USA > Pennsylvania > Pennsylvania in American history > Part 7
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That settlement was the result of no precon- ceived design. It came about as the consequence of no deliberate purpose. No nation, as did Greece and Rome in the ancient days, sent out colonies to occupy the land upon a prearranged system and under the protecting and fostering care of the government at home. It was the outcome rather of that impulse which has led the descendants of the old Teutonic race, whether they be Saxon or Suabian, to wander; which before the dawn of history impelled the barbaric tribes to pour over the Ural mountains into Europe, and which in the sixth century urged one of these tribes under the lead of Hengist, Horsa and Cerdic to cross the North Sea and seize what we now know as England. The hardy borderers living on the outskirts of the older colonies in the east pushed across the Alleghenies, rifle in hand, to found new homes upon richer lands, and to take the initial steps in the establishment of states des- tined ere long to become both prosperous and potent. The difficulties that were encountered were overcome. The dangers that arose in the path were surmounted. The wild beasts that filled the caverns
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below and clung to the limbs of the trees overhead were driven from their lairs. The savages who lurked in the forests and who endeavored to con- front the inpour of emigrants, with treachery and revenge in their hearts and scalping knives in their hands, were, after many a fierce struggle, beaten and destroyed. Those adventurers who perished on the way were soon followed by others equally deter- mined and more fortunate, until communities were established and the new life in the wilderness was too deeply rooted to be uptorn.
It is my purpose, in this state, said to be more like our own than any other; in this city, which has been called the Philadelphia of the West, upon the occasion of the exposition intended to commemo- rate the most extensive acquisition of lands ever made by the government, upon this most impor- tant and interesting anniversary, to narrate, in a briet way and in broad lines, the part borne by Pennsylvania in these events so fraught with great results. Among the pioneers, at once the earliest and most distinguished, made the hero of song and story in many tongues and many lands, introduced by Byron into his poem of Don Juan, his statue set
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in marble in the Capitol at Washington by Ken- tucky, as the representative of her highest achieve- ment, was Daniel Boone. In later days the West gave to the nation him who has been happily limned by Lowell as the first American, him who rose to greater heights in broader ways than any other of the presidents. When in time to come the muse of history shall be called upon to select from her pages those rulers who tower aloft above the rest, who have conferred the most benefit upon their fellow men, who have shown in vast achieve- ment purity of character and breadth of intelli- gence, alongside of Cyrus, Alfred, Charlemagne and William of Orange, she will place Abraham Lincoln. It is a significant fact that Daniel Boone and John Lincoln, the great-grandfather of the President, were both born in the same locality in the county of Berks in the state of Pennsylvania, and both pursued the same path on their way toward the West. Among those most celebrated in the annals of the border and most conspicuous for doughty deeds done in the Indian wars-Wetzel, Van Bibber, Van Metre, Brady, Logan, John Todd, Levi Todd, the grandfather of Abraham Lincoln's
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wife, as well as Simon Girty, the thoroughly hated renegade who took part with the savages-all had their origin in Pennsylvania. John Filson, whose name is borne by the Filson Club of Louisville, who wrote the first history of Kentucky, laid out the city of Cincinnati, and was subsequently killed by the Indians, was born within twenty-five miles of Philadelphia in the county of Chester. The movement westward may be said to have begun when in 1732 Hans Joest Heijt left the valley of the Perkiomen, and, at the head of a little band of colonists, took up large tracts of land and made the earliest settlement in the Shenandoah valley in Virginia. The Dunker settlement along the Shen- andoah, afterward broken up by the savages, and the settlement of peaceable Moravian Indians at Gnadenhutten in Ohio, who were massacred by equally savage whites, marked futile efforts to ex- tend over the land those Christian principles in the contact of the races which had proven successful along the Delaware for three-quarters of a century, and are now again exemplified by the government in the erection and conduct of such schools as that at Carlisle.
