Pennsylvania Colony Quotes

The haphazard unfolding of religious toleration described above occurred chiefly by default (and in New York, to enhance a commercial environment), not to promote religious freedom. However, three colonies present arguable claims to the narrative of America being a haven for religious liberty: Maryland, Rhode Island, and Pennsylvania.

In a 2017 poll taken by the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center, most Americans appeared ignorant of the fundamentals of the US Constitution. Thirty-seven percent could not name a single right protected by the First Amendment. Only one out of four Americans could name all three branches of government. One in three could not name any branch of government. In a 2018 survey conducted by the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, almost 75 percent of those polled were not able to identify the thirteen original colonies. Over half had no idea whom the United States fought in World War II. Less than 25 percent knew why colonists had fought the Revolutionary War. Twelve percent thought Dwight D. Eisenhower commanded troops in the Civil War.

The new Pennsylvania Fireplaces, as he called them, were initially somewhat popular, at £5 apiece, and papers around the colonies were filled with testimonials. “They ought to be called, both in justice and gratitude, Mr. Franklin’s stoves,” declared one letter writer in the Boston Evening Post. “I believe all who have experienced the comfort and benefit of them will join with me that the author of this happy invention merits a statue.” The governor of Pennsylvania was among the enthusiastic, and he offered Franklin what could have been a lucrative patent. “But I declined it,” Franklin noted in his autobiography. “As we enjoy great advantages from the invention of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours, and this we should do freely and generously.” It was a noble and sincere sentiment.

Franklin was concerning himself more and more with public affairs. He set forth a scheme for an Academy, which was taken up later and finally developed into the University of Pennsylvania; and he founded an "American Philosophical Society" for the purpose of enabling scientific men to communicate their discoveries to one another. He himself had already begun his electrical researches, which, with other scientific inquiries, he called on in the intervals of money-making and politics to the end of his life. In 1748 he sold his business in order to get leisure for study, having now acquired comparative wealth; and in a few years he had made discoveries that gave him a reputation with the learned throughout Europe. In politics he proved very able both as an administrator and as a controversialist; but his record as an office-holder is stained by the use he made of his position to advance his relatives. His most notable service in home politics was his reform of the postal system; but his fame as a statesman rests chiefly on his services in connection with the relations of the Colonies with Great Britain, and later with France.

British and perniciously bred into their economic life. The First Continental Congress, however, pledged itself to oppose the slave trade generally; Rhode Island, noting that “those who are desirous of enjoying all the advantages of liberty themselves should be willing to extend personal liberty to others,” ruled that slaves imported into the colony would thereafter be freed. Connecticut followed suit; Delaware prohibited the importation of slaves; and Pennsylvania taxed the trade so heavily as almost to extinguish it there. Abigail Adams spoke for many when she wrote on September 24, 1774, “I wish most sincerely there was not a slave in the province. It always appeared a most iniquitous scheme to me—to fight ourselves for what we are daily robbing and plundering from those who have as good a right to freedom as we have.

At the time I establish'd myself in Pennsylvania, there was not a good bookseller's shop in any of the colonies to the southward of Boston. In New York and Philad'a the printers were indeed stationers; they sold only paper, etc., almanacs, ballads, and a few common school-books. Those who lov'd reading were oblig'd to send for their books from England; the members of the Junto had each a few. We had left the alehouse, where we first met, and hired a room to hold our club in. I propos'd that we should all of us bring our books to that room, where they would not only be ready to consult in our conferences, but become a common benefit, each of us being at liberty to borrow such as he wish'd to read at home. This was accordingly done, and for some time contented us. Finding the advantage of this little collection, I propos'd to render the benefit from books more common, by commencing a public subscription library.

