Part 1 (1/2)
My Native Land.
by James c.o.x.
CHAPTER I.
OUR NATION'S BIRTH.
The Story of Liberty Bell--Impartial Opinions on the Revolutionary War--The Shot that was Heard Around the World--The First Committee of Safety--A Defeat which Equaled a Victory--Was.h.i.+ngton's Earnestness--To Congress on Horseback--The First 4th of July Celebration.
It was not until April 19th, 1775, that the shot was fired which was ”heard around the world.” But the struggle for American Independence was really started nearly a quarter of a century earlier, when on the afternoon of August 27th, 1753, Liberty Bell was rung to call together the a.s.sembly of the Province of Pennsylvania.
In the old days of town meetings, training days, town schools and Puritans, bells took a more prominent part in public affairs than they do to-day. It was usual to call the people together for purposes of deliberation by means of a village or town bell, and of these bells the one to which we refer was the most important and interesting. Liberty Bell is well named. It was ordered in the year 1751, and it was delivered a year later. Shortly afterwards, it cracked, and had to be recast, but in June, 1753, it was finally hung in the Pennsylvania State House at Philadelphia. It has never been removed from the building except on two occasions. The first of these was in 1777, when it was taken to Allentown for safety, and the second in 1885, when it was exhibited at New Orleans.
This bell, which sounded the death-blow to tyranny and oppression, was first rung to call together the a.s.sembly, which immediately resolved to insist upon certain rights which had been denied the colonists by the British Crown. Eighteen months later, it was again rung to announce the meeting at which the rights of the colonists were sternly defined and insisted upon. In 1765, it convened the meeting of the a.s.sembly at which it was resolved to be represented at the Congress of the Colonies in New York, and a month later it was m.u.f.fled and tolled when the ”Royal Charlotte” arrived, bearing the much hated stamps, whose landing was not permitted. Again it rang m.u.f.fled, when the Stamp Act went into operation, and when the people publicly burned stamp papers. In 1768, the Liberty Bell called a meeting of the men of Philadelphia, who protested once again against the oppression of government without representation. In 1771, it called the a.s.sembly together to pet.i.tion the King of England for the repeal of the duty on tea, and two years later it summoned together the largest crowd ever seen in Philadelphia up to that date. At that meeting it was resolved that the s.h.i.+p ”Polly,” loaded with tea, should not be allowed to land.
In 1774, the bell was m.u.f.fled and tolled on the closing of the Port of Boston, and in the following year it convened the memorable meeting following the battle of Lexington. On this occasion 8,000 people a.s.sembled in the State House yard and unanimously agreed to a.s.sociate for the purpose of defending, with arms, their lives, liberty and property against all attempts to deprive them of them. In June, 1776, Liberty Bell announced the submission to Congress of the draft of the Declaration of Independence, and on July 4th of the same year, the same bell announced the signing of the Declaration. On July 8th of the same year, the bell was tolled vigorously for the great proclamation of America's Independence. The tolling was suspended while the Declaration was read, and was once more rung when that immortal doc.u.ment had been thus formally promulgated.
In April, 1783, Liberty Bell rang the proclamation of Peace, and on July 4th, 1826, it ushered in the year of Jubilee.
The last tolling of the bell was in July, 1835, when, while slowly tolling, and without any apparent reason, the bell, which had played such an important part in the War of Independence, and in the securing of liberty for the people of this great country, parted through its side, making a large rent, which can still be clearly seen. It was as though the bell realized that its great task was accomplished, and that it could leave to other and younger bells, the minor duties which remained to be performed.
This is not a history of the United States, but is rather a description of some of the most interesting and remarkable features to be found in various parts of it. It is difficult, however, to describe scenes and buildings without at least brief historical reference, and as we present an excellent ill.u.s.tration of the apartment in which the Declaration of Independence was signed, we are compelled to make a brief reference to the circ.u.mstances and events which preceded that most important event in the world's history.
As we have seen, the conflict between the home country and the colonies commenced long before there was any actual outbreak. As Mr. Thomas Wentworth Higginson so graphically expresses it, the surrender of Canada to England by France in 1763 suddenly opened men's eyes to the fact that British America had become a country so large as to make England seem ridiculously small. Even the cool-headed Dr. Franklin, writing that same year to Mary Stevenson in London, spoke of England as ”that stone in a brook, scarce enough of it above water to keep one's shoes dry.” A far-seeing French statesman of the period looked at the matter in the same way. Choiseul, the Prime Minister who ceded Canada, claimed afterwards that he had done it in order to destroy the British nation by creating for it a rival. This a.s.sertion was not made till ten years later, and may very likely have been an afterthought, but it was destined to be confirmed by the facts.
We have now to deal with the outbreak of a contest which was, according to the greatest of the English statesmen of the period, ”a most accursed, wicked, barbarous, cruel, unnatural, unjust, and diabolical war.” No American writer ever employed to describe it a combination of adjectives so vigorous as those brought together by the elder Pitt, afterwards Lord Chatham. The rights for which Americans fought seemed to him to be the common rights of Englishmen, and many Englishmen thought the same.
