USA > Pennsylvania > Pennsylvania in American history > Part 9
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I "T is extremely difficult to regard with any se- riousness the article which appeared in the Atlantic Monthly for October, 1901, upon the " Ills of Pennsylvania."
Among the cases tried in my court a situation so frequently recurs that in its main features it has become entirely familiar, and with the first state- ment of the preliminary facts the sequel is at once forecasted. A well-meaning and kindly old gentle- man, whose vigor and intelligence a quarter of a century before won for him a comfortable subsist- ence in his declining years, but who is approaching that period of advanced maturity when the im- pressions of names and faces and characters are becoming indistinct, is addressed by a glib and en- tertaining stranger who assumes the reputable name
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of some good friend and talks with an assured air of known persons and events. The interview ends in loss to the confiding person both of substance and reputation.
There were ample indications in the article itself to have put the Atlantic Monthly upon its guard. Its appearance at a time coincident with an approach- ing election, and the desire of the writer to escape identification by keeping his name concealed, are facts that ought in themselves to have given warn- ing to the alert. His evidence in the shape of mythical interviews with unidentified farmers, who speak in an unknown dialect, his fling at those who are descended from the men who fought in the Revolutionary War, his manifest delight in the hanging of the Quakers upon Boston Common, his affectation of regret at the injury to the financial reputation of a state which has no debt, borrows no money, and pays each year $6,000,000.00 for schools and $2,000,000.00 for charities, his corrupt Eng- lish and pat "Augean Stables," his description of himself through the guise of a convenient but unnamed friend as "Godly purity," sufficiently showed that he assumed a garb which did not
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belong to him, and was narrating as facts mate- rial gathered for a purpose, and which could only lead to inquiry when presented by some respon- sible person. His article is absolutely discreditable and unworthy.
Its presentation in a magazine of good repute, which was once a leader in thought, and is still read by many excellent people in Pennsylvania, about which linger the memories of departed worthies whom they revere, is another matter, and it is with that aspect of the subject it is proposed to deal. When there are published to the world the untruths "that Philadelphia is the arch hypocrite of cities," and that Pennsylvania is a "state of weak moral fibre," the inquiry, made in all seriousness, is provoked whether there is not a touch of hardihood in suggesting that "Massachusetts and Pennsylvania persistently invite comparison." The assumption of superior virtue and achievement is not without pre- cedent. Cotton Mather, while inciting the hanging of witches and Quakers; John Adams, and John Quincy Adams, in their letters and journals, have been illustrious predecessors, and the Massachusetts law of October 14, 1656, says: "There is a cursed
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sect of heretics lately risen up in the world which are commonly called Quakers." Perhaps it may not be uninstructive to examine the foundation upon which the claim rests.
Massachusetts was settled in 1620, Pennsyl- vania in 1682, and in a race of less than three centuries, a start of sixty-two years is a long lead. Boston is located upon the sea, with a magnificent harbor adapted for all kinds of commerce, while Philadelphia lies a hundred miles from the mouth of the Delaware. Each census shows that Massa- chusetts is steadily falling in rank among the states, and Boston among the cities, and that Pennsylvania, which, at the time of the Revolution, was third in population, is surely approaching the first place .* It is manifest that either better government or greater opportunities for remuneration for effort, or some equally potent cause, has from the beginning led men to find Pennsylvania more attractive, and this conclusion is emphasized when we give attention to the obvious fact that while few Pennsylvanians can
* Massachusetts, which stood second under the census of 1790, was fifth under the census of 1890, and under the recent census of 1900 takes rank as seventh and below Texas. Pennsylvania, which was third in 1790, being below Virginia and Massachusetts, was second in 1890 and 1900.