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The emigrants in their march to the westward in the main followed one of two routes. They either went on foot or horseback over the Alle- ghenies by the "Wilderness Road," famous in western annals, blazed by Boone on his way from North Carolina to Kentucky in 1775, or they floated in boats down the Ohio from Pittsburg.
If the land was to be secured for civilization it must not only be occupied,-it must be won. It was inhabited and roamed over by fierce tribes of savages, resolute to oppose what they regarded as an invasion of their hunting grounds, and who waged a treacherous and ruthless warfare which spared neither child, woman nor home. The Brit- ish, who still occupied forts and trading stations along the lakes, incited them to resistance and fur- nished them with scalping knives, firearms and ammunition. The rifle in the hands of the hunter and borderer from Pennsylvania, Virginia and North Carolina, wielded with both courage and skill, was sufficient for his individual protection, and relying alone upon their own prowess, the backwoodsmen pushed their way into Kentucky and Tennessee, but with the coming of men given to more peace-
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ful pursuits and the growth of settlements which were ever subject to attacks by the wily foe, and might at any time be laid waste, other measures became necessary. In 1787 an ordinance was passed by Congress providing for the sale of lands and set- tlement in the northwest, and the creation of a ter- ritorial government. Arthur St. Clair, who had been a major general from Pennsylvania during the War of the Revolution, was appointed governor by Washington. The Ohio Company made a large purchase of lands, and colonists, for the most part from New England, with Rufus Putnam as an avant-courier, began to pour into Ohio. Between 1783 and 1790 fifteen hundred men, women and children were slain by the Indians. In the latter year there were only two hundred and eighty men living on the lands of the Ohio Company who were capable for warfare, and the people needed
protection. In that year St. Clair sent Josiah Har- mar, an officer of distinction in the Revolution, born in Philadelphia of parents from the valley of the Perkiomen, with fourteen hundred men into the wilderness to punish the Indians. He burned a number of their villages and reached the interior of
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Indiana, where he was defeated with a loss of over two hundred men. In 1791 St. Clair led an army of twenty-three hundred troops into the Indian country, but was compelled to retreat with a loss of more than six hundred killed and wounded. Among the killed was General Richard Butler, a brilliant officer, who had fought bravely in the Pennsylvania Line through the Revolution.
And then Washington, smitten with anger and chagrin, sent to the front Anthony Wayne. In his "Winning of the West," Roosevelt writes: "Of all men, Wayne was the best fitted for the work. In the Revolutionary War no other general-American, British or French-won such a reputation for hard fighting and for daring energy and dogged courage. But his head was as cool as his heart was stout."
He had won distinction at Brandywine, Ger- mantown, and Monmouth. He had been in com- mand at the capture of Stony Point, by assault, if not the most decisive, certainly the most brilliant achievement of the Revolutionary War. He had given further proofs of his capabilities in contests with Cornwallis in Virginia and with the Indians
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in Georgia. No other Revolutionary general has had so many counties named for him except Wash- ington. The previous failures had caused a timid feeling to pervade the councils of the administration, and every effort was made to secure an understand- ing without recourse to war. The Secretary of War wrote to Wayne that another defeat would be "ruinous to the reputation of the government." Wayne raised an army of twenty-five hundred men, organized and controlled it and introduced the dis- cipline which was the necessary preparation for the coming struggle. In the late summer of 1792 he established a camp on the Ohio twenty-seven miles below Pittsburg. In May of 1793 he advanced to the site of Cincinnati. In October he went forward to the Miami river, eighty miles north of Cincin- nati, where, surrounded by hostile Indians, he spent the winter. He built a fort upon the battlefield where St. Clair had met defeat, which he called "Fort Recovery," and buried the bones of the soldiers who had lost their lives in that disastrous engagement. Cut off from communication with the national government, whose capital was then Philadelphia, he had been given authority to dis-
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lodge the English garrison at the rapids of the Maumee if it should be found necessary. To his discretion, therefore, it was left to determine whether or not another war with England should be undertaken. On June 30th, 1794, he repelled an attack upon Fort Recovery. Then marching seventy miles further northward, he built a fort on the Maumee called "Fort Defiance," and a hundred and ten years ago to-day fought, almost under the walls of the English fortification, the important battle whose anniversary we celebrate. About two thousand Indians and Canadians were engaged and they were completely routed with great loss. A complaint made by the captain in command of the English fort met with a sharp rebuff. It was the most decisive victory won in all of our Indian wars. Both the power and the spirit of the hostile tribes were broken. For fifteen years thereafter there was peace along the border and the extension of settle- ments and the creation of states in the West were the result. Says Dr. Stillé: "In opening the mag- nificent national domain of the West to emigrants, secured in their life, liberty and property by laws of their own making, it may well be regarded when
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we reflect upon the history of that vast region during the last hundred years as having given birth to a new era in the history of American civilization."
