INDEPENDENCE HALL, PHILADELPHIA
WHERE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE WAS BORN
William Penn was a man of vision. When, in 1682, Thomas Holme surveyed for him the site of Philadelphia, the Quaker pioneer gave instruction that "the Centre Square," one mile from the Delaware, be set apart for the public buildings of the city and colony.
But for many years after the founding of the city, Centre Square was far out in the country. During these years temporary public buildings were provided for official meetings, including the Assembly, but in 1728 steps were taken to erect a suitable public building within reach of the people of the young city. Ground was bought on Chestnut Street, between Fifth and Sixth streets, and the State House was begun in 1730. The total cost of the building was $16,250. Two wings were added in 1739 and 1740; these cost some $12,000 more.
Two years after the completion of the main building the Pennsylvania Assembly passed an act in which this statement was made:
"It is the true intent and meaning of these Presents, that no part of the said ground lying to the southward of the State House, as it is now built, be converted into or made use of for erecting any sort of Building thereupon, but that the said ground shall be enclosed and remain a public open Green and Walks forever."
Eighty years after the passage of the act an attempt was made to divert the State House yard to other purposes. In a curious old document, dated February 6, 1816, W. Rawle and Peter S. Duponceau made an argument against this diversion, showing conclusively that the State House Square had been "irrevocably devoted to the purpose of an open and public walk." Thanks to their efforts and the efforts of others who have labored to the same end, the grounds are to-day, and must forever remain, open to the use of the people.
The first public function held in the new State House was a banquet, given in the "long room," in the second story. Of this Franklin's Pennsylvania Gazette of September 30, 1736, said:
"Thursday last William Allen, Esq., Mayor of this city for the past year, made a feast for his citizens at the State House, to which all the strangers in town of note were also invited. Those who are judges of such things say that considering the delicacy of the viands, the variety and excellency of the wines, the great number of guests, and yet the easiness and order with which the whole was conducted, it was the most grand, the most elegant entertainment that has been made in these parts of America."
The builders were dilatory. It was 1736 before the Assembly was able to hold its first session in the chamber provided for it, and not until 1745 was the room completed. Three years more passed before the apartment intended for the Governor's Council was ready for its occupants.
In 1741 the tower was built, and on November 4 Edmund Wooley sent to the Province of Pennsylvania an interesting bill, "for expenses in raising the Tower of the State House":
Provision was made in 1750 for the extension of the tower for the accommodation of a bell, and on October 16, 1751, the Superintendent of the State House sent a letter to the colonial agent in London. In this letter he said:
"We take the liberty to apply ourselves to thee to get us a good bell, of about two thousand pounds weight, the cost of which we presume may amount to about one hundred pounds sterling, or, perhaps, with the charges, something more.... Let the bell be cast by the best workmen, and examined carefully before it is shipped, with the following words well-shaped in large letters round it, viz:—
"'By order of the Assembly of the Province of Pennsylvania, for the State House in the city of Philadelphia, 1752,'
"And underneath,
"'Proclaim Liberty throughout all the land to all the inhabitants thereof—Levit. XXV. 10.'"
When the new bell was hung it was cracked by a stroke of the clapper. Isaac Norris wrote:
"We concluded to send it back by Captain Budden, but he could not take it on board, upon which two ingenious workmen undertook to cast it here, and I am just now informed they have this day opened the Mould and have got a good bell, which, I confess, pleases me very much, that we should first venture upon and succeed in the greatest bell cast, for aught I know, in English America. The mould was finished in a very masterly manner, and the letters, I am told, are better than [on] the old one. When we broke up the metal, our judges here generally agreed it was too high and brittle, and cast several little bells out of it to try the sound and strength, and fixed upon a mixture of an ounce and a half of copper to one pound of the old bell, and in this proportion we now have it."
But when the bell was in place it was found to contain too much copper, and Pass & Stow, the founders, "were so teazed with the witticisms of the town," that they begged to be allowed to recast it. In June, 1753, this third bell was hung, and in the following September the founders were paid £60 13s. 5d.
In 1752 arrangements were made for a clock. The works were placed in the middle of the main building, immediately under the roof. These were connected by rods, enclosed in pipes, with the hands on the dial plates at either gable. Early views of the State House show these dials. The cost of the clock, which included care for six years, was £494 5s. 5½d.
