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 "THE INFANCY OF THE UNION." 
 
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 "THE INFANCY OF THE UNION/' 
 
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 A DISCOURSE, 
 
 DEUVERED BEFORE THE 
 
 NEW YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY, 
 
 Thursday, December 19, 1§39. 
 
 BY V 
 
 WILLIAM BV^ reed 
 
 PUBLISHED AT THE REaUEST OF THE SOCIETY. 
 
 /l^wL££iS,^_N 
 
 PHIEiADEIiPHIA ! 
 
 J. CRISSY, PRINTER, NO. 4 MINOR STREET. 
 
 1840. 
 
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A DISCOURSE 
 
 ON 
 
 "THE INFANCY OF THE UNION." 
 
 When ancient Corinth fell before the arms of victo- 
 rious Rome, the legend tells us, that out of the various 
 metals which were melted together in the conflagration 
 of the city, there was created one, more precious than 
 any of its elements; more enduring in its strength; 
 more beautiful in its brightness. This classical tradi- 
 tion illustrates, as well the process as the result, when 
 a Revolution blended together the varied communities 
 of colonial North America. 
 
 Whenever the philosophical history of our country 
 shall be written, its most interesting portion will be 
 that which records the growth and progress of the social 
 union. The Federal Union, as a frame of government, 
 has been often and ably discussed, and its foundations, 
 whether in the Declaration of Independence, the Arti- 
 
4 
 
 cles of Confederation, or the Constitution itself, have 
 been carefully scrutinized; and by no one more so, 
 than by that venerable man, who, during the past year, 
 with the alacrity of youth, obeyed your summons on a 
 memorable anniversary, and with the full vigour of a 
 mind on which age has cast no shadow, discharged 
 the duty which your summons imposed.* But there is 
 an union beyond and above all frames of government. 
 There are foundations deeper than any that have yet 
 been laid bare. Assuming the corner-stone of the 
 Union, as a national political institution, to be the 
 Declaration of Independence, and no one has, I be- 
 lieve, dug deeper, and that on the Fourth of July, 
 seventeen hundred and seventy-six, our forefathers 
 laid that stone in its chamber of enduring repose, what 
 I seek to call your attention to, is the union of senti- 
 ment which brought the builders together, with the 
 spade, the mattock, and the pick, not to build, from 
 brick and slime, a leaning tower, " whose top might 
 reach unto heaven," but to lay the eternal masonry of 
 freedom's citadel, hewn from the bosom of our native 
 hills, to be bound together by the enduring cement of 
 indissoluble aifection. 
 
 Curious, indeed, would be the inquiry, as to the pre- 
 cise period when the North American Colonies began 
 to look upon each other as friends and brethren. As 
 
 * Ex President AJams. (Sec Appendix, A.) 
 
originally planted, they had no principle of union. 
 They were not one in origin, in language, in religion, 
 or in interest. None could suppose then that they 
 were one in destiny. The infant settlements on the 
 coast hardly ventured to conjecture what lands, or 
 what people lay behind the headlands which put out 
 into the ocean, and when they did peep beyond, they 
 often saw strange and hostile faces, and heard the 
 sound of other tongues than the one they spoke. — 
 Even where there was a common origin, there was no 
 sympathy; and the Swede, and the Dutchman, were 
 better friends far, than the Cavaliers and Independents 
 who came from Old England, who seemed to know no 
 dearer use for a common tongue than to revile each 
 other conveniently, and claimed a common birth-place, 
 as giving them the privilege to hate each other more 
 virulently. 
 
 How this separate existence was modified, and the 
 perfect union of sentiment produced, anterior to any 
 political union and aside from all political combina- 
 tions, is, then, an inquiry full of curious interest. 
 
 There were causes of different kinds at work, com- 
 mencing at an early period, and accumulating and 
 strengthening till the work was done. The ultimate 
 and immediate inducement to political union was, of 
 course, community of social right and common suffer- 
 ing under oppression ; but there were others of equal 
 efficacy, operating secretly and indirectly. It was a 
 
6 
 
 remark of the elder Adams, that " the Revolution was 
 twenty years old when the war began," and it is no less 
 true, that the Union was fifty years old when it was 
 first declared to exist. 
 
 There were some inducements to union which re- 
 quire no illustration, connected mainly with the geogra- 
 phical relations of the Colonies. Looking at the face 
 of the country, and bearing in mind that for a long 
 time the settlements were merely on the coast, and in 
 depth did not extend to the first mountain range which 
 runs lengthwise through the Continent, it is obvious 
 that from Georgia to New Hampshire, there was no 
 physical barrier to divide the colonists from each other. 
 There was no arm of the ocean interposed to prevent 
 free intercourse — no bay, or river that could not be 
 easily crossed. There were neither Pyrenees nor 
 Alps; but the primitive mail-carrier of those days, at 
 an early period, so soon, at least, as the path was cut 
 through the forest, and the thicket cleared of the In- 
 dian, carried his little budget slowly but securely 
 from one end of British North America to the other. 
 Each great river, the Delaware, the Susquehanna, the 
 Hudson, and the Connecticut, had its source beyond 
 the charter limits of the colony on whose shores it 
 reached the ocean, and the riparian privilege which 
 nature gives, of free navigation, in and out, unques- 
 tioned at that time, made distant settlers on the same 
 waters, feel like neighbours. 
 
It is not easy to ascertain when the first road 
 was made along the sea-board. In sixteen hundred 
 and seventy-seven, before the settlement of Philadel- 
 phia, William Edmundson, a public Friend, travel- 
 ed southward, from New York to the Delaware, in 
 company with a Swede and an Indian guide. In at- 
 tempting to cross from Middletown Point, they lost 
 their way, and were obliged to go back, so as to 
 find the Raritan at any point and to follow its mar- 
 gin, till they came to a small landing from New York, 
 and thence by a path to the Falls of the Dela- 
 ware. " By this means, only," says he, "did we find 
 our way, and we saw no tame animals on the route." 
 In sixteen hundred and ninety-eight, one of William 
 Penn's companions, in speaking of the infant pros- 
 perity of the Quaker settlement, attributes it to " its 
 vast and extended traffique and commerce (the gor- 
 geous merchant of the present day will smile at the 
 phrase) by sea and land," and then proceeds to enu- 
 merate the distant points whither this vast traffic ex- 
 tends — not Calcutta, Canton, or Batavia — not Lima, 
 Mazatlan, or Astoria: but St. Christopher's, Ber- 
 muda, Montserrat, Barbadoes, Carolina, Virginia, 
 Maryland, New England, and New York. Could this 
 poor, humble-minded, primitive quaker, who thought 
 he saw then a vast and extended commerce, open his 
 eyes and ears now, and see what we all see, unmoved, 
 every moment of our lives; could he see American 
 
8 
 
 commerce disturbed by the opium-eaters of the celestial 
 Empire, and hear of teas and silks, bought in Canton 
 and paid for by bills of exchange, drawn in Philadel- 
 phia or New York on London, his agony of surprise 
 would not be less than yours, could you see your pos- 
 terity, after the lapse of the same number of years, 
 standing amidst the ruins of abandoned railroads and 
 disregarded steamboats, having miraculously retro- 
 graded to an age of barter. 
 
 But the testimony of a far greater man than either 
 of these obscure travellers, to the condition of the 
 colonies at that period, has been preserved. In the 
 latter part of sixteen hundred and seventy-one, George 
 Fox, the founder of the Society of Friends, and one 
 of those great agitators of the sluggish spirit, to whom 
 the Reformation gave full scope, after being scourged 
 and imprisoned, year after year, in Great Britain, landed 
 in America. His mission was pastoral in its character, 
 and had for its object, the encouragement of the Quaker 
 settlements, then thinly scattered over this wilderness. 
 The Journal of his American pilgrimage, as you are 
 aware, is still extant, and tells in language of extreme 
 simplicity and beauty its tale of privation and patient 
 endurance ; a tale strongly illustrative of the real cha- 
 racter of the obstacles to social union, which the early 
 settlers encountered and overcome. He landed near 
 the mouth of the Patuxent river, on the western shore 
 of Maryland, and traveled as far eastward as Rhode 
 
9 
 
 Island, and as far south as Carolina. After crossing 
 the Chesapeake, his route, northward, was hy the east- 
 ern shore to New Castle. " The next day," says he,* 
 " we began our journey to New England, and a tedious 
 journey it was, tlirough the woods and the wilderness, 
 over bogs and across great rivers. We got over the 
 Delaware, not without some danger of our lives, and 
 then had that wilderness country to pass through, since 
 called West Jersey, not inhabited by any English, so 
 that we traveled a whole day together, without seeing 
 man or woman, house or dwelling-place. Sometimes 
 we lay in the woods, by a fire, and sometimes in Indian 
 wigwams." Thus travelling, pausing at occasional set- 
 tlements, this illustrious Pilgrim, for such the religious 
 sway he exercised entitles him to be considered, tra- 
 versed Long Island, and reached his journey's end, in 
 the Providence plantations. " Here," says he, using 
 the peculiar language of an enthusiastic age, " we had 
 a large meeting, at which, beside Friends, were some 
 hundreds of people, as was supposed. A blessed, 
 heavenly meeting this was — a powerful, thundering 
 testimony for truth was borne therein — a great sense 
 there was upon the people, and much brokenness and 
 tenderness amongst them." "When," he adds, "this 
 great meeting was over, it was somewhat hard for 
 friends to part, for the glorious power of the Lord 
 
 * Fox's Journal. Folio Edition, 1775, p. 441. 
 