With its rapidly increasing population, religious and royal wars, Irish ethnic cleansing, and fear of rising crime, Britain excelled among the European imperial powers in shipping its people into bondage in distant lands. An original inspiration had flowed from small-scale shipments of Portuguese children to its Asian colonies before the Dutch supplanted the Portuguese as the world's premier long-range shippers. Vagrant minors, kidnapped persons, convicts, and indentured servants from the British Isles might labor under differing names in law and for longer or shorter terms in the Americas, but the harshness of their lives dictated that they be, in the worlds of Daniel Defoe, "more properly called slaves." First in Barbados, then in Jamaica, then in North America, notably in Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, bound Britons, Scots, and Irish furnished a crucial workforce in the Americas in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In 1618, the City of London and the Virginia Company forged an agreement to transport vagrant children. London would pay £5 per head to the company for shipment on the Duty, hence the children's sobriquet "Duty boys." Supposedly bound for apprenticeship, these homeless children—a quarter of them girls—were then sold into field labor for twenty pounds of tobacco each.

Local Colonial Government in Pennsylvania," in Town and Country, ed.Bruce C. Daniels (Middletown, Conn., 1978),216-37.

In seven counties it was necessary to issue search and seizure warrants or arrest warrants or both compelling colonial prothonotaries to turn over records to the Revolutionary government.Robert L.Brunhouse, The Counter-Revolution in Pennsylvania, 1776-1790 (Harrisburg, Pa.,1971), 35-36.

RAYNAL, ABBE. Philosophical and Political History of the British Settlements and Trade in North America. Translated from the French. (Dependence of Great Britain upon colonies and Discussion of taxation. Colonies held as "Shackled in their Industry and Commerce," etc.) 2 Vols. Edinburgh: 1776. Record of Indentures, Individuals Bound Out as Apprentices, Servants, etc., and of German and Other Redemptioners in the ofice of the Mayor of the City of Philadelphia. October 3, 1771 to October 5, 1773. Before Mayors John Gibson and William Fisher. MS. Presented to American Phil. Society by Thos. P. Roberts, 1835. Reproduced in publications of Pennsylvania Germany Society, Vol. XVI, Lancaster, Pa., 1907. 321 closely printed pages averaging about twenty-two names to each double page or above 3,500 names recorded; both recently arrived and transfers recorded. Full description of terms, considerations, previous place of residence, etc. RECORD BEFORE THE MAYOR. (1745.) James Hamilton, Register. MS. contributed by George W. Neifle, Chester, Pa. Pa. Mag. Hist. and Biog., Vols. 30, 31 and 32. REDEMPTIONERS, REGISTRY OF THE "Book A" Germans, etc. (1785-1804); "Book C" (1817-1831). MSS. Library Historical Society of Pennsylvania. RICHARDS, ML H. "German Emigration from New York Province into Pennsylvania," Pennsylvania-German Society Proceedings, Vol. VII Lancaster: 1899.

The negro population grew by leaps and bounds, until on the eve of the Revolution it amounted to more than half a million. In five states—Maryland, Virginia, the two Carolinas, and Georgia—the slaves nearly equalled or actually exceeded the whites in number. In South Carolina they formed almost two-thirds of the population. Even in the Middle colonies of Delaware and Pennsylvania about one-fifth of the inhabitants were from Africa.

