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"
THERE IS A TIME FOR ALL THINGS - A TIME TO PREACH AND A TIME TO FIGHT, AND NOW IS THE TIME TO FIGHT," JOHN PETER GABRIEL MUHLENBERG, CLASS OF 1763, AS HE
CALLED HIS PARISH TO ARMS, 1775. BAS-RELIEF ON STATUE ERECTED ON THE PLAZA OF PHILADELPHIA CITY HALL.
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THE COLLEGE OF PHILADELPHIA
AND THE POLITICS OF
REVOLUTION,
MICHAEL G. DUBROW
Should your country call, or should you perceive the
restless tools of faction at work in their dark cabals, and
plotting against the sacred interests of liberty; should you
see the corrupters or corrupted imposing upon the public
with specious names, undermining the civil and religious
principles of their country, and gradually paving the way
to certain slavery, by spreading destructive notions of
government— then, Oh! then, be nobly rouzed! Be all
eye, and ear, and heart, and voice, and hand, in a cause
so glorious! `Cry aloud, and spare not,' fearless of
danger, undaunted by opposition, and little regardful of
the frowns of power, or the machinations of villainy. Let
the world know that liberty is your unconquerable
delight, and that you are sworn foes to every species of
bondage, either of body or of mind!1
hese were the words preached by Dr.
William Smith, the first provost of
the College of Philadelphia, at the
first commencement in 1757. While
the widely professed intention of
Smith and the founders of the
College was to indoctrinate the students with a sense of civic duty and social responsibility, Smith never imagined that such service
would conflict with the interests of King George of
England and the Proprietor of the colony of
Pennsylvania, Thomas Penn. Smith's support of
the King and the Proprietor was the result of a
natural desire to keep the College financially
healthy: fund-raising campaigns for the College's
MICHAEL G. DUBROW, CLASS OF 1 9 9 2 , HAWS FROM THE PHILADELPHIA SUBURB OF
MEADOWBROOK, PENNSYLVANIA. HE HAS ENTERED A DUAL DEGREE PROGRAM,
MAJORING IN HISTORY IN THE COLLEGE AND BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION IN THE
WHARTON SCHOOL.
endowment carried Smith across the Atlantic to
Penn and George III. In 1762 Smith's extended
travels throughout England and Scotland, soliciting, at Penn's behest, the Archbishop of
Canterbury, the Duke of Newcastle, members of
the Privy Council, and others, brought the College
£6921 sterling, or some £12,000 in the colonial
scrip. In one swift stroke, Smith tied the fortunes
of the College to the future of the British Empire.2
With so much money coming to the College
either from Penn directly or through his connections in influential circles in England, Smith had a
vested interest in maintaining the Proprietor's
power and wealth in Pennsylvania. To this end,
Smith directed his most pugnacious political
essays toward the Proprietor's nemesis: the
Pennsylvania Provincial Assembly. Smith's attacks
began during the early phases of the FrenchIndian War with the publication of two pamphlets,
A Brief State of the Province of Pennsylvania and A Brief
View of the Conduct of Pennsylvania for the year 1755,
each charging the Assembly with incompetence in
defending the colony from invasion by FrenchIndian forces. One of Smith's diatribes, written in
complicity with Judge William Moore and
appearing in the American Magazine and Monthly
Chronicle for the British Colonies in 1757, prompted
the Assembly to jail Smith without formal charges
being brought against him, so that the members of
the Assembly might enjoy a moment's peace. After
Smith secured a pardon from the King, he
continued his attacks against the Assembly,
criticizing the latter's plan to change the status of
Pennsylvania from a proprietary to a royal colony.
As tensions between the colonies and England
mounted, Smith condemned what he perceived to
allegiance to the Crown and the Proprietor which
the Trustees and the faculty had to take were
replaced by oaths of allegiance to the state of
Pennsylvania.8 Thus the machinations of Smith
and his Trustees rendered the College politically
impotent at a time of momentous change in
American society.
