Chapter IX: Introduction: By Albert Shaw (7)

Wilmington built her new Town Hall just a century ago last year, and Friend Joseph Tatnall gave the clock that shone in its tower and told the hours. The clock went out of use more than thirty years ago, but the building remains, not altogether spoiled by modern additions, sacred because of its associations, and testifying to the solidity with which the city fathers built in the last century.

When the City Hall was built Penn’s charter, unamended, still served the community, and continued to serve until 1809, when it was amended and the borough limits were enlarged. The town was yet merely a borough when the War of 1812 came on, and Senator James A. Bayard, the first of four Bayards to represent Delaware in the United States Senate, helped with his own hands to build a fort almost upon the site of Fort Christina. A city charter came in 1832. The mayor was elected for three years by the city council, and the first mayor chosen was Richard H. Bayard.

Wilmington as the intellectual centre of the State was naturally also the home of radical thought. Quaker sentiment had sunk deep into the community. An anti-slavery society was organized early. A great meeting at the Town Hall in 1820 adopted resolutions against the extension of slavery into the territories. Sam Townsend, a picturesque and characteristic figure in the mid-century politics of the State, was amazed and horrified to find that his brother, home after a week’s visit to Wilmington, had returned with a tincture of abolitionism. Sam and his neighbors labored with the erring one, but could not meet his arguments against holding one’s fellow-men in bondage until Sam bethought him to deny the humanity of the negro, and thus snatched the brother as a brand from the burning.

Wilmington was a station on the “underground railroad,” and Thomas Garrett, a Quaker of Pennsylvanian birth, was the station-master—a man of prudence but of dauntless courage, who, left penniless at sixty by reason of a fine imposed upon him for violation of the Fugitive Slave Law, declared upon the court-house steps in his peculiar lisp: “I did it; I’m glad I did it; and I’d do it again.” The Civil War came too soon for him, he said, for he had hoped to help away three thousand slaves, and had stopped at two thousand seven hundred.

The conflict found Wilmington a little city of rough-cobbled streets, the metropolis of a small surrounding territory, visited daily by country folk, who drove twelve or fifteen miles,—came “to town,” as the phrase went,—and having made their purchases, drove home, whipping in dread past “Folly Woods,” since the days of Sandy Flash a place of evil reputation. The firing upon Fort Sumter stirred the community to its depths, and the city lost no time in sending to the front more than her quota of volunteers. Flags fluttered out all over the city. Barbers made haste to add to their poles a third stripe, a blue one, in token of loyalty. Amid all the enthusiasm it was a time of acrid bitterness, for Delaware was a border State with citizens holding openly or secretly opinions of many shades other than that recognized as true blue. There were reported sullen threats of incendiarism on the part of the disaffected; there were many arrests of the disloyal, and stubborn but entirely conscientious men, who would not take the oath of allegiance and were imprisoned or publicly shamed. It was no time for a nice weighing of motives, and the fires of the war-time hatreds were nearly a generation in cooling. The city came out of the war chastened by sorrow and pained by bitter contention, but ready for a newer and broader life. She has since grown to 70,000 people. Her boundaries have been extended to the Delaware; her factories have vastly increased in volume and variety. Miles of territory have been covered with new homes. Water-works, sewers and parks have been created. New Castle, the old Dutch capital of New Amstel, has yielded up the court-house to Wilmington, but has held on to the whipping-post, as perhaps not quite in keeping with the modern mood of the city. But in spite of growth and change the old Quaker spirit, the ineradicable instinct of sobriety and decency, remains along with the Swedish and Dutch names two and a half centuries ago. When the hush of evening falls upon the city and the crowds have melted from the sidewalks, then in the dusk of the deserted streets one may easily imagine the distinguished William Shipley and the gracious Elizabeth, the grin of broad-faced Dutchmen fresh from the harrowing of Swen Schute, the spectral figures of tow-haired Swedish farmers, or the grave, black-clad form of Pastor Torkillius with solemn eyes bent upon wondering peasant lads and lasses.

