was reasonable and necessary for re-
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