USA > Pennsylvania > The making of Pennsylvania; an analysis of the elements of the population and the formative influences that created one of the greatest of the American states > Part 13
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He also had the Scotch-Irish aptness in the use of language, and went beyond Gibson in this respect. Speaking of a rather notorious railroad promoter, he said of him, " If he would take an oath that he was a liar I might believe him." Who but a Scotch-Irishman would have tied such a knot of words ? He had a quaint ancestor who always carried a heavy cane, for the pur- pose, as he never failed to announce, of punishing those who lied in their conversation.
Of all the sects and nationalities that have affected the destinies of Pennsylvania, the Scotch-Irish alone furnish pithy anecdotes that can be quoted. The colorlessness and diffusiveness of the Quakers and Germans are a barren field for anything pointed.
Black's judicial opinions are, for power of expression, among the most remarkable in the English language, and may be found interesting to the laity as well as to lawyers. Perhaps the most typical specimen of his judicial style is a quotation from an opinion in which he dissented from the rest of the court.
" The judgment now about to be given is one of ' death's doings.' No one can doubt that if Judge Gibson and Judge Coulter had lived, the
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plaintiff could not have been thus deprived of his property. . .. It is a melancholy reflection that the property of a citizen should be held by a tenure so frail. But ' new lords, new laws' is the order of the day. Hereafter, if any man be offered a title which the Supreme Court has decided to be good, let him not buy it if the judges who made the decision are dead; if they are living, let him get an insurance on their lives, for ye know not what a day or an hour may bring forth.
"The majority of this Court changes once every nine years, without counting the chances of death and resignation. If each new set of judges shall consider themselves at liberty to overthrow the doctrines of their predecessors, our system of jurisprudence (if system it can be called) would be the most fickle, uncertain, and vicious that the civilized world ever saw. A French Constitution, or a South American Republic, or a Mexican administration would be an immortal thing in comparison to the short-lived principles of Pennsylvania law." (2 Phila. Rep. 417.)
Many examples of his eloquence might be given, es- pecially passages from his open letter to President Gar- field, which for power of statement and stinging sarcasm has seldom been equalled. There is a passage from a speech he made in a famous Kentucky case which shows the quieter side of his oratory.
" It is not from the exercise of despotic power, nor yet from the head- long passions of a raging people that we learn our duty to one another. When the Prophet Elijah stood on the mountain side to look for some token of the divine will, he did not see it in the tempest, or the earthquake, or the fire, but he heard it in the ' still small voice' which reached his 'ears after those had passed by. We have had the storm of political debate, we have felt the earthquake shock of civil war, we have seen the fire of religious persecution. They are passed and gone; and now, if we do not hearken to the still small voice which speaks to our consciences in the articulate words of the Constitution from the graves of our fathers, then we are without a guide, without God, and without hope in the world."
The Presbyterians of Pennsylvania, whether Scotch- Irish or English, always showed a stronger leaning to-
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The Scotch-Irish and the Presbyterians
wards the best sort of education than either the Quakers or the Germans. Their surroundings and circumstances often seriously interfered with them; but even on the frontier they made efforts to have good schools, and Doddridge speaks of two institutions which they founded in the wilderness on the extreme verge of civilization, one an academy at Cannonsburg, which afterwards be- came Jefferson College, and the other Washington Col- lege, in the county and town of the same name.
The Eastern Presbyterians were equally enthusiastic in the pursuit of knowledge. Primary schools were not enough for them, and, except the Church of England, they were the only religious division in Pennsylvania which in colonial times was willing to encourage higher education. One of them, William Tennent, a Presby- terian minister, established on the Neshaminy, in Bucks County, in 1726, a school, which became known far and wide as the "Log College." Such were the vigor of this man's instruction, and the inspiration of his character, that some of his pupils established similar schools, and the name Log College, whether applied to a man or to an institution, became in Pennsylvania a synonyme for excellence in mental training and some little culture. From these log-college men can be traced several excel- lent academies, Dickinson College, at Carlisle, also the important university at Princeton, in New Jersey, and the lesser lights, Hampden-Sidney, in Virginia, and Wash- ington and Jefferson, in Pennsylvania.
