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 5
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Pennsylvania in colonial days was an impossible place
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Quaker Traits
for such a man. He went to study in Italy, and finally settled in England, where he became one of the founders of the Royal Academy, and was afterwards its president, succeeding Sir Joshua Reynolds. His pictures were mostly of the classical and historical type. Many of them, such as the Death of Wolfe, the Prodigal Son, Hector and Andromache, are still copied, and his place in art is a permanent one.
General Greene, of the Revolution, drove the British from the South, and in ability was second only to Wash- ington. Unlike West and Whittier, he dropped his sect entirely when he joined the army. Mifflin was a Penn- sylvanian born and bred, and a very distinguished sol- dier. He commanded the best-disciplined brigade in the Continental army, was governor of the State, and had a long and successful career in politics.
There were also two other very prominent Quakers in colonial Pennsylvania, James Logan and John Dickinson. Logan was a rare instance of a Scotch-Irishman turned Quaker. He had a strong character, combined with scholarly and cultivated tastes. In his early life, being deeply tinged with religious thought, he acquired an undue contempt for money and material things. But afterwards, becoming more balanced, he devoted himself to the commercial ventures in which Philadelphia gave so many opportunities, and acquired a fortune.
He was a lover of books, and founded the Loganian Library, which became part of the Philadelphia Library founded by Franklin. Like many of his fellow-colo- nists, he dabbled in scientific pursuits, and encouraged such pursuits in others. His quiet tastes and delicacy of feeling were undoubtedly of Quaker origin.
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But the Scotch-Irishman in him would not down. He believed in war, and advocated it openly and boldly in the teeth of the protests of his sect, and yet was never cut off from meeting. He was secretary of the province, and represented the interests of the proprietors pretty much all his life. It was a stormy career for him. He was continually attacked by the popular party, and at one time had to endure an impeachment trial. He was always supremely indifferent to attacks and abuse, a trait which by some was attributed to strength of mind, and by others, to haughty arrogance. He was surly and morose at times in his old age, which was also a charac- teristic of Dickinson. Not a few of the Quakers, in the height of their power, were affected with some of the severe qualities which come of pride and success.
Dickinson was a lawyer, the author of the famous Farmer's Letters which had so much influence in the early part of the movement for independence. Like Logan, he believed in war, was colonel of a regiment, and fought at the battle of the Brandywine. He had a long career in Pennsylvania politics, as well as in national politics, and he largely controlled the destinies of the continent up to the Declaration of Independence. But he belonged to the conservative party, believed the Dec- laration to be premature, and his reputation has suffered.
All these men-Penn, Bright, West, Whittier, Greene, Mifflin, Logan, and Dickinson-were excellent citizens, of exemplary lives and valuable influence. They seem to have combined what was best in their faith with what was best in the world, and to have escaped what was narrow in both.
Bayard Taylor was also partly of Quaker origin, and
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has left some interesting accounts of his struggles with the limitations of the sect in his Pennsylvania home. His ancestors were both Quaker and German, and, though his family had been dismissed from the society for the unpardonable offence of marrying out of meeting, his mother had had a great fondness for the Quaker belief, and taught it to her children.
Taylor grew up under Quaker influences, not only in his own home, but among his neighbors at Kennett Square. He always retained an affection for these as- sociations, and even in mature years his letters were often written in the thee and thou language. But he reacted strongly from the narrowness of his surroundings. The story is told of his boyhood, that, having listened for a long time to interminable doctrine on the evils of oaths, both judicial and profane, he went out into a field, and, having delivered himself of all the swearing he could remember or invent, came back with his mind relieved. He sought delight in endless travel. His best poems were oriental, and the scenes he loved best were in the East, probably because its light, and passion, and color were the furthest remove he could find from the negations at Kennett Square. A large part of his Home Pastorals is an expression of the struggle between affection for his old home and revolt from its repression.