During the twenty years that followed the installation of the clock and the bell the State House became a civic centre of note; but not until the stirring events that led up to the Revolution did it become of special interest to other colonies than Pennsylvania. On April 25, 1775, the day after news came to Philadelphia of the battles of Lexington and Concord, the great bell sounded a call to arms that was the real beginning of making the building a national shrine. In response to the call eight thousand people gathered in the Yard to consider measures of defence. On April 26 the newspapers reported that "the company unanimously agreed to associate for the purpose of defending with arms their lives, liberty, and property, against all attempts to deprive them of them." This determination of the people was soon sanctioned by the Assembly, and Pennsylvania prepared to raise its quota towards the Army of the Revolution.
On May 10, 1775, the Second Continental Congress met in the Assembly Chamber, and took action that made inevitable the adoption of the Declaration of Independence the next year. On Friday, June 7, 1776, in the Eastern Room on the first floor of the State House, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia introduced the following:
"Resolved, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved."
At the same time the Pennsylvania Assembly was considering, in the chamber upstairs, what instruction to give to its delegates. When the Assembly adjourned the Continental Congress removed to the upper room. There, on July 2, the Virginian's motion was carried. Later the Declaration itself was adopted, and on July 4, it was
"Resolved, that Copies of the Declaration be sent to the several assemblies, conventions, and committees or councils of safety, and to the several commanding officers of the Continental troops; that it be proclaimed in each of the United States and at the head of the army."
It was ordered that the Declaration be proclaimed from the State House on Monday, July 8, 1776. On that day the State House bell sounded its glad call; for the first time did it indeed "proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof." And in the hearing of those who gathered in response to its call the Declaration was read.
From that day the State House has been known as Independence Hall, while the State House Yard has become Independence Square.
The sittings of Congress in Independence Hall were interrupted by the approach of the British. For five months the building was used as a British prison and hospital. But on July 2, 1778, Congress returned; the building once more belonged to the nation.
The building became more than ever a national shrine when, in 1787, the Constitutional Convention met there. On September 17, 1787, the votes of eleven States were recorded in favor of the Constitution, and Benjamin Franklin, looking toward a sun which was blazoned on the President's chair, said of it to those near him, "In the vicissitudes of hope and fear I was not able to tell whether it was rising or setting; now I know that it is the rising sun."
In 1790, the Congress of the United States met in the western portion of the buildings on the Square, erected in 1785 for the Pennsylvania Assembly.[1] This building was, by that body, offered to Congress and accepted for the term of ten years, until the Capital should be removed to the shore of the Potomac.
During these ten years, and for thirty-five years more, the Liberty Bell continued to sound notes of joy and of sorrow. On July 8, 1835, it was tolling for Chief Justice Marshall. When the funeral procession was on Chestnut Street, not far from Independence Hall, the bell cracked. Since that day it has been mute.
The passing years have brought many changes to Independence Hall, as well as to the Liberty Bell. The bell cannot be renewed, but the historic building and the Square have been restored until they present essentially the appearance of the days of 1776. The chief difference is in the steeple. The present steeple was built in 1828. It is much like the old steeple, but a story higher.
As the visitor passes from room to room of the venerable building, and examines the relics and studies the portraits of the great men who gathered there so long ago, his heart is stirred to thankfulness to those who dared to call a nation into being, and he cannot but think that it is good to live for one's country.
Photo by Ph. B. Wallace
DAVID RITTENHOUSE'S HOUSE, NORRITON, PENNA.
THE DAVID RITTENHOUSE HOME, NEAR
PHILADELPHIA
THE HEADQUARTERS OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN'S FRIEND
AND CO-LABORER
"See the sage Rittenhouse with ardent eye
Lift the long tube and pierce the starry sky!
He marks what laws the eccentric wanderers bind,
Copies creation in his forming mind,
And bids beneath his hand in semblance rise
With mimic orbs the labors of the skies."
This was Barlow's way of telling of the achievement of David Rittenhouse, the colonial astronomer, in fashioning the marvellous orrery, the mechanical representation of the movements of the planetary system. Thomas Jefferson's prose description was a little more readable:
"A machine far surpassing in ingenuity of contrivance, accuracy and utility anything of the kind ever before constructed.... He has not indeed made a world, but he has by imitation approached more its Maker than any man who has lived from the creation to this day."
The father of the maker of the orrery was a paper manufacturer near Germantown, but when David was three years old he moved to a little farm in Norriton, nineteen miles from Philadelphia, where, in 1749, he built the stone house in which his son spent the rest of his life.