Through a diversity of Bible-based beliefs, Colonial America firmly founded its culture, laws, and government on the Judeo-Christian worldview. That common faith was clearly expressed in the founding documents of all thirteen American colonies: The Massachusetts Bay Colony’s charter recorded an intent to spread the “knowledge and obedience of the only true God and Savior of mankind, and the Christian faith,” much as the Mayflower Compact cited a commitment to “the Glory of God, and Advancement of the Christian faith.” Connecticut’s Fundamental Orders officially called for “an orderly and decent Government established according to God” that would “maintain and preserve the liberty and purity of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus.” In New Hampshire, the Agreement of the Settlers at Exeter vowed to establish a government “in the name of Christ” that “shall be to our best discerning agreeable to the Will of God.” Rhode Island’s colonial charter invoked the “blessing of God” for “a sure foundation of happiness to all America.” The Articles of Confederation of the United Colonies of New England stated, “Whereas we all came into these parts of America with one and the same end and aim, namely, to advance the Kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ and to enjoy the liberties of the Gospel …” New York’s Duke’s Laws prohibited denial of “the true God and his Attributes.” New Jersey’s founding charter vowed, “Forasmuch as it has pleased God, to bring us into this Province…we may be a people to the praise and honor of his name.” Delaware’s original charter officially acknowledged “One almighty God, the Creator, Upholder and Ruler of the World.” Pennsylvania’s charter officially cited a “Love of Civil Society and Christian Religion” as motivation for the colony’s founding. Maryland’s charter declared an official goal of “extending the Christian Religion.” Virginia’s first charter commissioned colonization as “so noble a work, which may, by the Providence of Almighty God, hereafter tend to the…propagating of Christian Religion.” The charter for the Colony of Carolina proclaimed “a laudable and pious zeal for the propagation of the Christian faith.” Georgia’s charter officially cited a commitment to the “propagating of Christian religion.”27

Benjamin Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America. A noted polymath, Franklin was a leading author and printer, satirist, political theorist, politician, scientist, inventor, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat. As a scientist, he was a major figure in the Enlightenment and the history of physics for his discoveries and theories regarding electricity. He invented the lightning rod, bifocals, the Franklin stove, a carriage odometer, and the glass 'armonica'. He formed both the first public lending library in America and first fire department in Pennsylvania. He was an early proponent of colonial unity, and as a political writer and activist he supported the idea of an American nation.[2] As a diplomat during the American Revolution he secured the French alliance that helped to make independence of the United States possible. Franklin is credited as being foundational to the roots of American values and character, a marriage of the practical and democratic Puritan values of thrift, hard work, education, community spirit, self-governing institutions, and opposition to authoritarianism both political and religious, with the scientific and tolerant values of the Enlightenment. In the words of Henry Steele Commager, "In Franklin could be merged the virtues of Puritanism without its defects, the illumination of the Enlightenment without its heat."[3]

the evil one was no laughing matter for the Puritans, and almost anyone preaching a different doctrine than what they were used to was immediately suspect.

As the years passed, these two religious worlds would continue to collide, as one would try to convince the other of their ideological superiority. And in this struggle, it must be said that it was the Puritans who bared their teeth.

In many ways, this charter for West Jersey (later to become Pennsylvania) was a forerunner of what the actual United States Constitution would entail. “Concession and Agreements” contains general guidelines for the community, with an additional listing of allowed civil liberties, which are very much in line with what would eventually become the US Bill of Rights. William Penn, who lived one hundred years before the founding of the United States, is not usually considered a Founding Father, but there are those who would argue that he very well should be.

a group of Mennonites in Germantown, Pennsylvania, rose up. The Mennonites were a Christian denomination from the German- and Dutch-speaking areas of central Europe. During the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, orthodox authorities were killing them for their religious beliefs. Mennonites didn’t want to leave behind one place of oppression to build another in America, so they circulated an antislavery petition on April 18, 1688, denouncing oppression due to skin color by equating it with oppression due to religion. Both oppressions were wrong. This petition—the 1688 Germantown Petition Against Slavery—was the first piece of writing that was antiracist (word check!) among European settlers in colonial America.

Philadelphia became the Ulster Scots’ most popular port of entry for two reasons. The first was that the Pennsylvania colony had been created with an eye toward accommodating religious freedom and thus largely welcomed the Ulster dissenters , at least initially. And the second— equally as important—was that the communities in New England and New York wanted nothing to do with them.