" Right and left are the homes of the slow, conservative farmers, Loyal people and true, but, now that the battles are over, Zealous for temperance, peace, and the right of suffrage for women, Orderly, moral, are they-at least in the sense of suppression ; Given to preaching of rules, inflexible outlines of duty ; Seeing the sternness of life, but, alas ! overlooking its graces.
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Nay, but let me be just, nor speak with the alien language Born of my blood ; for, cradled among them, I know them and love them. Was it my fault if a strain of the distant and dead generations Rose in my being renewed, and made me other than these are ?"
West and Whittier always remained Quakers, and apparently suffered little or no sense of repression. But if the Quakers had anything to do with making Taylor a poet, it must have been by process of reaction. The process was quite effective, however, for it is impossible to read his life and works without seeing that his whole nature was thoroughly poetic. His prose was poetry, and his travels attained their large popularity princi- pally because they were written from the point of view of a poet.
The Quakers have played a great part in the world, and the decline and drying up of their sect in the present century is much to be deplored. Various causes have been given for it. In Pennsylvania the decay was hastened by certain political changes which drove them from power at the time of the Revolution.
But the general decline among them in all countries has usually been attributed to some of their peculiar rules of discipline, and also to the increase of wealth, - which has, perhaps, been the strongest cause of all. They have been so thrifty, and such careful men of business, that most of them made fortunes. Now, it is impossible for a Quaker to obey the discipline of his meeting and at the same time spend a large income, unless he gives it all away in charity. He is allowed nothing else to spend it on. The consequence has been, that as Quaker families grew rich the sons and daughters were continually tempted to expand, at first in the direction
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of innocent little articles of clothes or innocent little amusements. But one thing led to another until, with increasing wealth and increasing knowledge of the world, the family suddenly found itself outside of meeting and gradually joined the Episcopalians.
The Quakers held their own in Pennsylvania for some years after the Revolution. But in the last sixty years they seem to have been disappearing. Whole districts of Philadelphia which were once entirely populated by them now contain scarcely any. Instead of being the strongest sect in Philadelphia and the adjoining counties, they are now in many respects the weakest.
Their disappearance from public life and influence after the Revolution changed the character of the city, and not for the better. It is only within the last twenty years that it has begun to recover from the effects of the retire- ment of the people who created its early reputation. It is now rapidly coming under new influences, and its future will be built on lines somewhat different from those of its past.
It will be a long time, however, before all the results of the Quaker dominion disappear. Their numbers may be fewer, but their influence is still potent, and many of their ideas have been unconsciously adopted by the people of other religions, among whom they have been living so closely for two hundred years. It is not easy to tell their exact condition and numbers. So many of them have given up the distinctive dress, and they are so retiring in their habits, that their existence is not very clearly marked. If we count only those who are plain Quakers of the old type, their numbers would be few. But if we add those who are part Episcopalian and part
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Quaker, and those who may be called liberal Quakers, the Quaker influence still remains rather large in some respects.
It is sometimes said that the Quakers as a sect will soon be extinct, but this assertion is not supported by any definite facts or statistics. In the West they are said to be increasing, and apparently because they are willing to adopt more modern methods of worship. It is diffi- cult to discover their numbers, and some of the estimates are mere guesses. Some authorities give the number of them in England, about the year 1700, at one hundred
thousand. Other authorities put it at fifty or sixty thousand. At that time the population of Great Britain was about five or six million. Since then they have diminished rapidly, and in 1800 are said to have num- bered only twenty thousand, and now only fifteen thou- sand.
In America they have had better success, and, counting all the divisions-Orthodox, Hicksites, and Wilburites- are now estimated at about one hundred and fifty thou- sand. This is probably too high. But if it is anywhere near the truth, it shows that in this country they have about held their own for the last hundred years, without either much gain or much loss. If the number one hundred and fifty thousand is correct, it would show a slight gain.
