1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Pennsylvania

PENNSYLVANIA, a North Atlantic state of the United States of America and one of the original thirteen, lying for the most part between latitudes 39° 43′ 26.3″ and 42° N. and between longitudes 74° 40′ and 80° 31′ 36″ W. The state is in the form of a rectangle, except in the north-west where a triangular projection, extending to 42° 15′ N. lat., gives it a shoreline of almost 40 m. on Lake Erie, on the east where the Delaware river with two large bends separates it from New York and New Jersey, and in the south-east where the arc of a circle which was described with a 12-m. radius from New Castle, Delaware, forms the boundary between it and Delaware. The forty-second parallel of N. latitude forms the boundary between it and New York on the N.; Mason and Dixon's line is the border between it and Maryland and West Virginia on the south and a north and south line marks the boundary between it and West Virginia and Ohio on the west. The total area is 45,126 sq. m. and of this 294 sq. m. are water surface.

Population.—The population of Pennsylvania was 434,373 in 1790; 602,365 in 1800; 810,091 in 1810; 1,049,458 in 1820; 1,348,233 in 1830; 1,724,033 in 1840; 2,311,786 in 1850; 2,906,215 in 1860; 3,521,951 in 1870; 4,282,891 in 1880; 5,258,014 in 1890; 6,302,115 in 1900; 7,665,111 in 1910. Of the total in 1900, 985,250, or 15.6%, were foreign-born, 156,845 were negroes, 1639 were Indians, 1927 were Chinese and 40 were Japanese. Nearly 95% of the foreign-born was composed of natives of Germany (212,453), Ireland (205,909), Great Britain (180,670), Poland (76,358), Austria (67,492), Italy (66,655), Russia (50,959), Hungary (47,393) and Sweden (24,130). Of the native population (5,316,865) 90.7% were born within the state and a little more than two-fifths of the remainder were natives of New York, Maryland, Ohio, New Jersey, Virginia, New England, Delaware and West Virginia. Almost two-thirds of the Indians were in Cumberland county where, at Carlisle, is a United States Indian Industrial School. In 1906 the total number of communicants of different religious denominations in the state was 2,977,022, of whom 1,717,037 were Protestants and 1,214,734 were Roman Catholics. There is a large number of the smaller religious sects in the state; the principal denominations, with the number of communicants of each in 1906, are: Methodist (363,443), Lutheran (335,643), Presbyterian (322,542), Reformed Church (177,270), Baptist (141,694), Protestant Episcopalian (99,021), United Brethren (55,574), United Evangelical Church (45,480), Disciples of Christ (26,458), German Baptist Brethren (23,176), Eastern Orthodox Churches (22,123), Mennonites (16,527), Congregational (14,811), Evangelical Association (13,294), Friends (12,457), Church of God or &ldquo;Winnebrennerians &rdquo; (11,157), and Moravian (5322).

Administration.—Pennsylvania has been governed under constitutions of 1776, 1790 and 1838; the present government is under the constitution of the 16th of December 1873 with amendments adopted on the 5th of November 1901. An amendment to the constitution to be adopted must be approved by a majority of the members elected to each house of the general assembly in two successive legislatures and then, at least three months after the second approval of the general assembly, by a majority of the popular vote cast on the adoption of the amendment. All male citizens over 21 years of age

who have been citizens of the United States for one month, residents of the state for one year and of the election district for two months immediately preceding the election, have the right of suffrage, provided they have paid within two years a state or county tax, which shall have been assessed at least two months and paid at least one month before the election. The Australian or &ldquo;Massachusetts&rdquo; ballot, adopted in 1891 under a law which fails to require personal registration, by a provision like that in Nebraska makes it easy to vote a straight ticket; party names are arranged on the ballot according to the number of votes secured by each party at the last preceding election.

History.—The chief features of Pennsylvania history in colonial days were the predominance of Quaker influence, the heterogeneous character of the population, liberality in matters of religion, and the fact that it was the largest and the most successful of proprietary provinces. The earliest European settlements within the present limits of the state were some small trading posts established by the Swedes and the Dutch in the

lower valley of the Delaware River in 1623–1681. Between 1650 and 1660 George Fox and a few other prominent members of the Society of Friends had begun to urge the establishment of a colony in America to serve as a refuge for Quakers who were suffering persecution under the &ldquo;Clarendon Code.&rdquo; William Penn (q.v.) became interested in the plan at least as early as 1666. For his charters of 1680–1682 and the growth of the colony under him see.