Dickinson College, from its foundation, in 1783, until 1833, when it was turned over to the Methodists, had a hard struggle for existence. The trustees were continu- ally quarrelling among themselves and with the faculty.
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At two different times the college was closed for sev- eral years, and yet among its little company of alumni are to be found President Buchanan and Chief-Justice Taney, Justice Grier, of the Supreme Court of the United States, two district judges, Chief-Justice Gibson, and three associate judges of the State Supreme Court, five United States senators, ten members of the House of Representatives, about twenty-three presidents of other colleges, seventy professors in other colleges, Bishops McCoskry and Cummins, of the Protestant Episcopal Church, two Postmaster-Generals, Professor Baird, of the Smithsonian Institution, and Governor McClelland, of Michigan, who was at one time Secretary of the In- terior. Governor Curtin, of Pennsylvania, was a gradu- ate of the Law School, as was also one of the governors of Minnesota.
The statistics of Washington and Jefferson University are equally remarkable. Besides sending an unusually large number of learned men into prominent positions in the Presbyterian ministry, it has produced sixty-four presidents of colleges, ninety-five judges, twenty of whom were on the Supreme Bench of their respective States, over sixty members of Congress, ten senators, ten gov- ernors, and five cabinet officers .*
* Morrison's Among the Scotch-Irish ; Proceedings of the Scotch- Irish Society in America; Chambers's Tribute to the Scotch-Irish; Dodd- ridge's Settlement and Indian Wars of West Virginia and Pennsylvania; Fourth Annual Meeting of Pennsylvania Scotch-Irish Society.
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CHAPTER VII.
THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND MEN.
WILLIAM PENN'S principles were very liberal, but all the circumstances of the founding of his colony indicated that its government would be largely controlled by the Quakers. They were the most earnest advocates of religious liberty that had ever appeared in England ; but their sincerity had never been put to the final test. The men of those times were very familiar with sects which preached religious liberty when they were persecuted and practised quite the reverse the moment they got their hands on political power. The officers of the Crown were bound to protect the established religion, and accordingly we find a clause in the charter to the effect that whenever twenty persons should petition for a Church of England parish it could be established. The National Church, which was a part of the British gov- ernment that created the charter, was thus protected from any attempt to nip it in the bud, if it should show signs of life in the province; but Presbyterians and other dissenters were left to take their chances with the Quakers.
Penn, in one of his letters to James Logan, seems to imply that the English Church attempted to get more protection for herself than the clause which was finally inserted in the charter. "The Bishop of London," he says, "at the passing of my patent did what he could to
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get savings for the Church, but was opposed by the Earl of Radnor." If the bishop tried for anything more than the provision finally adopted, it was unnecessary, for the clause as inserted proved to be amply sufficient.
The Episcopalians, after some years, attained to a very strong position in the province, and when the proprietors joined the Church of England, members of that Church were soon in control of the executive portion of the gov- ernment. But at first they were few in numbers, and there was no attempt to present a petition for a parish until 1695, thirteen years after the founding of the colony. Christ Church was established in that year, and a build- ing erected with a bell hung in the crotch of a tree. The brick building so interesting for its architecture, and which still stands on Second Street, was begun in 1727, and finally completed with its steeple in 1755. It was the sole rallying-point of the Churchmen for more than fifty years, or until the founding of the college which gave them an additional stronghold. Intrenched in these two institutions and under the leadership of the provost of the college, Dr. Smith, they became an element of great political importance.
As soon as the petition for a parish was presented in 1695, the Quaker magistrates arrested the attor- ney who drew it and several of the principal signers. This persecution, and the imprisonment of William Bradford for publishing Keith's pamphlet, are the only instances in which the Quakers violated their extreme principles of religious liberty. For the sake of the truth of history these instances must be mentioned. But when we consider that the Quakers controlled the gov- ernment of Pennsylvania for nearly a hundred years,
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allowed and encouraged people of all sorts of creeds to come to them, these two outbursts of irritation count for very little. We should indeed rather welcome and rejoice in them. The conventional books of history, from which most of us get our ideas, always represent the Quakers as utterly stupid in their perfection. Any- thing that shows them to have been human is a valuable discovery, and, like the one or two instances in which Washington lost his temper and swore, should be care- fully preserved.