Says Roosevelt: "It was the most complete and important victory ever gained over the north- western Indians during the forty years warfare to which it put an end; and it was the only consid- erable pitched battle in which they lost more than their foes."
Pennsylvania had still another service to render in the settlement of the West. The purchase of Louisiana from France in 1803, which included all of the lands to the west of the Mississippi, save those owned by Spain, was approached with mis- giving and attended with uncertainty. The oppo- sition was earnest and decided. The real reason for objection upon the part of the eastern states was the sense that with the growth of the West and the admission of new states likely to result, there would be a corresponding diminution in their own influence in national affairs, and as has often happened in the course of our history, the inspiring motive was hidden under an avowed interest in the maintenance of the constitution. It was contended
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that the proposed purchase was in violation of that instrument, since there was no provision in it for the extension of territory, and that no new state could be admitted into the union save by the unan- imous consent of all the original states. It was argued that we had land enough, that these track- less wastes could never be utilized, that complica- tions with other nations unforeseen and innumer- able would arise, and that expansion meant destruc- tion. Quincy threatened that if this step should be taken it would be followed by a dissolution of the union. In similar vein, Senator Plumer of New Hampshire said: "Admit this western world into the union, and you destroy at once the weight and importance of the eastern states and compel them to establish a separate independent empire," and Griswold of Connecticut added : " It is not con- sistent with the spirit of a republican government that its territory should be exceedingly large. . .. The vast and unmanageable extent which the acces- sion of Louisiana will give the United States, the consequent dispersion of our population and the de- struction of that balance which it is so important to maintain between the eastern and western states
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threatens at no very distant day the subversion of our union." When the final vote was had upon the bill to enable the President to take possession of the territory, both of the senators and all of the eighteen representatives from Pennsylvania cast their votes in favor of its passage. The significance of this action in what is everywhere now recognized as one of the most important crises in the advancement of the nation is enhanced when we remember that all of the senators from Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Hampshire voted in the negative. Among them were Timothy Pickering and John Quincy Adams.
The position assumed by Pennsylvania upon this vital question is the more gratifying because of the reasoning in support of it, the soundness of which the subsequent course of events has entirely justified. It was extremely difficult for contempora- ries to catch the full import and future consequences of the movement in which they were engaged. Jefferson was looking to the opening of the Missis- sippi river and securing control of its mouth, and his instructions to his representatives in France were to make an offer only for New Orleans and the
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Floridas. It did not occur to Jefferson, Madison, Monroe or Livingston, who were acting for us, to make a proposition for the purchase of the immense territory west of the river. It was Napoleon, who did not care to retain these lands if he parted with New Orleans, who first broached the suggestion. As the country has grown and trade has followed the railroads east instead of the rivers south, it has been proven that this territory constituted the vast importance of the acquisition. With keen insight and remarkably clear vision Thomas Mckean, in an address to the Legislature of Pennsylvania, Decem- ber 9, 1803, said: "The value of the acquisition, even with the sole view of accommodating and securing the commerce of the western States and territory of the union, every candid mind will ap- preciate much higher than the stipulated price; but when we consider it in relation to the present as the probable means by which we avoid a participation in the war that has been fatally rekindled in Europe, or in relation to the future as affording a natural limit to our territorial possessions, by which the danger of foreign collision and conflict is far re- moved, while the sphere of domestic industry and
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enterprise is enlarged, the event may well be regarded as an auspicious manifestation of the interference of Providence in the affairs of men."
