Volume II Part 12 (1/2)
III
THE REALITY OF PENN'S TREATY
(1682)
BY GEORGE E. ELLIS[1]
There has been much discussion of late years concerning the far-famed Treaty of Penn with the Indians. A circ.u.mstance, which has all the interest both of fact and of poetry, was confirmed by such unbroken testimony of tradition that history seemed to have innumerable records of it in the hearts and memories of each generation. But as there appears no doc.u.ment or parchment of such criteria as to satisfy all inquiries, historical skepticism has ventured upon the absurd length of calling in question the fact of the treaty. The Historical Society of Pennsylvania, with commendable zeal, has bestowed much labor upon the questions connected with the treaty, and the results which have been attained can scarcely fail to satisfy a candid inquirer. All claim to a peculiar distinction for William Penn, on account of the singularity of his just proceedings in this matter is candidly waived, because the Swedes, the Dutch, and the English had previously dealt thus justly with the natives. It is in comparison with Pizarro and Cortes that the colonists of all other nations in America appear to an advantage; but the fame of William Penn stands, and ever will stand, preeminent for unexceptionable justice and peace in his relations with the natives.
Penn had several meetings for conference and treaties with the Indians, besides those which he held for the purchase of lands. But unbroken and reverently cherished tradition, beyond all possibility of contradition, has designated one great treaty held under a large elm-tree, at Shackamaxon (now Kensington)[2], a treaty which Voltaire justly characterizes as ”never sworn to, and never broken.” In Penn's Letter to the Free Society of Traders, dated August 16, 1683, he refers to his conferences with the Indians. Two deeds, conveying land to him, are on record, both of which bear an earlier date than this letter; namely, June 23d and July 14th of the same year. He had designed to make a purchase in May; but having been called off to a conference with Lord Baltimore, he postponed the business till June.
The ”Great Treaty” was doubtless unconnected with the purchase of land, and was simply a treaty of amity and friends.h.i.+p, in confirmation of one previously held, by Penn's direction, by Markham, on the same spot; that being a place which the Indians were wont to use for this purpose. It is probable that the treaty was held on the last of November, 1682; that the Delawares, the Mingos, and other Susquehanna tribes formed a large a.s.sembly on the occasion; that written minutes of the conference were made, and were in possession of Governor Gordon, who states nine conditions as belonging to them in 1728, but are now lost; and that the substance of the treaty is given in Penn's Letter to the Free Traders. These results are satisfactory, and are sufficient corroborated by known facts and doc.u.ments. The Great Treaty, being distinct from a land purchase, is significantly distinguished in history and tradition.
The inventions of romance and imagination could scarcely gather round this engaging incident attractions surpa.s.sing in its own simple and impressive interest. Doubtless Clarkson has given a fair representation of it, if we merely disconnect from his account the statement that the Indians were armed, and all that confounds the treaty of friends.h.i.+p with the purchase of lands. Penn wore a sky-blue sash of silk around his waist, as the most simple badge. The pledges there given were to hold their sanct.i.ty ”while the creeks and rivers run, and while the sun, moon, and stars endure.”
While the whites preserved in written records the memory of such covenants, the Indians had their methods for perpetuating in safe channels their own relations. They cherished in grateful regard, they repeated to their children and to the whites, the terms of the Great Treaty. The Delawares called William Penn _Miquon_, in their own language, though they seem to have adopted the name given him by the Iroquois, _Onas_; both which terms signify a quill or pen. Benjamin West's picture of the treaty is too imaginative for a historical piece. He makes Penn of a figure and aspect which would become twice the years that had pa.s.sed over his head. The elm-tree was spared in the war of the American Revolution, when there was distress for firewood, the British officer, Simcoe, having placed a sentinel beneath it for protection. It was prostrated by the wind on the night of Sat.u.r.day, March 3, 1810. It was of gigantic size, and the circles around its heart indicated an age of nearly three centuries. A piece of it was sent to the Penn mansion at Stoke Poges, in England, where it is properly commemorated. A marble monument, with suitable inscription was ”placed by the Penn Society A.D. 1827 to mark the site of the Great Elm Tree.”
[1] Mr. Ellis was a Unitarian clergyman, long pastor of a church at Charlestown, Ma.s.s.
[2] Kensington is now a part of Philadelphia, being the northeastern section. It lies on the Delaware River, about two miles distant from the City Hall, and is a center of the s.h.i.+p-building industry.
THE CHARTER OAK AFFAIR IN CONNECTICUT
(1682)
BY ALEXANDER JOHNSTON[1]
In December, 1686, the Hartford authorities were called upon to measure their strength again with their old antagonist. Andros had landed at Boston, commissioned as governor of all New England, and bent on abrogating the charters. Following Dudley's lead, he wrote to Treat, suggesting that by this time the trial of the writs had certainly gone against the colony; and that the authorities would do much to commend the colony to his majesty's good pleasure by entering a formal surrender of the charter. The colony authorities were possibly as well versed in the law of the case as Andros, and they took good care to do nothing of the sort; and, as the event showed, they thus saved the charter.