 2 
 
10 
 
 which was over all, and his blessed truth, had knit 
 and united them altogether — at last, tilled with his 
 power, and rejoicing in his truth, they went away, 
 with joyful hearts, to their homes, in the several 
 colonies where they lived." 
 
 And here, let me pause one moment, and ask you, 
 anticipating conclusions to be reached hereafter, to 
 trace an active germ of union in the record of this 
 early missionary. — George Fox soon after returned to 
 England, again to feel the scourge of persecution, and 
 again to abide in the prison-house; but he left behind 
 him "joyful hearts in the several colonies," — hearts 
 which beat in unison on the one great topic of what 
 they believed to be religious truth, and were bound 
 together in communion which local or political sepa- 
 ration could not sever. In every colony that he visited, 
 the apostle of Quakerism found, or left a congregation, 
 and thus connected by a spiritual chain of union, 
 every humble community from New England to Geor- 
 gia. Nor must it be forgotten, at what an early day 
 other sects were weaving the web of religious commu- 
 nion over the wilderness. While the Jesuit missionary 
 was planning, and executing his scheme of conversion 
 in one quarter, and at a later day, the accomplished 
 Berkeley, saw in his bright and poetic visions, the rise 
 of new Christian empires here, the unsandalled feet of 
 two humble, but not less ambitious missionaries of 
 truth. Fox and Wesley, were traversing, at long inter- 
 
11 
 
 vals, portions of this continent, and their footsteps can 
 now be traced as plainly as when they were first im- 
 printed on the virgin soil. The influence of Christian 
 communion, in its varied forms, in aiding the growth 
 of the social union, is, of itself, a subject of vast in- 
 terest, to which I regret I can but refer in passing. 
 
 Such was the condition of Colonial America in 
 sixteen hundred and seventy-one, when George Fox 
 left it. There was no visible union then. 
 
 The history of intercommunication, accurately writ- 
 ten, would throw great light on the growth of that 
 sentiment of union, which, when political causes lent 
 their agency, matured so gloriously. On an occasion 
 like this, it can but be alluded to. I have spoken of 
 the primitive mail-carrier of Colonial America. The 
 creation of this convenient functionary was long post- 
 poned, and his progress was necessarily very slow. 
 In sixteen hundred and ninety-two, a Post Office sys- 
 tem was projected, if I mistake not, in Virginia, but 
 almost immediately abandoned, in consequence of the 
 difficulties of travelling. 
 
 In seventeen hundred, there was a local Post Office 
 in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and in seventeen 
 hundred and ten, an act of Parliament was passed, one 
 of the few acts of beneficence for which Colonial Ame- 
 rica ever had to thank the mother country, and which 
 is an important statute, as being one applying to all 
 
12 
 
 America, and designed for the common benefit.* — 
 Under this statute, the chief Letter Office was estab- 
 lished in New York, the line of mails extending as far 
 south as Charleston, the chief town of South Carolina, 
 and as far eastward as Portsmouth, the chief town of 
 New Hampshire. The revenue, from colonial post- 
 ages, was appropriated for the general purposes of the 
 Empire, and to defray the expenses of the pending 
 war; and a strong prohibitory section is embodied in 
 the statute, to meet an evil then, and since the fruitful 
 source of partisan complaint, (whether justly or un- 
 justly I do not venture here to say,) inflicting heavy 
 penalties, and " permanent official disfranchisement on 
 any Postmaster General, or his deputies, or any person, 
 employed under him or them, who should, by word, 
 message, or writing, or in any other manner whatso- 
 ever, interfere in any election in the mother country or 
 the colonies." 
 
 It required, however, more than an act of Parlia- 
 ment, to bring into convenient action, mail communica- 
 tion between the distant parts of the Colonial settle- 
 ments, and it was not, so far as I can now ascertain, 
 till twelve or fifteen years later, that a continuous mail- 
 route was organized even on the sea board. In seven- 
 teen hundred and twenty-two, a Philadelphia News- 
 paper expresses considerable alarm at the delay of the 
 
 * Stat. 9 Ann. chap. 10. For some interesting memorials, &c,, relating to the early 
 Post Office, see Vol. 7, Mass. Hist. Collections, 43. 
 
13 
 
 New York Post, "which," it says, with a note of ad- 
 miration as emphatic as any ever used in our day, 
 when the Great Western delays her arrival twenty- 
 four hours, "is three days beyond its time!" 
 
 It is not easy, in these days of secondary causes, 
 when, in the heat and hurry from which few can 
 claim exemption, no one pretends to trace a result of 
 any kind beyond the immediate and palpable agency 
 which produces it, to realize the vast effects produced 
 by this one imperial agent, the Colonial Post Office. 
 No matter how dilatory its processes may have been ; 
 no matter how many days and nights the loitering let- 
 ter-bag may have wasted or required on its weary way; 
 still, when it came, it brought distant points together 
 in a right line and over land, which before were foreign 
 to each other ; and when it did not come, there was a 
 feeling of disappointment at the want of news from 
 their neighbours — a word till then unknown in the 
 colonial vocabulary. The New Yorker no longer 
 looked altogether out to sea, but began to feel an inte- 
 rest in the ferry-craft that brought from Staten Island 
 the ten or twenty pound mail-bag, freighted Avith few, 
 but important letters from Philadelphia, and Annapolis, 
 and Williamsburg, and Charleston. The Postman, 
 though not then "the herald of a noisy world" was a 
 person of great importance, and a political and social 
 agent, with influence far beyond the short calculation 
 
14 
 
 of the day. It was the sound of the axe in the track- 
 less forest — or the blazed tree to the craving eye 
 of the man who thinks himself alone — it proved there 
 was a neighbourhood, in what seemed to be a wilder- 
 ness, and that there were those, not far off, who had 
 sympathies, direct and immediate, which were needed 
 and appreciated. 
 
 One immediate effect of the Post Office, in America, 
 was the invigoration of the Newspaper press. The 
 infancy of the newspaper art, in America, was sickly 
 and precarious. It may, however, easily be conceived, 
 how great must have been the impulse given to it by the 
 institution of a Post Office in the colonies. The first 
 Postmasters were the Editors. The Press told its 
 tale of local grievance, or exemption, or danger. The 
 mail was the telegraph which transmitted it to those 
 who complained, or exulted, or feared, in sympathy — 
 and, by this means, an union of sentiment was formed, 
 long before the parties to it, or the world, dreamed of 
 its existence. It was, to be sure, a loose and uncertain 
 bond — a bond of accidental feeling, which might be 
 easily interrupted, and the fragments made repulsive 
 to each other. Nor, in asserting its precarious exist- 
 ence, must I be understood to exaggerate its obliga- 
 tion, or to intimate that there was, in fact or in visible 
 promise, any thing like political union in it. All that 
 is meant is, that in communities so closely contiguous, 
 
15 
 
 and which, in addition, were made, by artificial means, 
 to know of each other's existence, and take an interest 
 in each other's welfare, there can be discerned at least 
 the seed of the union beginning to germinate. Other 
 influences of more apparent efficacy, soon began to 
 operate. 
 
 And before I notice any of these, let me say, in ad- 
 vance, that there has always seemed to me an error in 
 supposing that the colonies surmounted any very great 
 difficulties in forming their political union. The an- 
 tipathies and repugnance which, unquestionably, ex- 
 isted at the time of the first settlements, softened 
 down much earlier than is usually supposed. As early 
 as seventeen hundred, they may have been, in a mea- 
 sure, strangers, but they certainly were not enemies to 
 each other ; and in seventeen hundred and twenty-three, 
 when Benjamin Franklin, the runaway apprentice, 
 traveled from Boston to Philadelphia, it is obvious that 
 his journey was through friendly regions, and that the 
 border-lines of Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, 
 and New Jersey, which he successively crossed, marked 
 no very palpable distinction of character or feeling, but 
 were little else than the conventional lines which they 
 now are. The individual who now addresses you has, 
 not very many years since, experienced far more trou- 
 ble from adverse local regulations in a neighbouring 
 Federal Union, whose Constitution was a literal tran- 
 script of our own, than did Franklin, more than one 
 
16 
 
 hundred years ago, when he worked his way from New 
 England to Philadelphia.* 
 
 Nor was it the least of the delusions under which the 
 agents of the Metropolitan Government laboured, that 
 they never, in the lapse of time, were sensible of the 
 growth of any common sentiment, but from first to last, 
 asseverated earnestly, and no doubt sincerely, that con- 
 certed action was, and ever would be, impracticable. 
 In seventeen hundred and twenty-eight, an official com- 
 munication, on this very subject, was made to the go- 
 vernment, in these emphatic terms : — 
 
 " From the universal loyalty of the people, even 
 beyond any other parts of His Majesty's dominions, 
 it is absurd to imagine they have any thoughts of inde- 
 pendence; and to show the reverse, it is the custom of 
 all persons coming from thence for London, though 
 they and their fathers and grandfathers, were born in 
 New England, to say, and always deem it, coming 
 home, as naturally as if born in London; so that it may 
 be said, without being ludicrous, that it would not be 
 
 * In Bishop Berkeley's Proposal for the Institution of a College for the educa- 
 tion of Clergymen in Bermuda, published in seventeen hundred and twenty-five, two 
 years after Franklin's journey, is the following passage.—" A general intercourse and 
 correspondence among the colonics is hardly to be found. For on the Continent, 
 where there are neither inns, nor carriages, nor bridges over the rivers, there is no 
 travelling by land between distant places. The English settlements are reputed to 
 extend along the sea-coast for fifteen hundred miles. It is, therefore, plain, there can 
 be no convenient communication between them, otherwise than by sea — no advantage, 
 therefore, in this point, can be gained by settling on the continent." 
 
