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The Liberty Bell 
 
The Story of the 
 Liberty Bell 
 
 ^By WAYNE WHIPPLE 
 
 Author The Story of the American Flag, 
 The Story of the White House, Etc. 
 
 ILLUSTRATED 
 
 PHILADELPHIA 
 HENRY ALTEMUS COMPANY 
 
/I. 
 
 5 
 
 CoPYEiGHT, 1910, BY Howard E. Altemus 
 
 ICI.A2685 15 /. 
 
Introductory 
 
 / c/ 
 
 p 
 
 ^^ ]p*^ROCLAIM Liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabit- 
 ants thereof/' is the legend moulded around the Liberty 
 Bell. This inscription is from the twenty-fifth chapter of 
 Leviticus, as part of the directions given by Jehovah for the 
 celebration of the year of jubilee, and the very next words to it in the 
 Bible are: 
 
 ' ' It shall be a jubilee unto you ; and ye shall return every man unto his 
 pc^:ession. " 
 
 For Liberty is the ' ' possession ' ' of every man, woman and child. 
 The Story of the Liberty Bell is the story of Liberty. It is a history 
 of thrills and throbs and tears. If the ancient Hebrew slaves had not 
 made that immortal dash for liberty when the Egyptians pursuing them 
 were drowned in the Eed Sea, there never would have been that 
 
 tumult in the city, 
 In the quaint old Quaker town, 
 
 when the Liberty Bell rang in the ''year of jubilee," and rang out the 
 glad tidings of freedom "throughout all the land unto all the inhabi- 
 tants thereof." 
 
 When ancient people conquered their enemies they made captives and 
 slaves of them. They had very little idea of personal rights and still 
 less of religious liberty. They seemed to think that those who did not 
 believe as they did ought to be put to death if they were strong enough 
 to kill them — unless they cared to make slaves of them or hold them for 
 ransom. The ancients understood the right of Might, but they knew 
 nothing of the might of Eight. 
 
 Though the human race is counted to be six thousand years old, 
 Liberty, as we know it, is but little more than one hundred years old. It 
 is a hardy, slow growing shrub, which was just about to show its tender 
 shoots when the wicked, cowardly King John of England granted the 
 Magna Charta, or Great Charter, to the barons, because he was afraid 
 
 5 
 
6 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 of them, on a green meadow or mede, called Runnymede, near Windsor 
 Castle, on June 15, 1215. This gave the English an inch along the line 
 of Liberty and they and their children in America have made that inch 
 a yard at least. 
 
 The ' ' Compact ' ' which the Pilgrim Fathers signed in the Mayflower, 
 just before the Landing of the Pilgrims, was a wee child of the Great 
 Charter, but it soon grew to be the father of the Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence. From this, in turn, descended Lincoln's Emancipation 
 Proclamation, which at last gave freedom to all in the Great Republic, 
 and made the keystone of ' ' that government of the people, by the people, 
 for the people," which "shall not perish from the earth." 
 
 So, if it had not been for many sacrifices, sufferings and martyrdoms 
 among the devout and simple Swiss, the stalwart Irish, the knightly 
 Poles, the brave English, the sturdy Dutch, the staunch Germans, the 
 chivalric French, the valiant Italians, and many other heroes, who loved 
 Liberty better than their own lives, the giant statue of ''Liberty Enlight- 
 ening the World" would not now be standing in New York Harbor, 
 the front doorway to the New World, nor, indeed, could 
 
 The Star Spangled Banner yet wave 
 
 O'er the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. 
 
THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
The Story of the Liberty Bell 
 
 AN ANCIENT PEOPLE'S DASH FOR LIBERTY 
 
 Sound the loud timbrel o'er Egypt's dark sea! 
 Jehovah has triumphed — his people ai'e free. 
 
 — Thomas Moore. 
 
 AFTER four hundred years of bitter bondage in Egypt, much 
 worse than the negro slaves ever suffered in this country, a 
 million Hebrew people, encouraged and led by Moses, who had 
 been brought up in the Pharaoh's palace, came together one 
 dark night, over three thousand years ago, and made a wonderful dash 
 for liberty. Their cruel masters had recently suffered so much on their 
 account that they were forced to say : 
 
 ' ' Go — leave, every one of you ! We have had so much trouble about 
 you that we are glad to get rid of you." 
 
 But the Egyptians soon found out how much they missed their Jewish 
 servants and they said among themselves : 
 
 "How foolish we were to let all our slaves go away!'* 
 
 And the king, Pharaoh, began to think of all the great stone cities, 
 pyramids, temples and tombs he was building of giant blocks of stone; 
 he remembered how he had planned all these massive structures to have 
 them inscribed so that people thousands of years to come would wonder 
 and exclaim: 
 
 "What magnificent monuments! What a great king that Pharaoh 
 must have been!'* 
 
 The Pharaoh saw all the unfinished buildings — and they never could 
 be completed now that all those Hebrew slaves were gone — standing 
 there, half done, through coming ages, a scorn and a by-word, making 
 his neighbors and future nations laugh at him, saying: 
 
 "Behold the half built monuments that foolish Pharaoh began to 
 build and then let all his slaves go away and leave him." 
 
 9 
 
10 THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 The Pharaoh could not bear the thought. 
 
 ''I was weak and tender-hearted to let them otf, after all," he said 
 to himself. ' ' I will go out after them now, and bring them all back. That 
 
 Moses Before Pharaoh 
 
 will be easy, for they are only a great mob of slaves without weapons 
 or anything to fight with. ' ' 
 
 The king also learned that, instead of going as directly as possible 
 
THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 11 
 
 out of Egypt across the isthmus of Suez into Asia, the slaves had 
 inarched toward th'e Red Sea. "What a foolish thing to do!" he 
 thought. "The crazy mob has marched right into a trap." Yes, he 
 would go right out after them and drive them back like a vast flock of 
 sheep, and set them all to work again, lifting huge stones and finishing 
 pryamids and temples. So, as it is told in the fourteenth chapter of 
 Exodus, beginning with the sixth verse : 
 
 He made ready his chariot, and he took his people with him, six hundred chosen 
 chariots and all the chariots of Egypt, and captains over every one of them, . . . and 
 he pursued after the children of Israel, and the children of Israel went out with a 
 high hand. 
 
 But the Egyptians pursued after them, all the horses and chariots of Pharaoh, and 
 his horsemen, and his army, and overtook them encamping by the sea. 
 
 When the runaway slaves saw that they were shut in between the sea 
 in front of them, and Pharaoh 's army, infantry, cavalry and all, clatter- 
 ing away behind them, they were terribly frightened, as they had a right 
 to be. They began to ask Moses sarcastic questions, like : 
 
 ' ' What was the use of getting us out here and making matters worse ? ' ' 
 "Didn't we tell you you would get us into deeper trouble than ever 
 when you teased us to run away?" "Was it because there were no 
 graves in Egypt that you fooled us into coming out here to be murdered 
 in the wilderness?" 
 
 While the poor, frightened people were screaming "We told you so!" 
 "We all knew just how this would come out!" "Just as we expected!" 
 and so on, the Egyptians, "horse, foot and dragoons," came thunder- 
 ing nearer and nearer. 
 
 Moses, instead of being angry or disgusted with the scared and trem- 
 bling slaves, held up his hand, making a sign for silence. Then he said, 
 in loud but gentle tones : 
 
 Fear not, stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will show to you 
 to-day : for the Egyptians whom ye have seen to-day, ye shall see them again no more 
 forever. The Lord shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace. 
 
 And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea and the Lord caused the sea to go 
 back by a strong east wind all that night, and made the sea dry land, and the waters 
 were divided. And the children of Israel went into the midst of the sea upon the dry 
 ground: and the waters were a wall unto them on their right hand and on their left. 
 
12 THE STORY OF THE LIBEETY BELL 
 
 And the Egyptians pursued, and went in after them to the midst of the sea, even all 
 Pharaoh's hoi-ses, his chariots, and his horsemen. 
 
 The sluTering Israelites hurried across on a sand bar, while "all the 
 king's horses and all the king's men" followed hard after them, not 
 seeing, in the darkness, that they were really running on the bottom of 
 the Eed Sea. The Pharaoh and his anny evidently thought Egyptian 
 masters could follow wherever their Hebrew slaves could go. They 
 were playing a game of "follow the leader" on a grand scale. 
 
 Over three thousand years after that awful night the great Xapoleon 
 was in Egypt with a brave French army, marching along the shore of 
 the Eed Sea. "A strong east wind" was blowing again as it did long 
 ago, while the Eg^'ptian army was marching in about the same place, 
 chasing the host of Hebrew slaves. But some one discovered that 
 Xapoleon and his army were walking on a bar in the sandy bed of the 
 sea. A signal was given for the men to "double quick," and the French 
 aiTny had barely got out and up on the shore when the wind, which had 
 held the water back, suddenly changed and the sea came rushing and 
 foaming across the very path on which they had just been marching. 
 It was a hairbreadth escape. As they saw the waves tmnbling and 
 frothing over their line of march, those brave men turned pale, and 
 Xapoleon remarked to one of his staff : 
 
 •"That is what happened to the Egyptian army thirty centuries ago." 
 
 Xapoleon was right; for as soon as the last of the Hebrew slaves 
 hastened up the shore on the farther side of the arm of the sea the wind 
 changed and Pharaoh and his army were engulfed and drowned in the 
 midst of the Eed Sea. 
 
 When all the people saw how they had been saved and how all their 
 cruel and terrible taskmasters were drowned, their fears and complaints 
 were turned to rejoicing. Moses, who was a poet and musician, com- 
 posed a song describing the miraculous event. And his sister Miriam, 
 the older sister who had watched over him while he was a little baby in 
 the ark of bulrushes in the edge of the river Xile, joined in the grand 
 responsive sei'vice. Miriam was a woman now. She led the thousands 
 of women in the great concert chorus. 
 
MiBTAM's Song of Triumph 
 
 13 
 
14 
 
 THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 HOW IRELAND LOST ITS LIBERTY 
 
 She's the most distressful country that ever you have seen, 
 
 For they're hanging men and vpomen there for the vpearin' of the gi'een. 
 
 DERMOT McMORROUGH, the Prince or Chief of Leinster, 
 was the Judas who betrayed Ireland. It was in the twelfth 
 century. He had been so cruel and wicked that he had to be 
 driven from the island. He found refuge in England. He 
 knew he was despised by his own people, so in his own fierce hatred he 
 devised a devilish scheme of revenge. It is doubtful if Dermot real- 
 ized all he was doing when he induced Henry the Second of England 
 to come over and try to conquer Ireland. Neither did Judas Iscariot 
 know what an awful thing he was doing when he betrayed his Lord. 
 
 Invasion op Britain by the Eomans 
 
 Before the coming of the English, Ireland was the most favored 
 country in the world. While the savage Goths and Huns were running 
 wild over Europe, and during the Dark Ages that followed their bar- 
 barities, ancient Erin shone like an emerald safely surrounded by a glit- 
 tering sea of sapphire, the fortunate Island of the Saints. The Roman 
 legions, when they conquered savage Britain before the time of Christ, 
 
THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 15 
 
 never reached the Emerald Isle. It was a land flowing with milk and 
 honey. There was plenty for all. The people lived in ease and quiet. 
 When the English came, no serpents, toads, frogs or reptiles of any kind 
 were found in the green fields or bogs. Only once a frog was discov- 
 ered in Wexford, and the bearded natives came from many miles around 
 to gaze in astonishment upon the strange looking creature. A green 
 and living frog had never been seen in Ireland before. While the crowd 
 was dumbly gazing at the little monster, as it seemed to them, Donald, 
 King of Ossory, began to wail and beat his head in deep grief. Then he 
 uttered this prophecy : 
 
 ''That reptile is the bearer of doleful news to Erin." 
 
 Donald's prediction was soon fulfilled, for the English came within 
 two years. 
 
 A story is still told among the Irish people how St. Patrick drove 
 the snakes out of the Emerald Isle. While a lad, Patrick had been car- 
 ried off by a band of Picts from his home near the wall of Severus in 
 Roman Britain. His father was a magistrate. Patrick, as his name 
 implies, was of patrician birth. Those of more noble rank among the 
 Romans were called patricians. The noble young Patrick became a 
 slave. He played on a harp to while away the quiet hours. After six 
 years of faithful service Patrick was set free. He was allowed to go 
 home to his family, who had given him up for dead. As he was of a 
 devout and thoughtful turn, Patrick prepared himself in Brittany to 
 become a priest. During his vigils he had a vision sucli as St. Paul 
 saw before he went to i^reach the gospel in Europe. He saw some one 
 making signs to him to come over and preach and teach the people of 
 Ireland. In the year 432, he obeyed, going as a minister and friend to 
 the very hills where, as a slave, he had cared for his master's sheep. 
 The people received him gladly. He taught them how terribly wrong 
 it was for them to sacrifice their little babies as they still did, sometimes, 
 in their ' ' Valley of Slaughter, ' ' thinking that by taking the lives of their 
 little infants they were pleasing the horrible gods they believed in and 
 feared. For the Christian religion had not then made much headway 
 in the world and nearly all the people everywhere knew nothing of the 
 Bible and the Church and all the things that have since made the world 
 much better and happier. 
 
 St. Patrick soon preached to the Irish assembled as a nation on the 
 
16 
 
 THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 hill of Tara. His word was received in honest and good hearts. Be- 
 sides leading the big, bearded sons of Erin away from their ancient 
 superstitions, he founded schools, colleges and monasteries. Then Erin 
 became the leader in Christianity, education and refinement. Centu- 
 ries before Alfred the Saxon founded Oxford University, the university 
 of Armagh flourished, and men came from all parts of the civilized 
 
 world to study there — seven thousand at 
 a time. A hundred schools were scat- 
 tered over the beautiful green island. 
 Irish missionaries were sent to ancient 
 England, Scotland, France and other 
 parts of Europe, carrying the gospel to 
 the heathen, Irish teachers founded 
 schools and monasteries in Europe, light- 
 ing the lamp of knowledge for the Dark 
 Ages. When Charlemagne wished to 
 found colleges to better establish his 
 great empire he sent for Irish scholars 
 to be professors in them. The Irish 
 Church, in simple grandeur, faithfully 
 carried on the work of converting 
 the neighboring tribes and nations 
 from pagan barbarism. When Europe 
 emerged from the gloom of ignorance 
 and superstition it was Ireland that led 
 the way out. 
 
 Such was the state of the Island of the 
 Saints when Dermot McMorrough, burn- 
 ing with hatred for his clan and tribe, 
 went to King Henry the Second of En- 
 gland and betrayed the whole country in 
 order to avenge himself on his own kith and kin. When Henry, with five 
 hundred Norman knights and two thousand soldiers, crossed the Channel 
 and landed near Waterford on October 18, 1172, her brave people were 
 doomed. They fought heroically and suffered extreme cruelties. Henry 
 commanded his soldiers to put out the eyes of all their men prisoners and 
 cut off the noses of the women. So great were the cruelties practised 
 
 An Early Norman King 
 
Henry the Second and the Barons 
 
18 THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 then, in time of war, that this order did not strike people as very strange. 
 It made the Irish giants the more desperate, for they would rather meet 
 death in battle than be tortured after defeat and drag out their miser- 
 able lives in slavery, dungeons and sightlessness. To the Normans it 
 was no more a crime to murder an Irishman than to kill a dog. Their 
 priests granted speedy absolution to men who came in red-handed from 
 the murder of a son of Erin. 
 
 The heroic struggles of Roderic O'Connor, king of all Ireland, and 
 his loyal subjects, fighting for home and Church and Liberty, were of 
 no avail, Henry gave their lands to his Norman knights. One, named 
 DeLacy, alone received eight hundred thousand acres for his share in 
 the destruction. So Ireland, formerly the seat of learning for all Eu- 
 rope, was in a few centuries reduced to abject poverty and ignorance. 
 The "pure religion and undefiled" of St. Patrick gave way to super- 
 stitious forms and rites. * 
 
 To conquer completely the lovely island required centuries of 
 harshness and cruelty. There was another "conquest of Ireland" 
 in Elizabeth's reign, four hundred years later. All around the 
 great colleges of Armagh and Cashel, where ten thousands of students 
 resorted at once, a thousand years ago, many people are now unable 
 to read. 
 
 Patriots and heroes like Grattan, Emmet and O'Connell have fought 
 and suffered for the sake of the beautiful island and her devoted and 
 oppressed people. The bards of Ireland can sing no more the songs they 
 used to sing when their poetry and music were the envy of Europe. Her 
 lovely lakes and mountains resound no more with the melodies of Erin. 
 Yet the old songs with their deep pathos are heard in foreign lands. 
 They appeal to the heart of humanity, and are full of promise that the 
 Emerald Isle shall yet be free. Her noble sons in America and other 
 far countries are fervently loyal to "the old sod." As the ancient 
 Hebrews in exile sang of Zion, so the men and women of Ireland are 
 crooning to their children of their beloved country. 
 
 The very songs of Erin with their heart-appealing pathos, and the 
 love and loyalty of her sons shall yet endow her with the fulness of 
 freedom she enjoyed a thousand years ago, Thomas Moore, the great- 
 est of all the poets of Ireland, has told the story of the by-gone glories 
 of his native land in that simple and familiar song : 
 
THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 19 
 
 The harp tliat once through Tara's halls 
 
 The soul of music shed, 
 Nov/ hangs as mute on Tara's walls ( 
 
 As if that soul were fled. 
 So sleeps the pride of former days, 
 
 So gloi'v's thrill is o'er. 
 And hearts that once beat high for praise 
 
 Now feel that pulse )io more. 
 
 No more to chiefs aiid ladies bright 
 
 The harp of Tara swells. 
 The chord alone, that breaks at night, 
 
 Its tale of ruin tells. 
 Thus Freedom now so seldom waives. 
 
 The only throb she gives 
 Is when some heart indignant breaks 
 
 To show that still she lives. 
 
20 THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 THE PRICE THE BRAVE SWISS PAID FOR LIBERTY 
 
 Avenge, Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones 
 Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold. 
 
 IT seems strange that the very people who enjoyed the greatest free- 
 dom in ancient days lost their precious liberties during the hard 
 struggle and changes of later centuries. The Jews, the chosen 
 people of Jehovah, have suffered persecutions and exile for nearly 
 two thousand years. The brilliant and cultivated Greeks, whose mental 
 powers made them masters of the known world several centuries before 
 Christ, later suffered for centuries the rude and cruel rule of the half 
 civilized Turks. After many struggles against Turkish tyranny, the 
 Greeks were aided by other nations in their revolution of 1821, and 
 gained a certain degree of independence. The monarchs of Europe then 
 selected a king for them. The present king of Greece was Prince George 
 of Denmark, the brother of Queen Alexandra of England. 
 
 The Armenians, also, are said to have founded the earliest Christian 
 Church that still exists, and have preserved their simple faith without 
 the forms that have gone to make up the rich rituals of the Greek and 
 Roman Catholic Churches. These natives of the land where Noah's 
 ark rested are still suffering great persecutions from the brutal Turks, 
 who are worshipers of Mahomet and who have a deep and abiding hatred 
 of Christians. The daily newspapers often give long and painful ac- 
 counts showing how the Armenians are being massacred by the terrible 
 Turks. 
 
 About the only ancient people still free are the Waldenses or Vaudois, 
 who still live in the mountain fastnesses of that part of Switzerland 
 which looks down upon the sunny fields of Italy. They dwell up among 
 the fields of ice, called glaciers, from which great avalanches often slide 
 down the mountains, carrying destruction in their paths. Though the 
 three valleys of the Vaudois scarcely measure sixteen miles square, 
 they have been the scenes of valiant combats and hideous persecutions 
 for nearly a thousand years. The heroic conduct of Leonidas at the 
 pass of Thermopylae, or Horatius at the Roman bridge, has been re- 
 peated again and again and outdone by brave men, and women, too, 
 among these simple Swiss. Several times almost all the Vaudois per- 
 
THE STOEY OFV THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 21 
 
 ished, and the few who were deft were dragged away from their icy 
 fields and dizzy caves and, scattered over Europe. But these few and 
 their children and children's children remained loyal to their simple 
 faith and longing for their desolated land and homes in the mountain- 
 tops of Switzerland. The story of their sufferings is too terrible to tell 
 in detail — ^how they were burned, maimed and hurled over the Alpine 
 cliffs, all because they were true and faithful to their own pure and un- 
 
 How Arnold op Winkelried "Made Way for Liberty" 
 
 defiled religion, which, they believed, came to them direct from the 
 apostles and early Christians who had 'fled to them in their mountain 
 wilds to escape the horrible persecutions of the Roman emperors. 
 
