USA > Pennsylvania > Philadelphia County > Philadelphia > Warwick's Keystone commonwealth; a review of the history of the great state of Pennsylvania, and a brief record of the growth of its chief city, Philadelphia > Part 11
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In his early days, eager for information and mental development, he estab- lished what avas called "The Junto," a debating club which met at taverns or at the homes of the members once a week. Among the members of this associa- tion was Thomas Godfrey who invented an instrument by which a ship's lati- tude and longitude at sea could be fixed, and which great invention was sub- sequently stolen by a man named Hadley, an instrument maker in London and sold under the name of Hadley's Quadrant. These young mien, members of "The Junto," considered almost every question of the day, political, scientific, literary and educational and from their efforts came the Philadelphia Library,
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in 1731. Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Hopkinson, William Parsons, Philip Syng, Jr., Thomas Godfrey, Anthony Nicholas, Thomas Cadwalader, John Jones, Jr., Robert Grace and Isaac Pendleton were elected Directors. The beginning was a very humble one, for books they secured were lodged in the house of one of the members, Mr. Robert Grace, and they remained there until other quarters could be found. "This," declared Franklin, "is the mother of all the North American subscription libraries."
Another institution with which he was prominently connected was the
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. From a rare print presented to the Franklin National Bank by Samuel T. Bodine.
American Philosophical Society. It was the result of a circular published by . Franklin, entitled, "A Proposal for the Promoting Useful Knowledge among the British Plantations in America." The society was to extend throughout all the colonies, and they were to correspond with each other.
Franklin, too, was mainly instrumental in having chartered the College, Academy and Charitable school of Philadelphia, which subsequently became the University of Pennsylvania. He also forwarded the institution known as the Pennsylvania Hospital, which was chartered in 1751. In fact, as we read the history of the past, there seems to have been nothing of importance in those days in which he did not take a leading part. The paving of the side-
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walks, the lighting of the streets, the organization of a fire brigade, the mstal- lation of a useful nightwatch, all were promoted by him. Before his arrival houses were cold until he gave them stoves, and chimneys smoked until he suggested a method of relief. From the garret where, as a boy, he read and studied, from the shop where he dipped candles and set wicks, to the royal salon at Versailles, where he bore with simple dignity the office of ambassador of the new republic, he was the same in his simplicity of character. With the eye of a sage, he looked into the world quite through the thoughts of mien, studied their motives and fathomed their purposes. Unspoiled by flattery, no eminence made him dizzy, no success made him haughty, no disappointment depressed him. He was not deeply learned, for he had had no early educational advantages, but he was a practical man with good common sense, not a poet, not an orator, but possessed of a natural wisdom that was greater even than the gift of genius. He always kept his head, he seems never to have lost his balance.
His literary style was expressive, lucid and simple. "It has," says Lord Jeffrey, "all the vigor and even conciseness of Swift without any of his harsh- ness. It is in no degree more flowery, yet both elegant and lively." So great a master was he of pure English, that when the question of selecting a member of the Congress to write the Declaration of Independence was considered, he might have been chosen instead of Jefferson to pen that immortal document had it not been for the fact that the staid and serious old Puritan, John Adams, opposed his selection for fear he would insert one of his jokes or bits of humor. Although witty, he was not a trifler, for, like Lincoln, his wit was always in season, and was used "to point a moral or adorn a tale." After the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Charles Carroll of Carrollton, seriously re- marked, "We must all hang together." "Yes," said Franklin in sombre jest. "if we do not, we shall all hang separately."