BUFFALO

“THE QUEEN CITY OF THE LAKES”

BY ROWLAND B. MAHANY

Few cities of the United States have a history more picturesque than Buffalo, or more typical of the forces that have made the Republic great. At the time of the adoption of the Federal constitution, in 1787, not a single white settler dwelt on the site of what is now the Queen of the Lakes; and it was not until after the second presidency of Washington, that Joseph Ellicott, the founder of Buffalo, laid out the plan of the town, which he called New Amsterdam. Ellicott was a man of great ability, force and foresight, and with prophetic vision he saw the future importance of the city, which is now the fourth commercial entrepôt of the world. He had been the assistant of his brother, Andrew Ellicott, the first Surveyor General of the United States; and the two brothers, together with General Washington,—himself an engineer by profession,—had collaborated with Captain Pierre Charles L’Enfant the plan of the National Capital. With the beautiful design of Washington City fresh in his mind, Joseph Ellicott gave to the village of New Amsterdam a similar system of radiating broad avenues, embracing in the territory they enclosed rectangular systems of streets. The avenues were 99 feet in width and the streets 66 feet. The surveys were begun in 1798 and completed in 1805. Indirectly, therefore, Buffalo is indebted to President Washington for some of its topographical features.

FOUNDER OF BUFFALO.]

The early history of the village is not unlike that of most of our inland cities which have grown from conditions common to the Canadian and to the western frontier; and differs, perhaps, chiefly in this regard, that owing to the natural advantages of the town’s situation and its proximity to the great cataract of Niagara Falls, its annals are rich with instances of exploration, of war and of romance; for adventure and enterprise met here at the beginning of the century.

The period when the Mohawks, the Eries, the Hurons, the Tuscaroras, the Neuters (so called because they were a peaceful tribe) and the Senecas were the sole possessors of this region was succeeded by the epoch of the French traders, whose business was in turn absorbed by their Dutch competitors. These gave way to the alert descendants of New England, who yielded back again the supremacy to a group of Dutch capitalists, composing the Holland Land Company, whose first agent was Joseph Ellicott.

The primitive scenery of Buffalo must have been almost incomparable in its beauty. The wooded hills, the fertile plains, the superb river and the mighty lake enchanted alike the savage and the civilized beholder. Even now, when commerce has invaded the loveliness of the prospect by investing one of the greatest harbors in the world with a fortress of elevators and crowding it with a forest of masts, artists and tourists unite in saying that the Buffalo sunsets are not rivalled anywhere save by those on the Bay of Naples.

In 1806, the first schoolhouse was built on the corner of Swan and Pearl streets,—the humble pioneer of an educational system that now embraces sixty modern grammar schools, three collegiate High Schools, and innumerable independent and private institutions of learning. Notable among these latter is the Le Couteulx Asylum for the instruction of the deaf and dumb. This beneficent institution owes its origin to the liberality of the Le Couteulx family. Louis Stephen Le Couteulx de Caumont, a Norman-French gentleman of station and culture, was the founder of the family in Buffalo. He came to New Amsterdam in 1804.

On February 10, 1810, the “Town of Buffaloe” was created by an act of the legislature. This was the name originally given to the settlement by the Senecas, and there is little doubt that it was derived from the visits of the bison to the neighboring salt-licks. However that may be, the village of New Amsterdam was merged in 1810 into the town of Buffalo.

With the disappearance of the Dutch appellation of the town, vanished also the Dutch nomenclature of the streets. Van Staphorst and Willink Avenues were connected and called Main Street; Stadinzky Avenue, a name suggestive of the Polish element that later was to swell in such numbers the population of the city, became Church Street; Niagara Street succeeded Schimmelpennick Avenue; and Vollenhoven Avenue was changed into Erie Street.

The origin of some of Buffalo’s thoroughfares is interesting and amusing. Utica Street was formerly a lane on the old Hodge farm, and led from the Cold Spring region to the Elmwood Avenue district. The people using it, however, were very careless about closing the gates, and this so irritated Mr. Hodge that he locked the gates and closed the lane. An indignation meeting was called in the little schoolhouse at Cold Spring. The schoolmaster was the chief speaker, and unless tradition does violence to his grammar, the principal part of his speech consisted of the declaration that “them Hodges is maintainin’ a ‘pent-up Uticky.’” When Mr. Hodge heard of the meeting, he relented and offered to give the people the lane on condition that the town government would lay out a street. The offer was accepted and the new thoroughfare was called Utica Street in commemoration of the schoolmaster’s speech.

The inevitable newspaper appeared on the 3d of October, 1811, when the Buffalo _Gazette_ issued its first number. The _Gazette_ was the forerunner of journals which to-day recognize as their only competitors the Metropolitan press.