 It was the vindictive people and the; cruel times before the dawning 
 of Liberty that made, men so violent toward all those who were brave 
 enough to think for themselves and to believe differently from all their 
 neighbors. The people of' Piedmont, early in the seventeenth century, 
 were guilty of the most inhuman butchery of their harmless neighbors, 
 
22 THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 in the quiet little villages nestling in the mountain ravines of Switzer- 
 land. The world, even in those cruel days, stood aghast at the atrocity 
 with which the Vaudois had been treated. John Milton, author of 
 '* Paradise Lost," one of the greatest poems in the English language, 
 wrote a poem On the Late Massacre in Piedmont of which this is part: 
 
 Avenge, Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones 
 
 Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold; 
 
 Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old, 
 
 When all our fathers worshiped stocks and stones, 
 Forget not: in thy book record their groans 
 
 Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold 
 
 Slain by the bloody Piedmontese, that rolled 
 
 Mother with infant down the rocks. 
 
 It is impossible for us to understand to-day why those good, modest, 
 kind and harmless mountaineers aroused such rage and hatred among 
 the powerful nations around them as to make even devout members of 
 the Christian Church throw helpless Vaudois mothers and their inno- 
 cent babies over the cliffs. Their terrible story is only hinted at here 
 to show those who now enjoy the blessings of Liberty why they ought to 
 appreciate their privileges more and more. We who were born in this 
 ''sweet land of Liberty" cannot appreciate the marvelous mercy of free- 
 dom so truly as those who have come to our shores from Russia, Italy or 
 some foreign country where such liberty is never allowed. We do not 
 realize the full value of a blessing until we have to do without it. You 
 never know how good a little cold water tastes until you have been where 
 you could not get a drink of water for a long time and are very, very 
 thirsty. People used to hunger and thirst for Liberty so much that they 
 were willing to give their lives in order that others might enjoy it. 
 
 In our glorious Twentieth Century since the birth of Christ we are 
 wholly unable to comprehend how even the best educated people looked 
 upon their neighbors' "beliefs^ a thousand or even a hundred years ago. 
 To-day, if those around us don't go to the same Church we attend, or if 
 they don't go to any Church at all, we don't think that is our affair. 
 We know, without even thinking much about it, that they have a right to 
 think and act as they please, so long as they don't interfere with the 
 rights of others. Hundreds of years ago — not so long as that — a man 
 
THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 23 
 
 who thought for himself, in religious matters at least, was looked upon 
 as either crazy or an outlaw. He was a "freethinker," and instead of 
 admiring a man who could think for himself, as we do, they considered 
 that a man who could think independently was a terrible kind of being, 
 a man to be afraid of! 
 One reason for this 
 general feeling against 
 one who thought dif- 
 ferently from all his 
 neighbors was because 
 the Church was be- 
 lieved to have the right 
 to bring up and edu- 
 cate its children in its 
 own way. When a 
 child was wilful and 
 wayward his body had 
 to be punished "to 
 save his soul." Also 
 the Church and State 
 were bound closely 
 together. A Russian 
 had to worship in the 
 Greek Church ; in 
 Rome they had to "do 
 as the Romans do;" 
 in Germany it was the 
 Lutheran Church. The 
 law of the country re- 
 quired the people of 
 that country to attend 
 the State Church. Not 
 to do this was to be a 
 law breaker and one must be punished for breaking the law. In Eng- 
 land the Church kept changing. For many centuries it was the Roman 
 Catholic Church, and all who worshiped otherwise had to suffer for it. 
 Then, through what was called the English Reformation, it was the 
 
 Vaudois Defending Their Liberty 
 
24 THE STORY OF THE LIBEETY BELL 
 
 Church of England, of which the King of England was the head or 
 presiding officer. The English Church persecuted the Roman Catholics 
 and the Nonconformists, as they were called who did not believe in the 
 English forms of worship and refused to '^ conform" to them. The 
 Pilgrims who fled to America and landed on Pljonouth Rock were 
 '* Puritans" and ''Nonconformists." But, after coming thousands of 
 miles, across the ocean, for the sake of worshiping in the way they 
 thought was right, even the Pilgrims persecuted, banished and hanged 
 Baptists, Quakers, and others who did not think just as they did! 
 
 So, old as the world is. Liberty is a new thing. It is a new way of 
 thinking. This intolerance, or unwillingness to let others think and do 
 as they pleased with their own affairs, was not confined to religious 
 matters. Far from it. There has been a great change in people's no- 
 tions of personal liberty, aside from the liberty of conscience and free- 
 dom in thought. To show this it will be necessary to tell but one little 
 story : 
 
 About one hundred years ago a man in London, England, thought a 
 high silk, or "stovepipe," hat would look well on him, so he had one 
 made and started down street with it on. People in London had never 
 seen a silk hat before, and they did not like it. If you saw a man wear- 
 ing a strange looking hat that you thought was queer, you might laugh 
 at it, but you would not think of such a thing as hurting the man for 
 wearing it. But a hundred years ago people saw such things in an 
 entirely different light. A mob soon gathered about the man wearing 
 the silk hat. Men attacked him with their fists ; they kicked him ; they 
 beat him with sticks ; screaming women joined in and threw stones and 
 eggs at him; the crowd tore off his clothes and he barely escaped with 
 his life. Of course they spoiled the hat. This was not done in fun, 
 either — the mere sight of such a hat seemed to throw even respectable 
 people into a violent rage. Times have greatly changed since then. 
 People have been learning, slowly and painfully, the sublime science 
 and lovely art of "minding their own business." It is the fashion now, 
 at least in America, to attend to one's own affairs. 
 
 Liberty has come into the world through the Christian Church, and 
 it has grown just as fast as the people would let it. Liberty is the 
 Golden Rule put in practice by all the people — that rule found in the 
 twelfth verse of the seventh chapter of Matthew : '''■''^' ' 
 
THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 25 
 
 Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so 
 to them. 
 
 About sixty years ago Charles Albert, King of Sardinia, called upon 
 his neighbors to set the Vaudois free, and let them go back to their homes 
 in the lofty Alpine valleys, and live there in the freedom their ancestors 
 had enjoyed eight hundred years ago, when their liberties were snatched 
 from them, or rather when they were torn from their liberties and their 
 homes. There was joy among them all and in the cities of their most 
 cruel persecutors. Everywhere were heard rejoicings over the return 
 to home and happiness of ''our Vaudois brothers," to the "Alpine 
 Church," and there were glad speeches on ''liberty of conscience" from 
 the children of the very people who had tortured and murdered the 
 Vaudois for believing in liberty and conscience. The city of Turin, from 
 which armed men had gone forth to massacre their ' ' Vaudois brothers ' ' 
 was now illuminated in their honor. There was a grand celebration 
 with processions and banners and music. Cheer after cheer went up 
 for the Vaudois and their path was strewn with flowers. All this from 
 neighbors who had always plotted 
 their destruction, astonished and 
 gladdened the hearts of the simple 
 mountain people. They breathed a 
 prayer of thanksgiving and whis- 
 pered in their hearts as they climbed 
 up the rugged roads and crooked 
 paths toward their old homes in the 
 high hills, the old Scripture promise* 
 that had sustained their faithful 
 hearts through many trials : 
 
 The ransomed of the Lord shall return, and 
 come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy 
 upon their heads : they shall obtain joy and 
 gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee 
 away. 
 
 The Vaudois have gone home to 
 stay. Nothing has happened in the 
 
 sixty years to disturb their peace and a Scottish Highlander 
 
26 THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 Gessler the Tyrant and His Hat 
 
 happiness — because all the people of the Christian world have been 
 learning the Golden Rule. This teaching applies to all the affairs of 
 life, not to religious matters merely. For instance, all the people of 
 Switzerland had a long, long struggle for Liberty. It would seem that 
 hardy mountaineers can never be conquered. This was true of the 
 Highlanders of Scotland as well as the Swiss. The Scottish High- 
 landers were never ruled by the Romans who conquered England about 
 the time of Christ, nor by the Saxons or Danes, nor by the Normans 
 
THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 27 
 
 who came and subdued the Saxons, nor yet by the later kings of Great 
 Britain and Ireland. 
 
 The story of the struggles of all the Swiss for liberty is so well illus- 
 trated by that of William Tell, who represents Switzerland, and Gessler 
 the tyrant, who stands for Austria, that it will be well enough to repeat 
 that familiar legend here. The story goes that Gessler, the Austrian 
 governor, hung his hat up on a pole and commanded a company of Swiss 
 to bow down before it, thus showing that they were Austrian subjects 
 or slaves. William Tell, a big, brawny, brave man of Switzerland, 
 stood bolt upright, scornfully refusing to bow his head. The Austrians 
 threatened him, but that made no difference. They chained him in a 
 prison cell, and came day after day to tell their Swiss prisoner that they 
 would let him go free if he would only nod just a little bit to the hat on 
 a pole. But it was of no use. Meanwhile Gessler had been told what a 
 sure shot with the crossbow his brave prisoner was. So the tyrant 
 sent word to Tell that if he would shoot an apple off his son's head at 
 a hundred paces he would set him at liberty. Tell said he would try. 
 His son Albert was a brave lad and willing to take the risk. He had 
 seen his father shoot and had great confidence in such unerring aim. 
 
 As for Gessler, he thought in his wicked, cruel heart that if the hand 
 of the bold fellow who refused to bow to his hat should tremble just 
 a little from fear of hurting his boy, the arrow would strike the lad in 
 the forehead or, perhaps put out an eye. But Albert stood perfectly 
 still, not the least afraid, while his father, with a stern eye and a steady 
 aim, sent the arrow straight to the mark and split the apple right in 
 halves. In the general relief and rejoicing, Gessler noticed that an 
 arrow fell from under Tell's jacket. He asked what that other arrow 
 was for. 
 
 "For your heart if I had hurt my boy," answered William Tell, 
 boldly. 
 
 Then Gessler ordered that Tell should be bound again and taken across 
 Lake Lucerne to a castle from which he could never escape. A sud- 
 den storm came up and lashed the lake with such fury that Gessler was 
 afraid of drowning, and commanded his men to unchain Tell to let him 
 steer the boat to safety. Tell was a powerful and skilful boatman, and 
 guiding the boat past a jutting rock, he sprang out upon it, and the boat 
 sank with Gessler and his crew, drowning them all. 
 
28 
 
 THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 THE GREAT CHARTER OF ENGLISH AND 
 AMERICAN LIBERTY 
 
 Thej^ that give up essential liberty to obtaiu a little temporary safety deserve neither 
 liberty nor safety. 
 
 — Benjamin Franklin. 
 
 CRUEL as Henry the Second of England seemed to be to his 
 enemies — especially to the Irish — he granted to his subjects 
 many so-called liberties, renewing and adding to the chart- 
 ers of Edward the Confessor and Henry the First, his 
 grandfather. He did this, partly, to make friends with his people, 
 
 for Henry was a French- 
 
 subjects 
 
 English 
 
 The Landing of William of Normandt 
 
 man and his 
 were Anglo or 
 Saxons. Henry was a 
 great-grandson of William 
 the Conqueror, who, as 
 the Duke of Normandy, in 
 the northern part of 
 France, sailed across the 
 narrow channel and con- 
 quered the Anglo-Saxons 
 under their king, Harold, 
 at the battle of Hastings, 
 in 1066. William the Con- 
 queror thus became King 
 William the First of Eng- 
 land. He divided the con- 
 quered country among his 
 knights and men, who 
 turned the Saxons out of 
 their castles and good 
 homes and made them 
 till the farms they used 
 to own. Thus the Nor- 
 mans became the masters, 
 and were called noblemen 
 
THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 29 
 
 and "barons, while the Saxons had to do all the work as shepherds, 
 farmers, mechanics, servants and even slaves. 
 
 As King Henry was a Norman and could not understand the language 
 of his subjects he granted them certain liberties (they were considered 
 great liberties then), in order to make friends with the conquered Saxons 
 who still felt resentful toward their foreign king. Henry's father was 
 the Norman duke who had once stuck a spray of broom-plant in his hel- 
 met for a plume so that his followers might know him in battle. The 
 armor of the knights and nobles in battle all looked alike, so they had 
 to have ensigns, pennants, sometimes coats with designs embroidered 
 on them, to wear outside their armor to show who was inside the iron 
 or steel coat of mail. These distinguishing coats or designs were called 
 ''coats of arms." Men often wore j)lumes of different colors and ar- 
 ranged in special ways on their helmets, and they were called crests. 
 So Henry's father seized a sprig of the plant they made brooms of, for 
 his plume or crest, and they called him by the French name for that 
 plant, or Plantagenet. So his son Henry the Second of England was 
 called Henry Plantagenet, and Henry's son Richard was known as Rich- 
 ard Plantagenet until they found a better name for him. 
 
 Henry the Second was a big, strong, handsome, brave man, and well 
 educated for his time. No one thought much of his having the captured 
 Irishmen's eyes put out, and their women's noses cut off. If people 
 thought much about it they considered it rather a funny thing to do, for 
 he had beaten them in battle and they belonged to him to be his slaves 
 or to do with them as he liked. So Henry marked them in that way, as 
 a ranchman brands his cattle — to show that they belonged to him. They 
 had queer notions in those times. For instance, Henry had a great 
 friend, a priest named Thomas a Becket. He asked the pope to ap- 
 point Becket Archbishop of Canterbury. But when Henry tried to 
 make Becket do something which Becket did not think was right, and 
 refused to do, a quarrel arose. This went on for years. One day in 
 a fit of rage the king exclaimed : 
 
 ''Why don't some of the cowards living on me get rid of this insolent 
 priest for me?" 
 
 The king's expressed wish, in those days, was considered an order. 
 Four knights who heard Henry's sneering remark rushed out from his 
 presence, galloped away to Canterbury and murdered the archbishop 
 
30 THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 at the foot of the altar. Then they fled the country and lived and died 
 in the Holy Land to atone for their crime. As for King Henry, he was 
 overcome when he heard what the knights had done. He said he did 
 not intend to have Becket murdered. It was the result of an unguarded 
 remark made while in a fit of anger. He walked barefoot to Canter- 
 bury and had seventy monks there lash him over his bare shoulders 
 with scourges to expiate his part of the crime. Then, in order to make 
 up to the pope, who was at that time a great emperor, as well as the 
 head of the Church, Henry began to conquer Ireland as a present to 
 the Church. That is, to atone for one murder, which he claimed he 
 never intended, Henry made himself guilty of ten thousand he did mean 
 to commit, besides crippling, blinding, torturing and disfiguring thou- 
 sands more! Henry did not see how ridiculous such an ''atonement" 
 would look in the eye of Heaven, nor did anyone else, for that matter, 
 in those cruel days, when the life of a common man did not count for 
 much in the opinion of kings and nobles. Liberty has taught us to set 
 the highest value upon human life, whether high or low in the social 
 scale, rich or poor, educated or ignorant. In the days of Henry the 
 Second a man did not seem to have a right to his own life if the king or 
 some other rich and powerful man wished to take it from him. 
 
 But Henry was obliged, against his will, to pay other penalties. His 
 wife. Queen Eleanor, was an able but wicked woman. She and her sons 
 fought against their father, the king. There were four of these sons, 
 Henry, Geoffrey, Richard and John. To have his own sons revolt 
 against him almost broke King Henry's heart. He defeated his wife 
 and had her imprisoned. Henry and Geoffrey both died repenting of 
 their evil conduct toward their father. John worked secretly against 
 his father, but fawned upon him, pretending that he alone had remained 
 true and loyal. But the king found John out before he died and left 
 him no territory to rule over, so he was called John LacMand. He left 
 the throne to Richard, who was a great, hearty, brave, reckless fellow, 
 whom the French people called Richard Coeur de Lion, or Richard Heart 
 of Lion. Richard was very fond of fighting and adventure, so he was 
 anxious to go on a crusade to the Holy Land, to drive away the Saracens, 
 who were Mahometans, and take possession of the sepulcher of the 
 Saviour. Richard first went to London to be crowned, though he had 
 but little use for the English people except to get money enough from 
 
The Murder of Thomas a Becket' 
 
 31 
 
32 
 
 THE STOEY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 them to pay the expenses of a large army to Palestine and back. Dur- 
 ing the celebration of Richard's crowning, the crowds mobbed and ill 
 treated the Jews. Richard claimed to be friendly with them, partly 
 
 because he needed 
 their money, but 
 the people hated 
 them. Whenever 
 the king or a pow- 
 e r f u 1 nobleman 
 needed money for 
 some special pur- 
 pose he imprisoned 
 a rich Jew and 
 threatened to tor- 
 ture and kill him 
 to make him give 
 up the amount of 
 money required. 
 The story of the 
 nobles ' cruelty to 
 the Jews is well 
 told by Sir Walter 
 Scott, in ' ' Ivan- 
 hoe." They often 
 tortured a wealthy 
 Hebrew victim by 
 laying him on a 
 bed of glowing 
 coals and keeping 
 him there until the 
 pain made him tell 
 where his money 
 was hidden. From 
 this custom has come the phrase, ''haul him over the coals," when 
 a severe reproof is referred to. A modern slang term for the same 
 idea is ''a roast." 
 
 Richard went off on the Crusade, leaving his mean, wicked, and cruel 
 
 Put Into a Dungeon and Tortured 
 
THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 33 
 
 brother John to reign in his place while he was away. John also ex- 
 torted money from the Jews, and did whatever he could to undermine 
 his brother Richard during his long absence. Their older brother 
 Geoffrey had left a son Arthur, only a lad, whose eyes John ordered 
 put out. But even the jailers could not bear to hurt the lad, he was so 
 good and kind. It is said that John came himself to the castle where 
 Arthur was a prisoner, pretended he was going to take his nephew out 
 to set him free, but stabbed him instead, tying weights to the boy 's body 
 and throwing it into the river. No one ever knew just what became of 
 Arthur, for if there were a boatman or any other witness to the crime, 
 he would never dare to tell lest he lose his own life. There were a 
 great many ''fatal secrets" in royal families then. Even a father or 
 a brother who might be in the way, because he had a better right to be 
 king than the man on the throne, disappeared suddenly and mysteri- 
 ously. The people wondered, but no one asked foolish questions, for 
 fear his curiosity would cost him his own life or liberty. There was a 
 theory, too, of the "divine right" of kings. But the right of such a 
 king as John was more devilish than divine. 
 
 It was not an enviable lot to be a king or prince in those troublous 
 times, nor at any time. Royal princes cannot have friends and play- 
 mates as they please, nor can they even marry after their choice. In 
 those days the princes, besides being restricted, were often imprisoned 
 and put to death by wicked relatives to get them out of the way. 
 
 Richard the Lion-Hearted spent many months trying to get possession 
 of the Holy Sepulcher. The people loved him — he was so big and 
 brave and strong and handsome ! Perhaps they loved him more because 
 he was away all the time and because his brother John was trying dur- 
 ing his absence to get the throne away from him. From boyhood John 
 had always been wicked and mean. Richard went on the great pilgrim- 
 age to the Holy Land to atone for his undutiful and traitorous conduct 
 toward his father. But before he started away he had his mother re- 
 leased from prison where his father had kept her shut up. Richard was 
 a devoted lover and husband. The people of Cyprus were very rude to 
 Berengaria, his betrothed, who was traveling toward the Holy Land 
 in a separate ship which was wrecked on the coast of that island. Rich- 
 ard, in great wrath, conquered Cyprus and made its king his prisoner. 
 But he was very courteous to his royal captive, actually making chains 
 
 J — The Story of the Liberty Bell. 
 
34 THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 of silver for liim instead of loading him with links of iron. History 
 tells us that the fallen king was very grateful for this great kindness. 
 After marrying Berengaria, Richard went on to Palestine, where he 
 became such a terror to the Saracens that Mahometan mothers used to 
 frighten their children, when they were bad, by saying, ''King Richard 
 will get you if you don 't mind, " as if Richard were an ogre or a goblin. 
 
 While fighting around Acre and other walled cities of Palestine, Rich- 
 ard of England took the lead of all the kings and knights in the Crusade. 
 This made the King of France, the Duke of Austria and others jealous 
 of him. One day the duke made a sneering, insulting remark about 
 Richard's father. This made Richard so angry that he took hold of 
 the duke and kicked him hard. If Richard, King of England, had 
 killed Leopold, Duke of Austria, then and there, it might have been 
 thought right and proper — but to kick him as if he were a poor villain, 
 a moan slave! That was an insult never to be forgiven. Philip and 
 Leopold went back to their own dominions and left Richard and his 
 army to fight in the Holy Land alone. He met with some bad reverses, 
 and began to hear stories from home that his brother John and Philip 
 of France were conspiring against him. So he embarked for home and 
 was shipwrecked. Alone and without money King Richard, disguised 
 as a pilgrim, started to walk across Europe. While passing through 
 Austria, the country of the duke he had kicked, a soldier who had been 
 in Palestine recognized Richard and he was soon arrested and put in 
 prison. Richard was too popular to be put to death, so he was held for 
 a great ransom. 
 
 King John, instead of trying to rescue his brother, was secretly glad he 
 was locked up and out of the way. He began to arrange with Philip 
 to divide Richard ^s kingdom. 
 