The a.s.sembly met as usual in October, 1687; but their records show that they were in profound doubt and distress. Andros was with them, accompanied by some sixty regular soldiers, to enforce his demand for the charter. It is certain that he did not get it, tho the records, as usual, are cautious enough to give no reason why. Tradition is responsible for the story of the charter oak. The a.s.sembly had met the royal governor in the meeting-house; the demand for the charter had been made; and the a.s.sembly had exhausted the resources of language to show to Andros how dear it was to them, and how impossible it was to give it up. Andros was immovable; he had watched that charter with longing eyes from the banks of the Hudson, and he had no intention of giving up his object now that the king had put him in power on the banks of the Connecticut.
Toward evening the case had become desperate. The little democracy was at last driven into a corner, where its old policy seemed no longer available; it must resist openly, or make a formal surrender of its charter. Just as the lights were lighted, the legal authorities yielded so far as to order the precious doc.u.ment to be brought in and laid on the table before the eyes of Andros. Then came a little more debate. Suddenly the lights were blown out; Captain Wadsworth, of Hartford, carried off the charter, and hid it in a hollow oak-tree on the estate of the Wyllyses, just across the ”riveret;” and when the lights were relighted the colony was no longer able to comply with Andros's demand for a surrender.
Altho the account of the affair is traditional, it is difficult to see any good grounds for impeaching it on that account. It supplies, in the simplest and most natural manner, a blank in the Hartford proceedings of Andros which would otherwise be quite unaccountable.
His plain purpose was to force Connecticut into a position where she must either surrender the charter or resist openly. He failed: the charter never was in his possession; and the official records a.s.sign no reason for his failure. The colony was too prudent, and Andros too proud to put the true reason on record. Tradition supplies the gap with an exactness which proves itself.
Having done all that men could do, Treat and his a.s.sociates bowed for the time to superior force. Andros was allowed to read his commission, and Treat, Fitz-John and Wait Winthrop, and John Allyn received appointments as members of his council for New England. John Allyn made what the governor doubtless considered to be the closing record for all time. But it is noteworthy that the record was so written as to flatter Andros's vanity, while it really put in terms a declaration of over-powering force, on which the commonwealth finally succeeded in saving her charter from invalidation, it is as follows:
”At a General Court at Hartford, October 31st, 1887, his excellency, Sir Edmund Andross, knight and Captain General and Governor of His Majesty's territories and dominions in New England, by order of His Majesty James the Second, King of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland, the 31st of October, 1687, took into his hands the government of the colony of Connecticut, it being by His Majesty annexed to Ma.s.sachusetts and other colonies under his excellency's government.
”FINIS.”
The government was destined to last far longer than either the governor or his government. But, while it lasted, Andros's government was bitterly hated, and with good reason. The reasons are more peculiarly appropriate to the history of Ma.s.sachusetts, where they were felt more keenly than in Connecticut; but even in Connecticut, poor as was the field for plunder, and distant as it was from the ”ring” which surrounded Andros, the exactions of the new system were wellnigh intolerable to a people whose annual expense of government had been carefully kept down to the lowest limits, so that, says Bancroft, they ”did not exceed four thousand dollars; and the wages of the chief justice were ten s.h.i.+llings a day while on service.”...
April, 1689, came at last. The people of Boston, at the first news of the English Revolution, clapped Andros into custody. May 9, the old Connecticut authorities quietly resumed their functions, and called the a.s.sembly together for the following month. William and Mary were proclaimed with great favor. Not a word was said about the disappearance or reapeparance of the charter; but the charter government was put into full effect again, as if Andros had never interrupted it. An address was sent to the king, asking that the charter be no further interfered with; but operations under it went on as before. No decided action was taken by the home government for some years, except that its appointment of the New York governor, Fletcher, to the command of the Connecticut militia, implied a decision that the Connecticut charter had been superseded.
Late in 1693 Fitz-John Winthrop was sent to England as agent to obtain a confirmation of the charter. He secured an emphatic legal opinion from Attorney General Somers, backed by those of Treby and Ward, that the charter was entirely valid, Treby's concurrent opinion taking this shape: ”I am of the same opinion, and, as this matter is stated, there is no ground of doubt.” The basis of the opinion was that the charter had been granted under the great seal; that it had not been surrendered under the common seal of the colony, nor had any judgment of record been entered against it; that its operation had merely been interfered with by overpowering force; that the charter therefore remained valid; and that the peaceable submission of the colony to Andros was merely an illegal suspension of lawful authority. In other words, the pa.s.sive att.i.tude of the colonial government had disarmed Andros so far as to stop the legal proceedings necessary to forfeit the charter; and then prompt action, at the critical moment, secured all that could be secured under the circ.u.mstances. William was willing enough to retain all possible fruits of James's tyranny, as he showed by enforcing the forfeiture of the Ma.s.sachusetts charter; but the law in this case was too plain, and he ratified the lawyers' opinion in April, 1694. The charter had escaped its enemies at last, and its escape is a monument of one of the advantages of a real democracy.