It was his purpose to make a farmer of David, and he might have succeeded if he had not invested in a few mathematical books. The twelve-year-old boy was fascinated by these volumes. Samuel W. Pennypacker has told the result:
"The handles of his plough, and even the fences around the fields, he covered with mathematical calculations.... At seventeen he made a wooden clock, and afterward one in metal. Having thus tested his ability in an art in which he had never received any instruction, he secured from his somewhat reluctant father money enough to buy in Philadelphia the necessary tools, and after holding a shop by the roadside, set up in business as a clock and mathematical instrument maker."
Dr. Benjamin Rush once said that "without library, friends, or society, and with but two or three books, he became, before he had reached his four-and-twentieth year, the rival of two of the greatest mathematicians of Europe."
The skilled astronomer was soon called upon to render a service to several of the Colonies. By means of astronomical instruments he did such accurate work in marking out the boundary between Delaware and Pennsylvania that Mason and Dixon later accepted his results, and he settled the dispute between New Jersey and New York as to the point where the forty-first degree of latitude touches the Hudson River. Perhaps, however, the achievement that won for him greatest fame was the observation, made in 1769, of the transit of Venus. The importance of the observation is evident from the facts that it provides the best means for calculating the distance between the heavenly bodies, which had never been satisfactorily made, and that the opportunity would not occur again for one hundred and five years. After months of preparation, which included the making of delicate instruments, Rittenhouse, one of a committee of three appointed by the American Philosophical Society, succeeded. In the words of Pennypacker, "The first approximately accurate results in the measurement of the spheres were given to the world, not by the schooled and salaried astronomers who watched from the magnificent royal observatories of Europe, but by unpaid amateurs and devotees to science in the youthful province of Pennsylvania."
Benjamin Franklin found in him a kindred spirit, and the Philadelphian was frequently a visitor at the Norriton farmhouse. On Sunday the two friends often went to the old Norriton Presbyterian Church, which had been built on the corner of the Rittenhouse farm, within sight of the house. This church, which probably dates from 1698, is still standing in good repair.
Some years after the successful observation of the transit of Venus brought fame to the American astronomer, he moved to Philadelphia. There, among other duties, he had charge of the State House clock.
At the beginning of the Revolution the Council of Safety asked that he should "prepare moulds for the casting of clock weights, and send them to some iron furnace, and order a sufficient number to be immediately made for the purpose of exchanging them with the inhabitants of this city for their leaden clock weights." The leaden weights were needed for bullets. Later he was sent to survey the shores of the Delaware, to choose the best points for fortifications.
When he became Engineer of the Council of Safety "he was called upon to arrange for casting cannon of iron and brass, to view the site for the erection of a Continental powder mill, to conduct experiments for rifling cannon and muskets, to fix upon a method of fastening a chain for the protection of the river, to superintend the manufacture of saltpeter, and to locate a magazine for military stores on the Wissahickon."
This was but the beginning of service to Pennsylvania during the Revolution. His activities were so valuable to the Colonies that a Tory poet published in the Pennsylvania Evening Post of December 2, 1777, a verse addressed "To David Rittenhouse," of which the first stanza read:
"Meddle not with state affairs,
Keep acquaintance with the stars;
Science, David, is thy line;
Warp not Nature's great design.
If thou to fame would'st rise."
The following year Thomas Jefferson wrote to him:
"You should consider that the world has but one Rittenhouse, and never had one before.... Are those powers, then, which, being intended for the erudition of the world, are, like light and air, the world's common property, to be taken from their proper pursuit to do the commonplace drudgery of governing a single State?"
To the call of the nation Rittenhouse responded in April, 1792, when President Washington appointed him the first Director of the Mint.
His closing years were full of honors, but his strength was declining rapidly; he had spent himself so fully for his country that his power of resistance was small. Just before he died, on June 26, 1796, he said to a friend who had been writing to him, "You make the way to God easier."
XXXVIII
THE HEADQUARTERS AT VALLEY FORGE,
PENNSYLVANIA
WHERE WASHINGTON LIVED DURING THE
WINTER OF 1777-78
A few rods from the beautiful Schuylkill River, at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, twenty-four miles from Philadelphia, is the quaint stone house where Washington spent nearly six months of the most trying year of the Revolution.
While the British troops were occupying Philadelphia Congress was in session at York, Pennsylvania. Valley Forge was accordingly a strategic location, for from here it was comparatively simple to guard the roads leading out of Philadelphia, and to prevent both the exit of the British and the entrance of supplies designed for the enemy.
The eleven thousand men who marched to the site selected for the camp were miserably equipped for a winter in the open. Provisions were scarce, and clothing and shoes were even more scarce. But the men looked forward bravely to the months of exposure before them.
