Philadelphia (Repplier)/Chapter 9

WHILE the province was growing rich in long years of peaceful industry, the Proprietors were amassing noble fortunes from the increased value of their quit-rents. John Penn, "the American," visited Philadelphia in 1732, and was received with clamorous delight: flags flying, cannon thundering, addresses without stint, and a grand banquet which cost the town exactly forty pounds, twelve shillings, and twopence. It is pleasant to find the little twopence so faithfully and accurately recorded. Thomas Penn, John's younger and cleverer brother, lived for nine years in the colony, and showed equal ability in the management of public affairs and of his own interests. He had more than his father's shrewdness, but lacked the distinction of character which made Pennsylvania's Founder a marked man, whether he lived in the two-storied Letitia House, or in the courts of kings. Thomas had no mind for two-story cottages. He purchased in 1760 Stoke Park, which had been the home of Sir Christopher Hatton in the days of Queen Elizabeth; and his son John made of ​this noble old place, and of Pennsylvania Castle, his other country-seat on the Isle of Portland, two great estates, famous during half a century for their elegance and beauty.

There is no denying that it was the persistent peace policy of the Quakers which secured for Pennsylvania its unmarred prosperity, and that this policy received the support of the people, notwithstanding the clamour raised by angry and belligerent agitators. What did the Quaker Assembly care if Spanish privateers flaunted their hostile colours in Delaware Bay? They knew enough about privateering themselves to be well aware that no serious injury was to be feared from these rovers of the sea, who preferred robbing to fighting any day, and who sought easier prey than a town protected by the dangerous shoals in its river bed. The war with Spain seemed no concern of Philadelphia's, and for a long time the wars between France and England fretted her but faintly. She protected her merchant ships with convoys, and she listened calmly to glowing harangues, mostly preached from Episcopal pulpits, which described the horrors to come: the city wrapped in flames, fathers slain, children homeless and weeping, desolation and ruin everywhere,—all because the Quakers would neither fight themselves, nor vote money to pay for fighting men. Pamphlets circulated at this time resemble in tone the appeals made to rural and pro​vincial England, when every week brought a fresh rumour that Napoleon and his troops had landed upon English soil.

Occasionally, but not often, the Quakers put forth a defensive pamphlet of their own. They were never much addicted to talking nor to printing; and the wealth of argument, animadversion, and personal application of strong passages from Holy Writ, launched at their devoted heads, won little response, save that of quiet and obstinate resistance. Abusing them was like hurling a missile against a padded wall; there was not even a rebound. The Assembly was as willing that Franklin should organize the first militia company as that he should organize the first fire brigade. It even permitted him to buy gunpowder with some of the money voted for "wheat and other grains," and serene Friends frankly acknowledged that they did not condemn the use of arms in those who thought it right to bear them. But they were determined that the peace of the province should not be lightly broken, and they were disposed to temporize as far as possible when the growing hostility of the Indians brought real danger close to their city's doors.

The cause of this hostility is not hard to find. Every year, as the colony increased, it became more difficult to control the frontiersmen, who had no scruples in occupying the Indians' land, and no hesi​tation in shooting the Indians, if they presumed to interfere. Sturdy farmers, Scotch-Irish and Germans principally, deemed it as preposterous to talk about the rights of savages as the rights of wolves and foxes. God never intended the fertile soil to be wasted on wandering heathens. Even Franklin philosophically remarked that rum, which had already wrought dreadful havoc among the tribes of the seacoast, was perhaps the means appointed by Providence to destroy a race that blocked the way of advancing civilization. The shameful "Walking Purchase" was another wrong that sank deeply in the Indians' hearts. They knew they had been outwitted by the Proprietors, and they felt themselves at the mercy of the Six Nations, whom the white men had summoned as allies. The Albany Treaty of 1754, by which the colonists gained the fertile land lying west of the Susquehanna, destroyed the last sentiments of good-will that lingered in the red men's souls. Driven practically out of Pennsylvania, and forced to seek shelter amid alien tribes, their anger and deep humiliation made them only too ready to listen to the wily advances of the French, who were then planning a chain of forts to stretch from the Great Lakes to New Orleans. That tenacious memory of the Indian, which never permitted him to forget either benefit or injury, had its serious inconveniences. He was still well disposed towards the ​Quakers, still loved and honoured the name of William Penn, "the white truth-teller," who had so consistently practised what he preached. But new wrongs could no more be forgotten than old friendships. The long peace of seventy years which Penn had bequeathed to his colony was drawing to a close; and the savages, once helpless as well as harmless, but now made sullen by ill-usage, and dangerous by the French alliance, had become a menace to the safety of the province, pacified and bribed into inaction by generous presents from the Assembly.