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ever be persuaded to emigrate to Massachusetts, there has been since the time of Penn a steady cur- rent of people who were willing to forego the advantages, civil or otherwise, of Massachusetts, in order that they might improve their condition and ours by coming here. A school was established in Philadelphia in 1683. There was no school in Plymouth for twenty years after the settlement. The free library of James Logan, the medical school of the University of Pennsylvania, the law school of the University of Pennsylvania, the Penn- sylvania Hospital, the American Philosophical Soci- ety, the Academy of the Fine Arts, and Peale's Museum are all examples of institutions successfully established here before any similar attempts were made in Boston. The English Bible and Testa- ment, Milton, Shakespeare, and Blackstone were all reproduced for the first time in America in Phila- adelphia, and it is an interesting indication of keen- ness of literary perception that the earliest book written by Thackeray to be given to the world first appeared in the same city.
The constitution of the United States pro- vides for the free exercise of religion and against
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the establishment of any creed by law. Perhaps no other of its provisions more distinctly marks the divergence between the American idea of the prov- ince of government and that of European nations, and more broadly separates the present from the past. Where in America did that view of life originate, and when it became a part of the funda- mental law, which community triumphed and which succumbed? Penn in his frame of government de- clared that government was " as capable of kindness, goodness and charity as a more private society," and he invited to his province people of all creeds. Massachusetts, founded as a theocracy from which all who dissented from the established beliefs were expelled, in accepting the principle since embodied in the constitution, abandoned her own ideals and adopted the doctrines inculcated and practiced in Pennsylvania.
After the organization of the national govern- ment the gravest peril which threatened its integrity and existence was the growth of the institution of slavery. The first American colonizer and lawgiver to appreciate the immorality and disadvantages of that system, and eternal fame ought to be accorded
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to him, therefore, was Peter Cornelius Plockhoy, who announced in 1662 that in his colony on the Dela- ware no slavery should exist. Then came the celebrated Germantown protest of 1688. These announcements occurred in a period when the people of Massachusetts were not only dealing in negro slaves but were selling Indians and even con- victed Quakers in the Barbados .* The Society of Friends soon threw the whole weight of their influ- ence against the institution, preventing their mem- bers from holding slaves, and at that time they were still in control of the province of Pennsylvania. The earliest abolition society in the world was organ- ized in Philadelphia in 1774, called "The Pennsyl- vania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery," and among its members in 1789 were Noah Webster and Thomas Gain of Massachusetts, who even yet could find at home no outlet for their sentiments. When the memorial of this society, supported by one from the Friends' annual meeting, asking for the discouragement of the slave trade and of traffic
* The order of the Massachusetts Court, May 11, 1659, concerning Daniel and Provided Southwick, empowered the treasurer "to sell the said persons to any of the English nation at Virginia and Barbados."
Hazard's Annals, Vol. 2, p. 163.
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in slaves, was presented to the House of Represent- atives in 1790, it received the support of every member from Pennsylvania and the opposition of Fisher Ames, Jonathan Grout and George Thatcher, one-half of the Massachusetts delegation .*
Said Benjamin Rush, writing in 1784: " It is scarcely forty years since a few men in Pennsylvania, who were branded as enthusiasts, first bore testimony against the slavery of the negroes. These principles spread gradually and in the course of a few years were adopted as part of the system of doctrines of the people called Quakers. From them and by their industry they have been propagated by natural means through all the middle and eastern states of America. Pennsylvania has done homage to them in her sovereign and legislative capacity. The slaves of the southern states feel a pleasure when the name of Pennsylvania sounds in their ears, and even the native African has learned to except our state from the execrations he pronounces against Christian tyrants and man thieves."+
* Journal of the House. New York, 1790, p. 62.
+ Considerations upon the present Test Law of Pennsylvania. Phila- delphia, 1784, p. 20.
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On March 1, 1780, the Legislature of Pennsyl- vania passed the first American act definitely abolish- ing slavery. It was through the efforts of Anthony Benezet that England was induced to abolish the slave trade. In 1794 there were enough abolition societies throughout the states of the country to justify a national organization, and delegates from Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland met in convention in Philadelphia for the purpose. They assembled in the same city thereafter annually. While ere long Rhode Island, Virginia and Tennessee appear, there is no trace of representation from Massachusetts as late as 1823. When William Lloyd Garrison estab- lished the Liberator in Boston in 1831, the anti- slavery views of the Quakers of Pennsylvania had permeated the whole country, and in every border county of that state stations on the underground railroad were engaged, not in sounding proclamations, but in seeing to it that escaped slaves were provided with means to reach the St. Lawrence.