Washington did everything possible to provide for their comfort. Realizing that the soldiers needed something more than the tents in which they were living at first, he gave orders that huts should be built for them. The commanding officers of the regiments were instructed to divide their soldiers into parties of twelve, to see that each party had the necessary tools, and to superintend the building of a hut for each group of twelve soldiers, according to carefully stated dimensions. A reward was offered to the party in each regiment which should complete its hut in the quickest and best manner. Since valuable time would be lost in preparing boards for the roofs, he promised a second sword to the officer or soldier who should devise a material for this purpose cheaper and more quickly made than boards.
Some of the first huts were covered with leaves, but it was necessary to provide a more lasting covering. After a few weeks fairly acceptable quarters were provided for the men, in spite of the scarcity of tools. Colonel Pickering, on January 5, wrote to Mrs. Pickering, "The huts are very warm and comfortable, being very good log huts, pointed with clay, and the roof made tight with the same."
At first, Washington sought to encourage his soldiers by assuring them that he would accept no better quarters than could be given them; he would set the example by passing the winter in a hut. But officers and men alike urged that it would be unwise to risk his health in this way, and he consented to seek quarters in a near-by house. However, he refused to make himself comfortable until the men were provided for.
His headquarters were finally fixed in the two-story stone house of Isaac Potts. There he met his officers, received visitors, planned for the welfare of the army, and parried the attacks of those who could not understand the difficulties of the situation. Once he wrote to Congress: "Three days successively we have been destitute of bread. Two days we have been entirely without meat. The men must be supplied, or they cannot be commanded."
To the objections of those who thought that the army should not be inactive during the winter weather, he wrote:
"I can assure these gentlemen, that it is a much easier and less distressing thing to draw remonstrances in a comfortable room by a good fireside, than to occupy a cold, bleak hill, and sleep under frost and snow, without clothes or blankets. However, although they seem to have little pity for the naked and distressed soldiers, I feel superabundantly for them, and, from my soul, I pity those miseries which it is neither in my power to relieve or prevent."
The heavy hearts of Washington and his officers rejoiced when, on February 23, 1778, Baron Steuben and Peter S. Du Ponceau called at headquarters. Du Ponceau wrote later:
"I cannot describe the impression that the first sight of that great man made upon me. I could not keep my eyes from that imposing countenance—grave, yet not severe; affable, without familiarity.... I have never seen a picture that represents him to me as I saw him at Valley Forge.... I had frequent opportunities of seeing him, as it was my duty to accompany the Baron when he dined with him, which was sometimes twice or thrice in the same week. We visited him also in the evening, when Mrs. Washington was at head-quarters. We were in a manner domesticated in the family."
An order was sent from headquarters, dated March 28, that Baron Steuben be respected and obeyed as Inspector General. The need of his services is revealed by his description of the condition of the army when he arrived in camp:
"The arms at Valley Forge were in a horrible condition, covered with rust, half of them without bayonets, many from which a single shot could not be fired. The pouches were quite as bad as the arms. A great many of the men had tin boxes instead of pouches, others had cow-horns; and muskets, carbines, fowling-pieces, and rifles were to be seen in the same company.... The men were literally naked.... The officers who had coats, had them of every color and make. I saw officers, at a grand parade in Valley Forge, mounting guard in a sort of dressing-gown, made of an old blanket or woolen bed-cover...."
Mrs. Washington joined the circle at headquarters on February 10. She was not favorably impressed. "The General's apartment is very small," she wrote. "He has had a log cabin built to dine in, which has made our quarters much more tolerable than they were at first."
The most joyful day at Valley Forge was May 7, 1778, when a fête was held to celebrate the conclusion of the treaty of alliance between France and the United States. After religious service, the army was reviewed, and Washington dined in public with his officers. "When the General took his leave, there was a universal clap, with loud huzzas, which continued till he had proceeded a quarter of a mile."
On June 18 the glad tidings came to headquarters that the British were evacuating Philadelphia. Next day the camp was left behind. Washington did not see it again for nine years.
In 1879 the Isaac Potts house was bought by the Continental Memorial Association of Valley Forge. And in 1893 the Pennsylvania Legislature created the Valley Forge Park Commission, which has since acquired the entire encampment, has laid it out as a park, and has arranged for the erection of many monuments and markers and a number of memorial structures. But the house in which Washington lived must always be the central feature of the grounds.
Photo by H. C. Howland, Philadelphia
DAWESFIELD, NEAR PHILADELPHIA, PENNA.
XXXIX