This was a state of things which could not long endure. The treaty between England and France was broken in 1755, and Major-General Braddock was sent to stop the advance of the French troops and their Indian allies. The Assembly, though occupied at this time in a particularly lively quarrel with Governor Morris, recognized the greatness of the emergency, laid aside its scruples anent war, and borrowed twenty thousand pounds on its own credit to supply Braddock with horses and provisions. The result of the campaign is too well known to need another telling. Not only Macaulay's omniscient schoolboy, but less admirably instructed people remember well what happened. Seven miles from Fort Du Quesne the English forces were surrounded by the French and Indians, and killed, easily and ruthlessly, like wild beasts in a trap. Of thirteen ​hundred men, only four hundred and sixty escaped that dreadful slaughter; sixty-three out of eighty-six officers were slain or wounded. The French loss was slight, and the fifty or sixty Indians whom the hemmed-in English succeeded in shooting could easily be replaced. It was a massacre rather than a battle, and it left Pennsylvania at the mercy of her foes.

The time for temporizing was past. The Indians, savagely elate that their day of reckoning had come, ravaged the province, and their stealthy attacks filled all the land with terror and despairing rage. It was absolutely necessary to send troops to the frontier, and the Assembly was ready and eager to vote the necessary funds, either by a new issue of paper currency, or by direct taxation, from which it justly insisted the estates of the Proprietors should no longer be exempt. To these measures, however, Governor Morris refused his consent, and for a while it seemed as if all the farmers of Pennsylvania might be scalped, because the Proprietors would not relinquish their privileges, nor the Assembly its constitutional rights. Happily, before the country was rendered wholly desolate, a compromise was reached. Thomas Penn offered in his own name, and in the names of his brothers, to contribute five thousand pounds towards the expenses of the war; the Assembly responded with equal generosity by raising the ​really noble sum of sixty thousand pounds, independent of the proprietary estates, and by promptly passing Franklin's militia bill, which sent a thousand sturdy men at once to the frontier.

It is a little surprising, accustomed as we are to the inevitable appearance of Franklin in all emergencies, to find him, not only organizing the militia,—there was nothing on earth he could not organize,—but actually marching at its head into the Lehigh Valley, prepared to defend his country with his sword or his rifle, whichever he carried, and surpassing in this one respect, at least, the labours of Michelangelo for Italy. He built some little forts in the valley, and succeeded in partially checking the Indian raids. Only ten farmers, we are told, were massacred in that district during his two months' occupancy; and while this does not sound to us now like satisfactory protection, it seems to have been considered at the time a very creditable piece of work. Franklin returned to Philadelphia to be made a colonel, and receive the ovations of the populace; and his fort at Gnadenhutten, being surprised by the savages while its garrison were skating one fine afternoon, the village it defended was burned to the ground, and nearly all the inhabitants slain.

Mr. Sydney Fisher has pointed out with admirable accuracy and good temper that Pennsylvania, so far from being the languid, supine province which Mr. ​Parkman is never weary of contrasting with vigorous and altogether inimitable New England, was in reality playing an active and prominent part in these years of hand-to-hand struggle with the Indians. She gave men, and she gave money with unstinted liberality, but she asked in return the preservation of her own rights; and the governors who fancied that the exigencies of war could be used as a weapon to wrest from the Assembly an authority cemented by seventy years of masterdom, found themselves signally mistaken in their calculations. The violence of party spirit was now so thoroughly aroused that even a common danger was powerless to allay it. The Quakers clung stubbornly to their prerogatives, and their opponents appealed to England for protection, asserting that the safety of the colony was at stake. It was at this juncture that Provost Smith made his furious attack upon the Assembly, and the exuberant impetuosity of his sentiments reflected fairly the hostile attitude of the Episcopal and proprietary party. It was but natural that the Privy Council should lend an attentive ear to complaints urged against men who had ever opposed the voice of home authority. The Penns were assured that unless the Friends acted "a more rational and dutiful part," they should not be permitted "to continue in stations to perplex the government"; and an imperious message was sent over the seas, condemning in no stinted

​terms the tardiness of the provincial rulers in prosecuting the war, and defending their own frontiers.