On the other hand, we are now able to do justice to those American Loyalists who honestly believed that the attempt at independence was a mad one, and who sacrificed all they had rather than rebel against their King. Ma.s.sachusettensis, the well-known Tory pamphleteer, wrote that the annals of the world had not been deformed with a single instance of so unnatural, so causeless, so wanton, so wicked a rebellion.
These strong epithets used on both sides show how strangely opinions were divided as to the rebellion and its causes. Some of the first statesmen of England defended the colonists, and some of the best known men in the colonies defended England.
The City of Boston at this time had a population of about seventeen thousand, as compared with some half a million to-day. In its garrison there were three thousand British troops, and the laws of Parliament were enforced rigidly. The city suffered temporary commercial death in consequence, and there were the most vigorous efforts made to prevent an open outbreak of hostilities. In January, 1775, a conflict was barely averted at Marshfield, and in the following month the situation was so strained at Salem that nothing but great forbearance and presence of mind on the part of the colonists prevented bloodshed. The Boston ma.s.sacre of less than five years before was still uppermost in men's thoughts, and it was determined that the responsibility of the first shot in the war, if war there must be, should rest with the Royal troops.
Accordingly, the colonists accepted insult and abuse until they were suspected by the British troops of cowardice. One officer wrote home telling his friends that there was no danger of war, because the colonists were bullies, but not fighters, adding that any two regiments ought to be decimated which could not beat the entire force arrayed against them. But the conflict could not be long delayed. It was on April 18th, 1775, that Paul Revere rode his famous ride. He had seen the two lights in a church steeple in Boston, which had been agreed upon as a signal that the British troops were about to seize the supplies of the patriots at Concord. Sergeant Monroe's caution against making unnecessary noise, was met by his rejoinder, ”You will have noise enough here before long--the regulars are coming out.”
Then he commenced his ride for life, or, rather, for the lives of others. We all know the result of his ride, and how church bells were tolled and signal shots fired to warn the people that the soldiers were coming. It was a night of tumult and horror, no one knowing what brutality they had to expect from the now enraged British soldiers. The women of the towns, warned by the pre-arranged signals, hurried their children from their homes, and fled to farm houses, and even barns in the vicinity. Before daybreak the British troops had reached Lexington Green. Here they found Captain Parker and 38 men standing up before twenty times that number of armed troops, indifferent as to their fate, but determined to protect their cause and their friends. The Captain's words have pa.s.sed into history. They took the form of an order to the men:
”Don't fire unless you are fired on; but, if they want a war, let it begin here.”
History tells us of few such unequal contests as this. The troops fired on the gallant little band, and seven of their number were killed. The fight at Concord followed, when 450 Americans met the British troops at the North Bridge, where
”Once the embattled farmers stood, And fired the shot heard around the world.”
The British detachment was beaten back in disorder, but the main body was too strong to be attacked. The minute men, however, made a most magnificent fight, and at the close of the day they had killed 273 British soldiers, only 93 of their own number being among the killed or missing.
Thus commenced the War of Independence, the event being described by Dr.
Joseph Warren in a doc.u.ment of sufficient interest to warrant its reproduction in full.
”The barbarous murders committed on our innocent brethren,” wrote the doctor, ”have made it absolutely necessary that we immediately raise an army to defend our wives and our children from the butchering hands of an inhuman soldiery, who, incensed at the obstacles they met with in their b.l.o.o.d.y progress, and enraged at being repulsed from the field of slaughter, will, without the least doubt, take the first opportunity in their power to ravage this devoted country with fire and sword. We conjure you, therefore, by all that is dear, by all that is sacred, that you give all a.s.sistance possible in forming an army. Our all is at stake. Death and devastation are the instant consequences of delay.
Every moment is infinitely precious. An hour lost may deluge our country in blood, and entail perpetual slavery upon the few of your posterity who may survive the carnage. We beg and entreat, as you will answer to your country, to your own consciences, and, above all, as you will answer to G.o.d himself, that you will hasten and encourage, by all possible means, the enlistment of men to form an army, and send them forward to headquarters at Cambridge, with that expedition which the vast importance and instant urgency of the affair demand.”
Two days after the fight, the Ma.s.sachusetts Committee of Safety resolved to enlist 8,000 men, an event which our old friend Liberty Bell celebrated by a vigorous tolling. All over the colonies a spirit of determination to resist spread like lightning, and the shot that was heard around the world was certainly heard very distinctly in every nook and corner of New England, and of the old Atlantic States. Naturally, there was at first a lack of concentration and even of discipline; but what was lacking in these features was more than made up for by bravery and determination. As John Adams wrote in 1818, the army at Cambridge at this time was not a National army, for there was no nation. It was not even an army of the United Colonies, because the Congress at Philadelphia had not adopted or acknowledged the army at Cambridge. It was not even the New England army, for each State had its separate armies, which had united to imprison the British army in Boston. There was not even the Commander-in-Chief of the allied armies.