Sydney George Fisher

“ Yet in one way the Brandywine Hills are closely connected with those sands, for from these very hills have been quarried the hard rocks for the great breakwater at the Cape, behind which the fleets of merchant vessels take refuge in storms.
The great sand dunes behind the lighthouse at the cape have their equal nowhere else on the coast. Blown by the ocean winds, the dunes work inland, overwhelming a pine forest to the tree tops and filling swamps in their course. The beach is strewn with every type of wreckage of man's vain attempts to conquer the sea. ”

“ But were the Quakers really narrow, or were they any more narrow than other rigorously self-disciplined people: Spartans, Puritans, soldiers whose discipline enables them to achieve great results? All discipline is in one sense narrow. Quaker quietude and retirement probably conserved mental energy instead of dissipating it. In an age of superstition and irrational religion, their minds were free and unhampered, and it was the dominant rational tone of their thought that enabled science to flourish in Pennsylvania. ”

“ The beautiful cluster of hills at the northern end dropping into park-like pastures along the shores of the rippling Red Clay and White Clay creeks which form the deep Christina with its border of green reedy marshes, is in striking contrast to the wild waste of sands at Cape Henlopen. ”

“ Immigrants and pioneers from all the New England and Middle States flocked out that way to the land of promise in wagons, or horseback, or trudging along on foot. Substantial taverns grew up along the route; and habitual freighters and stage drivers, proud of their fine teams of horses, grew into characters of the road. When the Pennsylvania Railroad was built, it followed the same line. In fact, most of the lines of railroad in the State follow Indian trails. The trails for trade and tribal intercourse led east and west. ”

“ Most of the colonies in America, especially the stronger ones, had an aristocratic class, which was often large and powerful, as in the case of Virginia, and which usually centered around the governor, especially if he were appointed from England by the Crown or by a proprietor. But there was very little of this social distinction in New Jersey. Her political life had been too much broken up, and she had been too long dependent on the governors of New York to have any of those pretty little aristocracies with bright colored clothes, and coaches and four, flourishing within her boundaries. ”

“ After the English conquest on the Delaware, not a few of the Dutch migrated to Maryland, where their descendants, it is said, are still to be found. Some in later years returned to the Delaware, where on the whole, notwithstanding the early confiscations, English rule seemed to promise well. The very first documents, the terms of surrender both on the Delaware and on the Hudson, breathed an air of Anglo-Saxon freedom. Everybody was at liberty to come and go at will. Hollanders could migrate to the Delaware or to New York as much as before. ”

“ Under such a change, while the Quakers might still have an influence in the Legislature, the Crown would probably give the executive offices to Churchmen. They therefore labored hard to discredit the Quakers. They kept harping on the absurdity of a set of fanatics attempting to govern a colony without a militia and without administering oaths of office or using oaths in judicial proceedings. How could any one's life be safe from foreign enemies without soldiers, and what safeguard was there for life, liberty, and property before judges, jurors, and witnesses, none of whom had been sworn? ”

“ Virginia was suffering in the same way: the settlers on her border were slaughtered or were driven back in herds upon the more settled districts, and Washington, with a nominal strength of fifteen hundred who would not obey orders, was forced to stand a helpless spectator of the general flight and misery. There was no adequate force or army anywhere within reach. The British had been put to flight and had gone to the defense of New England and New York. Neither Pennsylvania nor Virginia had a militia that could withstand the French and their red allies. ”

“ A feudal proprietorship, collecting rents from all the people, seems to modern minds grievously wrong in theory, and yet it would be very difficult to show that it proved onerous in practice. Under it the people of Pennsylvania flourished in wealth, peace, and happiness. Penn won undying fame for the liberal principles of his feudal enterprise. His expenses in England were so great and his quitrents always so much in arrears that he was seldom out of debt. But his children grew rich from the province. ”

“ In her time the ocean was free from enemy cruisers, and the trade of the colony grew so rapidly that the increasing sales of land and quitrents soon enabled her to pay off the mortgage on the province and all the rest of her husband's debts. It was sad that Penn did not live to see that day, which he had so hoped for in his last years, when, with ocean commerce free from depredations, the increasing money returns from his province would obviate all necessity of selling the government to the Crown.
With all debts paid and prosperity increasing, Penn's sons became very rich men. ”

“ It was the absurdity of such contrasts as this running all through the annals of the Dutch in America that inspired Washington Irving to write his infinitely humorous "History of New York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty," by "Diedrich Knickerbocker." It is difficult for an Anglo-Saxon to take the Dutch in America seriously. What can you do with a people whose imagination allowed them to give such names to their ships as Weigh Scales, Spotted Cow, and The Pear Tree? So Irving described the taking of Fort Casimir in mock heroic manner. ”