 But there was a boy harper, named Blondel, to whom Richard had 
 been kind, and he started out to find where his master was imprisoned. 
 There was a rumor that Richard was in prison somewhere in Europe, 
 but no one knew just where. Blondel went on foot through Europe 
 playing for people and asking what prisoners were in the different 
 " castles he passed. After months and months of weary searching the 
 young minstrel sat down in despair by the wall of a great castle in 
 Germany and began to play and sing a sad little song which no one knew 
 but King Richard and himself. Imagine his surprise when a deep 
 
ElCHARD THE LlON HeARTED 
 
36 
 
 THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 bass voice came floating down to liim from a little lofty window of the 
 massive building, singing the second verse! The loyal lad had found 
 King Richard the Lion-Hearted. He had to hurry back to England 
 to tell some one who might be rich enough to purchase his master's 
 freedom. Richard's mother, Queen Eleanor, and some English barons 
 
 quietly raised the money 
 required by the Emperor 
 of Germany, who now 
 claimed the English king as 
 his jDrisoner, and Richard 
 was set at liberty after 
 eighteen weary months in 
 prison. Wlien King Philip 
 of France heard of Rich- 
 ard's release he sent this 
 message to John: 
 
 "Take care of your- 
 self, for the devil is un- 
 chained. ' ' 
 
 There were many who 
 feared for their lives when 
 Richard of the Lion-Heart 
 came home, John went 
 cringing before his brother, 
 the real king, as he had al- 
 ways done to his father. 
 Richard was kind enough 
 to forgive John, but he 
 knew his j^ounger brother 
 pretty well. 
 
 ' * I wish I may forget my 
 brother's injuries as soon as he will forget my forgiveness." 
 
 John behaved himself very meekly while his^ brother lived, and when 
 Richard died, four years later, in 1199, after a reign of ten years, John 
 became the actual king he had been plotting and scheming to be, for 
 Richard left no children. It seems too bad that John should be king after 
 all, but if Richard had lived, or if a better man had succeeded him, the 
 
 Blondel Seeking Eichakd 
 
THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 37 
 
 barons might not have been indignant and disgusted enough to demand 
 their rights as they did ; or even if they had done so, another king might 
 have refused to grant them. For John was a sneaking coward and he 
 lost all his friends. Finally the barons (who were the nobles of the 
 kingdom, descended from the knights who had helped John's great- 
 great-grandfather, William the Conqueror) came in a body and de- 
 manded their rights or threatened to choose another king in John's place. 
 When they told him just what they must have — demands which seem 
 moderate nowadays — the king was very angry and said he would never 
 consent to anything of the kind. But the more John blustered the more 
 firmly the barons behaved. He tried to put off a decision, hoping 
 something might happen to prevent him from giving a final consent. 
 The barons saw what he was at and demanded that the king set a day 
 for his decision. They drew up a paper stating what they must have. 
 They were in no mood to be put off or trifled with. They asked that 
 there be courts established 
 in different parts of the 
 realm where trials could 
 he held without long de- 
 lays or great expense for 
 traveling and following 
 the king from place to 
 place, where he happened 
 to be. They demanded 
 trial by jury, and that no 
 one should be arrested or 
 imprisoned without good 
 reason being given. Also 
 they required that the 
 king consent to have a 
 committee of twenty-four 
 nobles to see that the 
 things named in the docu- 
 ment were done as agreed. 
 The great day was June 
 15, 1215, and the place, 
 Runnymede, a broad, Norman and Saxon Arms 
 
38 
 
 THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 King John and the Barons 
 
 green field by the Thames near Windsor, where the people had met 
 before to present petitions to the king. The barons, calling themselves 
 the "Army of God," came with great pomp and circumstance and 
 pitched their tents there. The king and his retinue paraded out in fine 
 style and confronted the "Army of God," as if two armies were en- 
 camped over against each other. When John read the paper presented 
 by the nobles and came to the item about the twenty-four barons to be 
 chosen to see that he kept his agreement he was very angry and asked : 
 
 "A^^iy not elect four-and-twenty over-lords to rule the realm in my 
 place and be done with it ! " 
 
 But the barons knew John would never keep his word if he were not 
 compelled to do so by main force or fear of consequences, so they re- 
 mained firm in this, as in every other demand. John was afraid they 
 would do him some bodily injury, so he signed the document against his 
 
THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 39 
 
 own will, hoping he might get out of keeping his agreement. The barons 
 marched away with that great parchment with its big signs and seals, 
 containing a new code of laws recognizing the rights of all classes of 
 people, which is called the Magna Charta, or Great Charter. It was 
 the dawning of English liberty, from which American liberties are 
 derived. 
 
 After the barons had gone, and John got safe back into his castle, 
 he raved violently, gnashing his teeth, biting, striking, kicking, and 
 swearing he would have his revenge on those cursed barons — just like 
 a naughty, unruly, spoiled child. 
 
 
 
40 THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 ''THE NOBLE ARMY OF MARTYRS" FOR LIBERTY 
 
 Ten thousand of the tried and true 
 Have laid them down and died. 
 
 IN our glorious Twentieth Century since the birth of Christ we are 
 often told that we cannot be thankful enough that we live in 
 America, the "sweet land of Liberty." We ought to be more 
 thankful, if possible, that we live in an age of freedom, for only 
 about a century ago Liberty was a poor, starving thing, even in the most 
 enlightened countries. We are unable to understand now how the best 
 educated people used to look upon their neighbors' religious beliefs 
 and what a crime it was for a man to think for himself ! Now we ad- 
 mire and honor an original thinker, but in olden times a "free-thinker" 
 was a terror, capable of awful crimes against the soul. 
 
 This was because the Christian Church took a firm stand as the Mother 
 Church. All the children in Christendom were born into her care as 
 children in a smaller family should be taken care of by their mother. 
 It was a stern duty and responsibility which the Mother Church exer- 
 cised in a strict, unyielding manner. As mothers in ancient Sparta 
 made their children suffer hardships to make them tough and ready for 
 the struggles and battles of life, so the Mother Church made thousands 
 of her children suffer in their bodies for the sake of their souls and the 
 souls of others. At least, that is what she meant to do. It was "heroic 
 treatment," as the doctors now say when they are about to perform a 
 necessary surgical operation. It brought out the real heroism of mil- 
 lions of true and noble hearts. 
 
 In Russia the State Church is the Greek Church; in Germany it is 
 the Lutheran; in Spain and some other countries of Europe, it is the 
 Roman Catholic Church ; in Holland, or the Netherlands, it is the Dutch 
 Reformed; in England it is the Church of England; in Scotland, it is 
 the Presbyterian Kirk ; in some countries it is no Church at all ; and in 
 America it is "any Church you please." The Mother Church in Eng- 
 land had been for nearly a thousand years the Roman Catholic Church. 
 Then what was known as the English Reformation came about in the 
 time of Henry the Eighth, and the religion was changed. Henry's 
 daughter, Mary, was a staunch Catholic, and his other daughter, Eliza- 
 beth, was just as staunch a Protestant. When the Roman Catholic 
 
THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 41 
 
 Church was in control the people of the English Church were put out 
 and persecuted; then, when the English Church came into power it 
 persecuted the Roman Catholics. As has been shown, it was the people 
 who were cruel, and the kings often used a Church as an excuse to carry 
 out their own wicked schemes, as did Henry the Eighth. When the 
 English Church became established it drove out not only the Catholics, 
 but other Protestants who would not conform to the worship of the 
 Church of which the king was the head. Among these "Nonconform- 
 
 Executions by Puritans for Conscience's Sake 
 
 ists" were the Pilgrims, who fled to America and landed on Plymouth 
 Rock. And when these Pilgrims got their Church established they ban- 
 ished the Baptists, hanged the Quakers and did considerable persecut- 
 ing themselves. It was all due to the spirit of intolerance or unwilling- 
 ness to allow other people to think and act for themselves. 
 
 The next step, after the barons succeeded in frightening King John 
 into signing the Great Charter, was for something to be done that would 
 reach the people at once without waiting for Liberty to filter down to 
 them from the king through the nobles, and so on. The common people 
 
42 
 
 THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 have always been ignored. All we know of the real lives of the ancient 
 people of Greece and Rome is what we have learned, almost by acci- 
 dent, in reading about Alexander and Socrates, Caesar and Cicero, and 
 a few great men like them. It is only recently that a great thinker has 
 written "The History of the English People.'' Before that the great 
 histories had mostly to do with the kings and nobles. In America we have 
 learned to speak of the "sovereign people," whose will is law and whose 
 united voice is "the voice of God," because millions of men, voting and 
 acting in harmony, are more likely to decide and do that which is right 
 than the mere will of one man acting for and by himself. So the Ameri- 
 can people are sovereigns instead of the "vulgar herd," or "the 
 masses," as they are often called in countries where one man is the 
 sovereign. A man spoke once to President Lincoln about "the com- 
 mon people, ' ' and Lincoln said, ' ' God must love the common people for 
 he made so many of them." Abraham Lincoln was proudest of being 
 one of the common people and gladdest to be able to do them a great 
 deal of good. 
 
 So, when a great idea or a great question gets out among the people 
 and they keep thinking about it while at their work or sitting by their 
 firesides in the long evenings, something is sure to come of it. When 
 all the people have a chance to settle a great question it is sure to be 
 
 settled right, though it may take a 
 hundred or even a thousand years to 
 do it. The "every-day people" who 
 did the work and had the best right 
 to live in old England (though the 
 nobles did not think so) began to get 
 at the truth when John Wyclif, mas- 
 ter at Oxford, the great English 
 university, took to writing and 
 preaching against some of the wrongs 
 that were then practised and taught 
 by religious leaders who, he thought, 
 were misleading the people. Among 
 other things, he taught that the 
 Church and the State ought to be kept 
 John Wyclif separate? 
 
THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 43 
 
 They ought to have been glad to have such a thinker and teacher as 
 that at a great seat of learning like Oxford University, then five hun- 
 dred years old. But no, the leaders in learning were indignant with 
 Doctor Wyclif for criticising and writing against their ideas before 
 the people, and they made him give up his position as Master of Balliol 
 and leave Oxford. So he took charge of a little church at Lutterworth 
 and began to do about the most important work that a man ever ac- 
 complished — he translated the Bible 
 into the language of the people. The 
 different Saxon tribes spoke separate 
 dialects when the Normans came 
 over to England, about three hun- 
 dred years before this. Then the 
 Normans spoke French, and the 
 Bible and all the other books were 
 written or printed with the pen in 
 Latin. It took years to print a single 
 Bible by hand, and such a book cost 
 as much as a great estate, so, very 
 few, even among the nobles, owned 
 Bibles. The Church did not believe 
 in having the sacred book read by 
 the people, because there is so much 
 in it that needed to be explained to 
 them. The few Bibles that were 
 found in the churches had to be 
 chained to the desks to prevent their 
 being stolen. If the people had had 
 the privilege of reading the chained 
 Latin Bibles they could not have understood them. 
 
 During the three centuries between the conquering of Saxon England 
 and the days of Wyclif, the Saxons had been brought together in a bond 
 of sympathy, because of their Norman masters. Also kings of England 
 claimed the throne of France and this brought on a war that lasted so 
 long that it was called the Hundred Years' War, and the English kings, 
 knights and nobles got into the habit of hating everything French. Be- 
 sides, the kings of England found that they must learn the language 
 
 A Knight of the 13th Century 
 
44 
 
 THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 spoken by their subjects in order to get money from them in the form 
 of grants, or gifts, and taxes and revenues to carry on their extensive 
 wars, crusades and maintain their expensive courts. So when 
 Doctor Wyclif translated the Bible for all the people to read he really 
 brought them together to speak and understand the same language and 
 practically melted the Anglo-Saxon clans and tribes together into the 
 great English People. That was a great achievement, but Wyclif did 
 more than that. He set the people to reading and thinking and talking, 
 and a little bird of Liberty was let out of its cage to grow strong, expand 
 
 its wings and fly to the sun, the 
 source of light. That bird of free- 
 dom is the American Eagle. 
 
 Wyclif is called "the Morning 
 Star of the Reformation" and the 
 ''Father of English Prose." He 
 was really the father of the Eng- 
 lish language. He opened the way 
 for Chaucer, ''the Father of Eng- 
 lish Poetry," whose long poem, 
 "The Canterbury Tales," is still 
 read with interest and amusement. 
 It shows that people were already 
 beginning to think for themselves. 
 Chaucer set them laughing at 
 monks, friars, ' ' pardoners, ' ' 
 women, and even kings and queens, 
 and told of their weaknesses and 
 wrongdoings in such a way that 
 even the king or the Church could 
 not take offense, but if a priest or monk had said such things in 
 the pulpit he would have been tried for thinking and speaking evil of 
 those in authority, and he would probably have been burned at the stake, 
 as poor John Huss was, away off in Bohemia, just about the time the 
 people of England were chuckling over the "Canterbury Tales." This 
 long poem was a description of a pilgrimage to Canterbury to pray at 
 the shrine of St. Thomas, the Thomas a Becket who was killed about 
 two hundred years before. Becket was called Saint Thomas because he 
 
 Chaucek as a Pilgrim to Canterbury 
 
THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 45 
 
 was made a martyr for doing what lie thought was right without fear 
 or favor from the king. It became the custom, after King Henry had 
 walked barefoot to Becket's tomb, for people to make pilgrimages to 
 the martyred Thomas's shrine. Chaucer told of an imaginary pilgrim- 
 age, as though several members of the party were relating the ' ' Canter- 
 bury Tales." These few lines will give you an idea of the style he 
 employed: 
 
 A monk there was of skill and mastery proud, 
 A manly man — to be an abbot able — 
 , And many a noble horse had he in stable. 
 
 I saw his large sleeves trimmed above the hand 
 With fur — the finest in the land. 
 His head, was bald and shone like polished glass, 
 And so his face, as it had been anoint, 
 While he was very fat and in good point. 
 Shining his boots; his horse right proud to see, 
 A prelate proud, majestic, grand was he; 
 He was not pale, as a poor pining ghost ; 
 A fat goose loved he best of any roast. 
 
 Of course the louder all this ridicule made the people laugh the angrier 
 it made the monks and friars, so angry that they wanted to kill Chaucer, 
 and he fled to Holland. When he came back he found that many of the 
 people had laughed themselves out of the Church and were rapidly 
 joining the Lollards, as those followers of Wyclif were called who refused 
 to have anything to do with the priests and friars. Chaucer had to go 
 away a second time. It was only through the saving sense of humor 
 of those in authority in the Church that kept the others back, so that 
 good, jolly old Geoffrey Chaucer was permitted to die a natural death 
 in the year fourteen hundred, probably without any idea of all the good 
 his quaint, queer poetry had done for the cause of thought and conscience. 
 
 But John Huss suffered a very different fate. A great scholar from 
 Bohemia, who had been at Oxford, and heard Doctor Wyclif preach, 
 carried Wyclif 's books home to his house in Prague, Bohemia. This 
 learned professor was Jerome of Prague. In this way, John Huss, a de- 
 vout, eloquent and learned man came to read Wyclif 's books, and found 
 deep truth in them. He began to preach against the wrongs committed 
 by many high in authority in the Church. He and Jerome were terribly 
 
46 
 
 THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 Huss Before the Council at Constance 
 
 in earnest. They did not laugh nor did the people of Bohemia. Husg 
 was summoned to appear before the great Council of Constance, Switzer- 
 land. There Sigismund, Emperor of Germany, presided and there were' 
 thousands of prelates and nobles in attendance. Sigismund promised 
 John Huss a safe-conduct, that is, he agreed to be responsible for Huss's 
 safety — but they imprisoned Huss and brought him out, gave him a 
 mock trial and condemned him. All John Huss had done was to be- 
 lieve the same things Wyclif had taught. He did not say half as hard 
 things as Chaucer did in his poem, but they burned him at the stake 
 in the public square at Constance, in the presence of a great crowd of 
 people, on July 16, 1415, while great piles of Wyclif 's and Huss's 
 books were also burning. His friend Jerome stood up for him and 
 
THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 47 
 
 afterward paid for his bravery by being chained to a stake and 
 burned. 
 
 It is told that during his so-called trial John Huss turned and looked 
 at Emperor Sigismund, who had promised the safe-conduct. But the 
 Emperor's pass or ticket of safe-conduct was taken from Huss and he 
 was kept in prison for months. On the final day of that trial, 
 when John Huss saw that some of the men he had accused of lead- 
 ing wicked lives were determined to have him put to death, for 
 they shouted at him when he tried to speak in his own defense, he 
 stood up calmly and spoke distinctly, turning to Emperor Sigismund, 
 saying : 
 
 * ' I came to this Council of my own free-will, with a safe-conduct from 
 the emperor. I came in full confidence that no violence should be done 
 me, and that I might prove my innocence. ' ' 
 
 Then, while John Huss stood gazing steadily, the emperor knew he 
 had spoken the truth, and that if he had given the order he could have 
 commanded thousands of men to defend Huss. The emperor's face 
 turned scarlet and the thousands in that great Council of Constance 
 beheld the blush of shame on the cheek of Sigismund, Emperor of 
 Germany. 
 
 One hundred and five years after this, when another German emperor, 
 Charles the Fifth, at another great council, was asked why he did not 
 break his word and violate the safe-conduct he had given Martin Luthef, 
 he said: 
 
 ''I should not like to blush as Sigismund blushed before John Huss.'^ 
 
 Martin Luther was not burned at the stake. Great things for Liberty 
 had happened in the century after the deaths of Huss and Jerome of 
 Prague. Savonarola had preached in words of fire against the wicked- 
 ness of Lorenzo de' Medici and other great sinners in Florence, Italy. 
 "The common people heard him gladly" for a time, but revenge came 
 swift and sure. The ashes of Savonarola were thrown into the river 
 Arno, in Italy, as the ashes of Huss and Jerome of Prague had been 
 cast into the Rhine and the ashes of Wyclif were scattered upon the waters 
 of the Avon, which flows through Stratford, the birthplace of Shakes- 
 peare. 
 
 But a greater event than the giving up of their lives in the holy cause 
 of liberty by such men as Huss, Jerome and Savonarola came to pass 
 
48 THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 in the latter half of the fifteenth century. At first it was kept a great 
 secret, but it became known in this singular manner : 
 
 A stranger came to the palace of Charles the Seventh, King of France, 
 with a package which he would not open for anyone but the king. At 
 last he was admitted and carefully undid the precious bundle, taking out 
 a beautiful copy of the Holy Bible, printed on j^archment, richly bound 
 and fastened with strong clasps. The king was delighted with the 
 regularity of the letters. It looked as though the monk who printed all 
 that by hand must have taken the greatest pains. Every Bible cost a 
 fortune in those days. The king asked the price of it. "Seven hun- 
 dred and fifty crowns" (nearly one thousand dollars), said the man. 
 The king was glad to buy it so cheap, for he really expected to pay much 
 more for it. He gave the man the money and let him go. Shortly 
 after this transaction the king received a call from the archbishop, to 
 whom he said, eagerly: 
 
 ''I have a beautiful Bible to show you — the most perfect I have ever 
 seen. The letters are done so evenly and well that I do not see what made 
 the man sell it so cheaply." 
 
 The king showed the great, handsome volume to the archbishop, and 
 to his astonishment that prelate sent out to his carriage for a package, 
 opened it and placed another copy of the book beside the king's. The 
 two Bibles were exactly alike ! Such a thing was never heard of before. 
 The two men were perplexed. What could it mean? Every page was 
 the same, every letter, every point. They were all so true and even, too, 
 and did not show the marks of a pen. Was it a miracle, or witchcraft? 
 No one but a wizard could do such a marvelous thing. They soon 
 found out that there were other Bibles sold cheap — only a thousand 
 dollars apiece ! Some thought it must have been done by the devil him- 
 self. Others said the devil would not be out selling Bibles. But the 
 archbishop said the devil sometimes took the form of "an angel of light." 
 The king and the prelate ordered the matter traced out. The man was 
 caught selling other Bibles just like the ones he had sold in France. 
 They found that the books all came from the house of a Doctor Faust 
 of Strasburg, in Germany, near the French boundary. This was hun- 
 dreds of years before Goethe wrote his great drama in which he repre- 
 sented a certain Doctor Faust as having sold himself to the devil. This 
 real Dr. John Faust did not want to tell how those Bibles were made 
 
THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 49 
 
 for fear lie could not sell so many, or at such high prices. But people 
 
 were suspicious and frightened. They thought he was a wizard, or a 
 
 man who, like a witch, had sold himself to the Evil One to do the works 
 
 of darkness or magic, like flying on i broomstick at night. If anything 
 
 was done that people did not understand, they thought the devil was at 
 
 the bottom of it. Some 
 
 men landed, hundreds of 
 
 years ago, near Lyons, 
 
 in the south of France, 
 
 in a flying machine, and 
 
 had a narrow escape 
 
 from being put to death 
 
 for witchcraft, for 
 
 witches were the only 
 
 13 e o p 1 e they thought 
 
 could fly. 
 
