Historic Events of Colonial Days

by Rupert Sargent Holland

"But I think they ought to be," protested the boy.

"So does Governor Evans," agreed Mr. Felton. "And it's my opinion that he and that truculent friend of his, Charles Hackett, planned this whole scare just to see how warlike the people of Philadelphia are. I think he arranged to have that messenger arrive from Maryland with that story about the French frigates. It's true enough they landed at Lewes, but they did little harm there beyond taking a few cattle and some wood and water they needed. I don't believe they had the slightest intention of coming up the river to Philadelphia. But it gave the governor a good chance to see what the people would do if the French had been coming."

"Most of the people believed it, or they wouldn't have hidden their valuables, and so many of them run away," said Jack.

"Oh, yes, they believed it," assented Mr. Felton. "And I guess the governor is thoroughly out of temper with most of us. But as a matter of fact he didn't need any militia to protect us from a raid."

That was the truth of the situation, as Philadelphia found out a few days later. The governor had laid a plot to find out what the people would do if their town were threatened with attack by an enemy. He thought that the Delaware River was insufficiently protected. He wanted to form a strong militia. His ruse had worked; but to his disgust he found that the more respectable and wealthy part of the community, the Quaker portion, had no wish either to strengthen the defenses of the Delaware or to enroll in a militia. His stratagem had at least taught him that much about them.

The Quakers brought the goods they had hidden back to town; those who had gone into the country returned to their homes as soon as it was known that the French frigates had sailed down the Delaware to the sea instead of up it to Philadelphia. They did not like Governor Evans for the trick he had played on them. As the governor himself said, "For weeks afterward they would stand on the other side of the street and make faces at me as I passed by."

As a result of the governor's stratagem most of the Quakers in Philadelphia signed a petition to William Penn, who was then in England, urging him to remove Evans from the governorship. William Penn did not like to do this. He had appointed Evans at the suggestion of some very powerful men at the English Court, and he did not want to antagonize them, or Evans himself for that matter, for so slight a cause. He wrote a letter to Evans, however, mildly reproving him for the trick he had played, and making it clear that he himself was no more in favor of warlike measures than were the Quakers in his colony. Governor Evans held his office for almost three years after this event, and was finally called back to England for very different reasons.

Penn's province did have less warfare than the neighboring colonies, partly because of the just way in which Penn and his settlers dealt with the Indians, partly by good fortune. No enemy attacked Philadelphia. But as men pushed out into the country west of the Delaware they began to come into conflict with the Indians. Often these settlers were able to protect themselves, but sometimes they felt that the men living securely in Philadelphia ought to help them in their effort to enlarge the province. After the defeat of the English General Braddock by French and Indians in western Pennsylvania the settlers found the Indians more difficult to handle. So the men of the frontier formed independent companies of riflemen and fought in their own fashion. They demanded, however, that the governor and General Assembly at Philadelphia should aid them with supplies, if they were unwilling to furnish soldiers.

The Assembly in Philadelphia refused to send the supplies. The news spread along the border, and the settlers, the mountaineers and trappers, set out for the Quaker city on the Delaware. Four or five hundred of them marched into town, men clad in buckskin, their hair worn long, armed with rifles, powder-horns, bullet-pouches, hunting-knives, and even tomahawks they had taken from Indians. Philadelphia was used to seeing a few of such hunters on her streets, but the good people grew uneasy at the appearance of so many of them at one time. The mountaineers swaggered and blustered as they passed the quiet Quakers. They let it be known that if the Assembly refused to vote them the supplies they wanted they would take supplies wherever they could find them.

Pressed by the frontiersmen, the Assembly finally voted the supplies. Then the men in buckskin went back to hold the borders against the Indians.