But when we consider the enormous growth of America in population, and the great increase in the numbers of other sects, it is easy to see that the Quakers have lost relatively and have made no real progress. In a country which has often doubled its population in thirty years, and where sects often double their numbers, to stand
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still is to lose. It will, however, be a long time before they are extinct, or anywhere near that condition, and it is safe to say that the man has not yet been born who will live to see the last of them .*
* Janney's History of the Quakers; Clarkson's Portraiture; Gurney's Observations ; Barclay's Apology ; Works of Penn; Marsh's Life of Fox; Turner's Quakers.
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CHAPTER IV.
THE GERMANS.
THE Quakers were obliged to share Pennsylvania with a large number of Germans, who constituted that impor- tant body of the population still known as the Pennsyl- vania Dutch. This was the first appearance of Germans on the American continent. The struggle for the pos- session of the New World, which began soon after the first voyage of Columbus, had been confined to the Spanish, Portuguese, French, Dutch, Swedes, and English. The Germans, distracted by their own political divisions, took no part in the contest, and seemed to have no desire for colonization. They finally appeared in Pennsylvania half a century after most of the English colonies had been established, but they came as immigrants under the protection of the English nation, at first by the en- couragement and persuasion of the Quakers, and after- wards by the encouragement of the British government .;
The German element has been variously estimated as composing from one-third to one-half the population of Pennsylvania, and has unquestionably had a great in- fluence on the development of our State. Whether that influence has been beneficial or injurious to our progress and highest interests is a question still debated among Pennsylvanians, and not likely to be settled in a way that will satisfy every one.
Some are of the opinion that where the Germans have
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The Germans
freely mixed and intermarried with the other elements of the population an excellent stock of people has been produced, but that unfortunately this intermixture has been of comparatively small extent. The great majority of the Germans have lived together in masses, with little or no intermarriage with other elements, and this isola- tion, combined with their slowness, their opposition to the public school system, and their retaining their lan- guage and customs, has checked the advancement of the State, which should be the first, instead of the second, in the Union. Others, however, have seen, in their thrift, steadiness, and love of liberty, the source not only of all that is great in the State, but of a large part of the great- ness of the nation.
They are usually described as consisting of two main divisions, the sects and the church people. The sects arrived first, some of them as soon as the Quakers, and were made up of the Mennonites, Tunkers, Schwenk- felders, and others. The church people who came in a little later belonged to the two regular churches of Germany, the Reformed and the Lutheran.
The religious belief of the sects was the result of the same general causes which had produced the Quakers. The most prominent of them, and the first to arrive in the colony, were the Mennonites, or Mennists, a sect whose origin has been disputed. According to their own account they were the descendants of the Waldenses, those ancient heretics who had existed from time imme- morial, who denied infant baptism and were guilty of many more supposed errors which afterwards cropped out in the Reformation. Others, however, have described the Mennonites as the descendants of the Anabaptists,
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who committed such violence and excess in the begin- ning of the sixteenth century.
The Mennonites undoubtedly held beliefs which were common to both the Waldenses and the Anabaptists. As they had none of the Anabaptist love of riot and disorder, it was said that they were the Anabaptists quieted and reformed. Very likely many people who had been among the old Anabaptists finally found them- selves with the Mennonites, and probably some who werejWaldenses, or whose ancestors had been Waldenses, were also with them. But the general cause of their ex- istence was the same which created the Quakers, namely, the reaction against dogma, and probably most of them were recruited from the Roman Catholics and the Lu- therans.
Their leader, Menno Simons, by whose name they were called, had been a Roman priest, and he first or- ganized them about the year 1540. They resembled the Quakers in almost every respect, except that they had less quietism. They believed in the inward light, and that since the coming of Christ it had reached every man in the world, heathen as well as Christian. They were opposed to war and to oaths, and would take no part in government. They were opposed to a hireling ministry, premeditated sermons, and high education, and also to infant baptism. Ideas of this sort were floating about Europe all through the period of the Reformation, and every now and then some strong, earnest man was inspired by them and built up a sect. Thus Menno Simons made the Mennonites, and a hundred years afterwards George Fox, from the same ideas, made the Quakers.