Historic fiction is deathless. It can never be silenced nor discredited. The Quakers have always borne the blame for Pennsylvania's failure to beat back her savage foes. It is true that, when the message of the Privy Council was received, the Assembly at once passed a compulsory militia bill, and that the governor promptly vetoed it; true that the Assembly voted a second grant of one hundred thousand pounds—an enormous sum in those days—for the expenses of the war, and that the Proprietors still refused to bear their share of the taxation. But these details are wisely ignored by historians, as both annoying and unmanageable. Once weakly admit such intrusive facts into history, and the smoothness and brilliancy of the narrative is forever destroyed.

What does seem tolerably sure, is that while Quakers and Episcopalians contended for mastery, the Indians had things pretty much their own way, and came within thirty miles of Philadelphia. Penn's city of peace bid fair to become—as in later years—the headquarters of war, when the wise and energetic measures of the elder Pitt restored some semblance of harmony to the combative colonists, and infused fresh vigour into the provincial government. The Prime Minister's clear eyes saw the absurdity of the situation, his impregnable common-sense mastered its ​difficulties. Born ruler of men, he knew when to abandon the policy of coercion for one of conciliation and kindness. His counsel and generous assistance put the wearisome struggle with the Indians on a wholly fresh basis. Arms, ammunition, and other necessities for the troops were despatched at once from England; three thousand recruits, raised in Pennsylvania, promptly joined the expedition against Fort Du Quesne; and the Quaker Assembly voted another hundred thousand pounds to meet the emergencies of this final struggle. A bounty of five pounds was also offered for every volunteer, thus putting a positive premium upon war; while at the same time, to leave no stone unturned, the Moravian missionary, Frederick Post, was sent on an embassy of peace to the Shawanese and Delaware Indians, who, though alienated from the English, were not closely allied with the French. Post was as successful in his negotiations as were General Forbes and Colonel Bouquet in their military manœuvres. A convention was held at Easton, three hundred chiefs of various tribes being present. The Proprietors, through their agents, restored to the savages a large portion of the land taken from them by the Albany Treaty; and the chiefs solemnly declared themselves satisfied with the restitution, and despatched at once to their young braves the white wampum belt, emblem of peace and good-will. No words can ade​quately praise the heroism, the quiet unflinching courage which carried an unarmed Moravian with two or three devoted followers into the very heart of the hostile country, where death lurked day and night amid the sombre woods.

In the meantime, arguments of a different order had been brought to bear upon the allied French and Indians at Fort Du Quesne, and they were found to be so convincing that, after two assaults and one long bloody battle, the French troops withdrew from the fort, setting fire to it before their departure, and carrying safely away their guns and ammunition, though beset by an invading army outnumbering them ten to one. Their departure restored safety and tranquility to Pennsylvania. Thousands of farmers returned to their abandoned homes. Fort Pitt was built for their protection on the site of Fort Du Quesne, and where the city of Pittsburg now stands, commemorating the name of the great statesman to whom was mainly due the renewed prosperity of the province. Forbes, shattered in health, was carried back to Philadelphia, where he died the following spring, and was buried in Christ Church. For a few years peace reigned in the city of peace, and the Assembly gained a real and lasting victory when Franklin, who had exchanged military glory for the more congenial field of diplomacy, obtained the consent of the Privy Council to a bill authorizing the taxation of the proprietary estates. ​This was the most important service he had rendered yet to the commonwealth. It had cost him two long years of hard work and weary waiting in England; it had taxed his ingenuity, his resources, his patience to the utmost; but it established his fame as a diplomatist, and was the beginning of his successful public career.

