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 17
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" Canaan of old, as we are told, Where it did rain down manna, Wa'n't half so good for heavenly food, As Dyer makes Susquehanna."
Either from unusual ability to express their feelings or from some other cause, these Connecticut settlers suc-
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ceeded in making the beauty of their retreat known to the whole world. It was the great natural wonder, the Yosemite of that day. It aroused the interest and became the talk of every one in England. It was de- scribed as " one of the happiest spots of human existence, both for the simplicity of its inhabitants and the beauty and fertility of the land."
As time wore on, and the terrible conflicts with the Indians were added to the charms of nature, imagination became more and more aroused, until Campbell, the English poet, expressed the general feeling of his coun- trymen in Gertrude of Wyoming. This work of genius, in spite of mistakes in detail, has now become as much a part of the region as the rocks and streams. Gertrude is not quite so well-known a character as Evangeline, but she is as thoroughly identified with Wyoming as Evangeline with Acadia :
" Then, where of Indian hills the daylight takes His leave, how might you the flamingo see, Disporting like a meteor on the lakes --- And playful squirrel on his nut-grown tree ; And every sound of life was full of glee,
From merry mock-bird's song, or hum of men ; While hearkening, fearing naught their revelry, The wild deer arched his neck from glades, and then Unhunted, sought his woods and wilderness again."
The flamingo and the mocking-bird were far from their native haunts. Campbell, like other Englishmen, was rather mixed in his knowledge of America. But the verse is typical of his merits as well as his defects, and undoubtedly expressed the general feeling of the day as to the peace and beauty of Wyoming.
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When in another passage he spoke of Gertrude read- ing Shakspeare in the woods, he again strained the realities. But most of his descriptions are within the possibilities :
" It seemed as if those scenes sweet influence had On Gertrude's soul, and kindness like their own Inspired those eyes affectionate and glad, That seemed to love whate'er they looked upon." * * * * *
* *
" Nor, guess I, was that Pennsylvania home, With all its picturesque and balmy grace,
And fields that were a luxury to roam, Lost on the soul that looked from such a face; Enthusiast of the woods : When years apace
Had bound thy lovely waist with woman's zone, The sunrise path, at morn, I see thee trace To hills with high magnolia overgrown, And joy to breathe the groves, romantic and alone."
The Indian wars were not forgotten, and their dark ferocity forms a contrast to the loveliness of Gertrude :
". But this is not a time, he started up, And smote his breast with woe-denouncing hand- This is no time to fill the joyous cup; The mammoth comes, the foe, the Monster Brandt With all his howling, desolating band ; These eyes have seen their blade and burning pine
1 . Awake at once and silence half your land. Red is the cup they drink, but not with wine; Awake and watch to-night, or see no morning shine."
The poem made its first appearance among the literary circle at Holland House, and was published in 1809. Its success was immediate. A second edition was soon called for. Those were the days of Sir Walter Scott,
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Chateaubriand, and the romantic school of novelists. Simple human nature in the wilderness was the favorite theme. Campbell, anxious for the fate of his Gertrude, had intrusted her to the care of the generous Sir Walter, who introduced her to the world of fashion.
Other poets were inspired by Wyoming, and some of them have declared that Campbell failed to do justice to the scenery. Drake, an early American poet, wondered why such beauty had not aroused the native talent :
" Romantic Wyoming ! could none be found, Of all that rove thy Eden groves among, To wake a native harp's untutored sound And give thy tale of woe the voice of song ? Oh, if description's cold and nerveless tongue From stranger harps such hallowed strains could call,
How doubly sweet the descant wild had rung From one who, lingering round thy ruined wall, Had plucked thy mourning flowers and wept thy timeless fall."
Some years after, in 1823, Halleck, a Connecticut poet, visited Wyoming, and wrote his impressions :
"I then but dreamed; thou art before me now In life, a vision of the brain no more.