Undoubtedly Smith was acting with the knowledge and acceptance of the Trustees of the College;
otherwise, the Trustees might not have been so
understanding when Smith was jailed in 1757 for
his political beliefs. Furthermore, there were
complaints that Smith was exceeding his role as
professor of logic, rhetoric, and natural philosophy
by politicizing his lectures. The allegations were
dismissed, according to Edward Potts Cheyney,
"since the Trustees themselves had it [Smith's
behavior] constantly under observation" and
because Smith's lectures were, in the words of the
Trustees, "becoming and satisfactory to us."9
Perhaps this meant that Smith was not endorsing
political positions in class; more likely, it meant
that Smith was not engaged in teaching anything in
class which the Trustees considered to be offensive.
The attempts by the College to indoctrinate the
students with conservative principles10 failed miserably. When the great test of ideology, the
American Revolution, exploded across the colonies,
only a fraction of the graduates perpetuated the
College's teachings. Indeed, though a majority of
graduates remained neutral, a large number were
active participants in the radical cause.
While most of the College graduates who participated in the Revolution were patriots, Isaac
Hunt was not among them. A member of the Class
of 1763, Hunt enjoyed one of the more colorful
political careers of College graduates, beginning in
1764 with the publication of a pamphlet entitled A
Letter from a Gentleman in Transilvania to his Friend in
America under the pseudonym of Isaac Bickerstaff.
In his letter, Hunt ridicules the proprietary system
of government in Pennsylvania, choosing instead
the royal colony side of a debate which had divided
Pennsylvanians since the out-break of the FrenchIndian War in 1754. At the time of the outbreak of
hostilities between the English colonists and the
Indians in western Pennsylvania, the Assembly,
being dominated by Quakers, was somewhat
reluctant to appropriate funds for the colony's
defense. The theory was that Pennsylvania would
receive military assistance from other colonies or
even from England, and the Quakers would be free
from having to participate in the atrocities of war.
In 1755 two expedi-
be an undermining of colonial rights by the
Parliament, rather than blaming King George, the
preferred scapegoat of most colonists.3 Adamantly
opposed to the Stamp Act, Smith rejoiced upon its
repeal in 1766, proclaiming that "the cause of
Liberty, Civil and Religious, is the Cause of Britain
herself " and that the outcry in the colonies over
the hated act would convince the English "that to
check the spirit of Freedom ... here in America
would, on the part of Great Britain, be to wound
her own members."4 Smith further condemned the
loss of colonial rights at the hands of the
Parliament in a sermon delivered June 23, 1775:
Enough has surely been attempted by way
of experiment, to be convinced that the
people of America know their rights and
will not consent to a passive surrender of
them — It is, now at least, time to pursue
another mode, and to listen to some plan
for averting the dreadful calamities which
must attend a hostile prosecution of this
unnatural contest.5
However much he denounced the usurpation of
colonial rights, regardless of the governing body
effecting that usurpation, Smith was adamantly
opposed to colonial independence, alleging that
"independency ... if effected, would inevitably
plunge our once preeminently envied country into
ruin, horror, and desolation."6
The republicans of Pennsylvania would seek
revenge for the anti-Assembly and anti-independence ideologies Smith espoused — and it would
be the College that would suffer it. When the new
Pennsylvania State Legislature convened in 1779,
it had Provost Smith in mind when it decreed:
WHEREAS the education of youth has
ever been found to be of the most essential consequence, as well to the good government of states, and the peace and
welfare of society, as to the profit and
ornament of individuals, insomuch that
from the experience of all ages, it appears
that seminaries of learning, when properly conducted, have been publick blessings to mankind, and that on the contrary,
when in the hands of dangerous and disaffected men, they have troubled the peace of
society, shaken the government, and often
caused tumult, sedition, and bloodshed.7
Remembering all of the epithets Smith had
levied against the Assembly over the previous two
decades, the Legislature proceeded to draw up a
new charter for the College, changing the name to
the University of the State of Pennsylvania and
forcing Smith into retirement. Other tory members
8
degree for expressing political thoughts which ran
counter to those embraced by the Trustees.13
Hunt's zeal for politics went undiminished in
spite of the affair over his degree from the College.