The principle upon which the Revolutionary war was fought to a successful conclusion, that the colonies "cannot be legally taxed but by their own
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representatives," was thought out and put in concrete form by John Dickinson in his "Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania to the inhabitants of the British Colonies," a book read with avidity all over America and reproduced in Europe. It aroused the colonies to resistance and enabled them to justify their efforts to themselves and before the world. He was given the freedom of the city of Boston, and Nathaniel Ames, in his almanac for 1772, pub- lished his portrait, one of the earliest rude attempts at American portraiture, with the legend "The patriotic American farmer, John Dickinson, Esq., Barrister-at-law, who, with attic eloquence and Roman spirit, hath asserted the liberties of the British Colonies in America."
On October 16, 1773, the people of Philadel- phia met in the State House yard and adopted a series of resolutions* drawn by William Bradford, forbidding the landing of tea from the British ships. These resolutions were forwarded to Boston, where- upon a town meeting was called there on November
* See the Resolutions in Etting's Old State House. Pages 67, 68.
The Boston resolutions say : "The sense of this town cannot be better expressed than in the words of certain judicious resolves lately entered into by our worthy brethren, the citizens of Philadelphia."
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5th, and they were re-adopted in the same language. This action led to the famous Boston Tea Party.
The turning point of the war was reached in the successes at Trenton and Princeton. Before those events our fortunes were at the lowest ebb. In his oration on Washington, David Ramsay, the contemporary historian, says : "The few that re- mained with General Washington scarcely exceeded three thousand and they were in a most forlorn con- dition, without tents or blankets or any untensils to dress their provisions. . . . In this period when the American army was relinquishing their general, the people giving up the cause, some of their leaders going over to the enemy, and the British com- manders succeeding in every enterprise, General Washington did not despair. He slowly retreated before the advancing foe and determined to fall back to Pennsylvania, to Augusta County in Virginia, and if necessary to yonder mountains, where he was resolved in the last extremity to renew the struggle for the independency of his country. While his unconquered mind was brooding on these ideas, fifteen hundred of the Pennsylvania Militia joined him." In this crisis, when others faltered and were
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in despair and Washington thought of retreating be- yond the Alleghenies to engage in guerilla warfare, which colony was it that sent a reinforcement equal to one-half of the army and enabled him to win his victories?
Would it be unkind to suggest that the difference in the characteristics of the people of Massachusetts and Pennsylvania is well exemplified in the compar- ison of the affairs at Bunker Hill and Stony Point? In the former engagement a Massachusetts general selected an elevation and protected himself by intrenchments. The British landed at the foot of the hill, marched up, drove the Americans from the field and captured and held the intrenchments. Since that time historians have written and poets have sung, a huge monument was erected and Daniel Webster delivered an oration, until almost if not altogether we are persuaded that in some way which we do not understand we must have won the battle. It is substantially the only one ever fought in Massachusetts and is cherished ex necessitate. At Stony Point six hundred British troops occupied a crest one hundred and fifty feet high elaborately fortified. In addition two abattis defended the hill
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and at the foot were a picket and a moat. Anthony Wayne with fourteen hundred men crossed the moat, tore down the abattis, stormed the fortifications and captured the garrison. He was hit on the head and thought to be killed, and of the twenty-one men in the forlorn hope, led by Lieutenant James Gibbons, of Philadelphia, seventeen were shot. Though then universally regarded as the most brilliant feat of arms of the war, there has been little vaunting about it since.
The final success of the war was due to the fact that France came to our assistance, and the friendship of that country was largely the result of the impression made on the minds of the French- men by Penn's " Holy Experiment." Even Voltaire at one time expressed a wish to emigrate to Pennsyl- vania, and the treaty which was never signed and never broken had caught the fancy and met the approval of all Europe. I have an autograph letter written in 1831 by Albert Gallatin, formerly secre- tary of the treasury, in which he says: " Pennsyl- vania the first example, the first experiment, which demonstrated that a community may remain under the influence of deep religious feeling without any
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compulsory law whatever on the subject of religion and all denominations live in perfect harmony. This, hailed by all the friends of liberty, appealed to by all as a decisive proof, had given the highest character to Pennsylvania, though only a colony, and was one of the principal, if not the main cause of the great popularity of America during her revolutionary contest."