Benjamin Franklin, who declared German-speaking public schools in his home colony of Pennsylvania illegal in 1751 (during the British colonial period, in other words), was so deeply concerned about German immigrants’ reluctance to assimilate that he worried they would “Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them.”20 As early as the midnineteenth century, Germans in the United States and in Germany founded numerous associations and organizations whose sole purpose was to facilitate the cultivation of their mother tongue, and to protect the home culture from the constant assault of Americanization

As New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Carolina looked to attract settlers, their proprietors focused on two sets of incentives: religious indifference and generous land grants. The land granted had a quasi tax placed on it, known as a quitrent. For the proprietors of vast lands, receiving the income of the quitrents, along with making the remaining land more valuable as it became populated, was the basic business model. As it turned out, the least religiously tolerant and theologically most uniform place in English America was New England; rules of Sabbath and observation were codified in most local laws. Everyone else was primarily interested in the pursuit of money, and if that meant tolerance, so be it. The Lords Proprietors of Carolina offered an especially unique incentive. For every family member brought over, the family was granted 150 acres. But the definition of family was a generous and loose one. Looking to populate Carolina from the English holdings in the Caribbean, the Lords Proprietors counted all Africans as members of their owner’s family, entitling the owner to an additional 150 acres for each slave. By 1720 this catalyzing structure led to people of African descent becoming the majority of the colony—a condition that would hold for generations.

And that was the significant difference between Great Britain’s West Indian colonies and her North American ones. Maturing colonies like Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Virginia controlled not a single seat in Parliament; they were unprotected against the taxes and rules so arbitrarily imposed; they kept their politicians at home, where they mastered those intricacies of rural American politics that would carry them to freedom.

None other than John Adams expanded on the theme of the armed citizen in his influential Novanglus series, a refutation of former Whig and now Tory "Massachusettensis" (Daniel Leonard), who argued that Parliament's authority extended to the colonies. In response to the suggestion that the colonies could not defend themselves, partly because the colonies south of Pennsylvania had no men to spare, Adams wrote: But we know better; we know that all those colonies have a back country, which is inhabited by a hardy, robust people, many of whom are emigrants from New England, and habituated, like multitudes of New England men, to carry their fuzees113 or rifles upon one shoulder, to defend themselves against the Indians, while they carry their axes, scythes, and hoes upon the other, to till the ground.

There are now many overgrown trails along the twenty-five years of the meandering research for this book, which began when I was a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania.

Yankees also combined what you might call social conservatism with political liberalism. Traditional and stern in their private lives, they believed in communal compassion and government action. They believed that individuals have a collective responsibility to preserve the “good order.” Even in the mid-eighteenth century, the New England colonies had levels of taxation for state and local governments that were twice as high as the levels in colonies such as Pennsylvania and Virginia. They also put tremendous faith in education. For the past 350 years, New England schools have been among the best in the United States. New Englanders have, to this day, some of the highest levels of educational attainment in the nation.19

Olaudah Equiano, born sometime around 1745 in a rural community somewhere within the confines of the Kingdom of Benin. Kidnapped from his home at the age of eleven, Equiano was eventually sold to British slavers operating in the Bight of Biafra, from whence he was conveyed first to Barbados, then to a plantation in colonial Virginia. Equiano’s further adventures—and there were many—are narrated in his autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano: or, Gustavus Vassa, the African, published in 1789. After spending much of the Seven Years’ War hauling gunpowder on a British frigate, he was promised his freedom, denied his freedom, sold to several owners—who regularly lied to him, promising his freedom, and then broke their word—until he passed into the hands of a Quaker merchant in Pennsylvania, who eventually allowed him to purchase his liberty. Over the course of his later years he was to become a successful merchant in his own right, a best-selling author, an Arctic explorer, and eventually, one of the leading voices of English Abolitionism. His eloquence and the power of his life story played significant parts in the movement that led to the British abolition of the slave trade in 1807.

I am an obsessive-compulsive reader and a history junkie. I brake by rote at every historical marker, I buy out museum bookstores, and for years my interest in colonial forts and Shaker villages so exhausted my two children that they are now permanently allergic to the past. I can tell you, right down to the hour, everything that happened at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, during the first week of July 1863, and each setback that Franklin Roosevelt endured during World War II feels like it happened to me.

