Part 5: “The Sphere of Political Tumult”
On May 20, 1774, Paul Revere rode into Philadelphia, not to announce “the British are coming!” but to gather support from Philadelphians in opposition to the recent Coercive (“Intolerable”) British acts closing the port of Boston. At a meeting of several hundred citizens the next day at the City Tavern, a vote was taken to form a “Committee of Correspondence” in support of Boston. Leaders of this new, organized opposition to British policies included many with ties to the university, including Rev. William Smith, Charles Thomson, Thomas Mifflin, and others.[1]
The Stamp Act crisis of 1765–66, which provoked strong resistance in Philadelphia (and even threats to Franklin’s home), had been a harbinger. In 1770, students at the Commencement discussed the Non-Importation resolutions and debated resistance to governmental authority. For a time, there was a notable degree of unified opinion and collective organization among elite Philadelphians. Smith was a key participant in meetings between more “radical” and more moderate citizens, negotiating with a hesitant Pennsylvania Assembly and preparing messages to Boston. A symbolic moment of civic unity took place in May 1775, when the College hosted the Continental Congress at their Commencement ceremony, with students proclaiming support for “Liberty” to a large audience of Philadelphia’s elite.
At the same time, new groups of leaders not part of the older city elites had begun to reshape these debates and to pose their own questions about the future. These included shopkeepers, artisans, printers, and teachers. One was Benjamin Rush, Professor of Chemistry in the Medical School; others were James Cannon, student and later Professor of Mathematics in the College, and David Rittenhouse, astronomer and clockmaker. All would play leading roles in the political battles to come.
Print culture reflected and also shaped these rapid, even dizzying political changes. In Philadelphia as elsewhere, increasing numbers of pamphlets, broadsides, and newspapers suggested that more voices with a wide variety of political viewpoints were speaking up to present their own visions of American “Liberty.”
One figure who dramatically experienced the whiplash of change—the “sphere of political tumult,” as he called it in sermon[2]—was Rev. Jacob Duché. A member of the first College of Philadelphia class, friend of Smith, Franklin, and Rush, and brother-in-law to classmates Francis Hopkinson and John Morgan, Duché became assistant minister and then rector of Christ Church and St. Peter’s Church. He was a published essayist and taught Oratory at the Academy. In the early 1770s, Duché preached in favor of the colonists’ struggles, leading a prayer during the first Continental Congress, and was chosen chaplain to Congress after the Declaration of Independence. But in 1777 he remained in Philadelphia during the British occupation, and a letter he wrote to Washington arguing for negotiation and against the Declaration turned public sentiment against him. He departed in 1778 for a long exile in England. A younger churchman and College graduate, William White, led Anglicans through the difficult break with the Church of England.
“This British American seminary”
In 1763, a London merchant named John Sargent presented Benjamin Franklin with two gold medals, to be awarded to students at public orations. One was to be for “some Classical Exercise” and the other was to focus on a more precise topic: “On the Reciprocal Advantages arising from a Perpetual Union between Great Britain and the American Colonies.” The speaking contest was held three years later and was particularly topical during the Stamp Act crisis: the announcement of the Act’s repeal was made public just one day before the speaking exercises took place.[3]
John Morgan, doctor and 1757 graduate, won the medal; others whose submissions are printed here include current and former students Stephen Watts, Joseph Reed, and Francis Hopkinson. In his talk, Watts refers explicitly to the Stamp Act repeal. Morgan’s winning essay is a hymn of praise to British commerce, colonial expansion, and “the promotion of the Protestant Religion.” Speaking from “This British American seminary,” Morgan emphasizes his own identity as “at once as a Briton and an America” and reminds listeners of a common interest: “To secure the liberty and property of all its subjects is, or ought to be, the end of every government.”
“A firm, modest exertion of a free spirit should never be wanting on public occasions.”
First printed in late 1767 in the Pennsylvania Chronicle, Dickinson’s letters were republished in pamphlet form and widely disseminated for years. His text is a careful, densely-footnoted argument against the British unilateral imposition of taxes on the colonies: the Stamp Act and the Townshend Acts.[4] Dickinson’s persona is mild-mannered, humble farmer character, with “a liberal education,” who observes political affairs calmly from his library but is compelled to speak out against the threat to “liberties” posed by Parliamentary actions. Dickinson would play a crucial role in Philadelphia political life up to 1776 and became a Trustee of the restructured university in 1782.
“Our cause is just. Our Union is perfect.”
Printed after the battles of Lexington and Concord and almost exactly one year before “the” Declaration, this “Declaration of the causes and necessity of taking up arms” shares a rhetoric and arguments with its more famous cousin. Like the 1776 Declaration, this one is signed by only John Hancock, as President of the Continental Congress, and “attested” to be authentic by Charles Thomson, the Secretary. The actual authors were John Dickinson and Thomas Jefferson, who had recently arrived as a Virginia delegate to the Continental Congress—although it is not certain which passages were written by which author.[5]
Although insisting that “we mean not to dissolve the Union,” the Congress presents a list of grievances that have prompted armed resistance and claims that they are “resolved, to dye Free-men rather than to live like Slaves.” It also appeals to shared valued: “A reverence for our great Creator, principles of humanity, and the dictates of common sense, must convince all those who reflect upon the subject, that government was instituted to promote the welfare of mankind . . . .”