 This very King of 
 France, who was puzzled 
 because many Bibles 
 were just alike, had been 
 placed on the throne 
 through the wonderful 
 leadership of a young 
 country girl, named Joan 
 of Arc, who could neither 
 read nor write, but who 
 heard, or thought she 
 heard, voices telling her 
 to lead the army of 
 France and drive out 
 the English who had 
 taken possession of many 
 French cities, claiming 
 king. The people, the 
 
 Joan of Arc 
 
 that France belonged to the English 
 soldiers and King Charles all believed the 
 girl was inspired of heaven. This gave everyone so much confidence, 
 that the victory was half won before Joan and the French army reached 
 Orleans, for the idea that a higher power was with the ''Maid of Or- 
 
 4— The Story of the Liberty Bell. 
 
50 
 
 THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 leans," as they called her, inspired the English soldiers with fear. When 
 Joan of Arc saw her beloved king, Charles the Seventh, crowned, she 
 wanted to go back to her humble country home and mind the sheep, as 
 she was doing when she heard the voices telling her to go and save 
 France. But King Charles and the army begged her to go on driving 
 the English out of France. She was persuaded to do this, though she 
 felt that the voice of her king was not the same as the voice of God. 
 She was half-hearted, and some of the very men who begged her to keep 
 on as their commander, deserted her when she was surrounded by the 
 enemy, and the English finally made her their prisoner. They took the 
 poor girl and told her she had done all the wonderful things by magic, 
 and tortured her to make her confess that she was a witch and that it 
 was the devil who had told her by whispers in her ear just how to go to 
 work to beat them. Joan could only tell what the voices said, and 
 while she was in the most excruciating pain she would say ''yes" to any 
 question they asked her, just to make them ston their terrible tortures. 
 Then they said: "She has confessed that she sold her soul to the devil. 
 
 Joan of Arc Before the Tribunal at Rouen 
 
THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 51 
 
 She is a witch, she says so herself. She must be burned." And they 
 took poor innocent young Joan of Arc out on a beautiful May day, in 
 1431, chained her to a stone post in the market place of Rouen, and 
 burned her to death. 
 
 For thousands of years everybody believed in • witchcraft. Moses 
 
 had said, as the Bible tells us, "Thou 
 shalt not suffer a witch to live." There- 
 fore, millions of innocent men, and even 
 old women and young children, have been 
 put to death or burned as witches. Even 
 the best educated people believed in this 
 superstition. Sir Matthew Hale, one of 
 the greatest men and a just judge, con- 
 demned men and women to death in the 
 highest court of England, two hundred 
 years after Joan of Arc's time, for being 
 in league with the devil, bewitching cows 
 so they would not give milk, preventing 
 butter from forming in the churn, and 
 such common things as that. In this 
 country Dr. Increase Mather, the 
 president of Harvard University, only two hundred years ago, 
 wrote a book on witchcraft, which was thought to have much to do with 
 the hanging of the witches at Salem, Massachusetts. His son. Dr. Cot- 
 ton Mather, though so often referred to as having been to blame for 
 that delusion which was common at the time, really had nothing what- 
 ever to do with it. When Cotton Mather was in favor of vaccination, 
 to prevent smallpox, ignorant people thought "inoculation," as they 
 called it, was of the devil, and they threw a hand grenade, or small 
 bomb, into his window, trying to kill him. Whenever anything was 
 done that the people did not understand, they were frightened and whis- 
 pered, "Witchcraft!" 
 
 We left Charles the Seventh of France, the archbishop and others 
 
 gravely debating whether it was through witchcraft that so many Bibles 
 
 looked just alike. As they threatened to try Dr. John Faust, of Stras- 
 
 'burg, and burn him also, he was forced to explain how the books were 
 
 made. He told them that they had not been printed with the pen, by 
 
 Cotton Mather 
 
52 THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 hand, but stamped with little blocks of wood or lead. This is the way 
 the art of printing started : 
 
 A jolly Dutchman, named Laurenz Koster in Holland, the country 
 of canals and windmills, used to whittle out toys and blocks for the chil- 
 dren. While doing this he happened to think he could make wooden 
 dies such as are now used in stamping letters and designs in butter and 
 wax. He found he could make up words, letter by letter, tie them to- 
 gether and print them. Laurenz Koster was the first person to put 
 wooden type together to make words, though seals and stamps had been 
 used for thousands of years. The Chinese are said to have known the 
 art of printing a thousand or more years ago, but they used single blocks, 
 printing with them, but making a separate impression for each char- 
 acter, somewhat as a grocer prints his price cards to-day, with separate 
 rubber types. Koster did a little printing in a small way, but he died, 
 leaving his precious secret with his apprentice, a young German named 
 John Gutenberg, who improved upon Koster 's invention by casting 
 lead type in moulds, instead of carving it on wood as Koster did. Young 
 Gutenberg needed money to perfect his invention, so Dr. John Faust, 
 a good, wealthy neighbor in Strasburg, supplied the funds for this and 
 to enable him to print a large number of Bibles. These were stored 
 with Dr. Faust and he saw to the marketing of the precious books. This 
 explains how the king's detectives traced the Bible salesman to Dr. 
 Faust 's house. This, in brief, is the story Dr. Faust had to tell to prove 
 that he was not guilty of witchcraft, and that the devil was not a silent 
 partner in that firm of printers. In all printing offices in England and 
 America to-day they call the boy apprentice the printer's *' devil." 
 The reason Dr. Faust did not like to tell how his Bibles were printed 
 was because he was afraid he could not sell them if it were known 
 that they were not written with a pen in the old way, at least he thought 
 the people would not pay such large prices when they knew how they 
 were made. It is a good thing the art of printing was not long kept a 
 secret. 
 
 About twenty-five years after King Charles bought his first printed 
 Bible, a man named William Caxton, of England, on a business trip to 
 Holland, saw the type and how it was used. He found the process so 
 interesting and profitable that, when he went back to London, he opened' 
 a printing place in a chapel of Westminster Abbey. The first book ever 
 
54 
 
 THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 printed in English was not the Bible, but "The Game and Playe of 
 Chesse," for the English people were then nearly as much interested in 
 chess as the Americans are in baseball to-day. There is a fine statue 
 of Gutenburg, as the inventor of printing, in Strasburg, Germany. But 
 should not the highest honor be paid to good Laurenz Koster, who really 
 invented printing while carving on wooden blocks the names of little 
 children 1 
 
 Thus printing came into common use in Germany just in time to save 
 Martin Luther from, being burned alive — for the people could get printed 
 Bibles and read them for themselves, and they became such great friends 
 to Luther that the men in authority were afraid to treat him as others 
 had treated John Huss, Savonarola, and thousands of the people called 
 Lollards. 
 
 Besides, Martin Luther's influential friends stood by him to the last. 
 
 Emperor Charles the 
 Fifth, though not known 
 as a good or honorable 
 monarch, held sacred the 
 safe-conduct promised to 
 Luther when that re- 
 former, as he is now called, 
 came to the Diet, or Con- 
 ference, at the city of 
 Worms in Germany, to 
 answer for his teaching 
 and preaching and writ- 
 ing, just as Huss was sum- 
 moned to the Council of 
 Constance. Dr. Luther 
 had been a professor in a 
 German university. He 
 was a singer and com- 
 poser. As he journeyed 
 to the town of Worms for 
 trial, crowds were waiting 
 for hours in the streets 
 MARTIN LuTHEE and on the housetops 
 
56 THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 to see the great Doctor Luther pass — the man who opposed the 
 selling of indulgences, and other wicked things done by men under the 
 cloak or protection of the Church. One of his hymns is now familiar 
 because it is sung in English as well as in German, and in the great 
 French opera, The Huguenots. It begins: 
 
 A mighty fortress is our God, 
 A bulwark never failing. 
 
 The streets of Worms were so crowded that the emperor's officers 
 could not conduct Doctor Luther to the council hall by the usual way, 
 and he had to be led through private passages and gardens. In that 
 spacious, solemn council chamber, the emperor and the nobles of his 
 court were assembled with the high dignitaries of the Catholic Church. 
 The Diet was presided over by Archbishop Treves, representing Leo 
 the Tenth, one of the greatest potentates that ever ruled the Christian 
 world from Rome. There was a deathlike stillness when the arch- 
 bishop, in the rich regalia of the Church, pointing to a pile of books and 
 pamphlets on a table before him, asked the humble man in plain garb, 
 standing before him : 
 
 "Martin Luther, did you write these books?" 
 
 Luther stood looking at them. He had seen on his way from Witten- 
 berg, notices posted up, condemning all his writings and warning every- 
 one who read them to a fate worse than death, of excommunication, 
 which meant eternal punishment. He believed when he came to this 
 Council, that he was coming to his own death. His friends, in tears, im- 
 plored him not to go to Worms, or he would suffer the fate of John Huss. 
 His great friend, the Elector, or King of Saxony, had sent his chancel- 
 lor to entreat Luther "not to enter a town where his death was decided." 
 The answer which Luther returned was simply this, "I will go though as 
 many devils aim at me as there are tiles on the roofs of the houses. ' ' 
 
 While Martin Luther stood considering how best to reply, the silent, 
 suspense was almost sickening. After he had looked the books over he 
 said, quietly, that as far as he knew, he had written them all. 
 
 Then the Archbishop asked him in a harsh, threatening voice: 
 
 "Will you take back what you have written!" 
 
 Doctor Luther calmly began the speech he had been deliberating. It 
 would mean life or death to him — death most likely. He went on quietly 
 
THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 57 
 
 explaining why be had been forced to write and to preach as be bad 
 done. They let him proceed. They dared not shout at him and call 
 him names as some bad done to John Huss. What made this great dif- 
 ference! Printing had been discovered. The people had begun in 
 Germany to read and to think for themselves. So Martin Luther was 
 permitted to go on. It was not a long speech. It ended with these 
 words : 
 
 * ' Here I stand. I cannot do otherwise. God help me. Amen. ' ' 
 Many of the nobles and prelates present had urged the Emperor 
 Charles the Fifth to break his word with Luther and give him over to 
 them to be tortured and put to death. But the young emperor, seeing 
 
 how the peoi^le all over Germany 
 loved their good friend, Doctor 
 Luther, agreed that it would not do 
 to violate his safe-conduct, but as 
 soon as Luther had reached his 
 home at Wittenberg in safety, they 
 might arrest him and do as they 
 pleased with him. 
 
 On his way back from the Diet, 
 while passing along a lonely road in 
 the depths of a dense forest, a band 
 of men dashed up on horseback 
 and surrounded Doctor Luther. 
 Throwing a cloak over him, they 
 compelled him to mount a horse 
 they had brought for him to ride. 
 Luther did not know who they were nor where they were taking him. 
 His captors rode on with him in silence. Luther asked no questions. He 
 thought his enemies had him in their power at last. No one spoke a 
 word all that long day. After nightfall they came to a high, steep hill 
 on top of which the towers of a huge castle loomed, gloomy and threat- 
 ening, above them. ''This is to be my prison, then," thought Luther. 
 A great gate swung open and his captors led him inside. They con- 
 ducted him to a little upper room, where clothing such as a knight wore 
 was laid out for him. 
 
 ''Put those on," they said to him, ''You are a knight, now, and 
 
 Seal of Charles V 
 
58 THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 your name is George. You will have to let your hair and beard grow. 
 No one must know who you are. ' ' 
 
 It was all very strange. Though Martin Luther was puzzled he was 
 also very weary. He threw himself upon the bed and slept soundly. 
 In the morning he arose and looked out through the little grated window. 
 Trees, nothing but trees. He was evidently in the heart of a deep for- 
 est — but where! Though a prisoner he was treated kindly. What did 
 it all mean' Months passed. The world heard nothing of Martin 
 Luther. He had mysteriously disappeared. His friends thought he 
 had been seized secretly and put to death. 
 
 Yet Martin Luther was among friends. Frederick, Elector of Sax- 
 ony, saw that his friend's life was now in greatest danger. Knowing 
 that the great Doctor Luther would never fly or retreat of his own ac- 
 cord, he sent men to make Luther a prisoner to save him from a worse 
 fate. Luther's enemies thought he had fled the country and hoped they 
 had seen and heard the last of that troublesome, outspoken reformer. 
 
 The place in which Frederick of Saxony kept Luther confined for ten 
 long months was the castle of Wartburg. As Doctor Wyclif had done 
 at Lutterworth two centuries earlier, when driven out of Oxford, Luther 
 began in this castle the greatest work of his life, the translation of the 
 Bible into the language which people in all parts of Germany could 
 read and understand. He took the greatest pains in making this trans- 
 lation. When he came to the passages about the sacrifices he watched 
 a butcher killing sheep and other animals and learned all that he could 
 about them. While working on the twenty-first chapter of the Revela- 
 tion he consulted a jeweler about the different precious stones there 
 described. He put forth every effort to make the Bible so plain and 
 simple that it could be understood by the mother in the house, by the 
 children in the streets and by "the common man in the market." As 
 Wyclif 's translation had brought all the Anglo-Saxons together into the 
 English people, so Luther's united all Germany into one Fatherland, 
 and made the present German Empire possible. Grand as this achieve- 
 ment proved to be it was by no means the greatest thing Luther did, 
 for the service he rendered the human race in the sacred cause of Liberty 
 can never be estimated. As all the people read their Bibles they "looked 
 into the perfect law of liberty." 
 
 Nearly four hundred years have passed since Martin Luther worked 
 
THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 59 
 
 day and night, in the great castle prison of Wartburg, in the heart of a 
 gloomy forest of Germany. In that time four hundred million Bibles 
 have been published — more than a million a year ! Thanks to such men 
 as Wyclif, Huss, Jerome, Savonarola and Koster, Gutenberg, Caxton 
 and the '* noble army of martyrs" and heroes '*of whom the world was 
 not worthy, ' ' the printing-presses of Christendom are sending forth more 
 and more Bibles every year; more and more good books are being 
 brought within the reach of all the people, and Liberty is spreading 
 faster than ever. 
 
 Early English Printing Office 
 
60 
 
 THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 SAH^ING THE "SEA OF DARKNESS" FOR 
 LIBERTY'S SAKE 
 
 WHEN you are asked what shape the world is, you promptly 
 answer that it is "round like an apple or an orange." 
 Any child can say this now, but a few hundred years ago, 
 for a man to say so in earnest would have cost him his 
 life, or at least his liberty. Christopher Columbus, the son of a poor 
 wool-comber of Genoa, Italy, somehow got the idea into his head that 
 the world is round. He went from country to country trying to get a 
 chance to prove his theory by sailing around the globe. How people 
 laughed and made fun of poor demented Christopher Columbus ! They 
 thought he was foolish or he would have been burned at the stake. The 
 
 Inquisition had not 
 been started or 
 they might have 
 arrested Columbus 
 and put him on the 
 rack, and stretched 
 him there until his 
 bones began to 
 come apart to 
 make him say "I 
 take it all back, the 
 world isn't round, 
 it's flat, yes, flat as 
 a pancake!" That 
 is the way they did 
 with Galileo, an 
 Italian philosopher, 
 a" hundred years 
 later, who made 
 m a n y important 
 discoveries. Galileo 
 really invented the 
 telescope and dis- 
 covered stars 
 
 ^./<^w^~'""'^^=^V- 
 
 Columbus Before Ferdinand and Isabella 
 
THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 61 
 
 never before seen by human eyes. When he was an old man he was 
 called to answer questions in the Inquisition. The Church did not like 
 new discoveries for fear they would contradict the Bible. 
 
 They told Galileo he must take back all that he had written and taught 
 about the earth revolving around the sun. He was an old man. They 
 threatened to torture him if he didn't say, "I was wrong; the sun re- 
 volves around the earth." 
 
 Poor old Galileo! He 
 knew it wouldn't make 
 any difference to the sun 
 or to the earth and it 
 might make a great deal 
 of difference to an old 
 man like him, so he took 
 it all back. He knelt, as 
 they ordered him, and re- 
 peated the seven peniten- 
 tial psalms every little 
 while for the sin of saying 
 ' ' the earth moves. ' ' There 
 is a story that after 
 Galileo read his speech 
 denying it all he said 
 softly to himself: "And 
 yet it moves ! ' ' The world 
 has moved since then in 
 another way. It has 
 moved out of darkness 
 into the sunlight of Lib- 
 erty. 
 
 Thus Columbus might 
 have been tortured for 
 saying the world is round, 
 only they thought he was 
 half crazy on the subject. 
 They did not hurt his body 
 for this belief, but they 
 
 Columbus in Youth 
 
62 
 
 THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 did torture him as children too often torture each other and even 
 strangers by making fun of them. 
 
 '*Ho, ho!" a girl would say when Columbus went by. ''There goes 
 the poor, silly man that thinks the world is round. How do the people 
 on the under side stick on, then? — He! he! he!" 
 
 ''Yes," a boy would add, "and he says he can go east by sailing west — 
 going one way by starting in the opposite direction! Ho! ho! ho! 
 Ain't that rich, though!" 
 
 Columbus had gone from country to country and no one believed or 
 cared enough about 
 the matter to help 
 him until Queen Isa- 
 bella of Spain, 
 touched by his earn- 
 est wish to convert 
 the heathen, said she 
 would see that he 
 had a few ships 
 even if she had to 
 pledge her crown 
 and other jewels to 
 pay for them. It is 
 strange that the 
 queen who had most 
 to do with starting 
 the Inquisition, and 
 the queen who drove 
 the Jews out of 
 Spain, was the same 
 queen who was so 
 good and generous 
 to Columbus, and 
 enabled him to prove 
 that one could go 
 east by sailing 
 west. Queen Isa- 
 bella was not nat- Columbus and the Egg 
 
THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 63 
 
 urally cruel. She only thought as St. Paul did, when he was persecuting 
 the early Christians — that she was doing God service. 
 
 When Columbus and his three little ships went ''sailing out into the 
 west" from Spain, the crews that manned them were criminals let out of 
 prisons, for no free sailors would ship with Columbus on such a danger- 
 ous voyage. The western sea, which we now call the Atlantic Ocean, was 
 then known as the "Sea of Darkness." Sailors and nearly everybody 
 
 The "Santa Maria," the "Pinta" and the "Nina' = 
 
 else believed that no one would ever come back alive from that unknown 
 sea. Some thought it was the home of terrible sea monsters waiting to 
 devour all who came their way. Most people believed that a ship going 
 westward beyond certain bounds would be engulfed in a great mael- 
 strom, or whirlpool, and be sucked down through the earth, or caught 
 by a swift current that would rush it over the edge of the world as a small 
 boat is carried over Niagara Falls, and go down, down forever into the 
 bottomless abyss. So it required more than mere heroism for Columbus 
 
64 
 
 THE STOEY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 to start out across that unknown sea. The men who had been made to 
 sail the ships against their wills came to him every day to beg him to 
 turn back before it was eternally too late, for they expected, hour by 
 
 hour, to be caught 
 in some irresisti- 
 ble current and 
 whirled to swift 
 destruction. They 
 sometimes went 
 down on their 
 knees at his feet, 
 with tears stream- 
 ing down their 
 bronzed faces, en- 
 treating him not to 
 drag them down 
 to death before 
 their time. Colum- 
 bus said all he 
 could to encourage 
 them and to divert 
 their minds. The 
 queen had offered 
 quite a fortune, as 
 a prize to the first 
 man who should 
 discover land be- 
 yond the western 
 sea, and Columbus 
 added to it an ex- 
 tra gift of a vel- 
 vet jacket. Yet 
 the poor sailors 
 from the Spanish jails did not believe anyone would find any- 
 thing in that direction but sure death. When they could not 
 persuade 'the Admiral'' as Columbus was now called, to let 
 them turn back, they schemed to tie him. hand and foot, and throw 
 
 Columbus Quieting the Grumblers 
 
THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 65 
 
 him into the "Sea of Darkness." Columbus discovered the plot and, 
 with the help of the faithful leaders on each of the three little ships, 
 kept the prows pointing westward. After ten long, anxious weeks 
 Columbus himself first sighted land. He had faith that he would find 
 it if he kept going long enough. Those who believe are the ones who do 
 things. The men who meant to murder Columbus were the first to 
 acknowledge that he was right and that they were all wrong. When 
 Admiral Columbus came back to Spain he was the greatest hero in the 
 world. Those who had snickered and made fun of him now considered 
 it an honor to tell their children and grandchildren if ' ' Admiral Colum- 
 bus ' ' happened to smile on them in a passing parade in his honor. The 
 king and queen did him honor and gave him wealth and titles which his 
 descendants, the Dukes of Veragua, have held to this day. The highest 
 honor of all was that he, by his faithfulness in following the call of duty, 
 gave the New World to the Old. The World's Fair, four hundred 
 years later, the grandest international exposition ever given, was all in 
 honor of the man whose neighbors ' children called ' ' crazy Christopher. ' ' 
 It was because Spain tried to keep her great discovery secret that 
 Columbus lost the honor of having the two continents of North and 
 South America named North and South Columbia in memory of their 
 discoverer. 
 
