“Commandant Price opened their valves and sank them in the basin.”
“And the American army, where is it now?” I asked.
“They’ve retreated south of the Brandywine—what’s left of them. Our new line is entrenching from Chester to Upland to Westchester with our right flank on the Delaware; but what’s the use?”
So crushing was the supremacy of the invaders that there was no further thought of resistance in Philadelphia. The German army was encamped in Fairmount Park and it was known that, at the first sign of revolt, German siege-guns on the historic heights of Wissahickon and Chestnut Hill would destroy the City Hall with its great tower bearing the statue of William Penn and the massive grey pile of Drexel and Company’s banking house at the corner of Fifth and Chestnut streets. Von Hindenburg had announced this, also that he did not consider it necessary to take hostages.
There was one act of resistance, however, when the enemy entered Philadelphia that must live among deeds of desperate heroism.
As the German hosts marched down Chestnut Street they came to Independence Hall and here, blocking the way on their sorrel horses with two white mounted trumpeters, was the First City Troop, sixty-five men under Captain J. Franklin McFadden, in their black coats and white doeskin riding-breeches, in the black helmets with raccoon skin plumes, in their odd-shaped riding boots high over the knee, all as in Revolutionary days—here they were drawn up before the statue of George Washington and the home of the Liberty Bell, resolved to die here, fighting as well as they could for these things that were sacred. And they did die, most of them, or fell wounded before a single one of the enemy set foot inside of Independence Hall.
Here is the list of heroes who offered their lives for the cause of liberty:
Captain J. Franklin McFadden, First Lieutenant George C. Thayer, Second Lieutenant John Conyngham Stevens, First Sergeant Thomas Cadwalader, Second Sergeant (Quartermaster) Benjamin West Frazier, Third Sergeant George Joyce Sewell, William B. Churchman, Richard M. Philler, F. Wilson Prichett, Clarence H. Clark, Joseph W. Lewis, Edward D. Page, Richard Tilghman, Edward D. Toland, Jr., McCall Keating, Robert P. Frazier, Alexander Cadwalader, Morris W. Stroud, George Brooke, 3d, Charles Poultney Davis, Saunders L. Meade, Cooper Howell, C. W. Henry, Edmund Thayer, Harry C. Yarrow, Jr., Alexander C. Yarnall, Louis Rodman Page, Jr., George Gordon Meade, Pierson Pierce, Andrew Porter, Richard H. R. Toland, John B. Thayer, West Frazier, John Frazer, P. P. Chrystie, Albert L. Smith, William W. Bodine, Henry D. Beylard, Effingham Buckley Morris, Austin G. Maury, John P. Hollingsworth, Rulon Miller, Harold M. Willcox, Charles Wharton, Howard York, Robert Gilpin Irvin, J. Keating Willcox, William Watkins, Jr., Harry Ingersoll, Russell Thayer, Fitz Eugene Dixon, Percy C. Madeira, Jr., Marmaduke Tilden, Jr., H. Harrison Smith, C. Howard Clark, Jr., Richard McCall Elliot, Jr., George Harrison Frazier, Jr., Oliver Eton Cromwell, Richard Harte, D. Reeves Henry, Henry H. Houston, Charles J. Ingersoll.
It grieved me when I visited the quaint little house on Arch Street with its gabled window and wooden blinds, where Betsey Ross made the first flag of the United States of America, to find a German banner in place of the accustomed thirteen white stars on their square of blue. And again, when I stood beside Benjamin Franklin’s grave in Christ Church Cemetery, I was shocked to see a German flag marking this honoured resting-place. “Benjamin and Deborah, 1790,” was the deeply graven words and, beside them under a kindly elm, the battered headstone of their little four-year-old son, “Francis F.—A delight to all who knew him.” Then a German flag!
I began to wonder why we had not learned a lesson from England’s lamentable showing in 1915. What good did all our wealth do us now? It would be taken from us—had not the Germans already levied an indemnity of four hundred millions upon Philadelphia? And seized the Baldwin locomotive works, the greatest in the world, employing 16,000 men? And the Cramp shipbuilding yards? And the terminus at Point Breeze down the river of the great Standard Oil Company’s pipe line with enormous oil supplies?