Swinging to the far right of the political spectrum,
Hunt rallied to the Loyalist cause in 1775 with a
pamphlet entitled The Political Family , which
enumerated the reciprocal advantages of a
perpetual union with Great Britain. Hunt had
actually written the pamphlet in 1766; the fact that
he waited until the outbreak of hostilities between
the colonies and England before publishing the
essay hardly endeared him to his fellow colonists:
the publishing of the pamphlet prompted a mob to
attack Hunt and cart him off to jail. Hunt managed
to escape to Jamaica, from which he sailed to
England, but it was at the expense of the property
and possessions he held in North America.
Had Hunt printed his essay on the reciprocal
advantages of a perpetual union nine years earlier,
the colonists probably would not have thought the
worse of him, for in 1766 that was the subject
about which College graduates were encouraged to
write. The perpetual union concept was conceived
by John Sargent, a wealthy London merchant and
member of Parliament. When Franklin was in
London in 1762, Sargent approached him and
offered to donate two gold medals to the College,
one for a classical essay and the other for
tions, one under Colonel George Washington and
the other under General Edward Braddock, ended
in such thorough disaster that all of western
Pennsylvania was open to invasion by the combined French-Indian armies. In light of the quality
of aid Pennsylvania was receiving from England
and her sister colonies, the conclusion to sit and
wait for help became most unpopular within
Pennsylvania itself; Benjamin Franklin led the
movement favoring the organization of an intracolonial militia which could then be sent out to
campaign against the Indians. The militia was
organized in 1755, but further battles between the
Assembly and the Proprietor over how to fund an
expedition continued until 1761, when an act of
Parliament supported the Assembly's cattle tax for
the purpose.
In describing the dispute between the Assembly
and the Proprietor, Hunt wrote,
The Delegates, being assembled to consult
the welfare of the Country; insisted that a
Tax shou'd be laid upon all the Cow-kine in
the Province. The Waymode [the governor]
agreed, but upon condition, that all his own
shou'd be exempted, as he had large flocks
all over the Country— This, the Delegates
refus'd, because his Cows were as liable to
be made a prey of by the Enemy, as their
own. He then told them his Bulls were free
from the Taxes, as they could not come
under the denomination of Cow-kine, but
Bull-kine; this construction however the
Delegates wou'd not admit of. A long dispute
then ensued. His Excellency told them that
if Bulls shou'd be taxed, which he cou'd not
believe was just, yet certainly Heffers and
Calves of all kinds were clear. The Delegates
reply'd, they saw no reason why his
Excellency's Bulls, Heffers, and Calves
shou'd be exempted and not their own. The
Barbarians in the mean time, laid waste the
Frontiers with fire and sword.11
Hunt's clear support for the republican forces
in Pennsylvania at the expense of the Proprietor
ran contrary to the College's dogma. When in
1766 Hunt applied for his Masters degree from
the College, he was turned away for, according to
the Trustees as quoted by Thomas Montgomery,
complicity in several scurrilous and scandalous Pieces, unworthy of a good man or
Person of Education; some of them highly
reflecting on the Government of this
Province, as well as on this College itself
where he had received his Education and
his former Benefactors in it....'12
That is, Hunt was barred from receiving his
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9
an essay written on a contemporary subject: "The
Reciprocal Advantages of a Perpetual Union
between Great Britain and her American Colonies."