I've stood upon the wooded mountain's brow That beetles high thy lovely valley o'er, And now, where winds thy river's greenest shore, Within a bower of sycamore am laid ; And winds, as soft and sweet as ever bore
The fragrance of wild flowers through sun and shade, Are singing in the trees whose low boughs press my head.
" Nature hath made thee lovelier than the power Even of Campbell's pen hath pictured ; he Had woven, had he gazed one sunny hour Upon thy smiling vale, its scenery
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With more of truth, and made each rock and tree Known like old friends, and greeted from afar ; And there are tales of sad reality
In the dark legends of thy border war,
With woes of deeper tint than his own Gertrude's are." * * * * * * *
" There's one in the next field-of sweet sixteen-
Singing and summoning thoughts of beauty born In heaven-with her jacket of light green, Love-darting eyes and tresses like the morn, Without a shoe or stocking-hoeing corn.
Whether, like Gertrude, she oft wanders there, With Shakespeare's volume in her bosom borne,
I think is doubtful. Of the poet player
The maiden knows no more than Cobbett or Voltaire."
Native talent has at times been inspired. But these poets to the manner born appear to have been less im- pressed than strangers with the beauty of the scenery. The only part of Wyoming life that aroused their imaginations was the deep-dyed atrocity of the Indians. They lack the polish, the refinement, and the tenderness of Campbell. But in vigor of expression they are by no means deficient, and one specimen will suffice :
" Kind heaven, assist the trembling muse, While she attempts to tell Of poor Wyoming's overthrow By savage sons of hell."
For several years after the discovery of Wyoming the Connecticut people visited it in small parties every summer without attempting any settlement. Their object was to get the land from the Indians gradually, and make sure that it was safe for white men. In 1753 they formed an association called the Susquehanna Company, made up of about six hundred persons,-
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some from Rhode Island and Massachusetts, but most of them from Connecticut. One of the first acts of this company was to send a deputation to Albany in 1754 to meet a great council of the Six Nations and purchase from them the land of the Wyoming Valley.
Pennsylvania sent to the same council John and Richard Penn, Isaac Norris, and Benjamin Franklin to resist the purchase. They were unsuccessful, however, and for the sum of two thousand pounds of the current money of New York the Susquehanna Company ob- tained the land.
No regular settlement was effected under this pur- chase until 1762, when about two hundred farmers with their families entered the valley. The Indians allowed them to sow and reap their first crop, and then suddenly killed and scalped about twenty of the men and scat- tered the rest with the women and children among the woods and mountains. Some of them returned to New England, and others took refuge in the Moravian towns on the Lehigh.
For six years after this no settlement was attempted. The Indians, anticipating revenge for the massacre, left the valley, which returned to its primeval beauty unpolluted by either race.
Meanwhile, the Penn family, proprietors of Pennsyl- vania, were anxious about the purchase at Albany. There was a feeling at that time that the title to land which a charter gave was not complete until the land had been purchased from the Indians. As a matter of strict law this was not so, for the only Indian title ever recognized was a mere title of occupancy,-that is to say, the right of the Indian to hunt game upon the land
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and build encampments. This sort of title was not con- sidered inconsistent with the ownership of the fee simple by a white man. The so-called title of the Indian was not really a title at all, but a mere lien or incumbrance, which could be discharged or not as the white man and the Indian might agree.
The Albany purchase was, therefore, not of any great importance, and did not affect the real merits of the question. The final decision of title as between Con- necticut and Pennsylvania was to be determined by the grants or charters from the British crown and not by any grants from Indians. Nevertheless, the Penn family felt bound to protect their title at every point, important or unimportant, Indian or British.
They had always taken care to secure themselves within their charter limits so far as possible. Some of the land they had purchased outright from the Indians, and on the rest they had bought what were then called pre-emptions and nowadays options. In these pre- emptions they had made a contract with the Indians that the Indians would never sell the lands to any one until they had first given the Penn family a chance to buy them. In 1736 they had bought from the Indians an option on all the territory in Pennsylvania which remained unpurchased, and this, of course, included the land which the Susquehanna Company bought at Albany in 1754. The Penns maintained that under this contract of pre-emption the Indians had no right to sell to the Susquehanna Company, and that the Albany deed and purchase were void.