On the 26th of June, 1812, the tidings of war with Great Britain reached Buffalo, and on August 13th the first gun of the struggle is said to have been fired by the battery at Black Rock, then a rival, now a suburb, of Buffalo. The excitement was intense; for all recognized that the growing town, because of its frontier situation, was sure to be one of the theatres of hostilities. Nor was this a mistaken idea, as subsequent events proved. Immediately after the declaration of war, the British soldiers from the Canadian garrison at Fort Erie, directly across the river from Buffalo, made an incursion, and captured the schooner _Connecticut_, at anchor in the Buffalo Creek. This humiliation, however, was more than wiped out by the daring exploit of Lieutenant Jesse D. Elliott, U. S. N., who, on October 9, 1812, crossed the river, and boldly attacked two vessels lying under the guns of Fort Erie. One of these, the _Detroit_, of six guns, had been captured by the British at the surrender of that town; the other was the _Caledonia_, of two guns. With a loss of two killed and five wounded, Elliott’s force captured both vessels and took prisoners, officers and men, to the number of seventy-one. Forty-seven American prisoners taken by the British at the River Raisin, were released by Elliott. The _Detroit_ was carried down the stream when the cables were cut, and ran aground on Squaw Island. The British opened a lively cannonading from the Canadian shore and attempted to recapture the vessel, but were driven off by the Americans, who, unable to float it, burned it to the water’s edge. For his brilliant coup, Lieutenant Elliott was voted a sword of honor by Congress.

One great advantage the British possessed early in the war was their superiority on the Lakes. The _Queen Charlotte_, of twenty-two guns, the _Hunter_, of twelve guns, and a small armed schooner patrolled the Erie coast-line in the neighborhood of Buffalo, and kept the inhabitants of the region in a constant state of fear and excitement. To remedy this disadvantage, the Government, in the spring of 1813, sent Captain Oliver Hazard Perry to fit out a war fleet at Erie, Pennsylvania. He arrived in Buffalo in March, and thence proceeded to his destination. The Government had purchased a number of merchant craft, and these he immediately began converting into men-of-war. Some new vessels also were built. Five gunboats were fitted out at Buffalo on Scajaquada Creek. On September 10, 1813, Perry, with an inferior force, both in the number of men and guns, gave battle to the British and captured or destroyed their entire fleet. This victory was not only the most notable of the war, but is one of the most conspicuous in our naval history. In the midst of the battle Perry’s ship was sunk, and he left it in an open boat, and, under the fire of the enemy, went to another vessel of his fleet, whence he directed the operations that rendered the battle of Lake Erie an illustrious triumph for American arms.

In a few months, however, the exultation of Buffalo’s citizens was turned into mourning through the burning of the town by the British. On the 29th of December, General Riall, with twelve hundred men, regulars, militia and Indians, landed below Scajaquada Creek, and owing to the confusion which prevailed in the councils of the local military commanders, captured the town with little difficulty. The inhabitants had fled, and every dwelling, with one or two exceptions, was given over to the flames. Mrs. St. John and two of her daughters remained to protect their house, and owing to the chivalry of Colonel Elliott, the commander of the Indians, neither the ladies nor their household possessions were molested. Mrs. Joshua Lovejoy, who also remained in her home, where the Tifft House now stands, was imprudent enough to have an altercation with the Indians, and was slain by one of them. Her house was burned, and her dead body with it.

On the withdrawal of the British, the citizens returned from their flight, bringing back with them such household goods as they had gathered together on their hasty departure, and forthwith the rebuilding of Buffalo commenced. The American loss in the engagement preceding the capture of the town was heavy. Between forty and fifty of our troops were killed, as many more wounded, and about ninety prisoners were carried off by the victors. From all these reverses the people of the little town measurably recovered in the succeeding five or six months. On April 10, 1814, Brigadier-General Winfield Scott came to Buffalo, and shortly after, Major-General Brown arrived. The preparations for an advance on the Canadian position were pushed forward as rapidly as possible, and on July 3d the movement began. Three brigades,—two of regulars, one of volunteers,—accompanied by a few Indians, crossed the river, and captured Fort Erie. Thence proceeding down the Canadian bank, they engaged the enemy at Chippewa on July 5th, and won a decisive victory.

The Americans wore temporary uniforms of gray, and it was in honor of the conspicuous gallantry displayed by our troops in this conflict that gray was adopted as the uniform for the West Point cadets.

The volunteer brigade was commanded by General Peter B. Porter, for many years a member of Congress from Erie County, and afterwards Secretary of War for a brief period under John Quincy Adams. General Porter distinguished himself also in the battle of Lundy’s Lane, and throughout the war gained such reputation for valor, skill and eloquence, that to him has been assigned the credit of being the pioneer in organizing the volunteer system of the American Army.