Sargent suggested that Franklin, a representative of
the Pennsylvania Assembly; Isaac Norris, speaker
of the Assembly; and a third per-son of their
choosing ought to award the prizes. Obviously,
Sargent's motives were political in and of
themselves: he wished to tie the College of
Philadelphia and perhaps the colony of
Pennsylvania closer to the Mother Country at a
time when England was losing its grip over the
North American empire. Realizing the potentially
politically explosive nature of the medals, Franklin
and Norris left the issue up to the Trustees of the
College to decide. In 1766, at the height of Stamp
Act tensions, the Trustees offered the prize for the
essay written about the "reciprocal advantages of a
perpetual union"; anyone who had a degree from
the College was free to compete.
Nine essays were submitted, all under
pseudonyms. The medal was awarded to Dr. John
Morgan, Professor of Medicine and future DirectorGeneral of Military Hospitals and Physician-inChief of the Continental Army during the
Revolution. Even before he mentions any
"reciprocal advantages" emanating from a "perpetual union," Morgan reaffirms his beliefs and
values as an Englishman:
I consider myself at once to be a Briton and
an American, and reflect upon the invaluable
privileges, to which, in both these
characters and capacities, I am so happy as
to be entituled .... I am ... the son of an
Institution, wherein I imbibed the true
principles of Liberty, and was taught to
admire the beauty and excellency of that
civil Constitution, in which the governing
powers mutually controul, and are
controuled, by each other, in which the
rights of prince and people are accurately
discriminated, and liberty and property
effectually secured by a government of
laws, not of men; in which civil and
religious rights and privileges are held
sacred and inviolable, and declared to be
no less the birth-right of the meanest subject, in the most distant and obscure corner
of the realm, than of the highest courtier
that basks in the sun-shine of royal
favour.14
The reciprocal advantages which follow are primarily the result of mutual commercial interests
arising between the colonies and Great Britain.
The issue addressed most deliberately by the
essayists was the responsibilities the Colonists
owed to England and vice versa. To this end, an
10
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THOMAS MIFFLIN, BY CHARLES WILLSON PEALE, 1784. MIFFLIN, A
MEMBER OF THE CLASS OF 1760, WAS ONE OF THE FEW PROMINENT
PATRIOT TRUSTEES OF THE COLLEGE, SERVING IN THAT CAPACITY FROM
1773 THROUGH 1779. (COLLECTIONS OF INDEPENDENCE NATIONAL
HISTORICAL PARK)
anonymously written essay proclaims:
The Rights we claim are the full and free
enjoyment of CONSTITUTIONAL LIBERTY,
PROTECTION from foreign invasions, and
encouragement in every commercial interest,
which does not directly interfere with that
of the mother country.
The Duties we owe, are OBEDIENCE
under Constitutional and legal restrictions,
and an exclusive preference to the mother
country in every article of commerce and
trade.15
Four essays which were considered to be exceptional were read at the May 20, 1766 public commencement of the College. This was neither the
first nor the last time political theories were conveyed by the College to the community at large,
though the speakers, however shrill, generally did
not attempt to stir their audience to take political
action. William Moore Smith, B.A., son of the
Provost and a member of the graduating class,
gave a speech at the May 17, 1775 commencement
entitled, "On the Fall of Empires," which began as
follows:
At this time of public danger, public trial,
and public calamity, when even the arts
and sciences can scarce claim attention, and
our country's fate alone — now awfully
suspended in the balance of human events
— engrosses every thought ... I determined to venture a few sentiments on the
Fall of Empires; judging that they might be
to us as a beacon set upon a perilous place!16
Though fellow colonists were battling imperial
soldiers in New England, Smith did not seek to
enumerate the injustices the colonists had been
suffering at the hands of the British but merely
"determined to venture a few sentiments on the fall
of empires." It is unlikely that the speech was
intended to incite members of the community at
large to take up arms against the British, and we
can only assume that Smith, like so many other
colonists, was studied in his neutrality in the midst
of the social and political upheavals around him.