“ It is a curious commentary on the times and on human nature that these Quaker folk, treated as outcasts and enemies of good order and religion in England and gradually losing all their property in heavy fines and confiscations, should so suddenly in the wilderness prove the capacity of their "Holy Experiment" for achieving the best sort of good order and material success. They immediately built a most charming little town by the waterside, snug and pretty with its red brick houses in the best architectural style. ”

“ It was most aptly worded, drafted by the master hand of Franklin. It recited the fact that the province had always been ruled by Quakers who were opposed to war, but that now it had become necessary to allow men to become soldiers and to give them every facility for the profession of arms, because the Assembly though containing a Quaker majority nevertheless represented all the people of the province. To prevent those who believed in war from taking part in it would be as much a violation of liberty of conscience as to force enlistments among those who had conscientious scruples against it. ”

“ The other Quakers, too, were as careful as Penn in their honorable treatment of the red men. Quaker families of farmers and settlers lived unarmed among them for generations and, when absent from home, left children in their care. The Indians, on their part, were known to have helped white families with food in winter time. Penn, on his first visit to the colony, made a long journey unarmed among the Indians as far as the Susquehanna, saw the great herds of elk on that river, lived in Indian wigwams, and learned much of the language and customs of the natives. ”

“ Small fruits and grapes flourish in some places. At the northern end of this forest tract the health resort known as Lakewood was established to take advantage of the pine air. A little to the southward is the secluded Brown's Mills, once so appealing to lovers of the simple life. Checked on the east by the great forest, the West Jersey Quakers spread southward from Salem until they came to the Cohansey, a large and beautiful stream flowing out of the forest and wandering through green meadows and marshes to the bay. ”

“ So the Crown, knowing little of the value of it, granted him the most magnificent domain of mountains; lakes, rivers, and forests, fertile soil, coal, petroleum, and iron that ever was given to a single proprietor. In addition to giving Penn the control of Delaware and, with certain other Quakers, that of New Jersey as well, the Crown placed at the disposal of the Quakers 55,000 square miles of most valuable, fertile territory, lacking only about three thousand square miles of being as large as England and Wales. ”

“ The funeral was held at night, and the Indians in canoes, the white men in boats, passed down Cooper's Creek and along the river to Newton Creek where the graveyard was, lighting the darkness with innumerable torches, a strange scene to think of now as having been once enacted in front of the bustling cities of Camden and Philadelphia. Some of the young settlers took Indian wives, and that strain of native blood is said to show itself in the features of several families to this day. ”

“ The Quakers and conservatives, who seem to have been the more numerous, assailed the Scotch-Irish in no measured language as a gang of ruffians without respect for law or order who, though always crying for protection, had refused to march with Bouquet to save Fort Pitt or to furnish him the slightest assistance. Instead of going westward where the danger was and something might be accomplished, they had turned eastward among the settlements and murdered a few poor defenseless people, mostly women and children. ”

“ The northern half of the State is a region of mountains and lakes. As part of the original continent it had been under the ice sheet of the glacial age and was very unlike the level sands, swamps, and pine barrens of West Jersey which had arisen as a shoal and island from the sea. The only place in East Jersey where settlement was at all easy was along the open meadows which were reached by water near the mouth of the Hudson, round Newark Bay, and along the Hackensack River.
The Dutch, by the discoveries of Henry Hudson in 1609, claimed the whole region between the Hudson and the Delaware. ”

“ The assemblies of all the colonies have been a good deal abused for delay in supporting the war and meanness in withholding money. But in many instances the delay and lack of money were occasioned by the grasping schemes of governors who saw a chance to gain new privileges for the Crown or a proprietor or to weaken popular government by crippling the powers of the legislatures. The usual statement that the Pennsylvania Assembly was slow in assisting the war because it was composed of Quakers is not supported by the facts. The Pennsylvania Assembly was not behind the rest. ”

“ In nothing is this colonial prosperity better revealed than in the quality of the country seats. They were usually built of stone and sometimes of brick and stone, substantial, beautifully proportioned, admirable in taste, with a certain simplicity, yet indicating a people of wealth, leisure, and refinement, who believed in themselves and took pleasure in adorning their lives. ”

“ The river at every high tide overflowed great meadows grown up in reeds and grasses and red and yellow flowers, stretching back to the borders of the forest and full of water birds and wild fowl of every variety. ”

“ The rapid increase of population and the growing prosperity in Pennsylvania during the life of its founder present a striking contrast to the slower and more troubled growth of the other British colonies in America. The settlers in Pennsylvania engaged at once in profitable agriculture. The loam, clay, and limestone soils on the Pennsylvania tide of the Delaware produced heavy crops of grain, as well as pasture for cattle and valuable lumber from its forests. The Pennsylvania settlers were of a class particularly skilled in dealing with the soil. ”