During all this war the famous Seneca chief, Red Jacket, took an active part in behalf of the Americans, and though he had little love for the white men on either side of the controversy, still his influence was cast in favor of those who were the neighbors and friends of his people. Innumerable anecdotes are told of the wisdom, oratory and dignity of the great sachem, and a later generation has raised in Forest Lawn Cemetery an imposing statue to his memory.

After the battle of Chippewa, General Riall, the British commander, retreated to Queenstown, and thence to Fort George, the Americans in pursuit. The British, however, were reinforced and General Brown decided to return to Fort Erie. Riall, in turn, pursued. On July 25th the contending forces met near Lundy’s Lane, and one of the most fiercely fought battles of the war followed. The conflict began a little before nightfall, and raged until nearly ten o’clock, when the Americans held undisputed possession of the field. General Riall and one hundred and sixty-eight prisoners were captured. Both General Brown and General Scott were wounded, as was also Captain Worth, afterwards famous in the Mexican War.

The command of the American forces then devolved upon General Ripley, who took up his position at Fort Erie and was there besieged by Lieutenant-General Drummond. On August 3d, the British directed a savage onslaught against the Fort, but were driven back with loss. They continued, however, to invest the American position. On September 17th, General Porter headed an attack on the besieging force, and such was the gallantry of the American volunteers that the British veterans were dispersed. General Napier, the English military historian, cites this sortie as one of the few in all history that at a single stroke compelled the raising of a siege. The Governor brevetted Porter a major-general, and Congress voted him a gold medal.

With this exploit at Fort Erie, the War of 1812 was practically over, so far as the interests of Buffalo were concerned. When the American troops retired from Fort Erie, they blew it up, and its ruins are one of the picturesque features of the region about Buffalo.

The commercial greatness of the city is indissolubly associated with the Erie Canal. In 1807-8 Jesse Hawley of Geneva wrote a series of articles in the _Ontario Messenger_. In these he advocated the construction of a grand canal connecting Lake Erie with the Atlantic Ocean. This idea found favor with Joseph Ellicott, DeWitt Clinton, Gouverneur Morris, and Peter B. Porter, and so strong did the sentiment for the project become, that in 1816 a bill passed the Assembly, directing that the work of construction be commenced. The Senate, however, decided that additional surveys should be made. The work of preparation was inaugurated July 14, 1817; and on the 9th of August, 1823, the work of actual construction began in Erie County by the breaking of ground for the canal, near the place where is now the Commercial Street bridge in Buffalo. The great waterway was completed on October 25, 1825, and the first boat, _Seneca Chief_, started on its voyage from Buffalo to the Hudson. DeWitt Clinton, then the Governor of the State and chief promoter of the canal, graced the ceremonies with his presence.

In this connection, it is interesting to observe that, in 1819, the question whether Buffalo or Black Rock should be the western terminus of the canal was settled in favor of the former through the public spirit and enterprise of Charles Townsend, Samuel Wilkeson, Oliver Forward and George Coit. These men gave each a bond of $8,000 for the purpose of securing a loan of $12,000 from the State to construct a harbor, the State reserving the right to accept or reject, as it pleased, the completed work. From this time on, Judge Wilkeson devoted his immense energies and great executive ability to the interests of Buffalo in connection with the canal, and to him may justly be ascribed the credit of being the founder of her lake commerce. It was altogether appropriate, therefore, that, on the opening of the canal, he should have been given the honor of pouring into the lake the water brought from the ocean, an event described as the Wedding of the Atlantic and Lake Erie. It recalled the marriage in old time of Venice and the Adriatic.

Near where LaSalle, in 1679, built his little sailing vessel, the _Griffin_, three New York capitalists completed on May 28, 1818, the first steamboat that plied the waters of Lake Erie. This was fittingly named, after the Wyandot chieftain, _Walk-in-the-Water_. The little vessel was lost three years later, but it marked the beginning of steam navigation on the Lakes—since grown to such perfection as to rival the navigation of the sea.