17 
 
 more absurd to place two of His Majesty's beef eaters 
 to watch a child in the cradle, that it do not rise and 
 cut its father's throat, than to guard these infant colo- 
 nies to prevent their shaking off the British yoke.* 
 Besides, they are so distinct from one another in their 
 forms of government, in their religious rites, in their 
 emulation of trade, and consequently, in their affec- 
 tions, that they never can unite in so dangerous an 
 enterprise." 
 
 "Never," says the adage, "is a long time;" and this 
 promise of permanent loyalty, this assurance of help- 
 less imbecility, was broken before it was fairly written. 
 There was an union, or what is the same thing, an 
 adaptation for union, though not then discernible to 
 those who would not see. Significance was given 
 to a current phrase of colonial conversation to which 
 it really had no claim, and calling England " home," 
 was most absurdly supposed to imply an attachment to 
 her soil, so exclusive, as to shut out all sympathy with 
 their neighbours on this side of the water who called 
 England "home" too. The cradled infant was a ne- 
 glected child, which had soon to help itself, scramble 
 about without assistance, and, as we shall presently 
 See, like the infant of mythology, defend itself against 
 enemies from whom its natural guardian should have 
 protected it. 
 
 * Hutchinson, vol. ii. 319. 
 
18 
 
 Social causes of union, of more palpable efficacy, 
 soon began to develope themselves. As the colonial 
 settlements strengthened and deepened, they began to 
 feel an outward pressure, equal on every point, and 
 producing a sense of danger in every part. This was 
 the pressure of Indian warfare. It would be foreign 
 to the purpose of this discourse to say a word as to 
 the merit of the colonial treatment of the Aborigines 
 of this continent. Be it what it may, the decree had 
 gone forth from higher than human authority that the 
 savage man and the savage brute were to yield up the 
 wilderness to civilization ; and they did yield it up, and 
 with equal reluctance : and for more than a century, 
 the colonist was an armed man, armed for the protec- 
 tion of his primitive fireside and his desolate family, 
 and every year the frontier line of civilization became 
 more extended. 
 
 The Indian wars, beside producing the mere social 
 effect of community of interest, soon led to political 
 combinations, more or less extensive and more or less 
 intimate. So long as the Indians remained in force on 
 the east bank of the Hudson river, New England com- 
 bined to protect itself, and we see accordingly, the rude 
 but effective '•^confederacy'" (the word then first had 
 its application in America) of sixteen hundred and 
 forty-three. The formation of this confederacy, as a 
 measure of incipient political sovereignty, and a step 
 towards independence, has been often noticed. As an 
 
19 
 
 act of union, it is far more significant, or rather, it 
 is mainly as a measure of union that it had any very 
 decided tendency to independence. Had it been merely 
 a temporary contribution of military quotas for the com- 
 mon defence at a season of peculiar danger, it could not 
 be regarded as affording any very decided illustration 
 of the seminal principle of American union, and, in its 
 form and structure, would have borne no other character 
 than that of the accidental necessity which created it; 
 but if any one will have reference to its elaborate ar- 
 rangement, he will see the basis of future political com- 
 binations distinctly marked. Its terms dwell with 
 emphasis on doctrinal unanimity in religious matters, 
 as a main inducement to political concord, and refer to 
 the contest then waging in the mother country, "by 
 means of which," says the preamble, "we are hindered, 
 both from the humble way of seeking advice, and reap- 
 ing those comfortable fruits of protection which at other 
 times we might well expect." " We therefore," it 
 continues, " do consider it our bounden duty, without 
 delay, to enter into a present consociation amongst 
 ourselves for mutual strength and help, in all future 
 concernments, that as in nation and relation, so in other 
 respects, we be and continue one, according to the 
 tenor and true meaning of the ensuing articles — by the 
 name and title of ' the United Colonies of New Eng- 
 land,' to be bound in a firm and perpetual league of 
 friendship and amity, for ofience and defence, mutual 
 
20 
 
 advice and succour on all just occasions, both for pre- 
 serving and propagating the truths and liberties of the 
 Gospel, and for our own mutual safety and welfare." 
 
 The history of this confederacy is of less interest in 
 the connexion in which I wish to consider it than its 
 institution. It was the creature of necessity, but it 
 started into being, complete and perfect. Its heart's 
 blood was religious sympathy. The spirit which ani- 
 mated it was of that spirit which was working great re- 
 sults and great catastrophes in the parent country. 
 Sixteen hundred and forty-three, was an era when prin- 
 ciples of self-government were in active fermentation, 
 when the blast which had been driven into the ancient 
 stone-work of Monarchy, had been fired, and the old 
 walls were shaking fearfully. Then, the colonies of 
 Puritan New England had close sympathy with the 
 dominant party in Great Britain, and saw, with delight 
 which religious enthusiasm made most intense, the 
 near triumph of men and of opinions for whose sake 
 they had been mocked, and reviled, and scourged, and 
 exiled; but the Parliament, even in its triumph, was 
 too much engrossed at. home, to do an)'^ thing for 
 its distant, though beloved New England. The co- 
 lonies found themselves in danger and unprotected, and 
 at once, with an impulse so prompt as to prove it to be 
 natural, declared themselves, not free and independent, 
 which then they certainly did not wish to be, but united. 
 They proclaimed, not separation, but perfect and per- 
 petual UNION. 
 
01 
 
 /v 1 
 
 In less than twenty years, the parent country had 
 witnessed the surrender of its new-born and vigorous 
 liberty into the hands, first of that great man, the great- 
 est perhaps that England ever produced, the first 
 Protector, and then of the most perfidious of her mo- 
 narchs, the second Charles Stuart. United New Eng- 
 land had, in the interval, been busy with her savage 
 foes and foot by foot had driven the concentrated 
 vigour of her union further and further westward. 
 Thus occupied, she had taken no active part, or dis- 
 played no active sympathy, in the conflicts of Great 
 Britain, though, in the vigorous language of one of her 
 own historians, " she had been courted thereunto, by 
 the person who is now laid asleep in the dark house of 
 the grave, with his weapons under his head,"*^ and the 
 Restoration found these colonies, though united, yet 
 not flagrantly disloyal. 
 
 The process of time witnessed the gradual conquest 
 or pacification of the Indians within the limits of New 
 England, and, as the reluctant savage withdrew west of 
 the Hudson, and stood, with his armed companions, at 
 the foot of the Blue Ridge, determined to retreat no 
 further, the circle of civilization becoming larger, there 
 was a wider scope for united councils and united action. 
 Something more than a New England confederacy was 
 requisite for the common safety. The unbroken forest, 
 
 * Hubbard, 57G. 
 
22 
 
 and the savage enemy which tenanted it, reached from 
 Georgia to New York, and as the charter limits of the 
 New England provinces were asserted to extend far 
 beyond the Hudson, they still had an interest in frontier 
 warfare, though the war-whoop no longer disturbed 
 their familiar privacy. And hence we see, from this 
 time downward, to the attempted union in seventeen 
 hundred and fifty-four, a constant succession of at- 
 tempts at united action. The instinct was decided. 
 As early as sixteen hundred and ninety-three, Penn- 
 sylvania, at the instance of Governor Fletcher, accred- 
 ited an agent to treat with Commissioners from the 
 neighbouring colonies, at New York, concerning 
 quotas of men and moneys for frontier defence. And, 
 from time to time, there were many other plans sug- 
 gested, of the same kind, and with the same object.* 
 
 But it was not these semi-political combinations which 
 were fabricating the true colonial union. Higher agen- 
 cies were at work. The New England Confederacy 
 was remarkable as the first fruits of a common danger, 
 and the outward pressure on a few settlements and 
 within a narrow compass, and as remarkable for the 
 regularity of its structure and the completeness of its 
 parts. The occasional conventions of provincial agents 
 — of Governors, or commissioners, in later days, had 
 no such interest. The masses were blending and har- 
 
 ♦ See Pennsylvania Colonial Records, 1G93, vol. i. p. 352. 
 
23 
 
 monizing, though the forms of concerted action were 
 less perfect. 
 
 In the early times of colonial warfare, it had been a 
 strife, and a bloody strife, between the settler and the 
 savage ; but it was not long before the Indian found a 
 new and formidable ally in the trained soldiery of 
 France, who, lending to the savage the accomplish- 
 ments of a bloody trade, seemed to receive in return 
 an ample portion of that ferocious, indiscriminate ap- 
 petite for carnage which characterizes the savage war- 
 rior. The French and Indians thus allied, were as 
 formidable foes as ever hung upon the precincts of a 
 peaceful or a warlike land. 
 