Still, the ranks of non-partisan graduates of the
College did dwindle as the hour of revolution drew
near. Hugh Williamson, a member of the first
graduating class and Professor of Mathematics at
the College, came to embrace the Revolution
though he originally supported the oppressive
proprietary system in Pennsylvania. During the
1760s, Williamson was the author of essays that
attacked savagely the Quaker-dominated Provincial
Assembly. Writing in response to Franklin's Cool
Thoughts on the Present Situation of our Public Affairs
in 1764, the year the Assembly petitioned the King
for royal colony status and made arrangements to
send Franklin to England to argue against the
proprietary system, Williamson asserted in a series
of essays entitled The Plain Dealer:
That a Quaker faction has tyrannized
over the innocent inhabitants of our frontier counties, and
That faction has most wickedly abused
the Province by squandering away the
public monies,
In Bribes to a weak Government to pass
iniquitous Laws,
In support of Savages, who were enemies to his Majesty and this Province,
In fruitless ill timed and unreasonable
contentions with the Governor. In general
by taking every public measure which
might tend to enrich themselves, reduce
the rest of this province to slavery, poverty
and misery, and sacrifice the wretched lives
of the frontier inhabitants, by refusing
them any seasonable or effectual protection, and by aiding and encouraging
their enemies.17
Franklin returned fire in a public speech, proclaiming that The Plain Dealer is "as replete with
Falsehoods as it is with Sentences," falsehoods
which he attempted to enumerate.18 Williamson
countered in an essay entitled What is Sauce for a
Goose is also Sauce for a Gander by attacking
Franklin personally:
By assuming the merit of other mens discoveries, he obtain'd the name of a
PHILOSOPHER. By meanly beging and
Times
buying
HONORARY
some
DEGREES, from several Colleges and
Universities, he obtain'd the Character of
a Man of LEARNING.19
Williamson managed to quell his invectives
toward Franklin when the issue of independence
rose to the forefront. He rallied to the patriotic
cause by serving as a doctor in the American army.
In 1782, Williamson left the battlefield for
Philadelphia, having been elected a delegate to the
Second Continental Congress.
Thomas Mifflin, a member of the Class of 1760,
was in the vanguard of Revolutionary activities in
the 1770s. In 1772 Mifflin was elected to the
Pennsylvania Provincial Assembly and from there
went on to the First Continental Congress in 1774.
As a member of this first, not yet radical Congress,
Mifflin was instrumental in the drafting of the
Continental Association, which was ratified on
October 18, 1774. The Association first reinforced
the idea of colonial allegiance to the Crown but
continued with the following charge:
Having taken under our most serious
deliberation the state of the whole continent, [the members of the Continental
Congress] find that the present unhappy
situation of our affairs is occasioned by a
ruinous system of colony administration,
adopted by the British ministry about the
year 1763, evidently calculated for enslaving these colonies, and with them, the
British Empire.20
The Association suggested "To obtain redress of
these grievances ... that a non-importation, nonconsumption, and non-exportation agreement,
faithfully adhered to, will prove the most speedy,
effectual, and peaceable measure."21
After the Association failed "to obtain redress of
these grievances" and the shooting began in the
spring of 1775, Mifflin joined the Continental Army
with a major's commission; within a year he was
promoted to the rank of brigadier general and
served as quartermaster-general for the Continental
Army. In 1782 Mifflin was elected as a delegate to
the Continental Congress and served as its
president from December 1783 to June 1784.22
John Peter Gabriel Muhlenberg, a member of the
Class of 1763 who had actually left the College
before receiving a degree, played a correspondingly
active role in the era of the American Revolution.