In 1763 the treaty of Paris ended the war with France. There was a reasonable hope in every heart that the evil times were over, and that the old days of peace and comfort had returned to the province, now more thickly settled, more assiduously cultivated than before. But although the French had been driven westward, the Indians remained, and the settlers, having learned nothing from experience, treated them more cruelly and contemptuously than before, believing that, unaided by European allies, they were no longer to be feared, and that they should be punished for all the trouble they had dared to give. Perhaps it is never wise to provoke a savage foe beyond his rather limited powers of endurance. When the game seems easiest, then is danger near at hand. The story of Pontiac is no part of Philadelphia's history, save that his ruthless and terrible wars brought devastation to the fertile farms and smiling hamlets of Pennsylvania; for this Indian Attila, who combined the fierceness of the barbarian with the genius of a great commander, had organized the scattered tribes ​into a destroying army, infinitely more dangerous because ruled by a single mind, bent on the extermination of the white man. Fort Pitt, the one defence and stronghold of the province, was surrounded and patiently besieged by the savages; but the splendid courage of its Swiss commander, Captain Écuyer, nerved his soldiers to resolute resistance, and they held out bravely until relieved by Colonel Bouquet who, with a mere handful of veterans, went gallantly to the rescue of his countryman. He asked help in this desperate enterprise from Pennsylvania's frontiersmen, from those Scotch-Irish farmers to whose hostile attitude was due much of the present trouble; but not one of them consented to accompany him. The glorious battle of August 5th, which saved Fort Pitt, checked the triumphant advance of the Indians, and warded off from many a hearth the torch and the scalping knife, was fought by two regiments of English soldiers, so enfeebled by service in the West Indies that many of them died in the long, cruel marches before their goal was reached.

The danger once lifted, however, the hearts of the settlers grew hot with rage, and they formed themselves into companies for the easy extermination of scattered and often harmless bands of Indians, whose depredations had never gone further than a gypsy-like pilfering of hen-roosts. The history of the so-called Paxton Boys is one of the dark stains on Pennsylva​nia's record. It has been told many times already, and each new telling makes it seem more thoroughly disgraceful than before. A little band of friendly Indians, direct descendants of the savages with whom William Penn had made his first successful treaty, was settled at Conestoga, near Lancaster. All its members had long since been converted to Christianity by the kind Moravians, and supported themselves by basket-weaving, that time-honoured industry of their race. The wrathful colonists of Paxton, inflamed by the preaching of the church militant, as embodied in the fierce harangues of John Elder, determined to pluck out, root and branch, these abominations, hated of the Lord. With this pious purpose, fifty-seven of them went at daybreak on the fourteenth of December, 1763, to the Indian village, and found there only three men, two women, and a young boy. One hundred and forty of the tribe had been carried off to Philadelphia the day before, and fourteen of them were wandering about the country, selling their baskets and brooms. Though sorely disappointed by the smallness of the catch, the Paxton rangers promptly killed the men, the women, and the boy, set fire to the village, and retired jubilantly, trusting that Providence would soon deliver a more satisfactory prey into their hands.

They had not long to wait. The Lancaster sheriff, hearing what had been done, and eager to avert ​further bloodshed, collected together the fourteen Indians who had escaped the massacre, and lodged them for protection in the jail. His action was kindly meant, but the jail was old and weak. The Paxton Boys knew now where to find their victims. They rode in a body to Lancaster, thrust aside their pastor, John Elder, who vainly strove to turn them from the meditated murder, beat down the jail doors, and cut the fourteen Indians, men, women, and children, into pieces with their hatchets. And these were the settlers who had refused their aid to Bouquet's fever-stricken troops, when they were asked to defend their own province in open and honourable warfare.

The deed awoke shame and anger in every honest breast. Brave men loathed its cowardice, good men its sickening brutality. Franklin laid aside his philosophic theories concerning savages and the march of civilization, and wrote his famous "Narrative," telling in simple, straightforward phrases the whole horrible story, and sternly reminding the colonists that, even in the improbable event of the butchered Indians having been on friendly terms with hostile tribes, the lawless murder was no less a crime against God, against the commonwealth, and against the very essence of civilization, which such acts of violence inevitably and hopelessly blighted. As for the Quakers, who felt themselves in an especial manner outraged by the cruel slaughter of their helpless ​dependents, they were aroused to a state of un-Quakerlike wrath, which it is both pleasant and wholesome to contemplate. Governor Penn issued two proclamations, denouncing the murders, and instructing the magistrates to arrest the murderers, which, of course, they never did. On the contrary, the Paxtons found themselves so agreeably free from molestation that they grew valorous, and set out for Philadelphia, with the openly avowed intention of killing the one hundred and forty Moravian Indians who had been taken there for safety.