During the French and Indian war, when the convention of the colonies was to be held at Albany to consider means for common defence, he published in the Pennsylvania Gazette, a cartoon representing a snake cut into pieces, each piece representing a colony, over which were written the words "Unite or Die." This did more to create a sentiment of union among the colonists than half a hundred wordy and frantic appeals. He could express a truth in epi- grammatic form and it became an axiom or life lesson. llis proverbs were short, vivid texts. They were the truth expressed in simple phrase. He could compress his thought into the smallest possible compass, but the compression, instead of making the meaning dim or obscure, only simplified and illumined it. "Poor Richard's Almanac" was filled with wise sayings and although it is said by his detractors that many of them were ancient saws and taken from foreign sources without acknowledgment, it will be admitted, after a close comparison, that his sayings were simpler and wiser than even those of the writers or sages who originally suggested them. To be sure they were jewels when he found them, but he gave them a recutting and a new setting, and they shone with greater beauty and brilliancy. Poor Richard's sayings became as current as the coin of the realm, and were adopted as rules of life. What can be more suggestive or so easily understood as "Sloth eats more than rust," "A
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fat kitchen, a lean will," "A plowman on his legs is higher than a gentleman on his knees," "The eye of a master can do more than both his hands," "Plow deep while sluggards sleep." In a flash more meaning is conveyed than in a pon- derous sermon. "Poor Richard's Almanac" was found in the cottage of the plowman as well as in the boudoir of the lady of fashion. It became a house- hold book, and gave information on all practical subjects, from the relief of the toothache to the prognostication of the weather. There was not a farm- house in the province where the almanac could not be found hanging at the chimney place ready for consultation as to the proper time and conditions for the plowing of the land, the sowing of the seed and the cutting of the grain.
Franklin's arrival in France during the American Revolution, created the greatest enthusiasm among that sensation-loving people. As the ambassador of the young republic, he was most warmly and enthusiastically received. The door of every fashionable and literary salon was thrown open, and his recep- tion at Court was most cordial. He was made a member of the learned and scientific societies of the kingdom. He was feted, feasted and toasted and his name became a household word throughout all France. "His name," says John Adams, "was familiar to government and people, king and courtiers, no- bility, clergy and philosophers as well as to plebeians, to such a degree that there was scarcely a peasant, or a citizen, or valet de chambre, a coachman or footman, a ladies' chambermaid or a scullion in the kitchen who was not famil- iar with it and who did not consider him a friend to human kind." He seemed to the Parisians like an old philosopher who had stepped out of the history of the past, his heavy shoes, his iron-rimmed spectacles, his homely, rusty brown snit and his long hair falling upon his shoulders made his appearance striking and picturesque, and he never appeared upon the streets of Paris that he was not treated with regard and respect. The great philosopher, Auguste Comte, in his enthusiastic admiration declared that, "If he had been living when Franklin was in Paris, he would have followed him through the streets and kissed the hem of his home-spun overcoat made by Deborah." It was mainly through his efforts that France was secured as an ally for the American colonies, in the War of Independence. Franklin was not what may be termed a religious man. He was not a sectarian in any sense of the word. His faith was not circumscribed by any creed and if the truth be told, his mind was much tinctured by the writings and teachings of the French philoso- phers, but it must not be forgotten that he introduced a motion for daily pray- ers in the Constitutional Convention of 1787, saying: "I have lived a long time and the longer I live the more convincing proofs I see of this truth, that God governs in the affairs of men, and if a sparrow cannot fall without His notice, is it probable an empire can rise without His aid?"