 It is much to be regretted that history has never yet 
 adequately illustrated the great design of conquest and 
 conversion, which was matured in the councils of 
 Louis XIV, and which had for its field our western 
 wilderness. That it was a scheme of vast scope and 
 of sanguine promise cannot now be questioned. From 
 the Lakes to the Ohio, the Jesuit missionary pursued 
 his fearless and untiring course. No danger appalled 
 him ; no difficulty arrested his progress : and close on 
 his trail, the French soldier followed — the power of 
 this world widening, for its own purposes, the path 
 which the preacher of the world to come had made be- 
 fore, and in the lapse of but few years, a line of French 
 military posts was established on the western frontier 
 from the Lakes to the Balize. Nor is there in history, 
 
24. 
 
 a record more full of romantic interest, and at the same 
 time less accurately or minutely illustrated, than that 
 of the French missions in the Valley of the Mississippi 
 anterior to the Peace of seventeen hundred and sixty- 
 three. Within a few years after Philadelphia was 
 settled, and while, occasionally, an Indian eye peered 
 across the Hudson at the sturdy burghers of New 
 Amsterdam, Vincennes and Kaskaskia were founded. 
 The Jesuit had raised the cross, and preached the word 
 of God to the tenants of the forest, and there floated 
 over the infant settlement, the same white flag of Bour- 
 bon France, which our mother country was fighting on 
 the Atlantic and in Europe. And now, the far west- 
 ward traveller is struck in the deep recesses of Indiana 
 and Illinois with the names of Barrois, and Richard- 
 ville, and Theriac, and Bolon, and Laplante, indicat- 
 ing as distinctly their origin and boasting as justly of 
 their unadulterated continental descent, as do the Stuy- 
 vesants, and Van Rensselacrs, the Dessausures, and 
 Petrigrus of our eastern soil.* 
 
 The scheme of New France, thus commenced, and 
 destined so soon to be abandoned, is one of the most 
 magnificent divulged by history, and I can fully sym- 
 pathize with a recent French traveller, one of the most 
 accomplished that has ever visited us, when standing 
 
 * The historical student will find a most interesting sketch of the French settle- 
 ments in the West, in an Address, delivered February 22, 1839, before the Historical 
 and Antiquarian Societies of Vincennc:?, by the Hon. John Law. 
 
25 
 
 near the site of Fort Duquesne, now lost amidst the 
 chimneys of our Pennsylvania Birmingham, he mourned 
 over the disappointment of this great enterprise. " Se- 
 venty-six years ago, this day," says Mr. Chevalier, " a 
 handful of Frenchmen sorrowfully evacuated the Fort 
 which stood on the point of land where the Allegheny 
 and the Monongahela mingle their waters to form the 
 Ohio, and the Empire of New France, like so many 
 other magnificent schemes conceived in our country, 
 ceased to exist. Fort Duquesne has now become Pitts- 
 burgh, and in vain did I piously search for some re- 
 lics of the old French fort. There is no longer a stone, 
 or a brick on the Ohio, to attest that France ever had 
 a foothold there." 
 
 It is not my purpose to trace the progress of French 
 and Indian warfare. From sixteen hundred and eighty 
 to seventeen hundred and sixty-three, when the French 
 flag was struck for ever in America, the British colo- 
 nies never had a year, and scarcely a month of tran- 
 quil, real peace. If there was nominal pacification be- 
 tween the European sovereigns, no treaty bound the 
 savage, and war may be said to have continued all the 
 time. The pressure from without never intermitted. 
 To-day, it was on Carolina — to-morrow, on Pennsyl- 
 vania — the next day on New York and New England, 
 and sometimes on all at once; and the effect necessa- 
 rily and naturally was the invigoration of a sense of 
 
 4 
 
26 
 
 common interest — a community of direct personal con- 
 cern, which was in fact an union.* 
 
 Having shown the state of the country at the begin- 
 ning of the century, and even still earlier, when George 
 Fox wandered through its forest-covered territories, 
 any one will be satisfied of the progress of united senti- 
 ment, who will open a colonial newspaper or book of 
 travels, at or immediately before the peace of Paris. 
 
 In seventeen hundred and fifty-nine, an Episcopal 
 clergyman, of the name of Burnaby, landed at York- 
 town, in Virginia, and traveled as far northward and 
 eastward as Portsmouth in New Hampshire. His 
 published Journal is familiarly known to every histo- 
 rical student, and although his recorded opinions as 
 the result of his observations, are that no social sym- 
 pathy, even at that late day, existed among the colonies, 
 and that a political union was wholly impracticable, 
 yet the narrative of his own experience as a traveller, 
 contradicts, conclusively, these very opinions. From 
 Virginia to New England, from Cape Charles to Cape 
 Cod, he traveled through one people, and never seems to 
 have discovered any other difference of manner, habit, 
 or opinion, than such as in a modified form, exist now. 
 The Virginian planter he then describes "as indolent, 
 easy, and good natured, extremely fond of society, and 
 much given to convivial pleasures. He has little regard 
 
 * See Colonel Quarry's IVIemorial. 1703. Mass. Coll. Vol. 7, p. 332. 
 
21 
 
 for economy, and is very apt to outrun his income." 
 "The Virginians," he adds, "are very haughty, and 
 jealous of their liberties, and cannot bear the thought 
 of being controlled by any superior power on the face 
 of the earth."* He crosses the Potomac and the 
 Chesapeake and finds the Marylanders of the Eastern 
 shore "very like their neighbours of Virginia, though 
 not quite so presuming or so indolent, just as convivial, 
 and not much less thriftless." He reaches Pennsylva- 
 nia, and is lost in ecstacy. " Its trade," says he, " is 
 surprisingly extensive. Their manufactures are very 
 considerable. The Germantown woollen stockings are 
 in high estimation — so much so, that the year before 
 last, as I have been credibly informed, there were 
 manufactured sixty thousand dozen pairs." (?) He 
 enters our fair Quaker city and thus characterizes its 
 population, how justly it is not for me to say. " The 
 
 * As early as seventeen hundred and three, a Metropohtan agent thus charac- 
 terized the sons of the Old Dominion. " The Virginia gentlemen consider this Pro- 
 vince of greater importance to her Majesty than all the rest of the Provinces on the 
 maine, and therefore they falsely conclude they ought to have greater Privileges than 
 the rest of her Majesty's subjects. — The Assembly, they conclude themselves en- 
 titled to all the Rights and Privileges of an English Parliament, and begin to search 
 into the Records of that Honorable House for Precedents to govern themselves by. 
 The Council have vanity enough to think that they almost stand upon equal terms 
 with the Right Honourable, the House of Lords. These false and pernilious notions, 
 if not timely prevented, will have a very ill consequence. — As I have already hinted 
 to your Lordshipps, Commonwealth notions improve dayly, and if they be not checked 
 in time, the rights and privileges of English subjects will be thought too narrow. 
 
 Colonel Quarry's Memorial. 
 
28 
 
 Philadelphians are a frugal and industrious people, not 
 remarkably courteous and hospitable to strangers, un- 
 less particularly recommended to them, but on the 
 whole, I must confess, rather the reverse. The women, 
 however, are exceedingly handsome and polite — they 
 are naturally sprightly and fond of society, and un- 
 questionably are far more accomplished and agreeable 
 than the men." He arrives at New York, which he 
 describes " as subject to one great inconvenience, the 
 want of fresh water, so that the inhabitants are obliged 
 to have it brought from springs, at some distance out 
 of town;" but then (he adds with evident zest,) "as 
 some compensation, these waters afford various kinds 
 of most delicious fish — black-fish, sea-bass, sheeps-head, 
 lobsters, and several others, most delicious in their 
 kind," and finally, when he comes to describe the in- 
 habitants, he says : " Being, however, of different na- 
 tions, different religions, and different languages, it is 
 almost impossible to give them any precise and deter- 
 minate character," And so, throughout his colonial 
 pilgrimage, he discriminates just as the casual traveller 
 would do now, and deduces, just as a superficial tra- 
 veller might do now, from these exaggerated traits of di- 
 versity of manners, the absence of all community of 
 sentiment amongst them. Yet he travels on, quietly 
 and peaceably, through the English settlements, speak- 
 ing the same language, using the same money, reading 
 the same newspapers, meeting branches of the same 
 
29 
 
 families, as in one united people, and it is only when he 
 attempts to travel westward beyond that people's limits, 
 that he is admonished he will find other than friends to 
 each other and to himself. He ventures as far west as 
 Winchester in Virginia, and then adds, in reference to 
 those places of fashionable resort, whither so many, no 
 doubt, of those who now hear me, periodically repair : 
 " During my stay at Winchester, I was almost tempted 
 to make a tour for a fortnight into Augusta County, for 
 the sake of seeing some springs and other natural curio- 
 sities, which the officers assured me were well worth 
 visiting; but, as the Cherokees had been scalping in 
 those parts only a few days before, I thought it most 
 prudent to decline it." 
 
 And yet his volume closes with grave speculations 
 on the futurity then dawning on America, which satisfy 
 him that its communities must always be disunited, 
 helpless, and dependent, formed for happiness, perhaps, 
 " but certainly not formed for empire or for union" — 
 and as a reason for this conclusion, adduces the rival- 
 ship between New York and Pennsylvania, the two most 
 powerful and aspiring colonies, whom he describes '' as 
 having an inexhaustible source of animosity in their 
 jealousy for the trade of Ne7V Jersey ! /" Thus contra- 
 dictory were the opinions and the experience of an in- 
 telligent traveller in seventeen hundred and fifty-nine, 
 and thus dimly did he see the future. 
 