Such exhibitions of human feeling on the part of the Quakers were not calculated, however, to soften the hearts of the Churchmen, and there was considerable ill temper between the two faiths. They stood apart in political matters, never acted in concert and often in violent opposition. The letters and documents of the Churchmen during the first forty or fifty years are full of the most virulent abuse of the Quakers and their " many notorious, wicked, and damnable principles," as they called them.
On the other hand, the Quakers never appear to have expressed themselves so violently. They disapproved of the Churchmen ; but they preferred them to the Pres- byterians, for whom they had a most intense dislike. In fact, it has been said that many of the Quakers were willing to encourage the Church of England, and even favored an English bishop, as an offset to Presbyterianism, which they feared would overrun their colony.
Who were the first Churchmen and when they came is unknown. Doubtless some of them arrived soon after the first Quakers who came over in the "Wel- come" with William Penn. A school-master named
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Arrowsmith seems to have been their first clergyman, and he sometimes obtained the assistance of the Rev. Richard Sewell from Maryland. The Rev. Thomas Clayton was, however, the first regular incumbent, and began his labors in 1698, three years after Christ Church was built. The Quakers called him " the min- ister of the doctrine of devils;" but still he had great success in converting them. He was followed by the Rev. Evan Evans, who met with even greater success. The readiness with which the Quakers joined the Church of England in Pennsylvania was contemporane- ous with the founding of the colony, and has continued down to the present day.
The relations of the church with the Swedes were very friendly. The Swedes were Lutherans, and their clergy often exchanged pulpits with Episcopal clergy- men, and on at least one occasion took charge of an Episcopal church in the absence of its rector. Gradually the Swedes were all merged in the Church of England, and for a long time it was expected that the German Lutherans would follow them. The beautiful ----- old Swedish churches, Trinity at Wilmington, and Gloria Dei at Wicaco in Philadelphia, besides several others, became the property of the Episcopalians, in whose hands they still remain. 1 i
In the early days, under Arrowsmith, Clayton, and Evans, the Churchmen developed rapidly, not only in the city, but in the country districts. In a few years, how- ever, this rapid development in the country ceased, and many of the missionary stations fell into decay, and after that the advance in the country was comparatively slow. The cause of this is somewhat obscure, but may f
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have been the decision some of the clergy reached to dispense with vestries. But the churches in the city always flourished, and in colonial times the city was the chief stronghold of the Episcopalians, as the counties were of the Presbyterians.
The Churchmen were much increased by the Keithian controversy, which within a few years sent five hundred Quaker souls into Episcopacy. The Church grew steadily all through the colonial period, gaining not only by immigration, but by the recruits it received from the Quakers and the Swedes.
The rapidity and ease with which the Quakers joined it in preference to all other divisions of Christendom were quite remarkable, and have always been somewhat of a surprise to historians. The explanation, however, is easy if the fundamental principles of the two religions are kept in mind. The Church of England has never been a very dogmatic body, has never been much devoted to systems or theologies, and has always given ample room for the development of individual opinion. In colonial times, and up to the middle of the present century, it was in the low-church stage, especially in Pennsylvania, and in some respects more free from dogma than now. In fact, it was sometimes very close to what is now known as old-fashioned unitarianism. It satisfied the Quaker instinct for religious liberty and faith without formula. It had the additional advan- tage of allowing him to dress and spend money as he pleased, and contained a large measure of the delicate spirituality which characterized his own religion.