It was very difficult to make the Indians understand the binding force of an option. They seldom had much
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hesitation in selling the same piece of property two or three times over to different persons. The vagueness of the authority lodged with different chiefs gave ample opportunity for some of them to say that they had never consented. Moreover, they had little or no conception of the absolute fee-simple title of the white man. Their only idea of title was a tenancy in common, and when they sold land they supposed that they were merely admitting the purchaser to the privilege of hunting on it along with themselves and any others to whom they had previously sold it. It was a common occurrence in colonial ejectment suits for both sides of the disputed title to show a grant from the same Indians.
The Albany purchase, by the Susquehanna Company, had been from the Six Nations of New York, who held the Pennsylvania tribes in vassalage. Connecticut had easily accomplished the purchase against the protests of the Pennsylvania representatives, because the Six Nations were displeased with the Penn family, who, in order to make assurance doubly sure, had been in the habit of taking deeds from the local and conquered tribes of Pennsylvania.
The legal way to have had the Albany purchase de- clared void was by an appeal to England, long and ex- pensive, subject to the contingencies of court favor and change of kings and administrations. William Penn had had enough of that in his boundary dispute with Lord Baltimore. The shorter way was to persuade the Six Nations to admit their mistake and give a new deed to the Penns.
Some of the chiefs were approached, invited to Phila- delphia, feasted, and flattered. The assistance of Sir
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William Johnson, who largely controlled the policy of the Six Nations, was obtained, and four of the chiefs went to Hartford and openly disclaimed the sale to the Susquehanna Company. Finally, as a result of all negotiations, the Six Nations, assembled in council at Fort Stanwix in 1768, gave a deed of the disputed land to the Penns.
Having fortified their Indian title, the Penn family now turned their attention to the much more serious ques- tion,-namely, the charter right of Connecticut to the land on her western way beyond New York. Every advantage was taken and every point attacked. For many years, until the final decision of Congress in 1782, the controversy raged, and no theory, argument, or fine-spun inference that the ingenuity of learned lawyers on either side could invent, was left untried. It is impossible in this chapter to go into all these details. The reader who is curious about them must be referred to the voluminous pages of Miner, to Governor Hoyt's able and learned " Brief of a Title in the Seventeen Town- ships," or to the arguments of Provost Smith and Ben- jamin Trumbull.
Most of the books and essays which have been written on this subject uphold the Connecticut title. It is an- other instance of the way in which Pennsylvania has allowed her history to be written by her opponents. Of all the volumes and pamphlets which constitute the material for a history of Wyoming, there is only the single essay by Provost Smith devoted to maintaining the Pennsylvania title.
The writers are usually either natives of Connecticut or natives of Wyoming, whose right to their homes and
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property is in some way related to the Connecticut claim. Miner, the author of the most important book, was a native of Connecticut, who moved to Wyoming and became a member of Congress. Although he was not a trained lawyer, his argument is the most astute and shrewd that has come down to us; and is so inter- mingled with romance and misfortune that the ordinary reader is easily captured. Hoyt's work was written when its author was Governor of Pennsylvania; and he frankly gives his reasons for maintaining the Connecti- cut side. His home was in Wilkesbarre on a lot "cer- tified" from the Connecticut title; and for his final resting-place he had another lot in the green cemetery at Forty Fort. "You will," he said, "be the more in- dulgent in my taking such views of the case as will enable me to believe these claims to be founded as well on strict law as on sound equity and in good morals."
Some of the points made on the Pennsylvania side are dismissed by the intelligent mind at a glance. These we must dispose of, so as to bring the question to its last analysis, and see the real strength of Pennsylvania's position.