During Penn's life the colony was involved in serious boundary disputes with Maryland, Virginia and New York. A decree of Lord Chancellor Hardwicke, in 1750, settled the Maryland-Delaware dispute and led to the survey in 1763–1767 of the boundary between Pennsylvania and Maryland (lat. 39° 43' 26.3" N.), called the Mason and Dixon line in honour of the surveyors; it acquired considerable importance later as separating the free and the slave states. In 1784 Virginia agreed to the extension of the line and to the establishment of the western limit (the present boundary between Pennsylvania and Ohio) as the meridian from a point on the Mason and Dixon line five degrees of longitude west of the Delaware river. The 42nd parallel was finally selected as the northern boundary in 1789, in 1792 the Federal government sold to Pennsylvania the small triangular strip of territory north of it on Lake Erie. A territorial dispute with Connecticut over the Wyoming Valley was settled in favour of Pennsylvania in 1782 by a court of arbitration appointed by the Continental Congress.

Upon William Penn's death, his widow became proprietary. Sir William Keith, her deputy, was hostile to the council, which he practically abolished, and was popular with the assembly, which he assiduously courted, but was discharged by Mrs Penn after he had quarrelled with James Logan, secretary of the province. His successors, Patrick Gordon and George Thomas, under the proprietorship of John, Thomas and Richard Penn, continued Keith's popular policy of issuing a plentiful paper currency; but with Thomas the assembly renewed its old struggle, refusing to grant him a salary or supplies because of his efforts to force the colony into supporting the Spanish War. Again, during the Seven Years' War the assembly withstood the governor, Robert Hunter Morris, in the matter of grants for military expenses. But the assembly did its part in assisting General Braddock to outfit; and after Braddock's defeat all western Pennsylvania suffered terribly from Indian attacks. After the proprietors subscribed £5000 for the protection of the colony the assembly momentarily gave up its contest for a tax on the proprietary estates and consented to pass a money bill, without this provision, for the expenses of the war. But in 1760 the assembly, with the help of Benjamin Franklin as agent in England, won the great victory of forcing the proprietors to pay a tax (£566) to the colony; and thereafter the assembly had little to contest for, and the degree of civil liberty attained in the province was very high. But the growing power of the Scotch-Irish, the resentment of the Quakers against the proprietors for having gone back to the Church of England and many other circumstances strengthened the anti-proprietary power, and the assembly strove to abolish the proprietorship and establish a royal province; John Dickinson was the able leader of the party which defended the proprietors; and Joseph Galloway and Benjamin Franklin were the leaders of the anti-proprietary party, which was greatly weakened at home by the absence after December 1764 of Franklin in England as its agent. The question lost importance as independence became the issue.

In 1755 a volunteer militia had been created and was led with great success by Benjamin Franklin; and in 1756 a line of forts was begun to hold the Indians in check. In the same year a force of pioneers under John Armstrong of Carlisle surprised and destroyed the Indian village of Kittanning (or Atiqué) on the Allegheny river. But the frontier was disturbed by Indian attacks until the suppression of Pontiac's conspiracy. In December 1763 six Christian Indians, Conestogas, were massacred by the &ldquo;Paxton boys&rdquo; from Paxton near the present Harrisburg; the Indians who had escaped were taken

to Lancaster for safe keeping but were seized and killed by the &ldquo;Paxton boys,&rdquo; who with other backwoodsmen marched upon Philadelphia early in 1764, but Quakers and Germans gathered quickly to protect it and civil war was averted, largely by the diplomacy of Franklin. The Paxton massacre marked the close of Quaker supremacy and the beginning of the predominance of the Scotch-Irish pioneers.