People often point to the London Metropolitan Police, who were formed in the 1820s by Sir Robert Peel,” Vitale said when we met. “They are held up as this liberal ideal of a dispassionate, politically neutral police with the support of the citizenry. But this really misreads the history. Peel is sent to manage the British occupation of Ireland. He’s confronted with a dilemma. Historically, peasant uprisings, rural outrages were dealt with by either the local militia or the British military. In the wake of the Napoleonic Wars, in the need for soldiers in other parts of the British Empire, he is having more and more difficulty managing these disorders. In addition, when he does call out the militia, they often open fire on the crowd and kill lots of people, creating martyrs and inflaming further unrest. He said, ‘I need a force that can manage these outrages without inflaming passions further.’ He developed the Peace Preservation Force, which was the first attempt to create a hybrid military-civilian force that can try to win over the population by embedding itself in the local communities, taking on some crime control functions, but its primary purpose was always to manage the occupation. He then exports that model to London as the industrial working classes are flooding the city, dealing with poverty, cycles of boom and bust in the economy, and that becomes their primary mission. “The creation of the very first state police force in the United States was the Pennsylvania State Police in 1905,” Vitale went on. “For the same reasons. It was modeled similarly on U.S. occupation forces in the Philippines. There was a back-and-forth with personnel and ideas. What happened was local police were unable to manage the coal strikes and iron strikes. . . . They needed a force that was more adherent to the interests of capital. . . . Interestingly, for these small-town police forces in a coal mining town there was sometimes sympathy. They wouldn’t open fire on the strikers. So, the state police force was created to be the strong arm for the law. Again, the direct connection between colonialism and the domestic management of workers. . . . It’s a two-way exchange. As we’re developing ideas throughout our own colonial undertakings, bringing those ideas home, and then refining them and shipping them back to our partners around the world who are often despotic regimes with close economic relationships to the United States. There’s a very sad history here of the U.S. exporting basically models of policing that morph into death squads and horrible human rights abuses.” The almost exclusive reliance on militarized police to deal with profound inequality and social problems is turning poor neighborhoods in cities such as Chicago into failed states. The “broken windows” policy, adopted by many cities, argues that disorder produces crime. It criminalizes minor infractions, upending decades of research showing that social dislocation leads to crime. It creates an environment where the poor are constantly harassed, fined, and arrested for nonsubstantive activities.

This period saw the establishment of the first Swedish colony in America. On March 1, 1638, a large party of Swedes, who had crossed the ocean under the command of the celebrated Peter Minuit, took possession of land on the banks of the Delaware River. They called their settlement (on the site that later became Wilmington) Fort Christina, after their royal princess, and the colony which they were founding New Sweden. The first Lutheran congregation in America was established here by the Reverend Reorus Porkillus and five years later, the colonists from Delaware pushed into what is now Pennsylvania, where they founded the settlement of Upland, on the site where Chester now stands. Among the gifts these first Swedish colonists brought to America were the log cabin and the steam bath. The new colony, which never numbered more than 200 Swedes, did not long survive. In 1655, it was attacked and captured by the Dutch, who incorporated New Sweden into what was then New Netherland.

Not surprisingly, it didn’t take the English long to make changes; 2 days after Stuyvesant's surrender, New Amsterdam was once again blessed with a new name. This massive territory was now to be called “New York.” The now crown-owned region traced its borders around present-day New Jersey, Delaware, Vermont, and included portions of Maine, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania. The name paid homage to James II, the Duke of York and soon-to-be King of England.

Americans have always explored the mysteries of conversing with the departed. In Colonial Pennsylvania while prominent Quakers tried to convince members of their own denomination to give up divination by geomancy, palmistry, and astrology, they were themselves experimenting with not just communication with the dead but also, like their brethren back home in England, inspired by the New Testament, a few tried to raise the dead. Even less experimental Quakers owed much to the great German mystic Jakob Böhme, the Kabbalah, and Rosicrucian and alchemical undercurrents. Spiritual healing was a constant theme.