But the entire consequences in all of their immense proportions, as we, looking backward, are able to see them to-day, were forecasted in the res- olution of the Assembly drafted by William Maclay: "The acquisition of Louisiana promises incalculable advantages not only with regard to our foreign rela- tions but also to our internal industry, as the territo- ries of the United States will now possess a soil and climate adapted to every production and an outlet is thereby secured for the western parts of the union to the ocean and the trade of the world."
Pennsylvania has done much for the American union of states. Her founder gave a practical ex- ample of the possibility of the application of those broad principles of religious and civil liberty upon which it is based. In its infancy she nursed its feeble efforts in her chief city. Long ago, by com- mon consent, having regard to the benefits derived from her assistance, her contributions to its wars and her influence in its development and among the counsels of its statesmen, she was hailed as the
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Keystone of the arch. This proud position ac- corded to her in the past she has maintained until the present and will strive to deserve in the future. The American people do not forget that she alone of the thirteen original states had a regiment in the Philippines. They do not forget that moment- ous conflict upon her soil in 1863, where one of her sons dealt the death blow to the effort to rend asunder the nation. But never did she exhibit with more clearness her poise and good judgment, never did she confer more lasting advantage upon the country than when, disregarding the appeals of selfish interest, with her whole heart, she threw the great weight of her influence in favor of the extension of the national domain westward to the Pacific ocean.
GEORGE WASHINGTON IN PENNSYLVANIA
[Washington's birthday has been celebrated at the University of Penn- sylvania as "University Day" for more than a century, and in 1826 was formally set apart in the University Calendar as one of the annual observ- ances of the University. The following oration was delivered on "Uni- versity Day," 1904, at the American Academy of Music.]
We meet under the auspices of that University which, in its plan of organization, in its teachings of medicine and law, and in recent years in its archeological investigations of eastern civilizations, has led all others upon the continent; and we meet upon the anniversary of the birth of the great Vir- ginian, the fame of whose deeds, at once a beacon and an example for mankind, has reached to the confines of the earth and will continue to the limits of time. Are the careers of those men who have seemingly fashioned the institutions of a nation and moulded the destinies of a race the outcome of exceptional capabilities and characteristics, not be- stowed upon their fellows, or are the results due to
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the favorable conditions existing at the time the successful efforts were made? Did Alexander of Macedon and Charlemagne found empires through the exercise of their own unusual power of will and gifts of intelligence, or were they but the man- ifestations of a force which made the Greeks, in one case, and the Germans, in the other, see that if great ends were to be accomplished there must be a subordination of the lesser states surrounding them and a combination of the strength of all,-a force which impelled them forward irresistibly? Is not this a force common to all mankind, which has builded up the British Empire and is even now building up America, indicating itself in the move- ments of trade and transportation, as well as in those of government? Would the Reformation have come in its own good time had there been no Martin Luther? Had Napoleon been killed upon the bridge of Lodi, would the French Revolution have followed its own appointed channels neverthe- less? Is Darwin correct when he attributes even the slow formation of individual and race charac- ter to the nature of the environment? Perhaps a safe position to assume would be that in the con-
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duct of revolutions against long-established and seemingly overwhelming power, in the creation and development of new governments, and in the efforts to ameliorate the conditions of the masses of humanity, if success is to be attained, there must be the underlying currents which make it possible, as well as the leader of rare skill and intelligence, possessing the capacity to direct them. If this be true, then it may be of service to call attention, as has never been done before, to the field whereon the achievements of George Washington were accomplished and to the surroundings wherein his faculties were exercised, if not developed, and the energies of his public career were expended.