The Churchmen for a long time felt themselves in a very uneasy position, outnumbered in a dissenting
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community ; and they appear to have been not alto- gether satisfied with religious equality. Some of them would have preferred to see their faith established by law and their clergymen given the dignity and position which they had in England and Virginia. They had been accustomed in England to snub Quakers and Presbyterians, and now they found themselves in a colony where to snub a man for his religion was a penal offence. They felt this to be such a deprivation of ancient privileges that they called it persecution, and sent long complaints to the home government.
The truth of the matter was, that the Quakers had turned the tables and were snubbing the Churchmen. They believed themselves the makers of Pennsylvania, and their religion the established one, and they treated the Churchmen as dissenters.
" The Holy principles of our religion teach us not to resent such affronts, but it grieves us at this time that all Church of England men should be stigmatized with the grim and horrid title of treacherous and perfidious fellows, dissenters, and schismaticks from the established Religion, which is Quakerism, Intruders and Invaders in the Province, and, above all, that our Proprietor and Governor is resolved, and will be, aut Casar, aut nullus." (Perry's Collections, American Church in Pennsylvania, 4.)
George Ross, a clergyman at Chester, writes, in 1712, that the Quakers are a " haughty tribe," and nowhere " more rampant " than in his parish. Penn was certainly a good deal of a Cæsar in his way. He intended him- self to be the first in control, with the Quakers second, and other religions freely tolerated, but in a subordinate capacity. He considered it fair, and in accordance with his plans, to let the Churchmen hold a few of the offices within his gift, but not many, and their aggressiveness
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was very offensive to him. "They misrepresent all we doe," he says, "and would make us dissenters in our own country." He complained that they took advantage of his principle of toleration. "Their present minister," he says, "brought over printed books and broad sheets in great quantities to be pasted up in their Houses; is this submission to Government ?"
The Churchmen professed to regard the Quaker con- trol of the province as a great evil, not only to them- selves, but to the British empire. The Quaker objection to war prevented the establishment of a militia. The colony was in a defenceless condition, and might at any time fall into the hands of his majesty's enemies. They were careful not to lose this cause of complaint, and when it was proposed to organize a militia they voted against it. Not only was the province unprotected, they said, by the stupid Quaker government, but even civil justice could not be administered. The Quaker laws required no oaths ; a simple affirmation was the only form used in judicial proceedings and in accepting public office, and a man might be tried for his life by a judge, jury, and witnesses not one of whom had been sworn.
Their remedy for this state of affairs was to have the colony taken away from the Quakers and turned into a royal province, under the direct government of the king, and doubtless many of them foresaw in such a change a chance to have their church established by law. When the Jerseys, which were largely Quaker, became a royal province in 1702, the Pennsylvania Churchmen regarded it as a precedent in their favor and had great hopes of success. When Lord Cornbury, the first royal governor of Jersey, came out, they entertained him in Philadelphia,
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The Making of Pennsylvania
presented him with an address of welcome, and urged him to use his influence to obtain a royal government for Pennsylvania. In the same way they tried to obtain the assistance of Governor Nicholson, of Virginia, and left no stone unturned in their endeavors.
It was characteristic of the constant changes that were taking place in the position of parties in Pennsylvania that some years afterwards the Churchmen held just the opposite of these opinions, and became very much op- posed to direct royal jurisdiction. When the sons of Penn, who were proprietors of the province, became Episcopalians, the Quakers deserted the proprietary in- terest, and the Churchmen joined it. In other words, the two parties exchanged sides. In the year 1764 it was the Quakers who were attempting to turn the col- ony into a royal province, and the Churchmen who were opposing it.
In the early days, when the Churchmen favored a royal government, they were led by Colonel Quarry, at one time governor of South Carolina, whose name is still to be seen engraved on the communion set which he gave to Christ Church. He represented the Crown in the province, and was Judge of the Court of Admi- ralty, which had been established to adjudicate maritime causes, enforce the navigation laws, prevent direct trade with foreign countries, and, in general, look after the royal interests. He considered it part of his duty to send complaints of all kinds to the Board of Trade in England, and report irreverent and disloyal speeches. He was a great nuisance to Penn, who was almost will- ing to give up the province for the sake of getting rid of him.