In the war of 1812, when our independence of British control was finally assured, Pennsylvania fur- nished the commander of the army of Niagara, the then popular hero, Major General Jacob Brown, and if the contemporary authority of John Binns can be depended upon, a greater number of troops than any other state. Her naval record was unsurpassed, if equalled. The attitude of Massachusetts toward that war, owing to the fact that it injuriously affected her commercial interests, cannot be excused and can only be condoned and forgotten. She refused finan- cial aid, she declined to respond to the call of the president for her quota of militia, and the convention at Hartford first broached the pernicious doctrine of secession, so fruitful in the production of future ills to the republic. The president in his message
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described Massachusetts and Connecticut as being in insurrection, and Josiah Quincy, Abijah Bigelow, and thirty-two other members of Congress published a pamphlet, soon reproduced in London for the comfort of the enemy, in which they in effect con- tended for the right of the English to take seamen from our vessels, and used this thinly-veiled threat of destruction to the union: "A form of govern- ment, in no small degree experimental, composed of powerful and independent sovereignties, associated in relations some of which are critical as well as novel, should not be precipitated into situations cal- culated to put to trial the strength of the moral bond by which they are united."*
A president of the United States once felt it to be his duty to inform Congress that a secret agent
* An address of members of the House of Representatives of the Congress of the United States to their constituents on the subject of the war with Great Britain. London, 1812.
In it the writers assert : "The claim of Great Britain to the services of her seamen is neither novel nor peculiar. The doctrine of allegiance for which she contends is common to all the governments of Europe." P. 14.
Calhoun and Jefferson Davis contended for no more than that the states were "independent " and that the bond uniting them was only " moral" and not legal.
Of the thirty-four signers of this remarkable paper seven were from Massachusetts, eight from Connecticut, the whole delegation, one from New
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of the foe "was employed in certain States, more especially at the seat of government of Massachu- setts, in fomenting disaffection to the constituted authorities of the nation, and in intrigues with the disaffected, for the purpose of bringing about resist- ance to the laws, and eventually, in concert with a British force, of destroying the Union and forming the eastern part thereof into a political connection with Great Britain."
At half-past four o'clock on the morning of April 12, 1861, the rebels opened fire upon Fort Sumter, in Charleston harbor. Before the sun went down that day Pennsylvania had appropriated five hundred thousand dollars with which to arm the state .* This first step in the war upon the part of the north, quick as a flash, three days before the call by the president for troops, followed by New York on the 15th, and the other states later, is one of those momentous and overpowering events that
Hampshire, one from Vermont, two from Rhode Island, four from New York, one from Delaware, three from Maryland, four from Virginia, and two from North Carolina. I regret to say that one of the eighteen representatives from Pennsylvania, James Milnor, is found among them, but he was not returned to the next Congress.
* Tribune Almanac for 1862, p. 42. Acts of Assembly.
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determine the fate of nations, to be remembered with the crossing of the Rubicon and the dinner of the Beggars of the Sea. Three days after the call for troops five companies from Pennsylvania, the van of that mighty host which during the succeed- ing four years were to follow, arrived in Washington. The next day the Seventh Pennsylvania and the Sixth Massachusetts shed the first blood in the streets of Baltimore. Within four days after the defeat at Bull Run seventeen thousand Pennsyl- vanians, armed, equipped and disciplined, were in Washington to save the city from capture. No other state had an entire division in the army, and all of them were below her in the percentage of those killed in battle. Simon Cameron was secre- tary of war at the beginning of the struggle and Edwin M. Stanton at its close. Pennsylvania had forty-eight general officers in the war and fourteen commanders of armies and corps: Meade, McClel- lan, Hancock, Reynolds, Humphreys, Birney, Gib- bon, Park, Naglee, Smith, Cadwalader, Crawford, Heintzelman and Franklin. Two of them com- manded the Army of the Potomac, that army upon which the fortunes of the war depended. It was
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neither Grant nor Sherman nor Thomas who fought the battle that determined the issue of the contest, but George G. Meade, upon the Pennsylvania field of Gettysburg. Will some one tell us what great captain or what significant event in this most fate- ful of American crises is to be credited to Massa- chusetts?
