Part 5 (1/2)

[21] The ambiguity of the term ”New Purchase” becomes apparent once it is recognized that territorial acquisitions of both Stanwix treaties adopted that appellation.

[22] Dunaway, _The Scotch-Irish of Colonial Pennsylvania_, pp. 28-49.

[23] Northumberland County Courthouse, Sunbury, Pa., Penns & C.

1782-1811 Tax a.s.sessments, Cabinet #1. This book, found in the cellar of the courthouse, also contains the Pine Creek a.s.sessment for 1789.

[24] _Pennsylvania Archives_, Third Series, XIX, 618-622.

[25] _Pennsylvania Archives_, First Series, XII, 286-287. The squatters, apparently warned in advance, had practically all vacated the premises.

However, neighbors across the river willingly gave their names.

[26] _Pennsylvania Archives_, Third Series, XIX, 437, 468, 557, 711, 790.

[27] _Pennsylvania Archives_, Second Series, III (1875), 217, 518-522.

The original pet.i.tions of 1781 and 1784 are located in the State Archives, Harrisburg.

[28] Penn's colony was well advertised, and the emphasis upon liberty of conscience, when contrasted with the restrictions of the Test Act, gives ample support for the significance of liberty as a motivating factor.

However, economic causes predominated.

[29] Ray Allen Billington, _Westward Expansion_ (New York, 1960), p.

380. Billington refers here to the distribution-pre-emption measure of 1841, whereas Congress actually recognized squatters' rights in the act of 1830.

[30] Williams, ”The Scotch-Irish in Pennsylvania,” p. 382.

CHAPTER THREE

_The Politics of Fair Play_

The political system of these predominantly Scotch-Irish squatters in the Susquehanna Valley, along the West Branch, offers a vivid demonstration of the impact of the frontier on the development of democratic inst.i.tutions. Occupying lands beyond the reach of the Provincial legislature, with some forty families of mixed national origin in residence by 1773, these frontier ”outlaws” had to devise some solution to the question of authority in their territory.[1] Their solution was the extra-legal creation of _de facto_ rule historically known as the Fair Play system. The following is a contemporary description of that system:

There existed a great number of locations of the third of April, 1769, for the choicest lands on the West Branch of Susquehanna, between the mouths of _Lycoming_ and _Pine creeks_; but the proprietaries, from extreme caution, the result of that experience, which had also produced the very penal laws of 1768, and 1769, and the proclamation already stated, had prohibited any surveys being made beyond the _Lycoming_. In the mean time, in violation of all law, a set of hardy adventurers, had from time to time, seated themselves on this doubtful territory. They made improvements, and formed a very considerable population. It is true, so far as regarded the rights to real property, they were not under the protection of the laws of the country; and were we to adopt the visionary theories of some philosophers, who have drawn their arguments from a supposed state of nature, we might be led to believe that the state of these people would have been a state of continual warfare; and that in contests for property the weakest must give way to the strongest. To prevent the consequences, real or supposed, of this state of things, they formed a mutual compact among themselves. They annually elected a tribunal, in rotation, of three of their settlers, whom they called _fair play men_, who were to decide all controversies, and settle disputed boundaries. From their decision there was no appeal. There could be no resistance.

The decree was enforced by the whole body, who started up in ma.s.s, at the mandate of the court, and execution and eviction was as sudden, and irresistible as the judgment. Every new comer was obliged to apply to this powerful tribunal, and upon his solemn engagement to submit in all respects, _to the law of the land_, he was permitted to take possession of some vacant spot. Their decrees were, however, just; and when their settlements were recognized by law, and _fair play_ had ceased, their decisions were received in evidence, and confirmed by judgments of courts.[2]

The idea of authority from the people was nothing new; in fact, it is as old as the Greeks. Nor is the concept of a ”social compact,” here implied, particularly novel to the American scene. The theory was that people hitherto unconnected a.s.sembled and gave their consent to be governed by a certain ruler or rulers under some particular form of government.[3] Theoretically justified by John Locke in his persuasive defense of the Glorious Revolution, it had been practiced in Plymouth, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Hamps.h.i.+re, where practical necessity had required it for settlements occasionally made outside charter limits. The frontier, whether in New England or in the West Branch Valley, created a practical necessity which made popular consent the basis of an actual government.

They were not ”covenanters” in the Congregational sense of having brought an established church with them to the Fair Play territory. But the Fair Play settlers understood and subscribed to the principle of popular control, which was fundamental to such solemnly made and properly ratified agreements. Separated from the authority of the crown, detached from the authority of the hierarchy of the church by the Protestant Reformation, possessing no American tradition of extensive political experience, these settlers could only depend upon themselves as proper authorities for their own political system.

Furthermore, the great majority of the settlers who came to the Fair Play territory came from families who had left their homes in the old country to escape political, economic, and social restrictions, only to be made unwelcome in their new homes in the settled areas of Pennsylvania. Displaced persons in a new country, they were forced by lives of conflict to seek better opportunity by moving to undeveloped lands. As a result, they settled along the West Branch of the Susquehanna, beyond the authority of the crown and outside the pressures of the Provincial legislature.

If man is a predatory beast in his natural state, a belief some expressed in the eighteenth century, then it follows naturally that every society must have some agency of authority and control. The universally standardized solution to the problem of social control is government. The Fair Play system was the answer on this Susquehanna frontier to the need for some legitimate agency of force.[4] This system vested authority in the people through annual elections of a tribunal of three of their number. The members of the tribunal were given quasi-executive, legislative, and judicial powers over all the settlers in the West Branch Valley ”beyond the purchase line.”[5]

Although no record of any of these elections has been preserved, the composition of the Fair Play tribunal in 1776 has been established and verified by subsequent reviews of land claims in the county courts.[6]

Also, two of the members of the tribunal of 1775 are identified in a pre-emption claim made before the Lycoming County Court in 1797.[7] It is interesting to note that among these five men are represented the three most prominent national stock groups in the area, with the Scotch-Irish, as our earlier sample demonstrated, in the majority.

Lacking returns of the annual elections of the tribunal and minutes of its actual meetings, we have only Smith's _Laws of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania_, pet.i.tions from the Fair Play settlers, and the subsequent review of land questions by the Northumberland and Lycoming County courts to evaluate the tribunal, its members, and its procedures.

However, these data are more than adequate in giving us a picture of this _de facto_, though illegal, rule, which existed in the West Branch Valley until the Treaty of Fort Stanwix in 1784 brought the territory under Commonwealth jurisdiction. The composition of the electorate varied with the fluctuations in population caused by the two Stanwix treaties, the Revolution, and the Great Runaway.

Since property and religious qualifications were the primary prerequisites to voting at this time, it seems logical to a.s.sume that a similar basis for suffrage operated in the West Branch Valley.[8] Having no regular church--the first, a Presbyterian, was not organized until 1792--property qualifications appear to have been the basis for what, in this area, was practically universal manhood suffrage. Due to the fact that the entire settlement consisted of squatters, practically all of the heads of households were property holders, regardless of the questionable legality of their holdings. The tax lists indicate holdings of some 100 to 300 acres on the average for residents, so it is particularly difficult to know whether or not a minimum holding requirement prevailed. The Provincial suffrage requirement in this period was generally fifty acres of land or 50 of personal property.[9]