“Liberty Hall,” the name of the home of a one-time governor of New Jersey, was conspicuously seen on the next float. The girls had had some difficulty in getting an appropriate design for this little garden State that could be conveniently staged on a small-sized platform. But they had evidently succeeded, for the quaintly gowned young maiden who acted her rôle in pantomime was loudly applauded as she flew to an improvised window, only to exhibit wild alarm, and then in frenzied haste scurried to an old-time escritoire. Here she rummaged a moment or so, and then extracted a bundle of letters, which she hurriedly secreted behind a loosened brick beside a simulated fireplace. In explanation of this silent drama Nathalie told that the young girl was Susannah, the daughter of William Livingston, the governor, who, when she saw the redcoats marching towards the house in her father’s absence, quickly remembered his valuable papers and hid them for safety.
Five girls in homespun gowns, sewing on a United States flag, composed the New Hampshire float, which flew the State emblem, with its motto of Liberty inscribed on its side. The flag-makers, out of their best silk gowns, were making, in accordance with the description in the resolution just passed by Congress, June 14, 1777, the first Stars and Stripes that floated from the Ranger, to which Captain Paul Jones had just been commissioned, and which became known as “the unconquered and unstricken flag.”
The Connecticut float bore the words, “The Liberty Charter,” while a Liberty Girl, in a good impersonation of Ruth Wyllis, stood by a ladder resting against a somewhat strange simulation of the Charter Oak, handing the supposed charter to the redoubtable Captain Wadsworth, who quickly secreted it in the hollow of the tree.
Terra Marie, the land of Mary, not only blazoned the words, “The Rights of Liberty,” but portrayed Margaret Brent, the first woman suffragist, as she stood before the Maryland Assembly and pleaded with those worthies, with masculine energy, for her right to a say in the affairs of the little State, the State noted for its Toleration Act of 1649. Surely the good woman, as the representative of the deceased Governor Calvert, who had given his all to her with the words, “Take all, and give all,” had a right to demand that she be heard.
The “Daughters of Liberty” made a brilliant showing in big letters on the little Rhody float, to honor the seventeen young girls who, in 1766, met at the home of good old Deacon Bowen, in Providence, and not only voiced their disapproval of the Colonies’ tax on tea and on cloth manufactured in England, but formed the first patriotic organization known in America. It was the same inspiration of liberty that impelled their emulators to adopt their name, and to plan and push through the demonstration of which every one was so proud. As these Liberty maidens sat and spun at their looms, or whetted their distaffs on the float before the gaping crowd, they were guarded by two impersonations,—one the father of toleration, Roger Williams, who looked benignantly down upon these devotees of freedom, and the other, America’s first club-woman, the learned and martyred Anne Hutchinson.
Ah, but who is this riding astride a horse of sable blackness, curveting and prancing with chafing irritation at the tightened rein of its rider, who
“Burly and big, and bold and bluff,
In his three-cornered hat and coat of snuff,
A foe to King George and the English state,
Was Cæsar Rodney, the delegate.”[[2]]
Of course there were a few who were not familiar with this little incident in the history of Delaware, and how the aforesaid Rodney, a member of the Continental Congress, spurred his horse from Dover to Philadelphia, a distance of eighty-one miles, to reach Independence Hall before night, in order to cast the vote of Delaware for freedom and independence. It was, indeed, a great ride, and the townspeople must have appreciated it, for the horse and rider were heartily cheered as they read the words on the banner: “It is Liberty’s stress; it is Freedom’s need.”
North Carolina proved most interesting, with the inscription, “The First Liberty Bell of America,” on a big hand-bell resting in the center of the float. The inscription and the bell aroused so much curiosity as to why it should take precedence of the old Liberty Bell at Philadelphia, that Nathalie was called upon by a group of friends sitting near, to explain that it really was the first Liberty Bell used in the Thirteen Colonies, having sounded its peal for liberty when rung by the patriots of that State in 1771.
“These patriots,” went on the young Liberty Girl, “were the farmers and yeomanry of that State, who, in a vigorous protest against the tyrannous acts, misrule, and extortion during the administration of Governor Tryon, banded themselves into a company known as the Regulators. This bell was used to call them together in their struggle to maintain the rights of the people. These Regulators were not only hounded, persecuted, and sometimes executed as if they were rebels, but many of their number were killed at the battle of the Alamance,—so named because it took place on a field near that beautiful river,—when called upon to defend themselves, when fired upon by the governor and a company of the king’s troops. This battle has been called by some the first battle of the Revolution,” continued the young girl, “and really inspired the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence, the forerunner of the noted Declaration signed at Philadelphia. Some historians claim that ‘God made the flower of freedom grow out of the turf that covered these men’s graves.’”