In the late war with Spain there came as a result that American principles and institutions are no longer to be confined to this continent, but are to become the heritage of other peoples in other lands. Is it in Boston or in Philadelphia that or- ganizations were created whose object was to thwart the purposes of the government?
Robert Morris managed the finances of the Revolution, Stephen Girard those of the war of 1812, and Jay Cooke those of the Rebellion. The " Pennsylvania idea," wrought out by Mathew Carey and Henry C. Carey, adopted by Henry Clay and William McKinley, has dominated American poli- tics since the origin of the government.
Pennsylvania has no ills that are worthy of mention. Her six millions of people, twice those of Holland and three times those of Massachusetts,
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are happy, prosperous and contented, and they are less taxed and get more in return than their neigh- bors. There may be an occasional wanderer among them who thinks the Berkshire Hills are higher than the Allegheny Mountains, that the deserted wharves of Salem are more attractive than the ship- yards of Kensington, and that Benjamin F. Butler, who with true home spirit wrote a book about him- self, was a more skillful soldier than Hancock or Humphreys, but the vagaries of the human mind are often unexplainable. Cramp is still building the navies of the world, and Baldwin is still con- structing its locomotives. Henry C. Lea and Mc- Master are writing histories, Furness is annotating Shakespeare and Dr. S. Weir Mitchell is writing novels. Leidy, Cope and Brinton, Agnew, Gross and Pepper have just left us, and Hare, the most famous of contemporary American jurists, is still alive. There is a university or college in almost every county, and the work of Lehigh, Swarthmore, Bryn Mawr, and the University of Pennsylvania, the last of which has opened up a new field of learning in the far east, invites comparison with that of any similar institution in America or Europe.
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The anonymous purveyor of articles, though both ignorant and malicious, was nevertheless cor- rect in his statement that here respect is accorded to inherited good character, and it is a significant illustration of the conservation of ruling forces that the present mayor of Philadelphia is a member of one of the oldest Quaker families in the state, which sent George Ashbridge to the Assembly from Ches- ter county, from 1730 to 1770, the longest period of service in that body, and that the great-grand- father of Pennsylvania's most distinguished states- man was a major in Wayne's Chester county regi- ment in the Revolutionary war. There has been some commotion in public affairs in Pennsylvania since 1895, but it is neither deep-seated nor import- ant, and does not call for invidious comment. In the existing complications of mundane affairs the power of accumulated money is very great. It sways alike marts, magazines and newspapers and fills pulpits. It leads nations to look on complacently while the people of the republics of South Africa are being murdered for their possessions. The United States Senate has in recent years sometimes been flippantly called the Millionaires' Club. The
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fate which has befallen some other commonwealths was tendered to Pennsylvania. It was proposed, and the proposition was supported by some well- meaning persons, that the highest representative office in that state where the declaration of in- dependence was adopted, the constitution of the United States was framed, and the Battle of Gettys- burg was won, should be handed over to an enter- prising and successful merchant, not because of training in statecraft and public service, but as a reward for commercial prosperity, like a bale of cotton goods to be secured in the market for a consideration. The attempt was made in the wrong state, among the wrong people, and it failed. Little inquiry is needed to ascertain why men in Pennsylvania are attached to Mr. Quay and proud of his accomplishment. It is not for me to express an opinion concerning his political methods or prin- ciples, but about his personal characteristics it is permitted me to speak. No man, whatever may be his intelligence, can be regarded as having reached greatness who, when tested in a crisis pregnant with the vital interests of humanity, fails to compre- hend the situation, or, understanding it, fails to act
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