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The Mennonites held very much the same opinions as the early Quakers on the doctrine of the Trinity, but they went not so far as the Quakers in abolishing sacraments. They retained baptism, applying it only to adults, and they retained the sacrament of the com- munion. They added another sacrament of their own, which consisted in washing each other's feet, and this they held was commanded by the Scriptures even more positively than the communion.
They were not quite so far advanced in the Reforma- tion movement as the Quakers, for the reason that they were a hundred years older. But the two sects were so nearly alike that they always fraternized, preached in each other's meetings, and the Mennonites were often called German Quakers. In one respect they seem to have been somewhat in advance of the Quakers. They were the first people in Pennsylvania and the first people in America to suggest the abolition of negro slavery. In 1688 some of them who were living in Germantown sent a petition to that effect to the Quakers, who after- wards adopted the idea and became famous for the ad- vocacy of it. The petition is full of quaint and curious expressions, especially one paragraph.
" If once these slaves (wch they say are so wicked and stubborn men) should joint themselves, fight for their freedom and handel their masters & mastrisses, as they did handel them before; will these masters and mastrisses tacke the sword at hand & warr against these poor slaves, licke we are able to believe, some will not refuse to doe ? Or have these negers not as much right to fight for their freedom, as you have to keep them slaves?"
The signers of this petition, who certainly deserve re- membrance, were Gerret Hendricks, Derick Op de Graff,
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Francis Daniel Pastorius, Abraham Op den Graef, all Germans or Hollanders. They are often spoken of as Quakers. Whittier treats them as such in his Pennsyl- vania Pilgrim, and possibly they were as much Quaker as Mennonite. Many of the German Mennonites, espe- cially those who adopted English ways, became Quakers, and several prominent Quaker families in Philadelphia and other parts of the State are of German descent.
Throughout the greater part of the seventeenth cen- tury, before Pennsylvania was founded, the Mennonites and other German sects were fiercely persecuted by both Protestant and Catholic. In Germany they were hunted down by the Catholics, Lutherans, and Reformed, and in Switzerland by the Calvinists. They were constantly on the move from place to place, hiding in the mountains or the depths of the cities, or escaping to Holland, England, or America. Having refused to become the church militant, as was aptly said of them, they became the church migratory.
Long before William Penn received his charter, Gus- tavus Adolphus of Sweden is said to have invited the Mennonites to seek an asylum on the Delaware. His call seems to have been but little heeded, except by a small company of about twenty-five, who settled at Whorekill, on Delaware Bay, in 1662, where they were scattered and destroyed by the English two years after- wards, when the country was taken from the Dutch. The leader of the colony and his wife escaped, and after many years' wanderings in the wilderness came to Ger- mantown, where they were cared for and given a home for the rest of their lives.
The important Mennonite immigation began to arrive
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about the same time as the Quakers in 1682 or 1683, and was directly encouraged by William Penn. They went out to the beginning of the high land between the Delaware and the Schuylkill, about six miles north of Philadelphia, and founded Germantown, now a suburb of the city.
The most prominent man among them, and their leader, was Francis Daniel Pastorius, a school-master, who taught at Germantown, and also among the Quakers in Philadelphia. Like others of his nation, he had a prodigious capacity for absorbing all sorts of knowledge, was master of seven or eight languages, and well read in science and philosophy. At the age of twenty-two he is said to have disputed in public in several of these lan- guages on science and law. He familiarized himself with questions of international importance, studied juris- prudence at Strasburg, Basle, and Jena, and was for a time a law lecturer at Frankfort.
But the absorption of all this knowledge was not enough for his German enthusiasm. He sought other scenes and amusements, and in company with a friend wandered for two years all over Europe, "feasting and dancing," as he tells us. Perhaps in the course of these journeyings he may have been seen, as we sometimes now see young Germans, roaming through Switzerland, staff in hand, knapsack on back, and pipe in mouth.