The influence of the Erie Canal has been incomparably great, not merely in the rise of one city, but, in a larger sense, in the development of the State and the nation. The commercial forces which it generated have aided in building up the wealth of the Middle West, and the impetus of the resultant enterprise has finally reached every industry of the continent. To the canal, more than to any other factor, Buffalo owes its growth and importance. The little hamlet founded by Joseph Ellicott now has a population of 390,000. The city’s coal receipts in 1898 were 2,455,191 tons; its lumber receipts, 189,075,938 feet; its grain receipts, 267,395,434 bushels. It has a harbor enclosed by a new breakwater nearly four miles in length, and costing over $2,000,000. The coal interests have constructed the greatest trestles in the world. Forty-one elevators, with a capacity of 20,920,000 bushels, line the harbor. There are 3500 manufactories. The park system comprises thousands of acres, with seventeen miles of park driveways. Twenty-six railroads enter the city, with 250 passenger trains daily, and have nearly 700 miles of trackage within the city limits. The electric power from Niagara Falls is delivered at Buffalo in practically unlimited quantities. There are 24 banks, and 184 churches. The city has 116 miles of street paved with stone, 6 miles paved with brick, and 225 miles with asphalt, or more asphalt than any other city in the world, not excepting Paris, Washington, or London. Two public libraries contain more than 180,000 volumes. In handling flour and wheat, Buffalo is the first city in the world. Its fresh-fish industry aggregates an annual distribution of 15,000,000 pounds. Buffalo’s horse market is the most important in the country; and in cattle and hogs, the trade of the city is second only to that of Chicago. The sheep market is the largest in the United States.

The climate of Buffalo, with the exception of high winds during certain portions of the winter, is probably as delightful as that enjoyed by any city on the globe. In summer, the temperature is nearly always moderate, and when other cities suffer from extreme heat, the people of Buffalo are blessed with the conditions common to late summer in other regions.

The residence portion of the city is celebrated for its beauty. The avenues are wide, the dwellings elegant and commodious, the lawn effects charming, and the trees superb.

Buffalo is entering upon what might be termed its metropolitan period. New forces, new ideas, are building splendid superstructures on the foundations established by the generation now passing away. From the time of the city’s incorporation, in 1832, the bench and the bar, the medical and the clerical professions, have been especially rich with the names of those who have left a lasting impress upon the thought of the city, the state and the nation. The political life and the business progress have been dignified by men of intellect and character. Such names as the Right Reverend Arthur Cleveland Coxe, Protestant Episcopal Bishop of Western New York; the Right Reverend Stephen Vincent Ryan, Roman Catholic Bishop of Buffalo; John Ganson, one of the giants of the legal profession; Millard Fillmore, a former President of the United States; Doctors George N. Burwell and John Cronyn, cultured physicians of the old school; William I. Williams, the pioneer of Buffalo’s unrivalled paved streets; the Reverend Doctor William Shelton, rector of St. Paul’s Church; the Reverend Doctor John Lord, perhaps the most famous of Buffalo’s Presbyterian divines; James M. Smith, Justice of the Supreme Court, recall types of men whose ability, integrity and civic worth would contribute to advance civilization in any community.

During the Civil War, Buffalo did its patriotic share towards the preservation of the Union. The names of William F. Rogers, Michael Wiedrich, James P. McMahon, Daniel D. Bidwell, Edward P. Chapin, John Wilkeson and William Richardson are cherished by the people of Buffalo and Erie County as typical of the soldiers who, in regiment after regiment, enlisted there for the war.

In legislation, also, the city contributed its part to the successful prosecution of the struggle. On December 30, 1861, Mr. E. G. Spaulding, member of Congress from Buffalo, introduced the bill which afterwards became famous as the Legal-Tender Act, whereby the Secretary of the Treasury was authorized to issue $50,000,000 in Treasury notes, payable on demand, in denominations of not less than $5, these to be the legal tender for all debts, public and private, and exchangeable for the bonds of the Government at par.

Nearly every element of American progress has entered into the growth of this beautiful city. Its development has been brilliant in enterprise, luminous in education, rich in romance, splendid in achievement, and noble in patriotism. In a word, Buffalo has kept pace with the Great Republic.

PITTSBURGH

THE INDUSTRIAL CITY

BY SAMUEL HARDEN CHURCH

George Washington, the Father of his Country, is equally the Father of Pittsburgh, for he came thither in November, 1753, and established the location of the now imperial city by choosing it as the best place for a fort. Washington was then twenty-one years old. He had by that time written his precocious one hundred and ten maxims of civility and good behavior; had declined to be a midshipman in the British Navy; had made his only sea-voyage to Barbadoes; had surveyed the estates of Lord Fairfax, going for months into the forest without fear of savage Indians or wild beasts, and was now a major of Virginia militia. In pursuance of the claim of Virginia that she owned that part of Pennsylvania in which Pittsburgh is situated, Washington came there as the agent of Governor Dinwiddie to treat with the Indians. With an eye alert for the dangers of the wilderness, and with Christopher Gist beside him, the young Virginian pushed his cautious way to “The Point” of land where the confluence of the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers forms the Ohio. That, he declared, with clear military instinct, was the best site for a fort; and he rejected the promontory two miles below, which the Indians had recommended for that purpose.