 Try hard as she might, Spain could not hide the new world under a 
 bushel. Other men soon sailed out across the western sea, and John 
 and Sebastian Cabot and Amerigo 
 Vespucci discovered the continents of 
 North and South America before 
 Columbus found his way beyond the 
 outlying islands. King Henry VII 
 of England paid the Cabot who 
 first saw and landed on North 
 America, ten pounds, or fifty dollars, 
 for a new continent! The New 
 World soon became a refuge for 
 those who could not find Liberty in 
 the Old. Sir Walter Raleigh, one 
 
 of the noblest men that ever lived, y^^ ^ u^Y-'^'^'^^Efr-^ i* ''^' 
 came to found a settlement on the Sir Walter Kaleigh 
 
 5— Thf Story of the Liberty Bell. 
 
66 
 
 THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 coast of North America, naming the region ''Virginia" in honor of 
 Qneen Elizabeth of England. It was Walter Raleigh who spread his 
 red velvet cloak over a muddy ])lace in the road for Queen Elizabeth 
 to walk on, and thus save her dainty pearl-embroidered slippers from 
 
 being soiled. Raleigh's 
 colony did not last long, 
 but he took back tobacco 
 to England and potatoes, 
 which were first found in 
 America, to Ireland, 
 where they have grown so 
 well as to be called "Irish 
 potatoes. ' ' The English ' 
 used to call smoking 
 "drinking" tobacco. 
 Raleigh learned to smoke 
 from the Indians and, 
 after returning to Eng- 
 land, he sat smoking one 
 day in his room. A serv- 
 ant thought his master 
 was on fire and dashed a 
 pail of cold water over 
 him, drenching him from 
 head to foot to put the fire 
 out! 
 
 Sir Walter Raleigh 
 spent many years as a 
 prisoner in the Tower 
 of London because he 
 was supposed to have opposed King James as king of I^lng- 
 land. While confined in the Tower he wrote his "History of the 
 World." The king released him on condition that he should com- 
 mand an expedition to America, find a certain mine the king thought 
 Raleigh knew about, and bring back a cargo of gold. Sir Walter had 
 an unfortunate voyage, failed to find the gold-mine and returned empty 
 handed to the king, who was so disappointed and angry that he ordered 
 
 Death of Ealeigh 
 
PocAHANTAS Saves Captain John Smith 
 
 07 
 
68 THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 Raleigh taken back to the Tower and beheaded. The unfortunate man 
 need not have returned to England at all, but his high sense of honor 
 made him feel that he ought to report to the king. James did him the 
 honor to allow him to have his head cut off on Tower Hill instead of be- 
 ing hanged at Tyburn, like a common criminal ! When he was on the 
 scaffold ready for execution, Raleigh felt the keen edge of the heads- 
 man ^s ax and said, with a smile: 
 
 ' ' This is a sharp medicine, but it is a cure for all ills. ' ' 
 
 Another Englishman who did a great deal for America was Captain 
 John Smith. He came to America with a company of colonists led by 
 Captain Newport. They named two capes, Charles and Henry, and a 
 river James. A settlement was made and named Jamestown, in honor 
 of the king. Some of the settlers refused to work. They considered 
 labor undignified, if not degrading. Captain John Smith showed them 
 that unless a man worked he should not eat. He had several encount- 
 ers with the Indians. In one of these he was captured and carried into 
 the presence of Powhatan, the head chief. He was condemned to death. 
 Just as two stalwart braves had their war clubs uplifted ready to dash 
 out his brains, the Indian chief's daughter, Pocahontas, rushed for- 
 ward, threw herself upon the white prisoner's prostrate body and inter- 
 ceded with her father, Powhatan, in Captain Smith's behalf. King 
 Powhatan, as he was called, made a treaty with the white men, but after- 
 wards consented to join in a conspiracy to put all the white men out of 
 the way by murdering them. Pocahontas came secretly and gave Cap- 
 tain Smith warning of the plot, and he was ready for the Indians when 
 they came. The chief of the Pamunkeys detained Smith in a parley 
 until he was surrounded by Indians. Captain Smith seized the chief 
 by the hair and threatened to blow his brains out if he did not withdraw 
 and call off his braves. 
 
 Smith had many encounters with the savages and with mutinous 
 white men. He forced the idle fortune seekers to work or starve, and 
 had cold water poured down the necks of the men. He also made 
 voyages along the coast and drew a map of New England. It was he 
 who gave the name of Plymouth to the region afterward settled by 
 the Pilgrims. It is said that slavery was introduced in this country by 
 the bringing of negroes to Jamestown in 1619. 
 
 Captain John Smith was badly burned and injured by an explosion 
 
THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 69 
 
 of gunpowder. He soon returned to England and was honored by 
 King James, whose son, Prince Charles, named the northern part of 
 what was then called Virginia, "New England." 
 
 The colonies which settled in New England came over for Liberty ^s 
 sake. Pennsylvania and Maryland, were also established in the inter- 
 est of religious freedom. The former was settled by Quakers from 
 England, and the latter by Roman Catholics driven out of the Virginia 
 colony by Church of England people. The story of the settlement of 
 Pl}^noutli is the most interesting of them all, because of the noble pur- 
 pose of the people to be free to worship as they wished. When ''Good 
 Queen Bess," or Elizabeth, queen of England, died, she left the throne 
 to King James, the foolish, obstinate king of Scotland. He was very 
 narrow-minded, bigoted and mean. He thought he was very clever and 
 wise, when everyone could see how stupid and silly he was, but no one 
 dared or cared to tell him when he was in the wrong. To offend him 
 cost a man's life or liberty. 
 
 Perhaps the silliest thing of all that King James tried to do was his 
 attempt to make all the people of England worship in the Church of 
 England, of which he was the head. Those who refused to ''conform" 
 were called Nonconformists. Many of these desired a purer religion, 
 so they were called Puritans. The Puritans, instead of trying to purify 
 the Church, or make it better, separated themselves from it, so they 
 were called Separatists. That anyone should have the courage to 
 wish to think or do anything but what King James ordered and just the 
 way he ordered it, seemed to enrage him beyond measure. Several hun- 
 dred ministers in different iDarts of the kingdom, who earnestly desired 
 to make the Church and the people better, presented a humble petition 
 to the king to be allowed to explain their ideas to him. James gra- 
 ciously consented to hear them. He invited bishops and prelates of the 
 Church — his Church, for he was the father of the State Church — and 
 after taxing all the people to support his Church he used what he wanted 
 of the Church money himself ! Why not ! Was he not the Head of the 
 Church? When those hundreds of Nonconformist ministers came to 
 their "hearing, ' ' it was they, not the king, who did the listening, for when 
 they began to tell him why they wanted to talk with him, he stopped 
 them and snarled at them through his nose, in his self-satisfied way: 
 
 "I will have one doctrine, one discipline, one religion. I alone will 
 
^0 
 
 THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 decide. 1 will mafce you conform or 1 will harry you out of the land, 
 or else do worse — hang you!" 
 
 Then he rubbed his hands with glee and chuckled to the bishops whom 
 
 he had invited 
 there to see the 
 fun, ' ' I peppered 
 them soundly, did 
 I not?" 
 
 There was a de- 
 vout little meeting 
 at Scrooby, Eng- 
 land, where sev- 
 eral pious preach- 
 ers expounded the 
 Gospel in its sim- 
 plicity, and taught 
 the plain country 
 people to live pure, 
 upright lives. Thfe 
 man who lived in 
 the house where 
 the meetings were 
 held was William 
 Brewster, an im- 
 l)ortant man at the 
 court of Elizabeth. 
 He had seen the 
 seamy side of high 
 life and had settled 
 down to use his in- 
 fluence to hel]i to 
 improve the condi- 
 tion of the neigh- 
 borhood. A youth of seventeen, named William Bradford, was 
 another worshiper there. These (|uiet, law-abiding people were 
 sorry to hear of the king's decision, for it meant that they 
 must give up what they valued more than life — their liberty of 
 
 Foolish, Obstinate King James the First 
 
THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 71 
 
 conscience. The king went right to work to have the Nonconformists 
 "clapt up in prison," as he expressed it. Wliere could they got It 
 would be as bad for them in France and it would take years and cost 
 a fortune to go to America. They must leave their comfortable homes 
 and get out of England at once. In Holland the government and the 
 people were kind and allowed peoijle to worship as they chose. Brew- 
 ster and his neighbors had to go fifty miles to the seacoast in order to 
 get a ship to take them to Holland. He arranged with a captain to 
 carry them to Amsterdam. They sold their homes for all they could 
 get, packed up and made the journey to Boston, England, at night. 
 They were waiting on the quay, all readj^ to escape, when a constable 
 with a band of the king's men came clattering down the cobblestone 
 street and arrested them for trying to leave the country — after the king 
 had driven them away ! The ship captain, who had agreed with William 
 Brewster to take them to Holland, had informed on them instead. They 
 were kept in prison six months and finally set free. Then Brewster 
 tried again to take his faithful little band out of the country. This 
 time he bargained with a Dutch shipmaster to meet them at a lonely 
 spot on the English coast. They separated and went to the place of 
 meeting. But the ship was not there as agreed. The men, women and 
 children hid themselves along the shore the rest of the day and all night 
 before the Dutch skipper arrived. In the morning the shivering, dis- 
 couraged little company were glad to see the ship anchored off 
 shore. They began to take the people and their goods on board in 
 small boats. Some of the men and women were on the ship and some 
 on land and working hard to transfer the rest of the families and 
 goods when over the hills came a troop of armed police, sent by the 
 bishop, and seized those who were still on shore, clubbing them, even 
 the women, with their guns. The oaths of the officers and the shrieks 
 of the women and children made such a commotion that the Dutch 
 captain, fearing he might be arrested also, hoisted his anchor and sailed 
 away. 
 
 Young William Bradford was on board, and thus described the scene 
 in his diary : 
 
 ''Pitiful it was to see the heavy care of these poor women — what 
 weeping and crying on every side — some for their husbands carried 
 away in the ship, others not knowing what should become of them and 
 
72 THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 their little ones ; others melted in tears seeing their poor little ones hang- 
 ing about them, crying for fear and quaking with cold." 
 
 The little ship, instead of reaching Holland in a day or two, was 
 caught in a gale and driven away to the coast of Norway. For seven 
 days the fleeing passengers did not see the light of the sun or moon, and 
 hourly expected to go to the bottom. It was fourteen days before they 
 reached Amsterdam. 
 
 As for the broken families left behind weeping bitterly on the shore, 
 after fathers, husbands, wives and children had been carried off, they 
 were put in prison again and kept there until government officials in 
 London could be consulted. It was found that the bishop had no right 
 to arrest them, so they were allowed to go — but where? They had no 
 homes, their goods had been lost or destroyed. Of course, to-day such 
 officials would have to pay the penalty of such wanton abuse and ill 
 treatment. Even the king would now be made to suffer for such a tres- 
 pass upon the rights of private citizens. King James was not made to 
 suffer, but his son Charles, when he became king, was beheaded be- 
 cause of his father's high-handed crimes against Liberty. Especially in 
 royal families are the ''iniquities" of the fathers visited upon the chil- 
 dren "unto the third and fourth generation." King James did great 
 good in the cause of Liberty, by accident, as it were. He called together 
 the Church and other dignitaries to tell them just what he would and 
 would not allow in the way of worship, and the ''King James" trans- 
 lation of the Bible was the outcome of it all. It is still known as the 
 "Authorized Version." One has only to read its quaint and fulsome 
 preface to see the difference between the way we look at that stupid, 
 self-sufficient monarch and the way people had to see him then. Be- 
 sides being king and a worse despot than the Czar of Russia dares to be 
 now, he was the head of the English Church. But Providence over- 
 ruled the greatest evils of those days to bring about the highest good 
 in the world to future generations. 
 
 After many weeks of discouragements which amounted almost to 
 despair, the little group of Separatists was united in Amsterdam, Hol- 
 land. Men who had owned landed estates at home were obliged to learn 
 trades there to support themselves and their families. Though they 
 had lost lands, homes, friends, early associations and been separated 
 from all that they had learned to love, and were condemned to work 
 
Sailing of the " Mayflower" from Holland 
 
74 
 
 THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 from early morning till late night at hard labor, all these things seemed 
 no hardships to them because they had escaped the power of the king 
 and bishops who had persecuted them in the name of the Christian re- 
 ligion ! They worked on for many years, glad in the right to live their 
 lives and worship God in the way they wished. 
 
 Although the Dutch were kind and good to the English Nonconform- 
 ists, their very liberties became the cause of fear. They were still loyal 
 to their country and even to their unworthy king. They were English 
 in spirit, in spite of all they had suffered at the hands of the English 
 Church and State. They did not want their children to grow up to be 
 
 Hudson's Ship the Half Mocn 
 
 Dutch men and women. Besides, according to their strict ideas, the 
 Dutch notions of religious liberty seemed too liberal entirely. They 
 looked upon the Dutch manner of observing the Sabbath as loose and 
 full of license. They could not acquire lands and homes of their own in 
 Holland, so their weary, longing eyes turned toward the new country 
 beyond the western seas. 
 
 Henry Hudson, an Englishman in the employ of the Dutch East 
 India Company, had returned, in the Half Moon, from the voyage in 
 which he had discovered and named the Hudson river, telling of the 
 rich lands to be found along that beautiful stream. The English 
 Puritans in Holland thought that seemed to be an ideal place to settle. 
 
THE ISTOKY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 75 
 
 iin!|[lll(l!llllll!!|llllll!llilili|l!il(l'miitiiiiniiiiiiii!i[iiiiiiiii'[i'i iimi 
 
 They got together and, after much discussion, determined to go to New 
 Amsterdam, where the Dutch were already settling, or farther south- 
 ward to Virginia. They had hut little money, so they had to find 
 men in England who would advance enough to enable them to hire 
 one or more ships to make the voyage and help them build settle- 
 ments and live for years in the new country before they could pay it 
 back. When some one approached the king in their behalf he refused 
 to grant them his permission to settle in America unless they would 
 worship there in the forms he prescribed. It was after many years of 
 toil, suffering and anxiety that, with the aid of a syndicate calling them- 
 selves the "Gentlemen Ad- 
 venturers," the Puritans of 
 Holland were ready, in the 
 summer of 1620, to sail for 
 America. 
 
 They sailed from the port 
 of Delft Haven, Holland. 
 Their beloved pastor, John 
 Robinson, who had often 
 preached at the home of 
 William Brewster, at Scrooby, 
 England, was now too old to m 
 undertake so long a voyage. 
 He bade them a fond good- 
 by, prayed with them at the 
 landing and gave them all his 
 parting blessing. The peo- 
 ple "wept sore" as they well knew they should "see his face no 
 more. ' ' 
 
 They sailed through the English Channel to Southampton and Plym- 
 outh, where they were delayed and where others were added to their 
 number. Among these were Myles Standish and Rose, his wife, John 
 Alden, and the troublesome Billington family, which, as Bradford ex- 
 pressed it in his diary, was "shuffled into their company." They now 
 called themselves "Pilgrims," because they were wanderers in search 
 of a home. It Avas a religious pilgrimage, though they were not in 
 search of a shrine. It was an altar, a family altar, they sought — a 
 
 Bible Brought Over in the ' ' IVIayflower ' ' 
 
76 THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 place where they might worship God in the privacy of their homes and 
 hearts as their consciences dictated. Not all the Pilgrims, however, 
 were Puritans. Myles Standish had been brought up a Catholic, and 
 the Billingtons were looked upon as hoodlums by the rest. 
 
 They sailed away in the '* Mayflower" and the "Speedwell"; the 
 latter was a small ship, only one-third the size of the "Mayflower," 
 which was a clumsy little brig. The "Speedwell" didn't speed well at 
 all. While creeping along the southern coast of England it sprung a 
 leak, and both ships had to put back into Plymouth, England. After 
 another delay the "Mayflower" sailed alone with one hundred passen- 
 gers. There is no aristocracy in America. Thousands of people liv- 
 ing in this country now, nearly three hundred years after the sailing 
 of the ' ' Mayflower, ' ' trace their family line to the Pilgrims of Plymouth. 
 It is a descent to be proud of, for those voyagers were true noblemen 
 and heroes. That immortal sailing list remained the same, for though 
 one man was washed overboard in a storm, a man child was born on 
 board to take his place, so the "Mayflower" brought just as many im- 
 migrants to America as emigrants from England. It was a crazy old 
 tub, but no ship in all history can compare in beauty and loftiness of 
 purpose and imagery with the ' ' Mayflower. ' ' 
 
 The overloaded little craft had a stormy voyage. It came near split- 
 ting in two, in a storm, and they had to tie a cable around it to hold it 
 together. A storm drove them out of their course so that, instead of 
 reaching the mouth of the Hudson, they found themselves off Cape 
 Cod. Here they anchored and held a meeting in the cabin, at which 
 the men signed a solemn "Compact" by which they were to be gov- 
 erned. John Billington sneered at this agreement. He could not con- 
 ceive of authority coming from anyone but the king. He declared that 
 he would not be ruled by the others. He was a low-lived fellow. His 
 wife had to be punished as a common scold and their son — the boy who, 
 while x^laying with forbidden gunpowder, narrowly escaped blowing 
 up the "Mayflower" — was the wayward, lawless lad who gave the col- 
 onists a great deal of trouble. Once he got lost and Myles Standish 
 and a band of men had to spend days in search of him. This Billington 
 boy grew worse and worse and had to be hanged, years afterward, for 
 murder. This was the first sentence of death ever executed in that 
 .colony. 
 
THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 77 
 
 This digression has been made to show how new and strange it was at 
 that day for authority to come from anyone but the king, John Bil- 
 lington boasted that they could not force him to abide by laws made by 
 men among themselves, and he and his family learned, to their sorrow, 
 the force of this new but wonderful Compact. They all solemnly signed 
 as a mutual agreement that November day, in the stuffy cabin of the 
 dirty little '* Mayflower, " their modest agreement, little thinking that 
 it would take its place as one of the greatest documents in the world, 
 beside the Magna Cliarta of English Liberty. It contained the seeds of 
 the Great Republic. They were to be ruled by the majority, not by 
 the king. From it came the Declaration of Independence, the Emanci- 
 pation Proclamation and that *' government of the people, for the peo- 
 ple and by the people" which "shall not perish from the earth." Here 
 is the opening paragraph or preamble of the Pilgrims ' Compact : 
 
 In the name of God, Amen. We whose names are underwritten, by these presents, solemnly 
 and mutually, in the presence of God and one another, covenant and combine ourselves to- 
 gether into a civil body politic, for our better ordering and preservation, and furtherance of 
 the aims aforesaid, and by virtue hereof to enact, constitute and form such just and equal 
 laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions and offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most 
 meet and convenient for the general good of the colony, unto which we promise all submission 
 and obedience. 
 
 Then they proceeded to elect John Carver their Governor. He died 
 of something like a sunstroke the following April. He was an old man. 
 The rest of the Pilgrims were young — none of them over forty — or they 
 could never have endured the hardships and privations of that "long 
 and dreary winter," followed by "the wasting of the famine and the 
 burning of the fever. ' ' The drawing up and signing of their Compact* 
 was of vastly more importance than even the "Landing of the Pil- 
 grims," which did not take place until a month later, December 21, 1620. 
 A more important "landing" was that of the Pilgrim Mothers, who 
 went ashore at the end of Cape Cod and did nine weeks' washing, for 
 they had been cooped up in that overcrowded little ship for sixty-three 
 days. It must have been a great pleasure to them all to go ashore, even 
 to do a huge washing like that. They did this on Monday, and Monday 
 has been "washday" ever since. 
 
 The Pilgrims began at once to build a few log cabins, living on board 
 the "Mayflower," which had sailed up into the harbor of Pljniiouth, 
 
78 
 
 THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 which had been visited and named by Captain Jolm Smith, several 
 years before. They worked just as hard on the twenty-fifth, four days 
 after the landing, as on any other day. They called Christmas a 
 "papish hohday," so they considered it a sign of Liberty to be free to 
 work on that day! Half of them died that first winter. At one timt, 
 only a few were well enough to nurse all the rest, and they had to stop 
 building houses for the living to dig graves for the dead. These they 
 smoothed down level so tliat lurking Indians might not count them and 
 find out how few white men were left. 
 
 They built a log fort on top of the hill, for a church. Instead of- a 
 bell they had four brass cannon mounted on its flat roof. They marched 
 to church every Sunday, the men carrying their guns, which they stacked 
 
 Indians Declaring War 
 
 by the door during service. They kept a man on guard to give the 
 alarm in case of a sudden attack by the red men. The Pilgrims had to 
 watch as well as pray. They belonged to the ''church militant." They 
 have often been criticised because they drove away those who did not 
 believe as they did. It is true that the Puritans of Boston and Salem 
 banished Roger Williams because he was a Baptist, and hanged Quak- 
 ers and witches, but it must be remembered that the Puritans had come 
 to America, at great sacrifice, to worship tJieir way, not every way. If 
 they could have been satisfied with any kind of religion they would have 
 stayed in Holland. If others did not like their faith and forms they 
 were at liberty to go elsewhere and start a church of their own. That 
 is what they had had to do. They would not do as King James did. 
 
THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 79 
 
 but would let those who disagreed with them go iu peace though they 
 could not conscientiously bid them God speed. 
 
 When Governor Carver died, young William Bradford, who had 
 joined the little company at Scrooby, England, when he was only seven- 
 teen years old, was elected Governor. Bradford held that office for 
 nearly forty years. The diary he had begun before he was nineteen, 
 he kept for many years. His plain, quaint story of the settlement of 
 
 They Had Come to Stay 
 
 Plymouth '^ plantation" is now one of the most precious books in the 
 world. Its return to Massachusetts by its owner in England was re- 
 garded as a great event by and between England and America. All be- 
 cause that Bradford boy tried to do that which was right, and put down, 
 in plain and simple language, the daily happenings of his life, which was 
 full of hardships, sorrows and, seemingly, commonplace items. 
 
 When the ** Mayflower" started to England in the spring of 1621 an 
 
80 THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 offer was made to carry back without charge any who wished to go 
 "home," as the colonists always called England. But, although they 
 had all been ill and hungry and sad, no one wanted to go. They had 
 come to stay. They loved Liberty in a howling wilderness among 
 savages better than to live amid "mansions and palaces" without free- 
 dom. Hard as the life was in their new settlement, with its sufferings 
 and privations, the cruel, demon-like Indians were better than foolish 
 King James and his officers. The Pilgrims took a long stride toward 
 Liberty when they landed on Plymouth Rock. 
 
 Mrs. Hemans has well described their noble purpose in the following 
 poem: 
 
 THE LANDING OF THE PILGRIMS 
 
 The breaking waves dasli'd high 
 
 On a stern and rock-bound coast, 
 And tlie woods against a stormy sky 
 
 Their giant branches toss'd; 
 
 And the heavy night hung dark, 
 
 The hills and waters o'er, 
 When a band of exiles moor'd their bark 
 
 On the wild New England shore. 
 
 Not as the conqueror comes, 
 
 They, the true-hearted came; 
 Not with the roll of the stirring drums. 
 
 And the trumpet that sings of fame; 
 
 Not as the flying come, 
 
 In silence and in fear; — 
 They shook the depths of the desert gloom 
 
 With their hymns of lofty cheer. 
 
 Amidst the storm they sang, 
 
 And the stars heard and the sea; 
 And the sounding aisles of the dim woods rang 
 
 To the anthem of the free! 
 
 The ocean eagle soar'd 
 
 From his nest by the white wave's foam 
 And the rocking pines of the forest roar'd — 
 
 This was their welcome home! 
 
THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 81 
 
 There were men with hoary hair 
 
 Amidst that pilgrim band: — 
 Wiiy had they came to wither there, 
 
 Away from their childhood's land? 
 
 There was woman's fearless eye, 
 
 Lit by her deep love's truth; 
 There was manhood's brow serenely high, 
 
 And the fiery heart of youth. 
 
 What sought they thus afar? 
 
 Bright jewels of the mine? 
 The wealth of seas, the spoils of war? — 
 
 They sought a faith's pure shrine! 
 
 Aye, call it holy ground. 
 
 The soil where first they trod. 
 
 They have left unstained, what there they found- 
 Freedom to worship God. 
 
 Watchixg the "Mayflower" Sail Away 
 
 6— The Storv of the Liberty Bell. 
 
82 
 
 THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 ''LIBERTY AND UNION, ONE AND INSEPARABLE" 
 
 Hereditary bondsmen ! Know ye not 
 Who would be free themselves must strike the blow! 
 
 w 
 
 — Byron. 
 
 HILE liberty of conscience had been borne in upon the Pil- 
 grims and Puritans, they had much to learn about per- 
 sonal rights. They 
 
 were such firm be- 
 lievers in ''total depravity" and 
 "original sin" that they consid- 
 ered the human heart "of all 
 things desperately wicked." All 
 who were jolly and happy were, to 
 their way of thinking, on "the 
 broad road to perdition." The 
 
 The Culprit's Feet Were Thrust Through the Stocks 
 
 New England Seal 
 
 "Merry Mounters" of 
 Boston were so gay as 
 to shock their Puritan 
 neighbors. To be 
 light-hearted was to 
 be considered light- 
 headed or worse. It 
 was the same way with 
 the English Puritans. 
 Macaulay wrote of 
 them that they op- 
 posed bear-baiting, not 
 because it hurt the 
 bear but because this 
 form of sport gave 
 pleasure to the onlook- 
 ers. The tender mer- 
 cies of the Puritans 
 were cruel. It must 
 have been an awful 
 thing to be a child in 
 
THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 83 
 
 a Puritan family. All occasions were solemn. If a boy played 
 he was trifling on the brink of eternity. This terrible strictness 
 gave rise to the "Blue Laws," in which the outer conduct of the 
 people was regulated in a ridiculous manner. A sailor returning 
 to Boston from a three-years' voyage around the world kissed 
 his wife on the front steps of their home. For this public dem- 
 onstration of affection he was condemned to the pillory, that is, he had 
 to stand in a public place with his head and hands locked through holes 
 in two beams of wood, in the burning sun for many hours. For smaller 
 offenses, like speaking saucily or a manifestation of unseemly mirth 
 (they thought all mirth "unseemly"), the culprit's feet were thrust 
 through holes in beams called the stocks, and fastened there for days 
 and nights. 
 
 The whipping post was often used. A woman who scolded too much 
 was strapped into a chair at the end of a long beam beside a pond or 
 the sea and plunged into the water 
 until she was nearly drowned. They 
 went only a step farther when they 
 
 hanged a woman for a witch. Chil- 
 dren of to-day should be thankful 
 that they did not live in such cruel, 
 solemn times. Young America goes 
 to the other extreme nowadays. 
 Children are not taught to show 
 enough respect to their parents and 
 older people. "Children should be 
 seen and not heard" was an old 
 precept. Now they are too often 
 "heard" as well as "seen," and al- 
 lowed to behave like unthinking ani- 
 mals. There should be a "happy 
 mean" between the solemn strict- 
 ness of the Puritans and the absurd 
 behavior allowed to-day. One rea- 
 son that Liberty has progressed so 
 slowly is because people want to go 
 too fast and take liberties with Lib- 
 
 f 
 
 RoGEE Williams Taking Refuge Among 
 Indians 
 
84 
 
 THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 erty. 3^ii^t is the trouble with so-called socialists and anarchists. They 
 go^oo fast, and trample on the rights of others in claiming what they 
 c^U their own rights. 
 
 1 Ever since its discovery America has been the land of Liberty, and the 
 refuge of those who were driven from their own countries. Yet some 
 who came to this country must have thought they had fallen "out of 
 the frying-pan into the fire. ' ' Roger Williams was a Baptist. He had 
 to leave Salem for that. He tried to find a place to stay with other col- 
 onists. But being a Baptist was too great a crime. His white broth- 
 ers could not bear to have a Baptist around. So he turned to the In- 
 dians and they received him with open arms. In 1636 Roger Williams 
 founded a colony and a city which he named Providence, which is now 
 in the State of Rhode Island. Providence soon became the refuge of 
 people who thought and believed a little differently from other people. 
 A woman named Anne Hutchinson became too much of a teacher and 
 
 preacher for Boston, She 
 wielded too great an in- 
 fluence, and Anne had to 
 go to Providence. The 
 Quakers came — and went 
 to Providence. Some of 
 them felt it their duty to 
 come back and try to teach 
 the Puritans to behave 
 in a Christian manner. 
 Those Quakers — women, 
 too — were hanged on Bos- 
 ton Common. It is said 
 that a great Boston minis- 
 ter was in favor of bring- 
 ing a shipload of Quakers 
 from Barbados and sell- 
 ing them into slavery. If 
 the Chinese, the Turks, or 
 even the most savage and 
 brutal tribes in the Dark 
 Lord Baltimore Continent of Africa should 
 
THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 85 
 
 try to treat American citizens as cruelly to-day as Boston treated the 
 Quakers they would soon be punished by the United States Government. 
 
 The Massachusetts Bay colony was not alone in its cruelty. The 
 Church of England people in Virginia drove out the Roman Catholics, 
 and they settled Baltimore, named for their leader, Lord Baltimore. 
 Maryland was named for Henrietta 
 Maria, wife of Charles the First, 
 the Catholic queen of England. 
 
 The longest step toward Liberty 
 during the colonial period was that 
 taken by William Penn and the So- 
 ciety of Friends in Pennsylvania. 
 Penn's father was an English ad- 
 miral. King Charles the Second 
 owed the Admiral sixteen thousand 
 pounds (about eighty thousand dol- 
 lars) which was paid by giving his 
 son William a large district in Amer- 
 ica. Because this territory was a 
 vast forest, William Penn wanted to 
 call it Sylvania, but the King named 
 it Pennsylvania, or ''Penn's 
 Woods." William Penn had left the court and joined the Society of 
 Friends, or followers of George Fox, who believed in living at peace with 
 all men. The Friends were called Quakers because they often said men 
 ought to ' ' quake, ' ' or shake with fear at the very thought of the wrath of 
 God. 
 
 William Penn and a colony of Friends came to settle in Pennsyl- 
 vania in 1682. Everybody laughed at the idea of the Quakers having to 
 live among the Indians, for the savages were quarrelsome and would 
 take advantage of the Quakers who believed it was better to die than 
 to fight. The Friends would find chances enough to die when the In- 
 dians found out that they would not fight. The idea of ruling Indians 
 by love and kindness — people said that was a funny notion! Penn 
 founded a city which he named Philadelphia, "Brotherly Love," and he 
 soon arranged a meeting with the Indians under an elm near the village. 
 Here he made a treaty or bargain with the red men. Though all Penn- 
 
 WiLLiAM Penn 
 
86 
 
 THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 sylvania belonged to him by right of purchase and grant from the Brit- 
 ish crown, lie bought the country again of the Indians, giving them ar- 
 ticles of real value, instead of cheating them with glass beads and such 
 cheap things. The Indians gave Penn a wampum belt, showing a white 
 man and a red man clasping hands. Penn made a speech telling how 
 friendly he and his people felt toward the Indians, and they replied 
 saying : 
 
 William Penn 's House 
 
 ''We will live in peace with Penn and his children as long as the sun 
 and moon endure. ' ' 
 
 This pledge was kept for eighty years, because the Friends had re- 
 gard for the rights of the red men. When a case came up in which an 
 Indian was involved, they had a trial by a jury of six Indians as well 
 as six white men. Instead of hanging or driving away people of differ- 
 ent religious faiths, Penn invited such to come and settle in Pennsyl- 
 vania. A colony of Germans came, at his request, and settled 
 
88 THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 Germantown, a few miles north of Philadelphia. From these Germans, 
 and others who settled in different parts of the State, have come the 
 so-called "Pennsylvania Dutch," a thrifty, cleanly, kindly, law-abiding 
 people who have done much toward making Pennsylvania the "Key- 
 stone State." 
 
 William Penn's children and grandchildren were not noble in heart 
 and mind like the founder of Pennsylvania. They lost sight of every- 
 thing but the money their great inheritance would yield them. They 
 lived in England and refused to do anything to protect or develop their 
 vast estates. They were called the "proprietaries." They were al- 
 most, if not quite, as stupid and arrogant as the kings of England and 
 the governors they sent to represent them in the American colonies. 
 When Benjamin Franklin was sent to England in behalf of the colony 
 of Pennsylvania it was to confer with the grandsons of William Penn 
 as much as with King George of England. 
 
 Probably if the English government had treated the American colo- 
 nists with due consideration there would never have been a war for in- 
 dependence. But the governors who were sent to America were usually 
 incapable and insulting. They acted badly toward the people and told 
 false stories about the colonies to the English ministers, so that the 
 people were misunderstood at court. The first settlers had come to the 
 new world to escape injustice, so, when they were treated more unjustly 
 by the government than the king's subjects in England, they were natur- 
 ally indignant. England was in great trouble with the rest of Europe 
 and had to wage a number of expensive wars with neighboring nations. 
 In order to pay for these, in addition to maintaining the government 
 and an extravagant court. Great Britain taxed her subjects very heavily. 
 
 To raise all this money the Stamp Act was passed, requiring the 
 Americans to put a certain stamp on every document, and to pay a heavy 
 tax on many of the necessaries of life. As the colonies in America were 
 not allowed to have anything to say in the British Parliament about the 
 wars they were asked to help pay for, or, indeed, about the taxes them- 
 selves, they were very angry and refused to pay them. The tax col- 
 lectors were mobbed and had a hard time trying to collect the unjust 
 and burdensome revenues. The Americans ordered no silks, satins, 
 laces, cloths, or other articles usually brought from England. Men, 
 women and children dressed in homespun. The Stamp Law raised such 
 
THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 89 
 
 a storm of indignation in America that the English government was 
 forced to repeal, or take back, the law. No doubt, if Mother England 
 had said to her daughter across the ocean: ''I have had some very ex- 
 pensive wars and would like to have you help your poor old mother 
 pay for them," the colonial children would have turned in and helped 
 her. But England treated her children like slaves and demanded help 
 
 THE 
 
 NUMB 
 
 IPENNSYLVANIA JOURNAL; 
 
 AN D 
 
 WEEKLY ADVERTISER. 
 
 EXP I R 1 N G : In Hopes of a RafccErection to LlTE a^ ai ri. 
 
 am forry to be 
 obliged to ac- 
 quaint my read- 
 ers that as the 
 Stamp Act is 
 feared to be obligatory 
 upon us after the firff. of 
 November ensuing (The 
 Fatal To-morrow), The 
 publif her of this paper, un- 
 able to bear the Burthen, 
 has thought it expedient 
 to Cop awhile, in order to 
 
 deliberate, whether any 
 methods can be found to 
 elude the chains forged for 
 us, and efcape the infup- 
 portable f lavery, which it 
 is hoped, from the laft 
 representation now made 
 againft that act, may be 
 effected. Mean while I 
 muft earneftly Requeft 
 every individual of my 
 Subfcribers, many of 
 whom have been long be- 
 
 hind Hand, that they 
 would immediately dif- 
 charge their refpective 
 Arrears, that I may be 
 able, not only to fupport 
 myfelf during the" Inter- 
 val, but be better prepar- 
 ed to proceed again with 
 this Paper whenever an 
 opening for that purpofe 
 appears, which I hope 
 will be foon. 
 WILLIAM BRADFORD. 
 
 Newspaper Announcing the Death op Liberty 
 
 in such a disagreeable way that the daughter became obstinate and re- 
 fused to assist her at all. 
 
 In repealing the Stamp Act England left a small tax or ''three pence 
 a pound on tea," thinking this would be so small that the colonists woul(^'^ 
 be glad to pay it, after such heavy taxes had been repealed. But the 
 people of America said, ''No; 'in for a penny in for a pound'! It is the 
 principle we object to. We refuse to pay even a small tax without 
 
90 
 
 THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 representation in the government that levies that tax. To pay three- 
 pence a pound on tea would be admitting Great Britain's right to tax 
 us, and what would then prevent her increasing the amount or taxing 
 other things we want!" 
 
 The British government, however, did not seem to see the use of such 
 close reasoning and allowed shiploads of tea to be sent to the chief ports 
 of America. At Charleston, South Carolina, the tea was unloaded and 
 stored in damp cellars where it would spoil. In Philadelphia and New 
 York, the tea ships were not permitted to be unloaded, but were returned, 
 
 as they were to England. In 
 Boston, indignation meetings 
 were held, and a band of men, 
 dressed as Indians, went on 
 board the ships waiting in the 
 harbor to be unloaded, broke 
 open the chests of tea, and 
 emptied them into the water, 
 saying by this act : 
 
 ' ' There, Mother England, 
 you may have your tea when 
 it's steeped enough!" 
 
 This was the ''Boston Tea 
 Party." 
 
 This was a bold act on the 
 l)art of Paul Revere and others 
 of the Society known as ''the 
 Sons of Liberty." The feel- 
 ing against England had 
 been growing and deepening for many years. Samuel Adams, 
 John Adams, James Otis, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, John Han- 
 cock and many others had been speaking against the tyranny and op- 
 pression of England. Benjamin Franklin was perhaps earlier than 
 all of them, and George Washington came to the front when an army 
 needed a commander. 
 
 Franklin had been postmaster general of the colonies and had gone 
 up and down the country in his official capacity. He was the best known 
 man of his day in America, if not in the whole world. His inventions 
 
 Dr. Benjamin Franklin 
 
THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 91 
 
 and his almanacs, with their quaint maxims of ''Poor Richard," had 
 made all classes in many lands familiar with the name of Doctor Frank- 
 lin. As a delegate to the first Continental Congress he originated a flag 
 showing a snake 
 cut in sections 
 separated. n 
 each piece was 
 the name of a 
 colony. Under it 
 was the legend, 
 "Unite or Die." 
 
 Franklin had 
 been a kind of 
 postmaster gen- 
 eral in the French 
 and Indian War. 
 He had tried, 
 with young 
 George Washing- 
 ton, to influence 
 General B r a d - 
 dock, the British 
 commander, t o 
 fight the French 
 and Indians in 
 the right way, 
 but, with true 
 British arro- 
 gance, Braddock 
 scorned their ad- 
 vice, and he and 
 nearly all his sol- 
 diers were 
 
 slaughtered at Fort Duquesne, now Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. Wash- 
 ington was then twenty-three years of age, and one of Braddock 's aides. 
 He became a leader in the military affairs of the colonies. He was also 
 elected a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses, the first elected 
 
 Patrick Henry's Great Speech 
 
 'm^r 
 
92 
 
 THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 legislature in America. It was before this heroic body that Patrick 
 Henry made the great speech ending with the words, "Give me liberty 
 or give me death ! ' ' This speech rang like a war cry among the thirteen 
 colonies. A Continental Congress was elected and met in Carpenter 
 Hall in the city of Philadelphia. Here petitions were drawn up and 
 sent to the King of England. But George the Third, besides being a 
 
 stupid monarch, had 
 bad advisers. It was 
 stated that the minister 
 who had charge of the 
 atfairs of the colonies 
 could not even find the 
 principal American 
 cities on the map ! 
 
 The Boston Tea 
 Party made the British 
 government very indig- 
 nant. The Massachu- 
 setts charter was re- 
 voked and the port of 
 Boston was ordered 
 closed. Regiments of 
 ' ' redcoats ' ' were sent 
 from England to take 
 charge of Boston. The 
 people called the sol- . 
 diers in red uniforms 
 "lobster backs." The 
 British started the sing- 
 ing of "Yankee Doo- 
 dle" in derision, but 
 song. The Sons of 
 of Minute Men, who 
 
 Pulling Down the Statue of King George 
 
 the colonists adopted it as a sort of war 
 
 Liberty and other organized companies 
 
 were to be ready at a moment's notice, like a volunteer fire company, 
 
 were formed. Paul Revere was busy riding to and from Boston, New 
 
 York and Philadelphia with messages and notices of meetings of the 
 
 different colonies. The men we are now proud to call patriots were 
 
THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 93 
 
 tlien known as traitors and ringleaders in rebellion. The Britisli took 
 possession of Boston and drove out the patriots. A price was set upon 
 the heads of Hancock, Adams, and other leaders in the Continental 
 Congress. 
 
 When the Grand Union Flag was raised over the army quarters, Janu- 
 ary 1, 1776, it was the standard of the United Colonies. There were 
 thirteen red and white stripes, as there are in the flag of the United 
 States now, but instead of stars in the blue field in the corner, there 
 were the English Crosses, showing that the thirteen colonies were United 
 only to obtain their common rights from the British government. If 
 King George and his ministers had been disposed to treat the English 
 subjects in America with ordinary decency it is not likely that there 
 would have been a war. But the king sent governors to America who 
 inflamed the wrath of the people. A company of loyal Virginia plant- 
 ers once asked for aid in founding a college in their colony, for young 
 men, like Washington, who could not attend school in England. These 
 planters were treated so badly that one of them remarked that men in 
 Virginia had souls as well as Englishmen. This was the curt and in- 
 sulting reply : 
 
 ' ' Oh hang your souls ! Go and raise tobacco. ' ' 
 
 After the delegates from the different colonies began to meet, events 
 transpired rapidly. Washington was not one of the speakers, but for 
 knowledge and counsel, he was said to be the most important man in 
 the Congress. He had made an impassioned speech in the Virginia 
 House of Burgesses in which he stated in his great indignation over the 
 way the Mother Country was treating Massachusetts — in closing the 
 port of Boston, because of the Tea Party — that he would be willing to 
 equip and maintain an army of one thousand men at his own expense 
 and lead them to relieve blockaded Boston. Most of the other colonies 
 sent aid and provisions to sustain Boston in her hour of great trial. The 
 battle of Lexington and Concord, on April 19, 1775, roused the colo- 
 nies to a white heat of rage and sympathy. In less than two months 
 an army had gathered, and Colonel Washington of Virgina was elected 
 its commander-in-chief. 
 