In the year 1753 the two most powerful na- tions of Europe,-England and France,-which had long been enemies and rivals, were again upon the verge of a struggle. The declaration of war was not made until three years later, but the mutterings and rumblings were being heard, the preliminaries were being arranged, and all men knew that the outbreak could not be long postponed. It was a great stake for which the combatants were about to strip, the possession of a continent destined ere long
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to support a people among the foremost upon the earth. Man proposes, but the gods dispose. When Wolfe died as he clutched his victory at Quebec, there were weeping and wailing in every household in the American colonies. Little did they who lamented think how different might have been their fate if that energetic spirit, instead of the dilatory Howe, had confronted them at Brandywine, Ger- mantown, and Valley Forge. Never did it occur to either of the contestants while they were pampering the savages and gathering the cannon, nor when they were ready for the encounter, that no matter which of them should prove the stronger or more valiant, the reward should go to neither; that in the end his most Christian majesty of France must be obeisant and the king of England must submit to an underling in one of the camps. The English colonies were along the coast. The French were enclosing them with a series of forts intended to run up the St. Lawrence, thence to the Ohio and to the mouth of the Mississippi. In a sense it may be said that the right of the French line was at New Orleans, the left at Quebec, and the centre at the junction of the Allegheny and Monon-
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gahela rivers, where Fort Duquesne was erected in 1754, in the western part of Pennsylvania. What a series of events had their beginning when George Washington came to Pennsylvania in 1753! The unheeding world might well have listened. A young man, in his twenty-second year, of limited education and narrow reading, tall and well made, precise and prim in his methods, stiff in his man- ners and chirography; with an instinct of thrift which led him to manage farms and raise horses, to seek in his love affairs, whether with maid or widow, for a woman " wi' lots o' munny laaid by, and a nicetish bit of land," and enabled him to ac- cumulate one of the largest fortunes of his time; but ever a gentleman; whose youth had been de- voted to fox-hunting and athletic sports, and who since he was sixteen had been surveying lands in the valleys of Virginia, left the narrow confines of his early associations and took his first step into the outer and larger world. Governor Dinwiddie, of Virginia, sent him with a little force of seven men to the French commander in western Pennsylvania to protest against the building of forts and the occupancy of the land. Starting on the 15th of
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November, 1753, through the forests primeval, in the winter, surrounded by and often confronted with the savages, fired at by a treacherous Indian guide, rafting on the partly frozen rivers, he found his way to the site of Pittsburg and to a fort fifteen miles south of Lake Erie. It was a successful jour- ney. He delivered his message and returned on the 16th of January, 1754, to Williamsburg, with the answer of the commandant and with much knowledge of the country and of the armament and garrisons of the forts. As a result he was ap- pointed lieutenant-colonel.
At the head of one hundred and fifty men, accompanied by Jacob Van Braam, a Dutchman, one of his former attendants, who at an earlier time had taught him the drill, he, on April 2, 1754, started again for Pennsylvania. On the 25th he had reached the Great Meadows, in the neighbor- hood of the present Uniontown, in Fayette county. There he learned that a body of the French were in the vicinity. Supported by friendly Indians and led by Scarooyadi, a Delaware, to the French camp, through the darkness, he made an attack in the early morning. For fifteen minutes the rifles re-
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sounded and the balls whistled. Of the provincial troops three were wounded and one was killed. Of the French one was wounded and ten were killed, including Jumonville, their leader, and twenty-one were captured. Only one, a Canadian, escaped. And so it came about that the opening battle in that strug- gle of tremendous import, which was to determine that the vast continent of America should belong to the countrymen of Hermann, and not to those of Varus, was fought by George Washington upon the soil of Pennsylvania.
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