For example, when it was said that the Connecticut charter ought not to be so construed as to extend to the Pacific, or to include the land in question, because of the immensity of the territory that would be embraced, it does not require a legal mind to detect the absurdity. , The question at issue was what a formal legal document actually was, and what title its words imported ; not what it might have been or ought to have been.
So also as to the argument that the grant all the way to the Pacific was the result of ignorance and a mistake ;
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geography at that time being little understood, and. Charles II. not aware that the distance from Hartford to the Pacific was three thousand miles.
It is true that in the early stages of American ex- ploration, the distance was not known, and there is a curious argument in an old book to the effect that as the distance from the Atlantic to the Alleghanies was about three hundred miles, so the distance from these moun- tains to the Pacific was probably about the same. But after Sir Francis Drake had circumnavigated the globe in 1589 and explored the coast of California, there were no more mistakes. When the Plymouth council re- signed their grant in 1635, they describe what was then called New England as extending " from sea to sea, being near about three thousand miles in length." This was long before the time of Charles II. He knew per- fectly well what he was doing so far as the Pacific Ocean was concerned. Others had done the same. The Massa- chusetts charter and several others extended " from sea to sea ;" and this was done for the express purpose of laying claim to as much land as possible, so as to strengthen the position of England in her contests with Spain and France.
There is also another of the Pennsylvania arguments which deserves some consideration, not because of its merit, but because it was often quoted, and a great lawyer, afterwards Lord Camden, partly relied on it in the opinion he wrote for the Penn family.
There was always a boundary line dispute between the Connecticut colonies and the Dutch in New York, and for a long time no permanent decision could be reached. Soon after 1662, when New Haven and Connecticut were
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consolidated, and the exact size of their territory was fixed by their charter, the Dutch were conquered by the English and driven out of New York. Immediately after this, on the 12th day of March, 1664, Charles II. gave all the Dutch territory to his brother, the Duke of York, afterwards James II. With characteristic prodi- gality and recklessness, he included in the gift to his brother all the territory between the Connecticut and Delaware Rivers, which of course covered a large part of the land he had given to Connecticut only two years before.
The exact boundary line between Connecticut and New York was thus made still more difficult to settle. Charles, however, sent over royal commissioners with full power to adjust the absurdity he had deliberately created. They met the agents of Connecticut, transacted their business rapidly, and decided that Long Island should belong to New York, and that the Connecticut line should begin at the mouth of Mamaroneck Creek where it falls into the Sound, and extend northwestward to the line of Massachusetts. This restored the lost territory to Connecticut, and was very near to the boun- dary as it now stands. But the important words of the decision in the eyes of the Penn family were those that said that this line should be "the western bounds of the said colony of Connecticut."
Soon after, New York again fell into the hands of the Dutch, and remained with them until 1674, when a treaty of peace restored it to the British Crown. A new charter was issued to the Duke of York, containing pre- cisely the same boundaries as before, and taking away precisely the same amount of territory from Connecticut.
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The old dispute was renewed, and was finally settled by agreement, without the aid of royal commissioners, between Connecticut and New York. This agreement fixed the line where it now is, not far from the royal commissioners' line, which started from the mouth of the Mamaroneck.
The Penns argued that Connecticut having agreed to both of these boundary settlements, and both boundaries being described as the western bounds of the colony of Connecticut, she was ever afterwards precluded from laying claim to any land to the westward, for she had expressly, and by her own words and admissions, relin- quished all such rights. Lord Camden supported them in this, and said "the settlement of the new boundary under the king's commission in 1664, and, what is still stronger, the new line marked out by agreement between the province and New York, has now conclusively pre- cluded Connecticut from advancing one foot beyond those limits." And he goes on to argue that these admissions on the part of Connecticut took place before Penn's charter was given, and therefore released the land west of New York from the Connecticut claim, and laid it open to be included in the Penn charter.