 During all this time the people did not think of separating from the 
 Mother Country. The Mother Country seemed to regard America 
 merely as a market for English products. This attitude, shown through 
 
9^ 
 
 THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 many years, became irksome to the colonists, who had had a taste of 
 freedom. The governors, many of them, treated the people in a most 
 unreasonable and arrogant way. King George, instead of heeding the 
 warnings contained in the petitions sent by the Continental Congress, 
 issued a "speech" which was proclaimed in Boston on the day .the flag 
 
 Taking the Oath of Allegiance 
 
 of the United Colonies was raised in Cambridge. This pompons proc- 
 lamation showed such a lack of understanding of the rights of the people 
 of America that they began to see that the only way to secure the liber- 
 ties and rights of Englishmen would be to separate from such a govern- 
 ment and help themselves. 
 
 Not all the patriots of those early days remained as loyal and judicial 
 
THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 95 
 
 through all the years from the French and Indian war to the days of 
 the beginning of American Liberty as did brave Colonel George 
 Washington. 
 
 One of the earliest and most vigorous responses to the oppressions 
 of the L.amp Act and the revenue collectors came from Captain Abra- 
 ham Whipple of Providence, Rhode Island. As captain of a small 
 ship bearing the appropriate name of the Gamecock he captured twenty- 
 three French merchant vessels, during the French and Indian war. On 
 one of Whipple's cruises to the West Indies his little ship was caught 
 in a gale and it became necessary to throw overboard the guns and 
 heaviest cannon balls. Just after this a huge French ship hove in sight. 
 Too much disabled to cope with such an enemy, Whipple resorted to 
 stratagem. He cut up a spar into short lengths, painted them black like 
 cannon and stuck them out at the porthole. He ordered the men to put 
 their caps on the ends of handspikes and set them up to look like crews 
 all ready to fire the guns. With this harmless equipment, Whipple 
 bore boldly down upon the French j;)rivateer, which put about and soon 
 sailed out of sight. 
 
 Captain Whipple was soon given charge of a company of eighty vol- 
 unteers who went out in rowboats to the Gaspee, a British revenue ship. 
 He announced that he had come to arrest Lieutenant Duddington, 
 boarded the Gaspee, took Duddington and his men prisoners and burned 
 the obnoxious craft to the water's edge. The cool daring of this act 
 enraged the British. Captain Wallace, who commanded another Brit- 
 ish ship, wrote to Captain Whipple as follows: 
 
 Yon, Abraham Whipple, on the 17th day of Jnne, 1772, bnrned his Majesty's vessel, 
 the Gaspee, and I will hang you at yard's arm. 
 
 Whipple's reply was characteristic : 
 
 To Sir James Wallace, Sir: 
 
 Always catch a man before you hang him. 
 
 The day that Washington was elected commander-in-chief of the 
 Continental Army, Rhode Island purchased two sloops, the Providence 
 and a smaller ship, and placed Abraham Whipple in charge of them 
 to drive the British fleet out of Narragansett Bay. He did this effectu- 
 
96 THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 ally with his little fleet. Abraham Whipple fired the first shot on the 
 sea in the Revolution. He was recognized by the new government of 
 the United States before John Paul Jones and thus became the first 
 commodore of the American Navy. Commodore Whipple's many dar- 
 ing exploits placed him beside Paul Jones as a Revolutionary hero. It 
 is a curious fortune of war that his brave deeds have been so seldom 
 mentioned. It is sometimes stated that Whipple was in command of the 
 disguised Indians of the Boston Tea Party, but he had nothing to do 
 with that escapade. He conducted an exploit which required much more 
 heroism and shrewdness. This was the passing of the British blockad- 
 ing fleet off the coast of Rhode Island, in 1778, carrying important des- 
 patches to France. He chose a stormy night in April for this danger- 
 ous undertaking. Commanding his little ship, the Providence, he hurled 
 a defiant broadside at the British fleet as he passed through its lines. 
 With a voice stronger than the gale, he gave loud commands to his men 
 which confused the British, but he ordered the very opposite tactics in 
 lower tones to his men. So the Providence escaped to France with his 
 despatches to Dr. Franklin, John Adams and Arthur Lee, the American 
 commissioners in Paris, who finally succeeded in enlisting the aid of the 
 French for the American war for independence. 
 
 It was a strange looking navy of which Abraham Wliipple was the 
 first commodore. At his own expense he furnished uniforms for his 
 crews. With the little Providence he patrolled the coast to defend the 
 struggling commerce of the colonies against many and larger British 
 ships. While in Massachusetts Bay he was ordered to intercept a fleet 
 of one hundred and fifty vessels bound for the West Indies. Pretend- 
 ing to be a Halifax trader, he joined the fleet and by separating several 
 ships every night from the rest, under the cover of darkness, he took 
 possession of ten large vessels which he convoyed into Boston Harbor 
 in triumph. These ships, laden with food and provisions, afforded great 
 relief to the blockaded and nearly starving colony. His prize was val- 
 ued at more than a million dollars. 
 
 In 1779 Commodore AVliipple sailed under sealed orders to the aid of 
 General Lincoln at Charleston, South Carolina. But the struggle was 
 too unequal even for Abraham Whipple. Their combined land and 
 sea forces were too feeble to make much impression on the eighty-five 
 thousand men on the British side. Whipple was more brave than wise. 
 
THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 97 
 
 **His not to reason why." He and liis small crews were soon swallowed 
 up in the general disaster to the Americans at Charleston, while Wash- 
 ington was bound to his post watching New York City, far away to the 
 north. Whipple and his men were held prisoners of war until they were 
 exchanged after the heroic struggle for independence was won. While 
 held a prisoner, in painful inaction. Commodore 'WHiipple was forced 
 to look on and see large, well-equipped French fleets doing the work in 
 aid of Washington, Greene and Lafaj^ette that he would have given so 
 gladly and well if he had had even half as many ships and men to work 
 with. But the dauntless captain 
 spent no time in repining. His men 
 were ill and suffering. From his 
 private purse he took a house, fitted 
 it up as a hospital and maintained it 
 for the benefit of the men of his 
 command. 
 
 Long after the war was over he 
 was forced to accept a small pension 
 — about as much as a private sol- 
 dier receives to-day. The redoubt- 
 able commodore died in Marietta, 
 Ohio, after the beginning of the Sec- 
 ond War with Great Britain. Here 
 is part of a quaint tablet placed 
 upon his tomb : 
 
 ''Sacred to the Memory of Com- 
 modore Abraham Whipj^le, whose 
 fame, skill and courage will ever re- 
 main the boast of his Country. In the long Revolution he was first on 
 the seas to hurl defiance at Proud Britain and there to wave the Star 
 Spangled Banner." 
 
 But it was John Paul Jones who raised the first flag of the Revolution. 
 This was a yellow banner with a rattlesnake coiled at the roots of a 
 liberty tree, above which was written ' ' An Appeal to Heaven, ' ' and be- 
 neath it, ''Don't Tread on Me." This navy flag was raised even before 
 Washington's Flag of the United Colonies broke forth in the breezes 
 at Cambridge, Massachusetts, on New Year's Day, 1776. 
 
 y—The Story of the Liberty Bell. 
 
 John Paul Jones 
 
98 
 
 THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 In union is strength. When the colonies came together and compared 
 notes the idea of independence grew rapidly. Thomas Jefferson, who 
 wrote the Declaration of Independence, afterward said of the sentiments 
 of the colonists : 
 
 „ miiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiliiillliiiiiiiil^ iiiiiiiiifc, 
 
 Opening the First Congress 
 
 Before the 19th of April, 1775, I had never heard a whisper of a disposition to 
 separate from the Mother Country. 
 
 Washington went still further in saying : 
 
 When I first took command of the army (July 3, 1775), I abhorred the idea of inde- 
 pendence, but I am now fully convinced that nothing else will save us. 
 
THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 99 
 
 After the Continental Congress met in the State House (now known 
 as Independence Hall), Philadelphia, the feeling grew stronger and 
 stronger for liberty. The work of many years of James Otis, Patrick 
 Henry, Benjamin Franklin, Samuel and John Adams and many other 
 burning patriots was now rapidly bearing fruit. The colonial dele- 
 gates were terribly in earnest. Yet a boyish spirit of playfulness pre- 
 vailed. This alone seemed to relieve the terrific intensity of the meet- 
 ings. Benjamin Harrison, the big, bluff, jolly man, whose son and 
 great-grandson long afterwards became President of the United States, 
 was a candidate for president of the Continental Congress. But little, 
 neat, well-dressed John Hancock, the merchant prince of Boston, was 
 elected. The giant Harrison, to show his good will, picked up little 
 John Hancock in his fat arms, carried him to the chair of the presiding 
 officer and seated him there amid the cheers and applause of the "most 
 potent, grave and reverend seignors" who composed that illustrious 
 body. That men are but '*boys of larger growth" was never better il- 
 lustrated than in the immortal Congress that brought forth the Declara- 
 tion of Independence. 
 
 It was George Washington's boyhood friend, Richard Henry Lee, of 
 Virginia, who arose on the 17th of June and gravely read the following : 
 
 Resolved, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and inde- 
 pendent 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. 
 
 That it is expedient forthwith to take the most effectual measures for forming 
 foreign alliances. 
 
 That a plan of confederation be prepared and transmitted to the respective colonies 
 for their consideration and approbation. 
 
 These resolutions were eloquently seconded by John Adams of Massa- 
 chusetts. The names of the mover and seconder of these resolutions 
 were omitted from the records of the Congress. This was wise, for 
 every leader in the movement for liberty was a marked man in Eng- 
 land, fie was declared an outlaw and an arch-traitor, and a price was 
 set upon his head. 
 
 Richard Henry Lee's son was then in school in England. An Eng- 
 lish gentleman, who, in spite of all precautions for secrecy, had learned 
 of Lee's motion, and putting his hand on young Lee's head said: "We 
 
100 
 
 THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 shall yet see your father's head on Tower Till." Tower Hill was the 
 British place for beheading traitors. The boy, true son of a brave 
 father, promptly replied : ' ' You may have it when you can get it. ' ' 
 After a brief discussion of Richard Henry Lee's resolutions it was 
 
 Resolved, that the consideration of them be deferred until to-morrow morning, and 
 that the members be enjoined to attend punctually at ten o'clock, in order to take the 
 same into consideration. 
 
 The next day, Saturday, June 8, the discussion began promptly. It 
 was continued, with bitter opposition, all that day and resumed on Mon- 
 day the 10th. One delegate 
 who opposed the resolutions 
 declared that there was no 
 reason for passing them ex- 
 cept ^'the reason of every 
 madman," just for the sake 
 of making "a show of 
 spirit. ' ' 
 
 John Adams made a great 
 speech in favor of the reso- 
 lutions. 
 
 On Monday, June 10, ac- 
 tion upon Lee's resolutions 
 was postponed until three 
 weeks from that day. Mr. 
 Lee had to go home on ac- 
 
 V/^y^^^Z^Y I ^^^^^ ^^ ^^^ illness of his 
 
 __/____^ I wife. As journeys were 
 ^*** — -^ I made on those days, on 
 horseback, or in coaches, he 
 missed the discussion of his own resolutions. 
 
 On Tuesday, June 11, a committee was appointed to prepare a state- 
 ment of the case for the colonies. This statement was afterwards named 
 the Declaration of Independence. This committee was composed of 
 Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, John Adams of Massachusetts, Benjamin 
 Franklin of Pennsylvania, Roger Sherman of Connecticut, and Robert 
 R. Livingston of New York. Thomas Jefferson, as chairman of the com- 
 
102 THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 mittee, was requested to write out an appropriate statement. Jeffer- 
 son was staying in a brick house, out in an open field, only a short dis- 
 tance from the meeting place of the Congress. The report of this com- 
 mittee, written by its chairman, became the immortal Declaration of 
 Independence, one of the four great documents of history. 
 
 The three weeks were up on July 1, that year, when the report of 
 the committee was read and the discussion was resumed. The resolu- 
 tions were passed in triumph on July 4, and signed on that day 
 by the President and Secretary of the Congress. John Hancock, though 
 a small man, wrote a big, strong hand. He is said to have remarked 
 when he wrote his name, "There! King George can see that without 
 spectacles." When big, fat Benjamin Harrison signed his name he 
 said to Elbridge Gerry, who was a small, thin man, "You will be kick- 
 ing in the air long after I am dead." The men knew that if they did 
 not succeed in their struggle for independence they would all be hanged 
 as traitors. Dr. Benjamin Franklin humorously remarked, while he 
 and others were signing their names : 
 
 "We must all hang together or assuredly we must all hang separately." 
 
 Such was the spirit of the fathers who planned large liberties for 
 their grateful children. 
 
 As the sessions were held for a secret discussion the Liberty Bell was 
 not rung nor was the Declaration of Independence read to the people 
 until July 8. At this time John Adams, "the father of Inde- 
 pendence" wrote home to his wife, in Braintree. near Boston, the fol- 
 lowing true prophecy : 
 
 Yesterday the greatest q;:estion was decided that was ever debated in America; and 
 a greater, perhaps, never was nor never will be decided among men. The (fourth) 
 day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am 
 apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anni- 
 versary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance by solemn 
 acts of devotion to Almighty God. It ought to be solemnized with pompous parade, 
 with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations, from one end of the 
 continent to the other, from this time forward, forevermore. 
 
THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 103 
 
 FALSE FREEDOM AND TRUE LIBERTY 
 
 They bawl for freedom in their senseless mood, 
 And still revolt when truth would set them free, — 
 License they mean when they cry Liberty. 
 
 — Milton. 
 
 SLAVERY was mentioned in the draft of the Declaration of In- 
 dependence reported to the Continental Congress as **a pirati- 
 cal warfare against human nature itself. ' ' This clause was left 
 out of the Declaration, and omitted later from the Constitution 
 of the United States. Thus many concessions had to be made in order 
 to induce the people of all the thirteen colonies by vote, to adopt it. After 
 the War for Independence was over the people of the colonies went back 
 to their homes and began to look upon the other colonies as rivals if not 
 enemies. They were soon quarreling and in danger of going to war 
 among themselves. Washington, Franklin and young Alexander Hamil- 
 ton were among the strongest bonds that bound the thirteen colonies 
 together. 
 
 The States did not become really United States until the Constitu- 
 tion was adopted by them all and Washington was made President. The 
 last public acts of both Franklin and Washington were for the purpose 
 of doing away with slavery. In fact. Congress itself began to take 
 measures toward this result, and slavery would have died a natural and 
 easy death but for the invention, in 1793, of the cotton gin, a machine for 
 picking out the many tiny seeds from the fluffy balls of ripened cotton. 
 Usually a great invention helps along the cause of Liberty in some way 
 or other, but the cotton gin made the chains of black slavery stronger 
 and heavier than ever. This was because one slave, working with the 
 cotton gin, could take the seeds out of more cotton in one day than a 
 hundred slaves could pick out with their fingers alone. This made 
 slave labor far more valuable and their Southern masters, the planters, 
 became many times wealthier than before. It made Southern lands im- 
 mensely valuable for the raising of cotton. It is easy for people to 
 believe what they wish, and people too often wish to believe an^ihing is 
 right which will put money in their pockets. So, gradually, many of the 
 people in the South learned to think of slavery as a thing ordered of 
 God. The people of the North have no right to blame them for this, 
 
104 
 
 THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 for when New England's pocket-book was interested, tlirougli its cotton 
 spinning and weaving industries, abolitionists were mobbed in the 
 streets of Boston. Had cotton been a northern product the responsi- 
 bility for slavery might have been reversed. 
 
 Although Cornwallis surrendered to Washington in October, 1781, 
 and a treaty of peace was signed two years later between England and 
 the United States, at Paris, in 1783, the English could not understand 
 that the American people were actually free. British men-of-war kept 
 overhauling American vessels of all kinds, impressing or forcing sail- 
 ors and other men to work and fight England 's battles on English ships. 
 This of itself was a form of slavery, and the United States protested 
 repeatedly against it, but England paid no attention to these protests. 
 Meanwhile the French people began their great struggle for ' ' Liberty, 
 Equality, Fraternity." As France had aided the United States in gain- 
 ing freedom, the French, of course, expected independent America to 
 turn in and help France in her struggles. France professed to have 
 the greatest admiration for all things American and to be following in 
 the footsteps of the United States on the highway to Liberty. Thomas 
 Jefferson, Washington's Secretary of State, was inclined to agree with 
 the French and would have involved the newly formed government of 
 the United States in a foreign war but for the cool-headedness of George 
 Washington. His true ear detected the false ring in the popular clamor 
 
 for Liberty in France. He knew that 
 Liberty was not what the French people 
 really wanted, but the license, or reckless- 
 ness, of an unruly mob. Although many 
 Americans became enraged at Washington, 
 and claimed that for the United States to 
 draw back and refuse to help France would 
 be mean and ungrateful, he remained firm. 
 The way the French treated Lafayette, 
 that true lover of Liberty, proved to Wash- 
 ington that it was not Liberty the French 
 people were striving for. They had been 
 oppressed by extravagant courts led by 
 French monarchs from the days of Louis 
 Lafayette XIII down to the Reign of Terror. 
 
106 
 
 THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 Louis XIV had given expression to two ideas which proved 
 that he realized that the people would rise up in their fury 
 against the nobility and destroy the sovereign himself. Louis on one 
 occasion said, when some one spoke of the interests of the State, "The 
 State — that's I!" At another time he said of the future of France, 
 "After me, the deluge!" After he died there came a deluge of blood 
 and it was called the French Revolution. 
 
 The people murdered the nobles and beheaded the royal family merely 
 
 French Eevolutionists 
 
 because they belonged to higher ranks of society. They murdered and 
 guillotined one another, and the Reign of Terror and of blood continued 
 until Napoleon came and found one of the public squares of Paris filled 
 with a howling mob. He ordered cannon fired into the seething mass of 
 people and drove them out of the square. Even Madame Roland, a 
 heroine and a true lover of Liberty, was sent to the guillotine by a group 
 of men who pretended to be working for "Liberty, Equality and Fra- 
 ternity." Just before she was beheaded she exclaimed, sadly: 
 
THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 107 
 
 "0 Liberty, Liberty! how many crimes are committed in thy 
 name ! ' ' 
 
 Lafayette was confined in one prison and his wife in another. While 
 James Monroe represented the United States as minister to Paris, 
 Mrs. Monroe went, one day, to call upon Madame de Lafayette in 
 a great gloomy prison of Paris. Madame de Lafayette had been 
 marked for execution that very afternoon, but so great was the respect 
 of the French for American Liberty that they released her instead of 
 sending her to the guillotine. 
 
 There were heroes from other countries who came to America to 
 serve an apprenticeship to Liberty in the land of the free. One of these 
 was Kosciusko, the Polish patriot, who fought bravely and sturdily 
 against Russia and the other countries which divided struggling Poland 
 among them as they had no right to do. Campbell described the death 
 of Kosciusko in the following lines : 
 
 Hope for a season bade the world farewell 
 And Freedom shrieked when Kosciusko fell. 
 
 Pulaski, another lover of freedom, died in battle in America, and 
 Garibaldi, the Italian hero, spent years as a candle maker on Staten 
 Island, in New York Harbor. No one born in America can begin to 
 comprehend what true liberty means 
 to those who have suffered for the 
 cause of liberty in other lands. 
 Napoleon followed the Reign of 
 Terror in France and, in conquering 
 Europe, he promised certain liber- 
 ties to some of the conquered na- 
 tion. But Napoleon did not ''make 
 men free" in Europe. He did 
 something for American freedom 
 by selling the French possessions in 
 America to the United States in 
 1803. This was called by Ameri- 
 cans the Lousiana Purchase, Na- 
 poleon did this not for Liberty's 
 sake, but to raise money for his own Pulaski 
 
108 
 
 THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 wars and to make the United States a more powerful rival of England, 
 the ancient enemy of France. When Napoleon was meeting his fate at 
 Waterloo the War of 1812 between the United States and Great Britain 
 was being fought, in which America at last convinced the Mother Coun- 
 try that she must keep her hands entirely off the affairs of her daughter 
 over the sea. Though this war gained America her freedom from 
 other nations, she was far from free, for she still permitted slavery 
 within her borders. 
 
 This slavery made slaves not only of the black race but even of the 
 
 First Eailavay Train 
 
 white masters, whose principles were enslaved by their pocketbooks. 
 The hand of barbarism lay heavy upon the shoulders of men both 
 North and South. Freedom of opinion was muzzled and freedom of 
 conscience was gagged, either through self-interest or fear. This state 
 of affairs developed heroes and martyrs, and a literature throbbing with 
 a passion for freedom. William Lloyd Garrison started his little paper, 
 the *' Liberator," in Boston, in 1836. He lived to see the black slaves set 
 
THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 109 
 
 The Birthplace of Lincoln 
 
 free. Elijah Love joy was murdered in Alton, Illinois, because he exer- 
 cised the right of free speech in his paper. 
 
