Part 19 (1/2)
Far to the east, sheltered from danger, lay staid and prosperous Philadelphia, the home of order and thrift. It took its stamp from the Quakers, its original and dominant population, set apart from the other colonists not only in character and creed, but in the outward symbols of a peculiar dress and a daily sacrifice of grammar on the altar of religion. The even tenor of their lives counteracted the effects of climate, and they are said to have been perceptibly more rotund in feature and person than their neighbors. Yet, broad and humanizing as was their faith, they were capable of extreme bitterness towards opponents, clung tenaciously to power, and were jealous for the ascendency of their sect, which had begun to show signs of wavering. On other sects they looked askance; and regarded the Presbyterians in particular with a dislike which in moments of crisis rose to detestation.[338] They held it sin to fight, and above all to fight against Indians.
[Footnote 338: See a crowd of party pamphlets, Quaker against Presbyterian, which appeared in Philadelphia in 1764, abusively acrimonious on both sides.]
Here was one cause of military paralysis. It was reinforced by another.
The old standing quarrel between governor and a.s.sembly had grown more violent than ever; and this as a direct consequence of the public distress, which above all things demanded harmony. The dispute turned this time on a single issue,--that of the taxation of the proprietary estates. The estates in question consisted of vast tracts of wild land, yielding no income, and at present to a great extent worthless, being overrun by the enemy.[339] The Quaker a.s.sembly had refused to protect them; and on one occasion had rejected an offer of the proprietaries to join them in paying the cost of their defence.[340] But though they would not defend the land, they insisted on taxing it; and farther insisted that the taxes upon it should be laid by the provincial a.s.sessors. By a law of the province, these a.s.sessors were chosen by popular vote; and in consenting to this law, the proprietaries had expressly provided that their estates should be exempted from all taxes to be laid by officials in whose appointment they had no voice.[341]
Thomas and Richard Penn, the present proprietaries, had debarred their deputy, the Governor, both by the terms of his commission and by special instruction, from consenting to such taxation, and had laid him under heavy bonds to secure his obedience. Thus there was another side to the question than that of the a.s.sembly; though our American writers have been slow to acknowledge it.
[Footnote 339: The productive estates of the proprietaries were taxed through the tenants.]
[Footnote 340: The proprietaries offered to contribute to the cost of building and maintaining a fort on the spot where the French soon after built Fort Duquesne. This plan, vigorously executed, would have saved the province from a deluge of miseries. One of the reasons a.s.signed by the a.s.sembly for rejecting it was that it would irritate the enemy. See _supra_, p. 63.]
[Footnote 341: _A Brief View of the Conduct of Pennsylvania for the year 1755_.]
Benjamin Franklin was leader in the a.s.sembly and shared its views. The feudal proprietors.h.i.+p of the Penn family was odious to his democratic nature. It was, in truth, a pestilent anomaly, repugnant to the genius of the people; and the disposition and character of the present proprietaries did not tend to render it less vexatious. Yet there were considerations which might have tempered the impatient hatred with which the colonists regarded it. The first proprietary, William Penn, had used his feudal rights in the interest of a broad liberalism; and through them had established the popular inst.i.tutions and universal tolerance which made Pennsylvania the most democratic province in America, and nursed the spirit of liberty which now revolted against his heirs. The one absorbing pa.s.sion of Pennsylvania was resistance of their deputy, the Governor. The badge of feudalism, though light, was insufferably irritating; and the sons of William Penn were moreover detested by the Quakers as renegades from the faith of their father. Thus the immediate political conflict engrossed mind and heart; and in the rancor of their quarrel with the proprietaries, the a.s.sembly forgot the French and Indians.
In Philadelphia and the eastern districts the Quakers could ply their trades, tend their shops, till their farms, and discourse at their ease on the wickedness of war. The midland counties, too, were for the most part tolerably safe. They were occupied mainly by crude German peasants, who nearly equalled in number all the rest of the population, and who, gathered at the centre of the province, formed a ma.s.s politically indigestible. Translated from servitude to the most ample liberty, they hated the thought of military service, which reminded them of former oppression, cared little whether they lived under France or England, and, thinking themselves out of danger, had no mind to be taxed for the defence of others. But while the great body of the Germans were sheltered from harm, those of them who lived farther westward were not so fortunate. Here, mixed with Scotch Irish Presbyterians and Celtic Irish Catholics, they formed a rough border population, the discordant elements of which could rarely unite for common action; yet, though confused and disjointed, they were a living rampart to the rest of the colony. Against them raged the furies of Indian war; and, maddened with distress and terror, they cried aloud for help.