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Under the leadership of Quarry the Churchmen made, in 1703, what they considered a very clever move. They obtained an order from Queen Anne, which, while it allowed Quakers to affirm, compelled all others to take oath. The Quakers had as much objection to ad- ministering an oath as to taking one, and, armed with this order, Colonel Quarry was in a fair way to compel the resignation of every Quaker who held public office. Some resigned, others remained in office and adminis- tered oaths, and both received an indignant rebuke from Penn, who said that they should simply have disobeyed the order. It was an unfortunate affair for the Quakers. Such orders were probably unconstitutional, and in the end could not have been enforced ; but they pointed out a method of annoyance which, though never entirely successful, was several times attempted.
Soon after the death of Penn, when his sons had be- come Episcopalians, there seems to have been a feeling that the deputy-governor was head of the Church in Pennsylvania, as the king was head of it in England. One or two governors certainly gave themselves airs of this sort. But the idea was never very fully carried out, and probably for the reason that the Churchmen saw that if the governor's authority in this direction was much developed, his interference might at times become very inconvenient.
In " Perry's Collections" there is a curious letter writ- ten in 1727 by one of the clergy, William Becket, to the Bishop of London, in which he suggests a very ingenious plan for the advancement of the Church. The title to the three lower counties, as Delaware was then called, was, he said, in dispute. Penn claimed it, and also Lord
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Baltimore. The probability was that neither of them owned it, and it belonged to the king. Why not, then, give it to the Church as a manor ? There were said to be two hundred thousand acres of cleared and improved land in it, and the rents from this would easily support an American bishop, missionaries, and many other things which the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel might judge expedient.
The desire for a colonial bishop was always present with the Churchmen, and always more or less under agitation, but never accomplished. In the Middle and Southern colonies, the opposition to it among the dis- senters was not very serious. But in New England it was regarded with horror, and on the outbreak of the Revolution one of the strongest arguments which the Puritan ministers urged upon their people was, that unless they achieved their independence there would be an American Episcopate, with another Laud at its head, who would hang them up by the thumbs every morning, put their legs in Spanish boots, with all the other tortures of the inquisition.
But after all, the bishop might not have been such a serious evil as was supposed; and if Delaware had been given him as his see and manor, he could have lived in a most princely state from the rents of its fertile farms, become a most striking and remarkable character, and added an exciting interest, not only to the annals of Delaware but to the history of all the colonies.
The pettiness of conduct which marked the early his- tory of the Pennsylvania Churchmen passed away. By the year 1750 they had adopted broader views, were no longer peevish in their treatment of the Quakers, had
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learned to accept religious equality as a blessing, and soon after gained an abler leader than Colonel Quarry. The rest of their history in colonial times is the history of an institution and a man. The institution was the College of Philadelphia, and the man was the Rev. Dr. William Smith, its provost or president.
It would be out of place to enlarge much further on their position. They were not isolated like the Scotch- Irish, Germans, Moravians, or Connecticut people, who led a more or less distinct life of their own, and appeared only at intervals in the general history of the colony. The Churchmen, on the contrary, were largely the makers of that history. Most of them lived in Philadelphia or its immediate vicinity, the seat of government and the scene of all political conflicts. They were the head and front of the proprietary party and the bitter opponents of the Quakers and Benjamin Franklin.
Their clergy were not very numerous in Pennsylvania. Up to the time of the Revolution there were never more than eight or ten of them, and four of these were in Philadelphia. They had three churches in the city,- first, Christ Church, and afterwards two offshoots from it, St. Peter's and St. Paul's. St. Peter's, founded in 1761, was a sort of colony of Christ Church, and the two were long known as the United Churches of Christ Church and St. Peter's. St. James, a colony of St. Peter's, was added to the Union in 1809. St. Paul's, established in 1760, though also an offshoot of Christ Church, was the result of a disagreement, and was never in the Union. Outside of the city they had Trinity, at Oxford, nine miles to the north, and St. David's, about eighteen miles to the west, at Radnor, and St. Thomas, at White Marsh.
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