He was an enthusiast, ready for anything, and, as might have been expected, he was soon caught in one of the innumerable religious movements of his country. While lecturing on law at Frankfort he came under the mystic teachings of Spener, the leader of the pietists. The young and beautiful Eleanora Von Merlau was also
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of that faith, and added the mysticism of womanhood to the mysticism of religion. Such influences have sub- dued stronger men than the feasting, dancing young German, and the rest of his life was more serious. He came to America out of enthusiasm and sympathy for his fellow-countrymen, well content to begin life in a log- hut, to teach the children, and fill his garden with bees and flowers. This aspect of his character has been beau- tifully described by Whittier.
" So, with his mystic neighbors settling down, The homespun frock beside the scholar's gown, Pastorius to the manners of the town
"Added the freedom of the woods, and sought The bookless wisdom by experience taught, And learned to love his new-found home, while not
" Forgetful of the old; the seasons went Their rounds; and somewhat to his spirit lent Of their own calm and measureless content."
Eleanora Von Merlau, her husband, Johann Wilhelm Petersen, and several other learned people, interested in the pietist movement in Germany, intended to settle in Pennsylvania. They formed a company called the Frank- fort Company, and bought from William Penn twenty- five thousand acres of land, which included the present site of Germantown. They sent out Pastorius, as their attorney and agent, with a selected company of weavers and farmers, intending soon to follow him. They never came, however, which was a great disappointment to him, and after managing the affairs of the company for seventeen years, he gave it up in disgust. It fell into bad hands, and was soon involved in troublesome litigation.
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Pastorius continued to live his quiet life in German- , town, and was probably a very pleasant and genial sort of man, although some of his pupils have given him the reputation of being somewhat addicted to the rod. ; Many pretty and homely traditions are connected with . his life. When he first arrived in Philadelphia, and before he established himself in Germantown, he lived for a time, like many of the Quakers, in a sort of half hut, half cave, on the steep bank of the Delaware, probably near the present Chestnut Street Wharf. Over the door of this abode he placed a motto, "Parva domus, sed amica bonis, procul este profani," which gave Penn much amusement when he first visited the colony.
In Germantown, however, he built himself a sub- stantial stone house. He wrote punning Latin verses, one or two books of little importance that were published, and an unpublished manuscript of a thousand pages, full of philosophy and fancy, bees and flowers, and composed in the seven languages of which he was the master. He was a bailiff of Germantown, and represented it for two years in the Assembly. He had the good sense to recommend his children to study English, a piece of advice which his countrymen were not in the habit of giving. Whittier has pictured him in his garden musing over the rejection of the petition for the abolition of ilavery.
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" He ceased, and, bound in spirit with the bound, With folded arms and eyes that sought the ground, Walked musingly his little garden round.
" About him, beaded with the falling dew, Rare plants of power and herbs of healing grew, Such as Van Helmont and Agrippa knew.
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" For, by the lore of Gorlitz' gentle sage, With the mild mystics of his dreamy age, He read the herbal signs of nature's page.
" As once he heard in sweet Von Merlau's bowers, Fair as herself, in boyhood's happy hours, The pious Spener read his creed in flowers."
Some of the Germans who came with the Mennonites were called Pietists. Pietism was the name for a school of religious thought established by Spener, which pre- vailed more or less among the Lutherans, the Reformed, and pretty much all the religious divisions of Germany. It is difficult to describe, because it assumed so many forms. In the main it was part of the reaction against dogma. Its adherents were opposed to all rigid systems of theology, and devoted themselves to moral perfection. At times it was mystic. In some of its forms it cor- responded to what is known among us as evangelical Christianity, and it also seems to have contained some- thing of the idea, carried to an extreme by the English Methodists, that religion must consist exclusively of an individual experience of each soul.
The Pietists are sometimes described as an offshoot from the Lutherans, and in this sense they may be said to have been composed of those who carried pietism to an extreme and separated from the regular Lutheran body, leaving in it a party who were moderate Pietists. Appar- ently, only a few who were distinctly known as Pietists came to Pennsylvania, but pietism in some form or other prevailed among most of the sects and church people.
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