An ordained Anglican minister, Muhlenberg was
the pastor of the German Lutheran congregation in
Woodstock, Virginia, where he also served as town
magistrate. It was in the capacity of the latter role
that in June 1774 Muhlenberg presided over an ad
hoc committee designed to set a course of action in
response to the closing of Boston Harbor, by act of
Parliament,
11
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HUGH WILLIAMSON, BY JOHN TRUMBULL, CA. 1795. A GRADUATE OF THE
FIRST CLASS OF THE COLLEGE IN 1757, WILLIAMSON WAS AN INSTRUCTOR IN
THE ACADEMY WHILE STILL IN HIS SECOND COLLEGIATE YEAR. IN 1761 HE
WAS NAMED PROFESSOR OF MATHEMATICS AND MASTER OF THE
MATHEMATICAL SCHOOL, POSTS HE HELD FOR NEARLY THREE YEARS. (ON
LOAN FROM WILLIAM H. SWAN AND CAROLYN SWAN PARLATO TO THE
NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY, SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION)
as punishment for the Boston Tea Party. The committee passed the following resolution:
That it is the inherent right of British subjects to be governed and taxed by representatives chosen by themselves only, and
that every act of the British Parliament
respecting the internal policy of America is a
dangerous and unconstitutional invasion of
our rights and privileges. That the enforcing
the execution of the said act of Parliament
[the closing of Boston Harbor] by a military
power will have a necessary
tendency to cause a civil war.... 23
Muhlenberg's bellicosity was translated into
action in January 1776, when Muhlenberg was
enlisted as the commander of the German
Battalion, organized out of none other than his
congregation in Woodstock, Virginia. As the story
goes, Muhlenberg gave a rousing sermon to his
congregation, proclaiming at its culmination, "In the
language of the Holy Writ there is a time for all
things, a time to preach and a time to pray, but
those times have passed away. There is a time to
fight, and that time has now come."24 After the
service, Muhlenberg removed his robe, displaying
the colonel's uniform he had been wearing underneath, and walked out of the church. Tables were
set up to recruit volunteers for the army; hundreds
enlisted.25
If Mifflin and Muhlenberg were battling against
the British in the field, William Paca, class of 1759,
was waging the political war for independence. As a
member of the Maryland Provincial Legislature
during the 1770's, Paca dominated an anti-proprietary movement that was reminiscent of the one
Smith confronted in Pennsylvania during the
1760s. In 1770, the Tobacco Inspection Act, which
provided for the clergy's salary in terms of a quantity of tobacco paid as a tax, was left to expire
without renewal by the Maryland House of
Burgesses; the colonial governor proceeded to
enforce the expired statute regardless. As a result of
what he perceived to be a circumvention of popular
will, Paca threw his support behind the opposition
to the Proprietary Party, his elocution helping to
raise him quickly to preeminence .
Paca's popularity within Maryland rose immeasurably as a result of his battles against the
Proprietor, and he was elected to represent
Maryland in the First and Second Continental
Congresses. As a delegate to the Second
Continental Congress, Paca lobbied for and eventually signed the Declaration of Independence. He
returned to Maryland to help draw up the state's
constitution.26
Remarkably, in spite of the College's attempts to
indoctrinate its students to preserve the status quo,
namely, the proprietary system in Pennsylvania
and Crown control of North America, the students
did not seem to have learned their lessons as well
as their instructors might have hoped. Mifflin,
Hunt, Paca, Williamson, and Muhlenberg were
hardly lone wolves in the annals of the graduates of
the College in fighting for that which they believed.
Of those who graduated between 1757 and 1765,
almost half participated actively in the Revolution:
representatives to the Continental Congress,
including signers of the Declaration of
Independence; members of the rebel army, with
duties ranging from generals to physicians; members of state constitutional conventions; governors,
judges, and other state officials. Only a handful of
those participating in the Revolution were loyalists,
driven out of the colonies for refusing to compromise their affection for the Crown.27 Yet even the
loyalists are worth admiring, for in the face of
discomfort or even death, they refused to acquiesce
to the demands of the radicals to give up what they
considered to be just causes. It would appear that
the graduates chose to heed Provost Smith's call to
"Let the world know that liberty is your
unconquerable delight, and that you are sworn foes
to every species of bondage, either of body or of
mind!" rather than to observe the Provost's
reactionary political stances of the 1750s and
1760s, indicating that words are stronger than
actions after all.
12
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