We have given but a brief sketch of this remarkable man, who made so deep an impression upon his times and especially upon the growth and development of his adopted city. A man to have risen, by his own exertions, from so humble a sta- tion must necessarily have had great qualities of mind and heart and present day detraction cannot deprive him of the honors he won. We have traced his career briefly from the humblest beginnings until he became recognized as one of the lead- ing diplomats and statesmen of his time. This poor lad, a mere waif, who came to
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a strange city without money, friends or influence, rose to such distinction that when he died his body was carried to the tomb with every honor a sorrow- ing people could show and with that reverence that only real merit wins. The Governor and the Chief Justice of Pennsylvania were among the pall-bearers, all the officers of the government, National, State and Municipal, followed his body to the grave, and twenty thousand of the common people, from whom he sprang and whose interests were dear to hiim at all times, attended and wit- nessed the ceremony of his burial. Learned men the wide world over, paid honor to his memory and when the sad news of his death was announced in the National Assembly of France, the Abbe Sieyes, President of the body, was instructed to address a letter of condolence to the Congress of the United States, and Mirabeau, ascending the Tribune, pronounced the following beautiful eulo- gium: "Franklin is dead. Returned unto the bosom of the Divinity is that genius who freed America and rayed forth upon Europe torrents of light. The sage whom the two worlds alike claim-the man for whom the history of science and the history of empires are disputing, held beyond doubt an elevated rank in the human species. For long enough have political cabinets notified the death of those who were only great in their funeral orations, for long enough has court etiquette proclaimed hypocritical mourning. Nations should only wear mourning for their benefactors. Representatives of nations ought only recommend to their homage the heroes of humanity.
"The Congress has ordained in the fourteen states of the Confederation a mourning of two months for the death of Franklin, and America is acquit- ting at this very moment that tribute of veneration for one of the Fathers of her Constitution. Would it not be worthy of us to join in that religious act? * *
* Antiquity would have raised altars to that vast and powerful * genius who for the advantage of mortals, embracing in his aspirations heaven and earth, knew how to tame tyrants and their thunderbolts. France, enlight- ened and free, owes at the least an expression of remembrance and regret for one of the greatest men that have ever aided philosophy and liberty.
"I propose that it be decreed that the National Assembly wears mourn- ing for three days for Benjamin Franklin."
CHAPTER VIII.
THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WARS.
T THE struggle between France and England to secure supremacy in America and India involved the whole Continent of Europe in a war that lasted for seventy years and upwards and may be said to have been waged in every quarter of the globe. "Black men fought on the coast of Coromandel and red men scalped each other by the great lakes of North America." In the New World, it was known as the French and In- dian War, and extended, with intervals of peace, from 1689 to 1763.
While the English colonists had been getting a firm hold in North America from Maine to Georgia, the French were strongly entrenching themselves in Canada and the neighborhood of the headwaters of the St. Lawrence, and at the same time were making an effort to secure possession of the great valley of the Mississippi. When they attempted to move south from the Canadian line, however, the English colonists objected, contending that they were en- croaching upon their territory-territory which had been deeded to them by a treaty with the Iroquois who claimed to be the owners of the valley, they hav- ing secured their title from the western Indian tribes. Further than this, the English claimed the right of possession because of their grants from the Crown, their title extending from ocean to ocean, but at this time little was known by English explorers of the vast extent and resources of the western part of the continent. In fact the French explorations had been conducted on a grander and more extensive scale than those of the English, in so far as the great basin of the Mississippi was concerned.
In 1673, Joliet, an adventurous fur trader, and Father Marquette, a Jesuit priest, started forth to discover and navigate the Mississippi, which great body of water the Indians had informed them, lay west of Lake Michigan. Em- barking in birch bark canoes, the hardy pioneers paddled slowly up the Fox river to a place called Portage, which today is known as Portage City. Here they were compelled to carry their canoes overland for a distance of about two miles from Fox River to the Wisconsin. Upon reaching the latter stream, they again embarked in their canoes and were borne by the current until it floated them out on the broad and majestic bosom of the upper Mississippi, which at this point extended from shore to shore a distance of two miles. En- chanted by the view and jubilant over the discovery they had made, they bravely launched their canoes and started south. They found the river lined by un- broken wildernesses, except where they came into spaces that were great open prairies. Onward they floated with the current, past the Missouri and the Ohio rivers, and reached the spot where De Soto had crossed the Mississippi one hundred years before. Not resting here any length of time, however, they pushed on and at last reached the Arkansas River, where they had a conference with a tribe of friendly Indians who warned them that it would be most peril-
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ous to proceed further south because of the hostile attitude of the red men in that locality. Up to this point it had been easy work to float with the current, but when they turned back they were compelled to battle against the stream. Day after day passed and they made but comparatively little progress and un- derwent many privations, but they had been sufficiently rewarded for all their labors and the hardships they had undergone by the great discovery they had made. Upon reaching their friends, they made known to them in glowing terms the beauty and magnificence of this great stream running through the whole width of the continent. To be sure they had not reached the mouth of the river, as it originally was their intention to do, but they had gone far enough to be impressed with the importance of the river and the possibilities in the development of the new country.