 The invention of the steamboat, the railroad, the sewing machine, the 
 reaper, the telegraph and telephone, have all tended to the extension 
 of freedom in the earth.. It now seems strange that the United States 
 was the last of civilized nations to free the slaves within he;: borders 
 after even Russia, usually believed 
 to be two centuries behind the 
 march of European civilization, had 
 set the serfs free by a single ukase 
 or proclamation from the emperor. 
 But the negroes belonged to another 
 race of people and the Americans 
 seemed to think black men could not 
 have the same right as white 
 men. 
 
 The cause of Liberty had to wait 
 for the rising of another man who 
 should finish the work begun by Washington and the fathers. The 
 man was Abraham Lincoln. As Washington was the ''father," Lincoln 
 became the ''savior" of his country. Lincoln was able to do all this 
 because his heart was right and his own mind was free. He could not 
 bear to see anyone's rights interfered with. Angry tears came into 
 his eyes when he, as a little boy, saw some wicked fellows putting live 
 coals on the back of a mud-turtle. He snatched the shingle away from 
 the largest boy and began to punish him for his cruelty. His 
 first school "composition" was about "cruelty to animals." He stated 
 in this that "an ant's life is as sweet to it as ours is to us." He believed 
 that birds and beasts had a right to live and have Liberty. His religion 
 was that of love to all men and even to the lower animals. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln showed by his actions that 
 
 He prayeth well who loveth well 
 Both man and bird and beast. 
 
 His whole life illustrated his own saying: "With malice toward none; 
 with charity for all." 
 
 Abraham Lincoln was the "knight of the Nineteenth Century." His 
 
110 THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 chivalry was far in advance of that of Richard Lion-Heart. Richard 
 was brave and kind to those of his own rank in life. But he was cruel 
 not only to his enemies but to the poor and oppressed. Richard, like 
 Alexander the Great, never learned to control himself. Even the Black 
 Prince, beloved of all the people and a favorite in history, was self-in- 
 dulgent and cruel. After all the ages of knighthood and chivalry, it 
 remains for Abraham Lincoln to show the world a true knight "with- 
 out fear and without reproach, ' ' because he had moral as well as physi- 
 cal courage. In all his love of mankind and his exalted heroism Presi- 
 dent Lincoln really represented the high advancement of the people of 
 the United States along the grand highway of freedom. 
 
 If the people had not believed in Lincoln and with him — that is, if they 
 had not believed as he did, they would never have made him President. 
 So, when he, as ruler of the whole United States, proclaimed freedom to 
 all the people in the country on New Year's Day, 1863, he announced 
 freedom to many more than the four millions of black slaves in the United 
 States. It meant Liberty to all the white people in that they were at 
 last willing to give the same liberty to others which they claimed as their 
 own right. This is why Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation is one 
 of the four great documents of Liberty — the others being the Magna 
 Charta, the Compact in the "Mayflower," and the Declaration of 
 Independence. 
 
 There is yet another great step to be taken in the way of Liberty, 
 and that is, a doing away of war. The United States has taken its 
 proud place in the foremost ranks of freedom by becoming a leader and 
 guide in the paths of peace. As people have been learning that dueling 
 between men is not the true way to settle differences or questions of 
 honor, so with war, which is only dueling between nations. The time is 
 coming when men will gaze in wonder upon cannon and swords and other 
 implements of warfare as relics of barbarism, just as we now look upon 
 racks and thumb screws and the implements of torture once used by men 
 to make others think as they did. 
 
 When Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation an- 
 nouncing true freedom to all the white people as well as the blacks of 
 the United States of America, he was simply echoing the prophecy in- 
 scribed on the Liberty Bell: "Proclaim Liberty throughout all the 
 land unto all the inhabitants thereof." 
 
THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 111 
 
 THE STORY OF THE BELL ITSELF 
 
 Ring out the old, ring in the new ! 
 Ring out the false, ring in the true ! 
 
 — Tennyson. 
 
 Ring, ring for Liberty ! 
 
 — Brown. 
 
 THERE are many larger bells in the world than the Liberty Bell 
 of Independence Hall, in Philadelphia, but no bell in all history 
 has come to mean so much to the world. It is only twelve feet 
 around its rim and seven and a half feet around its crown — 
 a small bell as bells go nowadays, but how much sorrow and struggle 
 and heroism and happiness the Liberty Bell represents! It was or- 
 dered by the Assembly of the Province of Pennsylvania in 1751, twenty- 
 five years before the Declaration of Independence, through Robert 
 Charles, the agent of that Province in London. It was to be cast by 
 Thomas Lester of London, to weigh about two thousand pounds, and to 
 have in it, ''well shaped," in large raised letters, the following inscrip- 
 tions : 
 X Proclaim Liberty Throughout All. the Land Unto All the In- 
 habitants Thereof, Leviticus XXV, V, X., and 
 
 BY ORDER OF THE ASSEMBLY OF THE PROVINCE OF 
 PENNSYLVANIA FOR THE STATE HOUSE IN PHILADELPHIA. 
 The Bell was modeled after one cast by King Henry III, son of King 
 John of England, about the year 1250, in memory of Edward the Con- 
 fessor, a pious Saxon king who lived several hundred years before that. 
 
112 THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 The original bell was named ''St. Edward" and Imng in the clock tower 
 of Westminster, London, but the people called it "Great Tom of West- 
 minster. ' ' 
 
 The bright new Bell, with its Scripture verse and other inscriptions, 
 arrived from England in the good ship "Matilda," in August, 1752. 
 It was hung early in September that year and the first time it was rung 
 "without any violence whatever — it cracked!" This was a great dis- 
 appointment. At first the people were undecided what to do about it. 
 It would take a long time to send the cracked new bell back to Thomas 
 Lester in London and have it melted down and cast again. So they 
 decided to have it recast by "two ingenious workmen" named Pass and 
 Stow, bell founders of Philadelphia. These men melted the English 
 bell and added an ounce and a half of copper to the pound to make the 
 metal less brittle. They made it the same shape as before, with the same 
 Bible inscription, but, of course, put their names in place of the London 
 founders. But when the American bell was hung, there was a certain 
 want of clearness in its tone, probably because too much copper had 
 been added, so the ingenious Pass and Stow asked permission to cast it 
 once more. As the mold had been preserved this was not difficult. ^ 
 
 The third bell was hung in the steeple of the State House of the Prov- 
 ince, in June, 1753. Still many people did not like the sound of the bell, 
 because nearly everyone thought nothing could be done quite so well in 
 America as in England. So another bell was ordered from Lester, but 
 when it came, after a long delay, it was no better than, if as good as, the 
 American Bell. It is not known what became of this second English 
 bell, but it was probably melted and made over into a number of smaller 
 bells. 
 
 So the Bell which first called together the loyal Assembly of the Eng- 
 lish Province of Pennsylvania, August 27, 1753, had been cast by 
 Americans and was destined to "proclaim Liberty throughout the land" 
 twenty-five years after it was ordered with that prophetic inscription. 
 Yet it began very soon to be the Liberty Bell. When England sent word 
 to the colonies just what laws to make the Bell was rung to show that 
 the Provincial Assembly "would not make laws by direction." This 
 was in May, 1755. On February 3, 1757, the Bell rang when "Mr. 
 Franklin" was sent "home to England" to see if something could be 
 done to induce the English Government to show a little regard for the 
 
8— The Story of the Liberty Bell. 
 
114 
 
 THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 rights of the American Colonies. On September 9, 1765, the Bell 
 called the Assembly together to arrange for a Congress of all the Colo- 
 nies, Less than a month later, on October 5, the Bell was "muffled and 
 tolled" when the British ship, the "Royal Charlotte," arrived in Phila- 
 delphia with the hated stamps provided by the English Government in 
 accordance with the Stamp Act which so roused the indignation of the 
 American Colonies. The stamps were not permitted to be unloaded, 
 
 but were sent back to Eng- 
 land on a British man-of- 
 war. Nearly four weeks 
 later, on October 31, the Bell 
 was muffled and tolled all 
 day long when the enforcing 
 of the unjust Stamp Law 
 was begun in America, 
 Some of the people spent 
 that day in their houses 
 ' ' mourning the death of Lib- 
 erty," while others indig- 
 nantly burned hateful 
 stamped papers in a Phila- 
 delphia restaurant known 
 as the London Coffee House, 
 The Bell called the people 
 together on April 25, 1768, 
 to protest against the Acts 
 of Parliament which were 
 intended to stop planing 
 mills and other lumber mills 
 and to put an end to the 
 manufacture of iron and steel in Pennsylvania, The king had ordered 
 his arrow affixed to pine trees, claiming them as his own. This prob- 
 ably led to the adoption of the pine tree as an emblem of Liberty on 
 colonial flags, sometimes with the rattlesnake coiled about its trunk, 
 and oftener with "An Appeal to Heaven" lettered above or below the 
 pine tree, which was sometimes called the "Liberty Tree," 
 
 On July 30, the same year, the Bell called together a meeting of the 
 
 Franklin in the House of Lords 
 
THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 115 
 
 people in the State House yard to make the statement that * * the Parlia- 
 ment of Great Britain has reduced men here to the level of slaves." 
 
 December 27, 1773, shortly after the Boston *'Tea Party," the Bell 
 called together the largest and most indignant mass meeting ever seen 
 up to that time about the State House. The ship "Polly" was then com- 
 ing up the Delaware river loaded with taxed tea and other things from 
 England. The angry people voted then and there not to permit the 
 ** Polly" to land her cargo. They appointed a committee to send the 
 captain and the consignee with the tea from the Arch Street wharf, 
 where it was about to land, back to its ' ' old Rotterdam place in Laden- 
 hall Street, London." Not content with sending a committee, the citi- 
 zens generally went down to see that the tea was not unloaded, having 
 said in the mass meeting that they would not have "the detestable tea 
 funneled down 
 their throats with 
 Parliament's duty 
 mixed with it, ' ' and 
 that "no power on 
 earth had the right 
 to tax them with- 
 out their consent." 
 
 After the "In- 
 dians" had thrown 
 overboard the tea 
 in Boston harbor, 
 the English Gov- 
 er'svment closed the 
 nort of Boston. So 
 Ihe Bell was muf- 
 fled and tolled 
 again when this 
 was announced, on 
 June 1, 1774, and 
 on the 18th of the 
 same month it 
 called a meeting to 
 express the pec- Draptino the declaration op Independence 
 
116 
 
 THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 pie's sympathy with the Boston sufferers. The Friends, or Quakers, 
 of Philadelphia, who did not believe in war, subscribed $12,700 in gold, 
 and other people contributed $10,000 more, besides eleven hundred and 
 sixty barrels of flour, and collected from the Southern States one hun- 
 dred hogsheads of sugar and one thousand barrels of rice, all of which 
 did much to save the shut-off city of Boston from starving as the British 
 
 Government intended. 
 
 On April 25, 1775, six 
 days after the battle of 
 Lexington and Concord, 
 the Bell called together a 
 great meeting at which 
 eight thousand citizens 
 pledged themselves to the 
 cause of Liberty. 
 
 As the discussions of the 
 Continental Congress 
 which adopted the Decla- 
 ration of Independence 
 had been held in secret 
 sessions, the Bell did not 
 ring for Liberty until the 
 Declaration was formally 
 read on July 8, 1776. 
 
 On July 4, 1777, the Bell 
 rang in the first anniver- 
 sary of the Declaration of 
 Independence. It a n- 
 nounced the surrender 
 of Cornwallis in October, 
 1781, and welcomed General and Mrs. Washington to Philadelphia 
 during the month following that great victory. In 1873 the Bell 
 rang again to proclaim the signing of the treaty of peace which had been 
 signed by Dr. Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and Arthur Lee at 
 Paris. This treaty formally ended the war. In December, 1799, the 
 Bell tolled during the funeral solemnities in memory of Washington. 
 In 1824 the Bell welcomed Lafayette to the city. 
 
 Thomas Jefferson 
 
Signing the Treaty of Peace with England 
 
 ir 
 
118 
 
 THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 On the Fourth of July, 1826, the Bell rang joyously to commemorate 
 the "year of jubilee" mentioned in the verse of Leviticus from which 
 the motto of the Bell was taken. It was fifty years that day from the 
 signing of the Declaration of Independence. On that day Jefferson, 
 who wrote the Declaration, and John Adams a prime mover of it, died 
 in their homes in Virginia and Massachusetts. The Bell tolled in honor 
 
 of those two great patriots and Presi- 
 dents, on July 24, 1826. On July 21, 
 1 834, the Bell tolled in memory of Lafay- 
 ette, who had recently passed away in 
 his native France. It is claimed by 
 .some that the Bell was cracked while 
 tolling for this great French patriot and 
 Iriend of freedom. Others say that it 
 (Tacked while being violently rung as a 
 tire alarm; but authorities generally 
 agree that its voice was heard for the last 
 lime during the funeral of Chief Justice 
 John Marshall, on July 8, 1835. Mar- 
 shall was the last of the giants and 
 friends of the heroes of the Revolution. 
 It seemed right and proper that the Bell 
 should be silent now that the voices of those who labored long and 
 well in the holy cause of Liberty were heard no more in Independence 
 Hall. Though the old Bell is now silent, it is more eloquent than ever 
 in behalf of freedom, as 
 
 The silent organ loudest chants 
 The master's requiem. 
 
 The Bell has made several journeys. The first was to save it from 
 destruction or sacrilege. When the British took possession of Phila- 
 delphia, in September, 1777, just before the battle of Germantown, the 
 Bell was taken down from the belfry over the State House, now called 
 Independence Hall, and carried away in a train of seven hundred wag- 
 ons, guarded by two hundred Virginia and North Carolina soldiers, to 
 Allentown, Pa., by way of Germantown and Bethlehem. The wagon 
 on which it was conveyed broke down in Bethlehem on September 29th. 
 
 John Marshall 
 
THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 119 
 
 The Liberty Bell 
 
 The Liberty Bell found a lodging place, like the Ark of Covenant in 
 olden times. It was safely kept in Zion's Church, Allentown, until 
 after the British left Philadelphia, when it was restored to its steeple, 
 June 27, 1778. 
 
 After it lost its voice one attempt was made to make it ring clearly 
 again. It was finally taken down and placed in a 
 glass case in the entry of Independence Hall. 
 
 The first of the Bell's journeys as a silent teacher 
 and example of patriotism was to the New Orleans 
 Exposition, in January, 1885. 
 
 It was on exhibition in the Pennsylvania Build- 
 ing at the World's Columbian Exposition at 
 Chicago, in 1893. 
 
 It went South to the Exposition in Atlanta, 
 Georgia, in 1895. It made the southern journey 
 again in 1902, to the Exposition at Charleston, 
 South Carolina. The following year the Bell went 
 north and its hoarse voice was heard on Bunker Hill, on the one hun- 
 dred and twenty-eighth anniversary of that early battle for independ- 
 ence. In 1904 it was taken to the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at 
 St. Louis. 
 
 Everywhere, while on a journey, the Liberty Bell is received with en- 
 thusiasm by old and young. It is crowned with garlands and affection- 
 ately kissed by school children, while many tears well up in the eyes of 
 the older people who know more of the long, hard, sad story of Liberty. 
 Of course, none now recollect the days when its voice rang out clear and 
 strong, but there are many who remember the days of the later struggle 
 for freedom, when Abraham Lincoln stood in front of Independence 
 Hall on Washington's Birthday, 1861, and raised the Flag above the 
 Bell, saying, with reference to the principles laid down by the fathers 
 in the Declaration of Independence, that if the Union could not be saved 
 upon those pure principles he would rather be assassinated on that spot 
 than jro on with the struggle. It was then that Lincoln communed with 
 Washington, and the spirit of '76 met the spirit of '61 in the presence 
 of the great Bell of Liberty. 
 
 It rang for liberty, and round the world 
 
 The great notes traveled, and the hearts of men 
 
120 
 
 THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 Wakened and learned, and having learned, 
 
 They loved the now mute messenger whose mission was 
 
 To tell the world that Liberty means love. 
 
 And love of man for man makes nations free. 
 
 Who can describe the immortal scene wlien ciie Bell began to ''pro- 
 claim liberty throughout the land unto ail the inhabitants thereof "I It 
 was when John Nixon, 
 
 with a clear, strong voice, 
 stood out on the platform 
 commanding what is now 
 called Independence 
 Square. The place was 
 filled with people — a vari- 
 egated throng, relieved 
 now and then by the gray 
 garb of the Quaker. From 
 the iron-barred windows 
 overlooking the square 
 many prisoners listened to 
 the proclamation of Lib- 
 erty. Some were Tories, 
 or people who did not be- 
 lieve in independence. 
 
 In the throng stood a 
 man with a stern face, 
 lighted by a single eye, 
 for the other had been put 
 out when, as a little boy, 
 he was playing upon the 
 shore of his native France, 
 near Bordeaux. He had landed in Philadelphia only six weeks before, 
 driven up the Delaware by the British blockade. Though a French- 
 man of five and twenty, he was fervent in his devotion to the cause of 
 Liberty. He took the oath of allegiance and became a citizen of the 
 new-born republic as soon as it was possible to do so. That young man 
 was Stephen Girard, who afterward styled himself "Mariner and Mer- 
 chant." He could have added Hero and Patriot. He proved himself 
 
 Stephen Girard — from an Old Painting 
 
122 THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 to be both during the yellow fever epidemic in 1793, when nearly every 
 native born citizen fled the city, many deserting wives, parents and chil- 
 dren in the terror which prevailed, and the Government had to be re- 
 moved to Germantown. Stephen Girard and Peter Helm, two foreign 
 born patriots, risked their lives and stood by, caring for the sick, com- 
 forting the dying, and burying the dead. 
 
 In the second war for independence, the War of 1812, Stephen Girard, 
 then the richest man in the United States, offered his whole fortune to 
 the United States Government, if necessary, to save the liberties of the 
 country of his adoption. 
 
 Charles Brockden Brown has left a good description of the scene that 
 day, though he takes a poet's liberties with the dates and facts. The 
 old bellman was Andrew McNair, who had rung the Bell during those 
 troubled times for eighteen years. This is part of the poem: 
 
 THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 There was a tumult in the city, 
 
 In the quaint old Quaker town, 
 And the streets were rife with people 
 
 Pacing restless up and down — 
 People gathering at the corners, 
 
 Where they whispered each to each, 
 And the sweat stood on their temples 
 
 With the earnestness of speech. 
 
 As the bleak Atlantic currents 
 
 Lash the wild Newfoundland shore, 
 So they beat against the State House, 
 
 So they surged against the door, 
 And the mingling of their voices 
 
 Made a harmony profound, 
 Till the quiet street of Chestnut 
 
 Was all turbulent with sound. 
 
 So they surged against the State House 
 
 While all solemnly inside 
 Sat the Continental Congress, 
 
 Truth and reason for their guide. 
 
THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 123 
 
 O'er a simple scroll debating 
 
 Which, though simple it might be, 
 Yet should shake the cliffs of England 
 
 With the thunders of the free. 
 
 Far aloft in that high steeple 
 
 Sat the bellman, old and gray, 
 He was weary of the tyrant 
 
 And his iron-sceptered sway. 
 So he sat with one hand ready 
 
 On the clapper of the bell 
 When his eye should catch the signal 
 
 The long-expected news to tell. 
 
 See! see! the dense crowd quivers 
 
 Through all its lengthy line 
 As the boy beside the portal 
 
 Hastens forth to give the sign; 
 With his little hands uplifted. 
 
 Breezes dallying with his hair, — 
 Hark! with high, clear intonation 
 
 Breaks his young voice on the air. 
 
 Hushed the people's swelling murmur 
 
 Whilst the boy cries joyously — 
 "Ring!" he shouts. "Ring, Grandpa, 
 
 Ring, oh, ring for Liberty!" 
 Quickly at the given signal 
 
 The old bellman lifts his hand. 
 Forth he sends the good news, making 
 
 Iron music through the land. 
 
 How they shouted! What rejoicing! 
 
 How the old Bell shook the air 
 Till the clang of Freedom ruffled 
 
 The calmly gliding Delaware! 
 How the bonfires and the torches 
 
 Lighted up the night's repose. 
 And from the flames, like fabled Phoenix, 
 
 Our glorious Liberty arose! 
 
124 THE STORY OF THE LIBERTY BELL 
 
 That old State House Bell is silent, 
 
 Hushed is now its clamorous tongue, 
 But the spirit it awakened 
 
 Still is living — ever young; 
 And when we greet the smiling sunlight 
 
 On the Fourth of each July, 
 We will ne'er forget the bellman 
 
 Who, betwixt the earth and sky, 
 Rang out loudly "Independence !" 
 
 Which, please God, shall never die! 
 
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