“We hope and rely on thy care and assistance in this affair, and that thou will procure and forward it by the first opportunity, as our workmen inform us it will be less trouble to hang the bell before their scaffolds are struck from the building where we intend to place it, which will not be done until the end of next summer or beginning of the fall. Let the bell be cast by the best workmen, and examine it carefully before it is shipped with the following words, well shaped, in long letters around 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 through all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.—Levit. xxv. 10.'”
The bell was brought over in the ship Matilda, Captain Budden, and was unloaded on the wharf in Philadelphia about the end of August, 1752.
It was hung in position and when given its trial for sound “it was cracked by a stroke of the clapper, without any other violence.” Needless to state, the superintendents were disappointed and they determined to ship the bell back to England to be recast. But Captain Budden had already too heavy a cargo to carry the bell.
In this emergency two Philadelphians, Pass and Stow, undertook to recast it, using the material in the original bell. The mold was opened March 10, 1753. The work had been well done, even the letters being better than those on the first bell.
Pass and Stow first cast several small bells to test the quality of the material, and its sound, and found that there was too much copper in the mixture. It was their third mixture which was finally used.
A newspaper of June 7, 1753, carried this notice: “Last week was raised and fixed in the State House steeple the new great bell cast here by Pass and Stow, weighing 2080 pounds with this motto: ‘Proclaim Liberty to all the land and all the inhabitants thereof.’.” It was tested June 2 and proved satisfactory.
On July 8, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was read in the State House yard. At the same time the King’s Arms were taken from the court room and publicly burned, while merry chimes from the church steeples and peals from the State House bell “proclaimed liberty throughout the land.”
This was an event which made the inscription on the bell prophetic. John Adams, in writing to Samuel Chase on July 9, said, “The bells rang all day and almost all night.”