30 
 
 Five years prior to this date, a great incident in the 
 affairs of Colonial America had occurred, which has 
 confidently been relied on by those who question the 
 antiquity of our social union — the meeting of the Com- 
 missioners, at Albany, in seventeen hundred and fifty- 
 four, and the failure of their plan of confederation. 
 
 The history of this experiment, I am bound to pre- 
 sume, is familiar to you all. It was the convention of 
 twenty-three commissioners, chosen by the Assemblies 
 and commissioned by the crown, with a view, in the 
 first instance, to devise a concert of action against the 
 French and Indians. All that the Lords of Trade 
 contemplated when they recommended this meeting was 
 a compact, by which, after a war was begun, no colony 
 should make a separate treaty with the Indians.* But 
 the significant fact is, that no sooner was the Conven- 
 tion organized, than the proposition for a general and 
 permanent union was introduced and unanimously ap- 
 proved, and within the short space of three weeks, the 
 details of a well organized plan of a National Consti- 
 tution were as unanimously adopted. 
 
 This act of the Representatives of the People thus 
 convoked, speaks volumes. It told the secret, long 
 disguised, that the social union had so matured that po- 
 litical union became a natural suggestion. Nor is it 
 conceivable, that men as sagacious as Franklin and 
 
 * Massachusetts Hist. Trans. 3d Series, p. 23. 
 
31 
 
 Hutchinson, would have warmly espoused a measure so 
 decisive, without the strong conviction, not merely that 
 the necessities of the people required, but that their 
 minds were prepared for it. And it is as little accord- 
 ant with the ordinary principles of human action, that 
 they and their colleagues, all men of ability and con- 
 sideration, should have committed so gross a blunder, 
 or escaped its consequences, as to frame and recommend 
 a plan of National Union, with the sovereign preroga- 
 tives of taxation, coinage, enlistment, and treaties vested 
 in it, subject alone to the paramount control of the 
 Crown, to a people so divided by local jealousies as it 
 has been described. 
 
 The plan failed, it is true. Though unanimously re- 
 commended by the Convention, it was rejected by every 
 Colony to which it was meant to apply, and whose re- 
 presentatives had voted for it. The colonial assemblies 
 (for popular representation was the privilege of all) saw 
 new danger, and perhaps new tyranny, in the delegated 
 royal authority — the " imperium in imperio" of the Co- 
 lonial Executive — and the ministry at home could not 
 regard with complacency the creation of an united 
 though dependent sovereignty, in a country where they 
 saw their advantage in division, and where they only 
 had recommended temporary concert, not enduring 
 union.* 
 
 * See Report of Connecticut Committee (1st Series Mass. H. C. vol. 7, p. 209) 
 recommending rejection of the plan, mainly on the ground of its interference with 
 Charter privileges of se// taxation. 
 
32 
 
 But the plan mainly failed from a cause of greater ef- 
 ficacy which was at work unseen. Some sovereign, 
 paramount authority was required to enforce political 
 union and give it sanction, and no such supreme autho- 
 rity then existed or was then exercised; for a power 
 higher than any known to the British Colonial or Me- 
 tropolitan Constitution was requisite, and that power, 
 sovereign necessity and the popular will of the nation, 
 soon afterwards supplied. Had the colonies repre- 
 sented in the Albany Convention been left as New 
 England was in sixteen hundred and forty-three, self- 
 dependent — had the news reached its conclave that 
 the British monarchy was convulsed by revolution and 
 could not extend even a paralytic hand to support or 
 restrain its distant subjects, may it not be reasonably 
 inferred, at least by us who know what occurred 
 within a few years afterwards, when the hand of the 
 Monarchy, covered with a steel gauntlet, became the 
 hand of the oppressor, that just such an union as was 
 framed, or one more efficient and less dependent, would 
 have been formed, and that there was no adequate ob- 
 stacle to it in the social condition of the colonies.* 
 
 The peace of seventeen hundred and sixty-three, was 
 the great era of the awakening of America. That peace 
 gave opportunity for consciousness to tell its tale — op- 
 
 * See letter from Dr. Wm. Clarke, of Boston, to Dr. Franklin, dated May 6, 1754, 
 (Mass. Hist. Coll. 1st Series, vol. 4, p. 74.) '' However necessary an union may 
 be for the mutual safety and preservation of these colonies, it is certain it will 
 never take place, unless we are forced to it hy the supremo authority of the nation." 
 
39 
 
 portunity for self-examination, and self-comparison with 
 those around and above, and if the first feeling was pre- 
 sumptuous or grateful joy, which, as it swelled in the 
 bosom of each colonial community, certainly claimed 
 no kindred with any thought of union, the next was a 
 sense of deep injustice done by the common parent to 
 all her American offspring — and in less than two years 
 from that peace, a peace which took oif the outward 
 pressure, and removed the outward danger — in less than 
 ten years from the dissolution of the Albany Conven- 
 tion and the rejection of its plan, a solemn Congress of 
 the Colonies, convoked by Committees of Correspond- 
 ence regularly organized from Carolina to New Hamp- 
 shire, was sitting in this city, in stern and solemn de- 
 liberation on the common grievances of all the Colonies. 
 
 Of that Congress, the Stamp Act Congress of seven- 
 teen hundred and sixty-five, it is becoming every Ame- 
 rican to speak with reverence, as the forerunner of the 
 other graver and greater body, which, called into being 
 a few years later by renewed and protracted grievance, 
 was destined never to adjourn. The Congress of seven- 
 teen hundred and sixty-five, was but the shadow of the 
 coming substance, which sprang into being on the pas- 
 sage of the Port Bill, in seventeen hundred and seventy- 
 four, and has its principal interest as an incident to the 
 history of the political union of America. 
 
 It met in New York, and it is the duty of some one 
 of the many accomplished writers that New York pos- 
 
 5 
 
34 
 
 sesses, to present in detail its history to the world. 
 The project had its origin in Massachusetts, but the 
 suggestion met with a ready response throughout Colo- 
 nial America. The Massachusetts letter was dated in 
 June, and by the early part of October, the representa- 
 tives of the most distant colonies had arrived in New 
 York. But for the difficulties interposed by the Royal 
 Governors, every colony would have been represented; 
 even as it was, all seemed to feel alike, though some 
 were thus denied any active participation. As I have 
 said, I only refer to it as an incident in the history of 
 progressive union. Its acts were a Petition and Re- 
 monstrance to the King and Parliament. Temperate 
 and guarded as the remonstrance was, it was the earn- 
 est prayer of the wliole people of America — a people 
 united now in right, in grievance, and in complaint. 
 No plans for future action were suggested or urged, 
 and if any were thought of, they were withheld or sup- 
 pressed for the sake of harmony and union. 
 
 There was an out-door observer, who watched- the 
 deliberations of the first Congress with deep solicitude, 
 and who was destined to be the faithful witness and to 
 keep the high record of a still graver and more solemn 
 council. Charles Thomson, the Old Secretary, as he 
 is called, then a young man, and a merchant of Phila- 
 delphia, came to New York to be the spectator of the- 
 doings of the Stamp Act Congress; and I have in my 
 possession, deposited there for better uses than other 
 
and jealous avocations permit me to apply it to, a manu- 
 script Journal, written out at length by Mr. Thomson, 
 of all its acts. For what object this record was made, 
 whether for the writer's own use, or for ulterior pur- 
 poses, it is not easy to say. It is a curious monument, 
 as well of his industry as of the deep interest he then 
 took in the approaching struggle. 
 
 And when, twenty-four years afterwards, this same 
 witness came hither again, the only and the fit com- 
 panion who accompanied Washington from Mount Ver- 
 non to New York, and stood by his side at his inaugu- 
 ration, and heard the solemn voice raised to swear 
 fidelity to the Constitution of the Independent United 
 States, what must not have been the thick-coming re- 
 collections which crowded on his mind! For fifteen 
 years, long years of doubt and anxiety, had he kept the 
 record of the august body, which necessity and intense 
 sympathy had created for the guidance of revolutionary 
 America, and which, without authority known to the 
 laws or provincial constitutions, had almost miracu- 
 lously, in concord and in discord, done all that regular 
 government could do. He had seen, as an anxious spec- 
 tator, what was done here to petition and remonstrate 
 in seventeen hundred and sixty-five. He remembered the 
 dark interval which followed, when bolt after bolt was 
 forged in the parliamentary work-shop, and hurled at 
 devoted America. He had not forgotten, when, at the 
 end of that period, he had been suddenly called to be- 
 
36 
 
 come the Secretary of the Congress of the Revolution, 
 and found, in a small room in Carpenter's Hall, in Phila- 
 delphia, forty-one individuals, convened almost on their 
 ov^n motion, and preparing by their decrees to snatch 
 from the British Crown, the brightest and dearest of its 
 bright and most cherished jewels. The dawn of this 
 Union was lowering and cloudy; and perhaps there never 
 was a scene of more solemn anxiety than was presented 
 at the moment when Charles Thomson entered that hum- 
 ble council chamber. It was a scene even better worthy 
 of the painter's art, than that other more tranquil one 
 which a national painter has embalmed. It was a scene 
 on which, in the decline of life, the ancient Secretary 
 was always proud to dwell. 
 