Pet.i.tion after pet.i.tion came from the borders for arms and ammunition, and for a militia law to enable the people to organize and defend themselves. The Quakers resisted. ”They have taken uncommon pains,”
writes Governor Morris to s.h.i.+rley, ”to prevent the people from taking up arms.”[342] Braddock's defeat, they declared, was a just judgment on him and his soldiers for molesting the French in their settlements on the Ohio.[343] A bill was pa.s.sed by the a.s.sembly for raising fifty thousand pounds for the King's use by a tax which included the proprietary lands.
The Governor, constrained by his instructions and his bonds, rejected it. ”I can only say,” he told them, ”that I will readily pa.s.s a bill for striking any sum in paper money the present exigency may require, provided funds are established for sinking the same in five years.”
Messages long and acrimonious were exchanged between the parties. The a.s.sembly, had they chosen, could easily have raised money enough by methods not involving the point in dispute; but they thought they saw in the crisis a means of forcing the Governor to yield. The Quakers had an alternative motive: if the Governor gave way, it was a political victory; if he stood fast, their non-resistance principles would triumph, and in this triumph their ascendency as a sect would be confirmed. The debate grew every day more bitter and unmannerly. The Governor could not yield; the a.s.sembly would not. There was a complete deadlock. The a.s.sembly requested the Governor ”not to make himself the hateful instrument of reducing a free people to the abject state of va.s.salage.”[344] As the raising of money and the control of its expenditure was in their hands; as he could not prorogue or dissolve them, and as they could adjourn on their own motion to such time as pleased them; as they paid his support, and could withhold it if he offended them,--which they did in the present case,--it seemed no easy task for him to reduce them to va.s.salage. ”What must we do,” pursued the a.s.sembly, ”to please this kind governor, who takes so much pains to render us obnoxious to our sovereign and odious to our fellow-subjects?
If we only tell him that the difficulties he meets with are not owing to the causes he names,--which indeed have no existence,--but to his own want of skill and abilities for his station, he takes it extremely amiss, and say 'we forget all decency to those in authority.' We are apt to think there is likewise some decency due to the a.s.sembly as a part of the government; and though we have not, like the Governor, had a courtly education, but are plain men, and must be very imperfect in our politeness, yet we think we have no chance of improving by his example.”[345] Again, in another Message, the a.s.sembly, with a thrust at Morris himself, tell him that colonial governors have often been ”transient persons, of broken fortunes, greedy of money, dest.i.tute of all concern for those they govern, often their enemies, and endeavoring not only to oppress, but to defame them.”[346] In such unseemly fas.h.i.+on was the battle waged. Morris, who was himself a provincial, showed more temper and dignity; though there was not too much on either side. ”The a.s.sembly,” he wrote to s.h.i.+rley, ”seem determined to take advantage of the country's distress to get the whole power of government into their own hands.” And the a.s.sembly proclaimed on their part that the Governor was taking advantage of the country's distress to reduce the province to ”Egyptian bondage.”
[Footnote 342: _Morris to s.h.i.+rley, 16 Aug. 1755_.]
[Footnote 343: _Morris to Sir Thomas Robinson, 28 Aug. 1755._]
[Footnote 344: _Colonial Records of Pa_., VI. 584.]
[Footnote 345: _Message of the a.s.sembly to the Governor, 29 Sept. 1755_ (written by Franklin), in _Colonial Records of Pa._, VI. 631, 632.]
[Footnote 346: _Writings of Franklin_, III. 447. The a.s.sembly at first suppressed this paper, but afterwards printed it.]
Pet.i.tions poured in from the miserable frontiersmen. ”How long will those in power, by their quarrels, suffer us to be ma.s.sacred?” demanded William Trent, the Indian trader. ”Two and forty bodies have been buried on Patterson's Creek; and since they have killed more, and keep on killing.”[347] Early in October news came that a hundred persons had been murdered near Fort c.u.mberland. Repeated tidings followed of murders on the Susquehanna; then it was announced that the war-parties had crossed that stream, and were at their work on the eastern side. Letter after letter came from the sufferers, bringing such complaints as this: ”We are in as bad circ.u.mstances as ever any poor Christians were ever in; for the cries of widowers, widows, fatherless and motherless children, are enough to pierce the most hardest of hearts. Likewise it's a very sorrowful spectacle to see those that escaped with their lives with not a mouthful to eat, or bed to lie on, or clothes to cover their nakedness, or keep them warm, but all they had consumed into ashes.