“ He was a favorite with Queen Anne, who was now on the throne, and he led an expensive life which, with the cost of his deputy governor's salary in the colony, the slowness of his quitrent collections, and the dishonesty of the steward of his English estates, rapidly brought him into debt. To pay the government expense of a small colonial empire and at the same time to lead the life of a courtier and to travel as a preacher would have exhausted a stronger exchequer than Penn's. ”

“ When the treaty of peace was signed in 1763, extinguishing France's title to Canada and turning over Canada and the Mississippi Valley to the English, the colonists were prepared to enjoy all the blessings of peace. But the treaty of peace had been made with France, not with the red man. A remarkable genius, Pontiac, appeared among the Indians, one of the few characters, like Tecumseh and Osceola, who are often cited as proof of latent powers almost equal to the strongest qualities of the white race. ”

“ Franklin and Galloway also asserted that the colonies like Massachusetts, the Jerseys, and the Carolinas, which had been changed to royal governments, had profited by the change. But that was hardly the prevailing opinion in those colonies themselves. Royal governors could be as petty and annoying as the Penns and far more tyrannical. Pennsylvania had always defeated any attempts at despotism on the part of the Penn family and had built up a splendid body of liberal laws and legislative privileges. ”

“ The church people, or peasantry of the later migration, belonged usually to one of the two dominant churches of Germany, the Lutheran or the Reformed. Those of the Reformed Church were often spoken of as Calvinists. This migration of the church people was not due to the example of the Quakers but was the result of a new policy which was adopted by the British Government when Queen Anne ascended the throne in 1702, and which aimed at keeping the English people at home and at filling the English colonies in America with foreign Protestants hostile to France and Spain. ”

“ Pennsylvania had free government. The Germans and the Scotch-Irish outnumbered the Quakers and could have controlled the Legislature, for in 1750 out of a population of 150,000 the Quakers were only about 50,000; and yet the Legislature down to the Revolution was always confided to the competent hands of the Quakers. No higher tribute, indeed, has ever been paid to any group of people as governors of a commonwealth and architects of its finance and trade. ”

“ The Duke of York, to whom Delaware was given, introduced trial by jury, settled private titles, and left undisturbed the religion and local customs of the people. But the political rule of the Duke was absolute as became a Stuart. He arbitrarily taxed exports and imports. Executive, judicial, and legislative powers were all vested in his deputy governor at New York or in creatures appointed and controlled by him. It was the sort of government the Duke hoped to impose upon all Great Britain when he should come to the throne, and he was trying his 'prentice hand in the colonies. ”

“ But the New York Assembly attempted to exercise control over East Jersey and to levy duties on its exports. The two provinces were soon on the eve of a little war. For twelve or fifteen years East Jersey was in disorder, with seditious meetings, mob rule, judges and sheriffs attacked while performing their duty, the proprietors claiming quitrents from the people, the people resisting, and the British Privy Council threatening a suit to take the province from the proprietors and make a Crown colony of it. The period is known in the history of this colony as "The Revolution." ”

“ The warrior trails usually led north and south, for that had long been the line of strategy and conquest of the tribes. The northern tribes, or Six Nations, established in the lake region of New York near the headwaters of the Delaware, the Susquehanna, and the Ohio, had the advantage of these river valleys for descending into the whole Atlantic seaboard and the valley of the Mississippi. They had in consequence conquered all the tribes south of them as far even as the Carolinas and Georgia. All their trails of conquest led across Pennsylvania. ”

“ The proprietors of Pennsylvania took the opportunity to exempt their own estate from taxation and throw the burden of furnishing money for the war upon the colonists. Under pressure of the increasing success of the French and Indians and because the dreadful massacres were coming nearer and nearer to Philadelphia, the Quaker Assembly yielded, voted the largest sum they had ever voted to the war, and exempted the proprietary estates. The colony was soon boiling with excitement. ”

“ The people of the Cape became in colonial times clever traders in various pursuits. Although in one sense they were as isolated as islanders, their adventurous life on the sea gave them breadth of view. By their thrift and in innumerable shrewd and persistent ways they amassed competencies and estates for their families. ”

“ With the advice and assistance of some of those who were going out to his colony he prepared a code of laws which contained many of the advanced ideas of the Quakers. Capital punishment was to be confined to murder and treason, instead of being applied as in England to a host of minor offenses. The property of murderers, instead of being forfeited to the State, was to be divided among the next of kin of the victim and of the criminal. Religious liberty was established as it had been in Rhode Island and the Jerseys. All children were to be taught a useful trade. ”