 On the fifth of September, seventeen hundred and 
 seventy-four, the day the Congress met, Charles 
 Thomson was a happy bridegroom. Musing, no 
 doubt, on other things than the affairs of the pub- 
 lic, he was met in the street by a hurried messen- 
 ger, who came to tell him that the Congress, then 
 about to organize, required his services as their 
 Secretary. Nor w^ere the excuses which he so rea- 
 sonably urged admitted ; but with the assurance that its 
 session could not be prolonged more than a few days 
 or weeks, he was made to yield a reluctant consent. 
 As he entered the room, a plain, unadorned apartment, 
 used by the Society of Master Carpenters for their 
 periodical meetings, the Congress had just been called 
 
37 
 
 to order, and prayers were about to be said. It was a 
 prayer of deep solicitude — a prayer, which, through 
 the lips of the preacher, came from the hearts of his 
 auditors, and asked a blessing and illumination on coun- 
 cils which were intricate and perplexed. But as the 
 preacher, the loyal preacher,* prayed for the restora- 
 tion of peace and friendly intercourse with the parent 
 country, there were some faces in that assembly through 
 which might be traced the instincts which prompted the 
 belief that peace had fled for ever — that the silver cord 
 was loosened, and the bowl broken at the very fountain 
 — and that the next prayer which would there be heard, 
 would be a still more fervent one, for the patriot, fight- 
 ing for his home, and for the rights of home. — There 
 was the subdued and anxious visage of Joseph Gallo- 
 way, and the rather bolder, but still perplexed counte- 
 nance of John Dickinson, the two great leaders of the 
 peaceful politics of Pennsylvania; but neither of them 
 the man for revolutionary times. — But there stood 
 close by, a phalanx of other men, erect and firm, with 
 iron frames and souls of fire ; undaunted, and ready for 
 any crisis that might arise. There was the meagre, at- 
 tenuated form of Henry, care-worn by the restless 
 thoughts which were coursing through his soul — there 
 were John and Samuel Adams, stern and scornful; 
 the latter, the image of what we may conceive an an- 
 cient Cameronian to have been, or one of those "grave, 
 
 ♦ The Rev. Jacob Duche. 
 
S8 
 
 sad men," who, in the days of the Commonwealth, 
 pronounced the stern decree on Charles Stuart — "■ Ty- 
 rant of England." There stood Middleton, and 
 the RuTLEDGEs, and Richard Henry Lee, the true 
 representatives of Southern chivalry — and there, " the 
 noblest Roman of them all," your own John Jay, than 
 whom no purer spirit shed its influence on the contest 
 then beginning; and near them stood one other, whom 
 I need not name, an unpretending, young man, of noble 
 stature and of modest mien, scarcely known except to 
 his colleagues, who, as the prayer ascended, bowed his 
 head in reverence, as if reluctant to look upon the fu- 
 ture which was to canonize his glorious name. And 
 from this moment downwards, Charles Thomson kept 
 the record of the doings of that Congress — " he wrote 
 what the thunders uttered" — he witnessed and shared 
 its councils of dismay, anxiety, and triumph. When 
 the approach of the enemy, in seventeen hundred and 
 seventy-six, compelled them to retire to Baltimore, he 
 was with them. When, at the darkest hour of the war, 
 they retired to York, few in numbers, and broken in 
 spirit, he was with them still — more than their mere 
 scribe; their counsellor and friend: the man of un- 
 daunted courage, as he was the man of unquestioned 
 truth. As I have said, he lived to see the consumma- 
 tion of the work, the hour of triumph, the hour of per- 
 fected union. Whenever the history of the Union shall 
 be written, the few (and unhappily there are but few) 
 
39 
 
 records of this old man's life, will be worthy of careful 
 study. Among them is a letter from Mr, Jay, from 
 which, as it has never been published, I am tempted 
 here to quote an extract. It is dated at Passy, in July, 
 seventeen hundred and eighty-three, and seems to have 
 had no other object than to urge the following sug- 
 gestion. 
 
 " When I consider that no person in the world, is so 
 perfectly acquainted with the rise, conduct, and conclu- 
 sion of the American Revolution as yourself, I cannot 
 but wish that you would devote one hour in the four- 
 and-twenty, to giving posterity a true account of it. I 
 think it might be comprised in a small compass ; it need 
 not be burdened with minute accounts of battles, sieges, 
 retreats, evacuations, &c. : leave those matters to volu- 
 minous historians. The political story of the Revolu- 
 tion will be most liable to be misrepresented, and future 
 relations of it will probably be replete both with inten- 
 tional and accidental errors. Such a work would be 
 highly advantageous to your reputation, as well as 
 highly important to the cause of truth, with posterity. 
 I do not mean it should be published during your life. 
 That would be improper for many reasons; nor do I 
 think it should be known that you are employed in 
 such a work. This hint is, therefore, for yourself, and 
 shall go no further." 
 
 How much is it to be regretted that this wish was 
 
40 
 
 disappointed, especially as a long life of leisure was 
 then before him to whom it was addressed. 
 
 Mr. Thomson retired from public life in July, seven- 
 teen hundred and eighty-nine, then seeming to others, 
 and believing himself an old man, having reached that 
 age which the sceptical wisdom of this day fixes as the 
 limit beyond which the judicial intellect at least cannot 
 endure. Yet he who then thought the infirmities of 
 approaching age required seclusion and repose, lived no 
 less than thirty-five years in retirement, thirty of them 
 in the full possession of his faculties and mental vigour. 
 Nor was this a more remarkable instance of the un- 
 looked for duration of human life, than that of another 
 man of the revolution. There is extant, a letter from 
 Dr. Franklin, which I have seen, dated at London, in 
 September, seventeen hundred and sixty-six, in which 
 he complains of the growing infirmities of years, and of 
 his possible inability, on account of them, to return to 
 America. Yet after that, what did not this old man 
 live to see and do. He crossed the Atlantic no less 
 than three times — he saw a civil war break out and ter- 
 minate — he saw Independence declared and acknow- 
 ledged — he framed the first Constitution of Pennsylva- 
 nia, and was Governor under it — he negotiated the al- 
 liance with France — he signed the Definitive Treaty of 
 Peace with Great Britain — he saw a National Sove- 
 reignty created, and was an active member of that au- 
 
41 
 
 gust body which framed the Constitution of the Union. 
 All this he did, after he condemned himself as too old 
 and too feeble to work at all. The name of Dr. Frank- 
 lin recalls me to the path from which I have uncon- 
 sciously wandered, and brings me back but for a mo- 
 ment before I conclude, to the Congress of seventeen 
 hundred and sixty-five, and its incidents. Among them, 
 not the least important was Franklin's mission to Eng- 
 land, and his being chosen by several colonies to repre- 
 sent them. For a series of years, he was, in fact, the 
 minister to London of the United Colonies, and as the 
 American Representative in Great Britain, became the 
 object of deep and affectionate interest to all who felt 
 he represented them. His appearance before the Privy 
 Council, and his examination at the bar of the House 
 of Commons, as an American witness, are leading in- 
 cidents in our United History. 
 
 Between seventeen hundred and sixty-five and seven- 
 teen hundred and seventy-four, chain after chain was 
 forged in the mother country to shackle the limbs of her 
 colonies. Such, in that interval, was the growth of 
 united sentiment in America, so perfect the neighbourly 
 sympathy, that the immediate cause of the convocation 
 of the Revolutionary Congress was no enactment af- 
 fecting all, or any considerable portion of Colonial 
 America, but a statute having for its object the punish- 
 ment of a single disobedient town and the closing of 
 a single harbour. 
 
 6 
 
42 
 
 Ministerial vengeance aimed a blow at the merchants 
 and traders of Boston, and the whole nation, through 
 its representatives in Congress, stepped forward to the 
 rescue. 
 
 The councils of the Old Congress, this great creation 
 of the social union, its secret doings and deliberations, 
 are but little known. The witnesses of that conclave 
 have, one by one dropped into the grave, and no one 
 survives to tell the tale of its anxious deliberations. 
 For myself, were I to express one wish nearer to my 
 heart than any other connected with historical investi- 
 gations, it is that the illuminated record of those coun- 
 cils may yet be rescued from oblivion.* It would illus- 
 trate the spirit of the Revolution better than its battles 
 or its tumults — it would show how little communion 
 that spirit has with the radicalism of the hour, which 
 profanely claims the Revolution as its authority — the 
 spirit of patriotic deliberation — the firm contemplation 
 of impending danger — the resolution to do public duty 
 
 ♦ Mr. Madison's Report of the Debates in the old Congress, extends from the 4th 
 of November, 1782, to the 21st June, 1783. Mr. Jefferson's brief memoranda extend 
 from June 7th, to August 1st, 1776. " These," says Mr. Gilpin, in his Preface to 
 the Madison Papers, "are the only known or probable materials of what passed in 
 Congress in the form of Debates." Among the papers of Charles Thomson, now in 
 my possession, is a folio volume of about seventy pages of manuscrijjt Notes of De- 
 bates in Congress, made by Mr. Thomson, extending from July 22d, to 20th Septem- 
 ber, 1782. They appear to be very full and precise. It is the intention of Mr. 
 Thomson's family to have these and other memorials of their distinguished ancestor 
 published. 
 
43 
 
 at whatever sacrifice — the heroism of high counsel — the 
 intellectual romance which distinguishes our Revolu- 
 tion from all others the world has ever seen. 
 