The Friends prepared to give the invaders a hot welcome. They even took up arms with an alacrity foreign to their principles, and which left no shadow of doubt as to the course they intended to pursue. English regulars were summoned to their aid, and the city swarmed with defenders. It had been deemed prudent to place the frightened Indians out of harm's way by sending them to a distance, but neither New Jersey nor New York would consent to receive them. Apparently there was no such thing as a colonial government which did not fear a mob.

Philadelphia honourably resolved that no power on earth should wrest from her these poor hostages to fortune. They were lodged in the soldiers' barracks, freshly fortified with trenches and cannon, and we see the ubiquitous Franklin assuming the personal charge of their defence. When the Paxton ​rangers, now numbering a thousand or twelve hundred men, reached Germantown, they found matters not at all to their liking. Here was no question of easy butchery, but of stout fighting, if they were to attempt carrying out their purpose. The prospect cooled their ardour, and they announced themselves ready to negotiate. Franklin was thereupon sent to meet them, and to him they forthwith presented a memorial of their grievances, as if they had been sinned against, and were innocent of crime. Their complaints were many, but first and foremost on the list was the discontinuance of the "scalp bounty," by which a useful industry had been weakened and well-nigh destroyed. It did not profit settlers, they said, to kill stray Indians, unless the government would encourage them by paying for the scalps. Time was when an adroit backwoodsman could make a comfortable living by tracking down savages and their squaws; but the withdrawal of the bounty at the close of the French and Indian wars had made this species of hunting unsatisfactory and unremunerative. They prayed that the matter might be reconsidered, and honest labour meet its just reward.

Having presented their petitions, and having assured themselves that martial measures would be ill-advised, the rangers disbanded and went home. They had offered no injury to Philadelphia, nor to the poor fugitives they had sought to slay; but, on the other ​hand, they had been received with a good deal more civility than rioters and law-breakers had any reason to expect, and they felt tolerably sure that the Conestoga murders would never be avenged. Nor were they. Party feeling ran so high, the hostility between rival churches grew so bitter, that from more than one pulpit were heard in time condoning words anent that cruel slaughter. The Germans, always on friendly terms with the Quakers, condemned it strenuously; and the ever-widening breach determined the Assembly to make the strongest effort in its power to bring about the final overthrow of its enemies. The King was petitioned to abolish the Proprietorship, and to govern Pennsylvania as a royal province.

It is easy to trace the troubles and provocations which led to this extraordinary step. The Quakers had always been deeply antagonized by the Scotch-Irish settlers, at whose doors they laid the blame of most of the Indian disturbances. They abhorred the Presbyterian creed, with its marked preference for the Old Testament, and its vigorous, unmerciful interpretation of Hebrew sentiments and standards. They resented the position of the Church party, which, for purely political reasons, lent its moral support to the Presbyterians; and they were reduced to a state of chronic irritation by the perpetual encroachments of the English governors upon their ancient privileges. Above and beyond all, they were discouraged by the impossi​bility of keeping faith with the savages, whose scanty rights—even the one poor primitive right of living—were now openly ignored. For the Proprietors, with a callousness that seems incredible in any of their name and lineage, had gratified the active frontiersmen by renewing the scalp

In Old St. Peter's

bounty, and had suffered liberal rewards to be promised for the scalps of male and female Indians. "Such," says Mr. Sydney Fisher sadly, "was the melancholy end of Penn's Indian policy; a policy ​which for its justice and humanity had at one time aroused the admiration of all the philosophers of Europe. But now the tribe with which he made the famous treaty had dwindled to a miserable remnant, . . . and his grandson was offering bounties for women's scalps."