The famous segmented rattlesnake figure showing the disunited colonies first appeared in Franklin’s Pennsylvania Gazette in 1754, entitled “Join, or Die.” Its political context then was the proposed “Albany Plan” of union. Beginning in 1774, a number of colonial newspapers created their own versions in their mastheads, giving the motto new meaning.[6] In this Philadelphia example, from December, 1774, “Unite or Die” heads a series of responses to the Continental Congress from assemblies in Massachusetts and Maryland.
Newspapers also document daily life across social ranks. This page begins with an official announcement of regulated bread and flour prices (“The Assize of Bread”)—prices rose and fell dramatically during this period. Advertisements include sales of political pamphlets, such as Dickinson’s Farmer’s Letters, at the Bradfords’ shop; announcements of a runaway apprentice and a “misbehaving” wife; a wet nurse seeking employment; and newly arrived goods for sale.
“. . . those Halycon days of Harmony . . .”
Smith’s sermon, first delivered to a local militia group, became one of the most widely disseminated statements of “public religion,” with editions printed in Philadelphia, the Middle Colonies, England, and Ireland, along with several translations. Sarah Frazer, whose name is on this title page, may be a member of the Frazer family, prominent merchants.
Smith’s point of view on separation from Britain seems, at first, unambiguous. He is, he writes in his preface, “ardently panting for the return of those Halycon days of Harmony, during which both Countries so long flourished together.” Drawing his lesson from the Book of Joshua, Smith describes the rebellious tribes of Reuben and Gad, who were ultimately reconciled to the Israelites. Even as “ancient friends and brethren” are now ready to part ways, even as violence appears certain, he asks “Is there no wisdom, no great and liberal plan of policy to re-unite its members, as the sole bulwark of liberty and Protestantism”? But he does not deny the reality of a coming conflict: “You are,” he tells the militia members, “now engaged in one of the grandest struggles, to which Freemen may be called . . . contending for what you perceive to be your constitutional rights, and for a final settlement of the terms upon which this country may be perpetually united to the Parent State.” Smith concludes by asking his listeners to act together, in “Union,” in order to protect “the Genius of America.”
“a crowded and illustrious Assembly”[7]
The Commencement of May 17, 1775 represents, perhaps, a culminating moment for an old order in Philadelphia, even as dramatic changes loomed. In the wake of the violence at Lexington and Concord in April, the Second Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia on May 10. Franklin, just returned from England, and Smith arranged to invite members of the Congress to the College ceremony the following week. Smith described the procession of the delegates from the State House (Independence Hall) to the College buildings on 4th Street, and he recorded that the galleries of the assembly hall were “filled with as many of the most respectable Inhabitants of the City as could find Room.”[8]
On the program were typical presentations, but also some surprising ones. A “Church service” was followed by Latin disputations and student speeches on topics like “Politeness” and “Ancient Eloquence.” One student spoke “On the Education of Young Ladies”; no text survives. Benjamin Chew, Jr., son of one of the longest-serving Trustees, spoke in favor of the “American Cause” and of “Liberty . . . the unalienable right of mankind.” The main address was given by Smith’s eldest son, William Moore Smith, on “The Fall of Empires.” He recounts how luxury and corruption undermined past empires and called upon his fellow students to defend, even to worship Liberty—“Liberty is our idol!”—and to resist “Luxury,” itself a form of “Slavery.”
Despite these optimistic speeches, Smith himself concluded on a more somber note. While calling upon students to defend their “Liberty” and resist “bondage,” he recalls too the College’s supporters in Britain and their once-mutual desire “to enlarge the Sphere of Protestantism.”
Ryerson, The Revolution is Now Begun, 40ff. William Smith, “Notes & Papers on the Commencement of the American Revolution by Dr. Wm Smith,” manuscript, n.d. [18-?], Am .159, Historical Society of Pennsylvania. ↑
Jacob Duché, The American Vine: a Sermon, preached in Christ-Church, Philadelphia, before the Honourable Continental Congress, July 20th, 1775, 9. ↑
A Rising People, 10. ↑
Bailyn, Ideological Origins, 23; A Rising People, 14. ANB on Dickinson. ↑
Boyd, “The Disputed Authorship of the Declaration on the Causes…”, PMHB, 1950. ↑
Karen Severud Cook, “Benjamin Franklin and the Snake that would not Die,” British Library Journal. ↑
Trustees Minutes 2: 90. ↑
Trustees Minutes 2:90–91. ↑