 And, to judge the better of this romantic purity, con- 
 trast it, either in the council or the field, with that other 
 of history's records which was so soon after written — 
 the annals of revolutionary France. Compare the old 
 Continental Congress with the Assembly, or the No- 
 tables, or the Convention, or the Council of Ancients. 
 Take their great men, from Mirabeau, the greatest of 
 them all, downward on the roll, to the poorest, stroll- 
 ing patriot of the smallest section, and contrast each 
 and all of them with the true chivalry of our annals — 
 our soldiers or our statesmen, and still the palm is glo- 
 riously ours. 
 
 I have often made this contrast, and have often tried 
 to find, in the annals of Revolutionary France, any 
 thing on which that high principle of our intellectual 
 and moral nature, the poetic instinct, can dwell with 
 pleasure. They were tragic enough; but it was the 
 unvarying, unmitigated tragedy which nauseates the 
 mind with horrors. There was no more poetry in it 
 than there is in the gallows or the bow-string. It 
 was like witchcraft's dread mixture, the fermenta- 
 tion of coarse animal ingredients, without a leaf, 
 or a flower, or a fragrant herb being cast into the 
 boiling cauldron, or ever bubbling to its surface. 
 There was no object of sympathy, or there were ten 
 
44 
 
 thousand too many. The Republic itself, even as it 
 sprang from its birth-place, was no creation of beauty. 
 There were the helmet and the sword, and the gorgon 
 shield with all its hissing snakes — but there was not the 
 majestic step or the stately beauty of the Goddess. 
 And when the Republic fell, after it had so often changed 
 its garb from one costume of frippery to another, and so 
 often washed its bloody hands, there is nothing to com- 
 pare it to, in all its mutilated and unpitied deformity, 
 but that most disgusting of its horrible pictures, when 
 Robespierre lay stretched on a table in the Committee 
 of Public Safety, with his hands tied behind him, like a 
 common felon — his jaw broken by his own cowardly 
 pistol-shot, dressed in a sky-blue silk coat, with his 
 powdered hair and his lace ruffles dabbled in his own 
 blood. It was the very incarnation of French Republi- 
 canism in its last unpitied agonies. 
 
 Our Revolution was the effort of a dependent peo- 
 ple to stand by itself — to think for itself — to govern it- 
 self. It was the effort of a poor people to sustain it- 
 self. It involved a long and unequal contest — the de- 
 solation of many a field of prosperous industry — the 
 sacrifice of many a cherished life. But it involved no 
 wanton desolation. It was a war of defence — a war for 
 home and the rights of home. There w^as no persecu- 
 tion — there was no scaffold. There was, throughout, 
 and never more than in our early united councils, the 
 high dignity of that character which America inherited 
 
45 
 
 from her British ancestry, embellished by the gentler 
 grace which the refining spirit of the age hung around 
 it. It was like the first great English Revolution in 
 its dignity — unlike it — oh how unlike it, in its results ! 
 
 Having thus, within limits which necessity and pro- 
 priety impose, hinted at rather than illustrated a vindi- 
 cation of the antiquity of our social union, is there no 
 lesson to be gathered from the retrospect — no moral 
 which this very antiquity enforces? It is the social 
 union and its antiquity, alone, that I have sought to vin- 
 dicate — the union of distant hearts, rather than the 
 union of hands — the yearning of hearts which space 
 alone separates, but which are bent on the same dear 
 object, warmed by the same cherished affections. From 
 the social union the political union sprang, and with the 
 social union will the political union perish. The social 
 union is the Mother Earth on which the Temple stands. 
 That Mother Earth I would keep sacred, free even from 
 the spade and the plough which would break the sod 
 where grow the grass and flowers that spring from the 
 graves of our Revolutionary forefathers. 
 
 The political Union has safely stood. It has with- 
 stood violence — it has withstood metaphysics — it has 
 withstood the subtle spirit of political criticism, a spirit 
 which studies the Constitution as the sceptic studies 
 the Bible, to doubt and to cavil, and for its own pur- 
 poses to construe it strictly. It has defied all this, and 
 
46 
 
 yet sometimes the fear will intrude itself — that all is 
 not safe yet. 
 
 There are, on the face of the building (the northern 
 side too, where the moss begins to grow) two adjacent 
 masses, which can never be separated without toppling 
 down the fabric itself. Your own hearts will tell you, 
 with what feelings the events of the day prompt me, a 
 Philadelphian, to speak to you as New Yorkers. If 
 any foreign traveller, like the Rev. Mr. Burnaby in se- 
 venteen hundred and fifty-nine, were to come to our 
 country now, to speculate, as he did, on the surface, 
 the venj surface of things, what might not be the im- 
 pressions on his mind, that passing events would produce. 
 He would see New York and Pennsylvania, not the 
 cradled infants they then were, but full grown, with gi- 
 gantic proportions, and animated by spirits as ardent 
 and generous as ever were breathed into humanity ; not 
 contending for " the trade of New Jersey ;" but striving 
 fairly, generously, actively, for the commerce of a new 
 world, which has sprung up in the wilderness. He 
 might find them, if he looked merely at the surface, and 
 took for his guides, those who now claim to be the 
 guides of public opinion, standing in the attitude of des- 
 perate gladiators, and (what gladiators would not do,) 
 hurling at each other every missile that revenge or 
 malice can supply. New York, seeming to triumph 
 over Pennsylvania in an hour of distress and difficulty; 
 
47 
 
 exulting over a brother, not fallen, not even bowed 
 down, but yielding, as the strong man yields to the 
 blast that he has often breasted, yielding, as his bro- 
 thers of the union have yielded before him, and now, in 
 this, his darkest hour, collecting his mighty energies to 
 stand as nobly and as proudly as before : — and Penn- 
 sylvania forced to think that New York, this beautiful 
 New York, through whose streets no one can walk 
 without admiration; from whose citizens no one can 
 part without gratitude ; that New York is its worst and 
 bitterest enemy. 
 
 It was not so in times gone by. It was not so dur- 
 ing the Revolution, or the times, almost as trying, 
 which immediately preceded it, when the spirit of the 
 social union was hovering over the councils of those 
 who met to raise the Confederation. The nearest and 
 dearest friend of John Jay of New York, was Charles 
 Thomson of Philadelphia; of Robert Morris of Penn- 
 sylvania, him who raised, and almost individually sus- 
 tained the finances of the Revolution, the best, most 
 confidential, most worthy friend, was Alexander Ham- 
 ilton of New York: and there is in existence in Phi- 
 ladelphia, a mass of most interesting correspondence 
 between these two great men, which illustrates more 
 strongly than any yet laid before the world, not only 
 their consummate sagacity, and foresight of the dim and 
 distant future, but the deep, fervent, and affectionate 
 friendship which subsisted between them. And with 
 
48 
 
 such canonized examples, shall we, the little men of a 
 fleeting hour which may have no other record but of 
 miserable squabbles about protested bills and specie 
 payments, allow the chains of sacred affection, thus 
 forged, to be thus rudely broken? 
 
 Nor is this local strife all. There are, it is to be 
 feared, elements of fierce combustion swelling and heav- 
 ing the ground beneath our feet. The pure, spirit-like 
 flame of loyalty to the state, of true love to the institu- 
 tions under which we live, begins to pale its ineffectual 
 fire before the ghastly glare of fierce fanaticism, and 
 the torch which wild enthusiasm waves aloft. Not 
 only is the genius of revolution exercising its sway on 
 the moss-covered governments of the old world, but a 
 subtle and busy daemon, the bastard progeny of one of 
 the parents of all revolution is at work, to pick out the 
 cement of affection which binds this Union together. 
 We are beginning to learn that fidelity to the Common 
 State is a secondary duty, and love to our distant fel- 
 low-citizen no duty at all. When the full fruition of 
 these doctrines is attained — when the hour arrives in 
 which the value of the Union is to be calculated — when 
 the balance is to be struck between what will be called 
 romantic notions of duty and allegiance, and substantial 
 items of profit and loss on one side, and dogmas of 
 transcendental morality on the other — when the holiest 
 of early associations and the purest affections, the love 
 of country, and the reverence of ancestry are to be 
 
49 
 
 weighed in the scale against American utilitarianism, or 
 American ultraism, it will be too late to talk of oiir 
 common legacy. But the time has not come. The 
 sympathies of republican America are yet active. The 
 heart of the South is not yet ossified by the pestilent 
 doctrine of the day — that what is profitable is right. 
 The Northern heart beats true to its allegiance — true 
 to a brother's love. 
 
 I have now concluded what I have to say to you, 
 leaving myself open to the just criticism and as just re- 
 buke, of having said too much, and yet so little. But 
 I have said enough, if in the heart of any one of those 
 who have so kindly listened, I have invigorated a senti- 
 ment of affection or of loyalty to the common state — 
 or have suggested one new thought connected with that 
 best of histories for us, our own. The foundation of 
 the Union was common right — its best security is com- 
 mon inheritance. The soil on which we stand is filled 
 with the bones of those who lived and died for us. 
 The spirits of the mighty dead are above us and 
 about us. Their affections are breathing around us. 
 The object of their toil, the recompense of their suffer- 
 ing was this Republican Union. To perpetuate that 
 Union, to awe to blushing silence all whispers of dis- 
 union, let them come whence they may, I would hang 
 on its walls, and stand in its noble porticoes, the pic- 
 tures of heroic deeds and the statues of the men that 
 did them. I would build high monuments on their 
 
 7 
 
50 
 
 graves, on which praises more just than the canon of 
 the day can boast of, should be written, and then, when 
 the agent of faction or mistaken zeal should venture to 
 breathe a word as to the Union's value, or the Consti- 
 tution's obligation, I would lead him thither, and as we 
 knelt in veneration together, would trust to some inter- 
 ceding spirit to draw from his lips as fervent a prayer 
 as mine, that the work of the Revolution may not be 
 in vain. 
 