Six years later than this, that is in 1679, LaSalle, another great French explorer, set out to explore the great valley and after three attempts he was successful in reaching the Gulf, where he set up a wooden cross and claimed the land in the name of the king, and in honor of Louis XIV., called it Louisi- ana.
All this time the English had been content with developing their settle- ments in the east. It seems never to have occurred to them how vast were the resources and possibilities of the great country towards the west. The French had been industrious in erecting a line of forts which were to be used in the defence of their possessions. These extended almost from the Lakes to the Gulf itself, but the English colonists, waking up to a realization of what oppor- tunities they had lost, endeavored to reclaim the lands, which had been taken from them.
In the first war, which lasted for eight years, the French and the Indians at- tacked the colonists in the neighborhood of the Hudson. Marching secretly from Montreal in midwinter, they fell suddenly on the little village of Schenec- tady, in New York, at midnight, destroyed it by fire and massacred most of the inhabitants. A similar attack was made on Haverhill, in Massachusetts, but not with like success.
Then followed a long interval of peace, when the second war began, which lasted for eleven years. Deerfield, Massachusetts, was reduced to ashes by an attack of French and their Indian allies, and the New England colonists made an expedition against Quebec, which resulted disastrously.
In the third war a force of New England troops, under the command of Colonel Pepperrell, of Maine, assisted by an English fleet captured, in 1745, Louisburg, one of the strongholds of the French. The victory was a signal one and unexpected, for at the start it was thought to be a foolhardy under- taking. In the language of Franklin it was "too hard a nut for their teeth to crack" Peace, however, was soon declared, and under the terms of the treaty, the fortress was returned to the French. The victory had its influence. It gave the Yankees great confidence in their fighting ability, and, further than that, united the English colonies in sentiment as they never had been before.
In 1754, began the fourth and final struggle on this continent between the English and the French, which resulted in the final overthrow of the French
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and gave to the English the control of the continent. Pennsylvania became the very centre of this conflict. The French, in order to strengthen their position and to make sure their possession of the great valley of the Mississippi, had built a line of forts from the St. Lawrence to the Ohio. They virtually had in their control the whole Continent west of the Alleghenies. In order to re- claim this rich territory, a wealthy London merchant, in connection with a number of influential Virginians, organized what was called the Ohio Company, in 1748, the purpose of which Company was to induce, foster and assist the settlement of immigrants on the east bank of the upper Ohio. It received a grant of 500,000 acres, in the region that is now embraced by West Virginia and southwestern Pennsylvania. The French, in order to counteract this movement, began the building of a line of rude forts extending southward from Lake Erie to that point where the Allegheny and the Monongahela rivers unite their waters. This point was designated as the "Gateway of the West," and a conflict was at once begun to secure its possessions.
Governor Dinwiddie, of Virginia, considered it of importance in the first place to send a special messenger to the French Commandant, M. de St. Pierre, stationed at Venango, warning him to desist from further occupancy of the land and to at once abandon the territory. It was not an easy task to bear such a message through a savage and unbroken wilderness for a distance of five hundred miles, over rivers and mountains, and the success of the enterprise would depend upon the courage, the hardihood and the resolution of the mes- senger. Ile finally decided to send as his ambassador, a young man of Vir- ginia who was just coming into prominence .- George Washington. He made the journey successfully, had a personal interview with the Commandant, deliv- ered his message and received the reply, which gave no intimation of surrender but evinced in its every word a determination to hold the territory against all comers. It was seen that if the Ohio Company was to retain its possessions of the territory granted to it by the Crown, that it would have to do so by force of arms. It accordingly began the erection of a fort, but before it could com- plete its work, the French made an attack, seized the half completed building, garrisoned it, and called it Fort Duquesne, in honor of the French Governor of Canada. Washington at once began the building of a small fort which he called Fort Necessity, and which was located about fifty miles south of Fort Duquesne, but the French, still alert, suddenly appeared with an overwhelm- ing force and compelled him to surrender it.