There was the less excuse for this barbarous iniquity in which white men played the rôle of savages, inasmuch as Pontiac's wars had been brought to a close in 1764 by the successful expeditions of Bradstreet and Bouquet. The power of the organized tribes was broken, a treaty of peace was signed, and Bouquet, returning triumphantly to Pennsylvania, brought back with him over two hundred ransomed captives who had been carried away from time to time by the Indians. It is worthy of note that many of these poor prisoners were strangely reluctant to return, and to take up anew the bonds of civilization. Men had grown wedded to a wandering life, and to the wild pleasures of the chase; children clung piteously to the squaws who had adopted them, and were dragged away by force amid bitter lamentations; white women parted with tears from their savage husbands, and often, on the homeward march, escaped by night from the tents, and stole back through the forest paths to their deserted wigwams. It was truly discouraging to the soldiers who played the gallant part of liberators to find their efforts so often baffled by the mysterious intricacies of the human heart.

​Bouquet was received with wild enthusiasm in Philadelphia, and the Assembly willingly voted fifty thousand pounds to pay the expenses of his campaign. It was the refusal of the Proprietors to give their share of this money which precipitated the final quarrel between them and the Friends, and which brought about the memorable petition for the abolishment of the proprietary government.

The converting of Pennsylvania into a royal province had always been looked upon as a remedy—though a somewhat dangerous one—for the many ills that from time to time had beset colonial life. William Penn had himself resolved upon the step in the profound discouragement of his later years, and only the swift failing of his mental powers prevented him from carrying it into execution. The Christ Church party had in its day presented a similar petition, believing that the crown would readily grant it privileges denied by the obstinate Quakers; and now the Quakers were playing in their turn the part of the clamorous frogs, and begging for a king to eat them up.

The measure, however, was not one to be lightly carried. If it had sanguine friends, it had also mortal foes; and the fury of the combat may be gauged by the number of pamphlets, all couched in the most intemperate language, that have come fluttering down to us from these stormy days. "In the whole history of the province," says Mr. MacMaster, ​"there had never been in so short a time such a number of pamphlets issued"; and we know what that must have meant. Franklin took an active share in this paper war, and stoutly advocated the petition. Joseph Galloway, a brilliant lawyer and an accomplished gentleman, was its most ardent upholder. John Dickinson, afterwards made famous by the "Farmer's Letters," fought bravely on the other side, defending the ancient charter with rugged eloquence, and pointing out to the colonists that it was at all times better to endure the ills they had, than to fly to others that they knew not of. Though the Quakers triumphed, and the popular discontent carried the petition through the Assembly, yet the feeling against it was so strong that neither Franklin nor Galloway was returned at the next election. Galloway retired for a time to private life, but Franklin was naturally appointed to carry the petition to the King. This appointment was hotly opposed by Dickinson, who detested the philosopher with all his heart, and who brought forward a heavy array of arguments against the perpetual employment of his services. Philadelphia, however, was too well accustomed to these services to dream of setting them aside. A public mission, great or small, conducted by anybody but Franklin, would have been so serious an innovation that the Assembly could hardly have been expected to countenance it.

​So the triumphant diplomat sailed over the sea with his precious paper, leaving behind him a final pamphlet, by way of Parthian dart; and on the tenth of December, 1764, he reached the city of London. Here in due time he presented the petition,—and nothing came of it. The English Ministry, then meditating the famous Stamp Act, had apparently no desire to dispossess the Proprietors. King George III, who was determined a few years later to coerce the colonists at any cost into obedience, seemed quite indifferent to this opportunity of extending his royal power. The situation was Kunusual, and a little absurd. On the one hand, a province, upon the very eve of rebellion, asserting its absolute confidence in the justice of a king, and offering its constitutional rights as pledges of its credulity. On the other hand, a monarch and a ministry prepared to force their unwelcome measures at the point of the bayonet, but ignoring this easy means of strengthening their hands. Franklin himself seems to have well-nigh forgotten the petition, in the new excitement of opposing the threatened Stamp Act. His prophetic eyes saw clearly the manifold evils that would result from any form of taxation to which the colonists had not yielded their consent. He was a man of peace, for all his little toyings with Indian warfare, and he struggled honestly and impotently to avert the coming strife. As well have tried to beat back from the shore the broad, resistless roll of the encroaching wave.