But so far as technical law is concerned, his lordship is now generally believed to have been wrong. The royal commission boundary and the agreement boundary were adjustments of a dispute between Connecticut and New York, not between Connecticut and Pennsylvania. The land west of New York was not mentioned, and at the time of the royal commission was not supposed to be in dispute. The question of the western lands was not raised in either case. The royal commissioners were
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not given authority to decide that question, nor were the representatives of Connecticut who arranged the agreement boundary given authority to decide it. In fact, neither the commissioners nor the representatives knew of such a question. It did not exist at that time, and had never been thought of or mentioned. There is no principle of law more firmly settled than that a tri- bunal is strictly bound by the authority given to it, and can decide only the cases that are brought before it. Another principle is also equally well settled, that an agent cannot exceed his authority, and that all acts in excess of his authority are void, and the agents of Con- necticut certainly had no authority to agree to anything about the western lands which were within the charter limits beyond New York.
The argument on the Connecticut side is a very simple one, and consists principally of the statement that the king, having given the land in question to Connecti- cut, could not, eighteen years afterwards, take it away from her and give it to Pennsylvania. This brings us to the important point of the controversy. What was the rule of law governing grants of the Crown in the time of Charles II., and were such grants governed by the same law which applies to grants and conveyances between private individuals ?
If the grant by the king to Connecticut is to be treated as if it were an ordinary conveyance of land between individuals, then unquestionably the Connecticut title to the upper half of Pennsylvania was perfect. A man who has sold and conveyed a piece of land to a certain person cannot afterwards sell the same land and the same title to another. This was the position Connecticut always
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assumed. She relied on the ordinary rules of law, which were familiar to every one who had ever bought or sold real estate.
But did these rules apply to grants by the British Crown in the time of Charles II .? And would they apply even now to similar grants by the British Parliament, which has succeeded to the power once held by the king ? We are in this country so accustomed to a government of lim- ited powers, whose acts are controlled by technical rules like the acts of a private individual, that we are apt to forget that the English Constitution is, and always has been, a very different one from ours. In England the whole power of the nation is lodged in Parliament, which is omnipotent, does what it pleases, guided only by cer- tain customs changing from time to time, and called the English Constitution.
In the time of Charles II. the Crown had many rights which have now been given over to Parliament, among others the right to create corporations and grant away the public domain. This right the king exercised ab- solutely, just as Parliament now exercises it absolutely. Parliament could now grant away a tract of the public do- main to an individual or corporation, and some years after take back part of it and grant it to some other individual or corporation. Such action might be unjust or unfair or bad policy ; but Parliament, being omnipotent and representing the whole authority of the English people, would have the right to do it. The act, so far as law is concerned, would be perfectly legal, and the courts would have to uphold it.
Charles II., in his time, had this absolute legal right, and he constantly exercised it and abused it. We have
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already seen him giving a large tract of land to his brother, the Duke of York, only two years after he had solemnly given it to Connecticut. He did very much the same thing in Virginia, making large grants to favorites, and causing the insurrection in that colony known as Bacon's Rebellion. In fact, so far as con- cerned selling the same piece of land twice to different persons, Charles II. was no better than an Indian.
But no matter what we may think of his wisdom or foolishness in such things, there is no question about the legality of his acts. They were regarded as legal by the people of that time; and those who were injured by them, instead of appealing to a court to have them de- clared void, appealed to the king himself to change his action and correct the mischief by a fresh grant.
The Virginians did not complain of the granting away of their land by Charles II. as illegal, but as cruel and unjust. They did not appeal to courts to have the grants declared void, but they sent commissioners to England to buy off the noblemen to whom the grants had been given, or to persuade the king to revoke the grants. We have already seen how Charles II. corrected the injury done to Connecticut by his grant to the Duke of York. He appointed commissioners to meet the agents of Connecticut and settle the question. To those com- missioners he delegated a part of his sovereign authority to correct or affirm what he had done; and they restored to Connecticut the land which the king had unfairly and unjustly, but not illegally, given to the duke.
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