Owing to its central position, its liberal government, and its policy of religious toleration, Pennsylvania had become during the 18th century a refuge for European immigrants, especially persecuted sectaries. In no other colony were so many different races and religions represented. There were Dutch, Swedes, English, Germans, Welsh, Irish and Scotch-Irish; Quakers, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Catholics, Lutherans (Reformed), Mennonites, Bunkers, Schwenkfelders, and Moravians. Most of these elements have now become merged in the general type, but there are still many communities in which the popular language is a corrupt German dialect, largely Rheno-Franconian in its origin, known as &ldquo;Pennsylvania Dutch.&rdquo; Before the Seven Years' War the Quakers dominated the government, but from that time until the failure of the Whisky Insurrection (1794) the more belligerent Scotch-Irish (mostly Presbyterians) were usually in the ascendancy, the reasons being the growing numerical strength of the Scotch-Irish and the increasing dissatisfaction with Quaker neglect of means of defending the province.

As the central colony, Pennsylvania's attitude in the struggle with the mother country was of vast importance. The British party was strong because of the loyalty of the large Church of England element, the neutrality of many Quakers, Dunkers, and Mennonites, and a general satisfaction with the liberal and free government of the province, which had been won gradually and had not suffered such catastrophic reverses as had embittered the people of Massachusetts, for instance. But the Whig party under the lead of John Dickinson, Thomas Mifflin and Joseph Reed was successful in the state, and Pennsylvania contributed greatly to the success of the War of Independence, by the important services rendered by her statesmen, by providing troops and by the financial aid given by Robert Morris (q.v.). The two Continental Congresses (1774, and 1775–1781) met in Philadelphia, except for the months when Philadelphia was occupied by the British army and Congress met in Lancaster and York, Pennsylvania, and then in Princeton, New Jersey. In Philadelphia the second Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, which the Pennsylvania delegation, excepting Franklin, thought premature at the time, but which was well supported by Pennsylvania afterwards. During the War of Independence battles were fought at Brandywine (1777), Paoli (1777), Fort Mifflin (1777) and Germantown (1777), and Washington's army spent the winter of 1777–1778 at Valley Forge; and Philadelphia was occupied by the British from the 26th of September 1777 to the 18th of June 1778. The Penns lost their governmental rights in 1776, and three years later their territorial interests were vested in the commonwealth in return for a grant of £120,000 and the guarantee of titles to private estates held in severally. They still own considerable property in and around Wilkes-Barré, in Luzerne county, and in Philadelphia. The first state constitution of September 1776 was the work of the Radical party. It deprived the Quakers of their part in the control of the government and forced many Conservatives into the Loyalist party. This first state constitution was never submitted to popular vote. It continued the unicameral legislative system, abolished the office of governor, and provided for an executive council of twelve members. It also created a curious body, known as the council of censors, whose duty it was to assemble once in seven years to decide whether there had been any infringements of the fundamental law. The party which had carried this constitution through attacked its opponents by withdrawing the charter of the college of Philadelphia (now the university of Pennsylvania) because its trustees were anti-Constitutionalists and creating in its place a university of the state of

The Constitutional party in 1785 secured the annulment by the state assembly of the charter of the Bank of North America, which still retained a congressional charter; and the cause of this action also seems to have been party feeling against the anti-Constitutionalists, among whom Robert Morris of the bank was a leader, and who, especially Morris, had opposed the paper money policy of the Constitutionalists. These actions of the state assembly against the college and the bank probably were immediate causes for the insertion in the Federal Constitution (adopted by the convention in Philadelphia in 1787) of the clause (proposed by James Wilson of Pennsylvania, a friend of the college and of the bank) forbidding any state to pass a law impairing the obligation of contracts. The state ratified the Federal Constitution, in spite of a powerful opposition—largely the old (state) Constitutional party—on the 22nd of December 1787, and three years later revised its own constitution to make it conform to that document. Under the constitution of 1790 the office of governor was restored, the executive council and the council of censors were abolished, and the bicameral legislative system was adopted. Philadelphia was the seat of the Federal government, except for a brief period in 1789–1790, until the removal to Washington in 1800. The state capital was removed from Philadelphia to Lancaster in 1799 and from Lancaster to Harrisburg in 1812.