These deplorable circ.u.mstances cry aloud for your Honor's most wise consideration; for it is really very shocking for the husband to see the wife of his bosom her head cut off, and the children's blood drunk like water, by these b.l.o.o.d.y and cruel savages.”[348]
[Footnote 347: _Trent to James Burd, 4 Oct. 1755_.]
[Footnote 348: _Adam Hoops to Governor Morris, 3 Nov. 1755._]
Morris was greatly troubled. ”The conduct of the a.s.sembly,” he wrote to s.h.i.+rley, ”is to me shocking beyond parallel.” ”The inhabitants are abandoning their plantations, and we are in a dreadful situation,” wrote John Harris from the east bank of the Susquehanna. On the next day he wrote again: ”The Indians are cutting us off every day, and I had a certain account of about fifteen hundred Indians, besides French, being on their march against us and Virginia, and now close on our borders, their scouts scalping our families on our frontiers daily.” The report was soon confirmed; and accounts came that the settlements in the valley called the Great Cove had been completely destroyed. All this was laid before the a.s.sembly. They declared the accounts exaggerated, but confessed that outrages had been committed; hinted that the fault was with the proprietaries; and asked the Governor to explain why the Delawares and Shawanoes had become unfriendly. ”If they have suffered wrongs,” said the Quakers, ”we are resolved to do all in our power to redress them, rather than entail upon ourselves and our posterity the calamities of a cruel Indian war.” The Indian records were searched, and several days spent in unsuccessful efforts to prove fraud in a late land-purchase.
Post after post still brought news of slaughter. The upper part of c.u.mberland County was laid waste. Edward Biddle wrote from Reading: ”The drum is beating and bells ringing, and all the people under arms. This night we expect an attack. The people exclaim against the Quakers.” ”We seem to be given up into the hands of a merciless enemy,” wrote John Elder from Paxton. And he declares that more than forty persons have been killed in that neighborhood, besides numbers carried off. Meanwhile the Governor and a.s.sembly went on fencing with words and exchanging legal subtleties; while, with every cry of distress that rose from the west, each hoped that the other would yield.
On the eighth of November the a.s.sembly laid before Morris for his concurrence a bill for emitting bills of credit to the amount of sixty thousand pounds, to be sunk in four years by a tax including the proprietary estates.[349] ”I shall not,” he replied, ”enter into a dispute whether the proprietaries ought to be taxed or not. It is sufficient for me that they have given me no power in that case; and I cannot think it consistent either with my duty or safety to exceed the powers of my commission, much less to do what that commission expressly prohibits.”[350] He stretched his authority, however, so far as to propose a sort of compromise by which the question should be referred to the King; but they refused it; and the quarrel and the murders went on as before. ”We have taken,” said the a.s.sembly, ”every step in our power consistent with the just rights of the freemen of Pennsylvania, for the relief of the poor distressed inhabitants; and we have reason to believe that they themselves would not wish us to go farther. Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”[351] Then the borderers deserved neither; for, rather than be butchered, they would have let the proprietary lands lie untaxed for another year. ”You have in all,” said the Governor, ”proposed to me five money bills, three of them rejected because contrary to royal instructions; the other two on account of the unjust method proposed for taxing the proprietary estate. If you are disposed to relieve your country, you have many other ways of granting money to which I shall have no objection. I shall put one proof more both of your sincerity and mine in our professions of regard for the public, by offering to agree to any bill in the present exigency which it is consistent with my duty to pa.s.s; lest, before our present disputes can be brought to an issue, we should neither have a privilege to dispute about, nor a country to dispute in.”[352] They stood fast; and with an obstinacy for which the Quakers were chiefly answerable, insisted that they would give nothing, except by a bill taxing real estate, and including that of the proprietaries.
[Footnote 349: _Colonial Records of Pa_., VI. 682.]
[Footnote 350: _Message of the Governor to the a.s.sembly, 8 Nov. 1755_, in _Colonial Records of Pa._, VI. 684.]