APPENDIX, 
 
 A. Ex-President Adams. 
 The following letter has never before been published, and its existence is pro- 
 bably unknown to the eminent individual to whom it in part relates. It is a let- 
 ter from John Dickinson to Mr. Jefferson, written in 1801, on the election of the 
 latter to the presidency. By one of those curious transitions which often occur in 
 politics, Mr. Dickinson, in the latter part of his life, became the vehement partizan 
 of the extreme doctinnes of Mr. Jefferson and his school, and it was in the confidence 
 of personal and political friendship that the following letter was written. Mr. Dick- 
 inson was a leading member of the Society of Friends and resided in the State of De- 
 laware. During the latter part of his life, Mr. Jefferson and he corresponded on 
 terms of extreme affection. In March, 1801, Mr. Jefferson, in thanking his "very 
 dear and ancient friend" for a letter, says, (vol. 3, p. 454,) "No pleasure can exceed 
 that which I received from reading your letter of the 21st. It was like the joy we 
 expect in the mansions of the blessed, when received with the embraces of our fore- 
 fathers, we shall be welcomed as having done our part not unworthily of them." Af- 
 ter Mr. Dickinson died, in 1807, Mr. Jefferson's ecstatic affection for him seems to 
 have been buried in his grave; for in 1813, he wrote as follows, to another " very dear 
 and ancient friend," (p. 202.) " In the old Congress, you and I were together, and 
 the Jays, (!) and the Dickinsons, and other anti-independents were arrayed against 
 Us. They cherished the monarchy of England, and we the rights of our country- 
 men." A few years later, (p. 315,) he speaks of "the doubting Dickinson and 
 others who hung so heavily upon us." 
 
 Wilmington, the 21th of the Gih month, 1801. 
 My dear Friend, 
 
 Thy letter of the 21st, was received the day before yesterday, and as I value thy es- 
 teem at a very high rate, it gave me great pleasure. If it be possible that I can ren- 
 der any service to thee by offering my sentiments on things relating to this state, as 
 on the broader scale of the Union, I shall cheerfully express them, being fully per- 
 suaded that therein 1 shall, in the best manner I can, serve my country. When a 
 person, attentively surveying the world, observes the variety of opinions on the same 
 subjects, and the peculiarity of circumstances occasioning such variety, however he 
 may condemn some of thcni as erroneous or injurious, yet, if they are held in since- 
 rity, he will regard the holders of them with complacency and not with aversion. He 
 sees his fellow-creatures wandering from salutary truths, to which he wishes to bring 
 them back, for their own welfare as well as for the general benefit. These disposi- 
 tions are accordant with the goodness of the Common Parent, which has invested all 
 his rational creatures with equal rights, and with propensities favourable to mutual 
 felicity. Actual republicanism is a system of human invention, for carrying these 
 benevolent and sacred principles into effect, by the diffusion of happiness. Repub- 
 licans, therefore, cannot, in any consistency with the principles of their system, pro- 
 scribe any of their fellow-citizens merely for a difference of political opinion. On this 
 important point, real republicans are not governed by reasoning only. They discover 
 in themselves sensations superior to arguments. Their benignity is not completely 
 gratified, unless their adversaries share in their satisfaction. The prudence of such 
 a conduct is questioned by some ; its efficacy by others. To both it may be replied, 
 that parties consist of dissoluble materials; and that every country in Europe, and 
 particularly England, furnishes instances of parties, agitated by the most furious rage 
 against each other, of which no traces are now to be found, but in the pages of history. 
 There is one peril peculiar to a successful party, of which many examples, ancient 
 and modern, occur: that is, of its dividing. We have not been without a domestic 
 sample of this kind. In every age, and in every land, an eager selfishness has been 
 the source of this evil. At present, there is little to be apprehended by republicans 
 on this head, though it may not be improper to consider such an event as a possibility; 
 for then the attention will be duly engaged in guarding against it. The greatest dan- 
 ger to rulers is while the passions are in conflict ; that danger may be avoided by two 
 modes of proceeding. First, by engaging in measures that will gradually withdraw 
 the mind from the objects of contest; and more especially, if the measures are such 
 as both parties may approve. An agreement in these latter aflfairs will be a kind of 
 opiate against former feuds. Secondly, by turning the countenance of Government, 
 with respect and kindness, upon those who differ from the rulers in opinion. Here 
 immediately "the serious difficulties'' open to view. It is to be lamented, that many 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 who join with us arc not sufficiently acquainted with the wisdom or temper of their 
 profession. Their ardour is honest; too often tinctured with a vindictive spirit, and 
 sometimes dashed with more than a sufficiency of sellishness. These are not the best, 
 though frequently the most importunate of counsellors. 
 
 Perfectly assured, as I am, that the Chief Magistrate of my country aims at the 
 universal good of his fellow-citizens, and invited as I am by his obliging condescen- 
 sion, I let my thoughts t3ow from my pen without reserve. It seems to me impossible 
 for the President to have adopted a more wise method for obtaining useful informa- 
 tion, than that of being on terms of confidential intercourse with several persons in 
 each state, on whom he can rely. Yet that method will not solve every difficulty. 
 The character of the administration is to be fixed in the opinion of the world. It is 
 to be acknowledged to be mild, firm, generous, dignified. Disdaining to court its ene- 
 mies, it will not be unduly influenced by its friends. The Administrator will act as 
 the father of his country. 
 
 Taking this elevated station, I wish him to make two or three capital promotions 
 of his opponents, with proper pauses between the appointments, so that each may 
 make its full impression. I do not mean from among those in Congress, who, abus- 
 ing the trust reposed in them, and sinning against better knowledge, have for un- 
 worthy purposes, by a vile sophistry, striven to confound all distinction between right 
 and wrong, audaciously violated the constitution, and avowed doctrines utterly in- 
 compatible with the maxims of Liberty. Let us leave these Tarentines and the angry 
 deities they worship, in company together. Among tiicse promotions, I should like 
 to see the son of our cyiemij, John Adams, appointed minister to the Court of Peters- 
 burg. The more unexpected such an act, the greater will be its cfliect. It implies a 
 sincere confidence in the promoter, and that his mind moves in a region above the 
 stormy or the obscuring passions. Another consideration will come home to such a 
 heart as thine. This honourable regard to a falling family, will be soothing to them. 
 It may render them less unhappy, and as it is a blessed thing to have the power of 
 doing good to others, even a chance of its application is valuable. As to political con- 
 siderations, internal or external, they appear to me decisive. As to the first, it may 
 be sufficient to add to what has been said, that the warm persons who may be dis- 
 pleased, will become reconciled. As to the second, I have never heard any satisfac- 
 tory reason assigned, why the greatest Northern Power has been slighted by our 
 prompt advances to those that are inferior. The accession of a new Prince, the 
 points of public law now in controversy, and a number of accompanying circumstances, 
 seem to call upon us to form a Treaty that shall recognize principles favourable to all 
 mankind, and convince Russia that we wish to come to her market for some of her 
 manufactures. It strikes me that a perfectly friendly intercourse with that country, 
 and with France, is of more importance to us than with any other two portions in 
 Europe. 
 
 As to the other promotions that have been mentioned, by being remarkable, or sea- 
 sonable, they will operate desirably in tranquillizing minds that are too much heated. 
 These dispositions being made, the distribution of other offices may go on without 
 giving much disgust, especially as great changes must be made before one party can 
 be brought up to an equality with the other. Respecting this state, some of the best 
 mformed citizens are of opinion that no removals should take place, uidess for malver- 
 sation in office, before the next session of Congress. Called upon, as I am, by thy 
 friendship and love of country, I shall plainly answer the case proposed. If nothing 
 shall be decided by the instituted inquiry, yet, if "electioneering activity" be admitted 
 as a cause of removal, I question whether any man in these states has been more 
 zealous in that way, than the officer mentioned. Two persons here wish to succeed 
 him. John Bennet, an officer of merit in our revolutionary war, and Thomas Men- 
 denhall, who. as a private individual, suffered a good deal in that war. 1 have never 
 heard the character of either of them impeached ; they are both worthy republicans. 
 I think the last is the best qualified for the office. When any other alterations are 
 meditated in this state, 1 shall be ready to give my sentiments, with a cheerfulness and 
 impartiality becoming a man who fervently desires thy administration may be benefi- 
 cent to thy country, and honourable to thyself, and who is, with the strictest truth, 
 thy affectionate friend, 
 
 ^ JOHN DICKINSON. 
 
 It is unnecessary to add, that Mr. Dickinson's advice, with reference to Mr. John 
 duincy Adams, was not followed. Mr. Adams was appointed to the Russian mia- 
 sion ia 1809, by Mr. Ma,dison. 
 
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