The state was the scene of the Scotch-Irish revolt of 1794 against the Federal excise tax, known as the Whisky Insurrection (q.v.) and of the German protest (1799) against the house tax, known as the Fries Rebellion from its leader John Fries (q.v.). In 1838 as the result of a disputed election to the state house of representatives two houses were organized, one Whig and the other Democratic, and there was open violence in Harrisburg. The conflict has been called the &ldquo;Buckshot War.&rdquo; The Whig House of Representatives gradually broke up, many members going over to the Democratic house, which had possession of the records and the chamber and was recognized by the state Senate. Pennsylvania was usually Democratic before the Civil War owing to the democratic character of its country population and to the close commercial relations between Philadelphia and the South. The growth of the protectionist movement and the development of anti-slavery sentiment, however, drew it in the opposite direction, and it voted the Whig national ticket in 1840 and in 1848, and the Republican ticket for Lincoln in 1860. A split among the Democrats in 1835, due to the opposition of the Germans to internal improvements and to the establishment of a public school system, resulted in the election as governor of Joseph Ritner, the anti-Masonic candidate. The anti-Masonic excitement subsided as quickly as it had risen, and under the leadership of Thaddeus Stevens the party soon became merged with the Whigs. During the Civil War (1861–65) the state gave to the Union 336,000 soldiers; and Generals McClellan, Hancock, Meade and Reynolds and Admirals Porter and Dahlgren were natives of the state. Its nearness to the field of war made its position dangerous. Chambersburg was burned in 1862; and the battle of Gettysburg (July 1863), a defeat of Lee's attempt to invade the North in force was a turning point in the war.

The development of the material resources of the state since 1865 has been accompanied by several serious industrial disturbances. The railway riots of 1877, which centred at Pittsburg and Reading, resulted in the destruction of about two thousand freight cars and a considerable amount of other property. An organized association, known as the ../Molly Maguires/ (q.v.), terrorized the mining regions for many years, but was finally suppressed through the courageous efforts of President Franklin, Benjamin Gowen (1863–1889) of the Philadelphia & Reading railroad with the assistance of Allan Pinkerton and his detectives. There have been mining strikes at Scranton (1871), in the Lehigh and Schuylkill regions (1875), at Hazleton (1897), and one in the anthracite fields (1902) which was settled by a board of arbitrators appointed by President Roosevelt; and there were street railway strikes at Chester in 1908 and in Philadelphia in 1910. The calling in of Pinkerton detectives from Chicago and New

York to settle a strike in the Carnegie steel works at Homestead in 1892 precipitated a serious riot, in which about twenty persons were killed. It was necessary to call out two brigades of the state militia before the disorder was finally suppressed. The labour unions took advantage of this trouble to force Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois, Minnesota, Colorado and several other states to pass anti-Pinkerton statutes making it illegal to import irresponsible armed men from a distance to quell local disturbances. On the political side the chief features in the history of the state since 1865 have been the adoption of the constitution of 1873, the growth of the Cameron-Quay-Penrose political machine, and the attempts of the reformers to overthrow its domination. The constitution of 1838, which superseded that of 1790, extended the functions of the legislature, limited the governor's power of appointment, and deprived negroes of the right of suffrage. The provision last mentioned was nullified by the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments to the constitution of the United States. The chief object of the present state constitution (1873) was to prohibit local and special legislation. It increased the number of senators and representatives, created the office of lieutenant-governor, substituted biennial for annual sessions of the legislature, introduced minority representation in the choice of the higher judiciary and of the county commissioners and auditors and provided (as had an amendment adopted in 1850) for the election of all judges by popular vote. The political organization founded by Simon Cameron (q.v.) and strengthened by his son, James Donald Cameron, Matthew Stanley Quay and Boies Penrose (b. 1860), is based upon the control of patronage, the distribution of state funds among favoured banks, the support of the Pennsylvania railway and other great corporations, and upon the ability of the leaders to persuade the electors that it is necessary to vote the straight Republican ticket to save the protective system. Robert E. Pattison (1850–1904), a Democrat, was elected governor in 1883 and again in 1891, but he was handicapped by Republican legislatures. In 1905 a Democratic state treasurer was elected.