War was now on in earnest and to meet the conditions, the English colon- ists sent delegates to a convention that met at Albany, to decide upon a course of action. In this convention, it was urged by Benjamin Franklin that the colonists unite for self-protection and a compact was drawn up for this pur- pose. Among other things, it provided that the Colonies should have a Presi- dent, appointed by the Crown, and a Council, chosen by the people. It was the first attempt at union and consolidation for a common purpose made by the Colonies of America, but England feared such a combination and the compact was rejected. England, however, to meet the conditions, decided to send over General Braddock with a body of troops, two regiments of English soldiery. They arrived in January, 1755. The arrival of Braddock proved that the
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Mother country was in earnest to assist the Colonies and the people were roused to the greatest enthusiasm.
Braddock was a soldier of renown, a stiff, straightlaced martinet and so confident of his knowledge in all that pertained to warfare that he refused to take the advice of Washington and Franklin, who were familiar with the schemes, stratagems and methods of the red-men.
It was decided that three simultaneous expeditions should be undertaken. The first of these was to be conducted by Braddock with the British troops, against Fort Duquesne. Governor Shirley was assigned to the command of the second expedition, which was against the French fort at Niagara. The third was an expedition against Crown Point, to be led by a regiment of Co- lonial militia. The most important of these, it will be seen, was that directed against Fort Duquesne, in Pennsylvania, for it was the advance position of the French in the valley of the Ohio. Braddock's army started from Virginia, and about the middle of May reached Wills Creek in Pennsylvania. Here a long halt was made in order that horses and wagons might be procured for the conveyance of the supplies and it was mainly through the persuasive elo- quence of Benjamin Franklin that the farmers were induced to loan their teams for the purpose, and on the tenth of June the march was again taken up, but the army moved very slowly. This plan of campaign, however, was adopted against the advice of Washington who urgently contended that the delay would be taken advantage of by the French to strengthen and reinforce their position. On the nineteenth of June twelve hundred regulars and officers advanced, leav- ing the remainder of the body with most of the wagons, under the command of Colonel Dunbar with instructions to follow closely. Braddock, controlled by his European education and experience, still moved very deliberately "halt- ing to level every molehill and to erect bridges over every brook, by which means he was four days in advancing twelve miles." Washington, who was an aide to Braddock, did all that a subordinate officer could do to urge his superior to hasten the march, but the English soldier, confident of his own ability, ig- nored every suggestion. Had he followed the advice of Washington the expe- dition, doubtless, would have turned out to be a successful one instead of a dis- astrous defeat.
About this time Washington was stricken with a fever, was compelled to go to the rear, and was confined to his bed until the day before the battle. Hle then rejoined the General, but had been so weakened by his sickness that it was almost impossible for him to retain the saddle.
They had now reached a point within fifteen miles of the Fort, and there was no appearance of an enemy, but this was an ominous sign to the young American officer who had had former experiences in Indian fighting. The very silence of the woods to him was oppressive and almost gave assurance that a ruthless enemy was lying in wait to make a sudden attack ; the ground, too, with its thick growth of underbrush favored an ambush. The regular, were marching in fine military order, with drums beating and flags flying, and presented an imposing appearance in their brilliant uniforms, but Washington felt confident they were walking into the very jaws of death. Again he im- plored Braddock to be allowed to send out an advance guard of scouts, but
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