(FROM A STATUE BY T. A. MILLS IN THE CARNEGIE MUSEUM.)]

As early as 1728 a daring hunter or trader found the Indians at the head waters of the Ohio,—among them the Delawares, Shawanese, Mohicans and Iroquois,—whither they tracked the bear from their village of Logstown, seventeen miles down the river. They also employed the country roundabout as a highway for their march to battle against other tribes, and against each other. At that time France and England were disputing for the new continent. France, by right of her discovery of the Mississippi, claimed all the lands drained by that river and its tributaries,—a contention which would naturally plant her banner upon the summit of the Alleghany Mountains.[26] England, on the other hand, claimed everything from ocean-shore to ocean-shore. This situation produced war, and Pittsburgh became the strategic key of the great Middle West. The French made early endeavors to win the allegiance of the Indians, and they felt encouraged to press their friendly overtures because they usually came among the red men for trading or exploration, while the English invariably seized and occupied their lands. In 1731 some French settlers did attempt to build a group of houses at Pittsburgh, but the Indians compelled them to go away. The next year the Governor of Pennsylvania summoned two Indian chiefs from Pittsburgh to say why they had been going to see the French Governor at Montreal; and they gave answer that he had sent for them only to express the hope that both English and French traders might meet at Pittsburgh and carry on trade amicably. The Governor of Pennsylvania sought to induce the tribes to draw themselves farther east, where they might be made to feel the hand of authority, but Sassoonan, their chief, forbade them to stir. An Iroquois chief who joined his entreaties to those of the Governor was soon afterward killed by some Shawanese braves, but they were forced to flee into Virginia to escape the vengeance of his tribe.

Louis Celeron, a French officer, made an exploration of the country contiguous to Pittsburgh in 1747, and formally enjoined the Governor of Pennsylvania not to occupy the ground, as France claimed its sovereignty. A year later the Ohio Company was formed, with a charter ceding an immense tract of land for sale and development, including Pittsburgh. This corporation built some storehouses at Logstown to facilitate their trade with the Indians, which were captured by the French, together with skins and commodities valued at £20,000; and the purposes of the Company were never accomplished.

As soon as Washington’s advice as to the location of the fort was received, Captain William Trent was dispatched to Pittsburgh with a force of soldiers and workmen, packhorses and materials, and he began in all haste to erect a stronghold. The French had already built forts on the northern lakes, and they now sent Captain Contrecœur down the Allegheny with one thousand French, Canadians and Indians, and eighteen pieces of cannon, in a flotilla of sixty bateaux and three hundred canoes. Trent had planted himself in Pittsburgh on February 17, 1754,—a date important because it marks the first permanent white settlement there. But his work had been retarded alike by the small number of his men and the severity of the winter; and when Contrecœur arrived in April, the young subaltern who commanded in Trent’s absence surrendered the unfinished works, and was permitted to march away with his thirty-three men. The French completed the fort and named it Duquesne, in honor of the Governor of Canada; and they held possession of it for four years.

Immediately on the loss of this fort, Virginia sent a force under Washington to retake it. Washington surprised a French detachment near Great Meadows, and killed their commander, Jumonville. When a larger expedition came against him, he put up a stockade near the site of Uniontown, naming it Fort Necessity, which he was compelled to yield on terms of marching away with the honors of war.

The next year (1755) General Edward Braddock came over with two regiments of British soldiers, and, after augmenting his force with Colonial troops and a few Indians, began his fatal march upon Fort Duquesne. Braddock’s testy disposition, his consuming egotism, his contempt for the Colonial soldiers and his stubborn adherence to military maxims that were inapplicable to the warfare of the wilderness alienated the respect and confidence of the American contingent, robbed him of an easy victory and cost him his life. Benjamin Franklin had warned him against the imminent risk of Indian ambuscades, but he had contemptuously replied: “These savages may indeed be a formidable enemy to your raw American militia; but upon the King’s regular and disciplined troops, sir, it is impossible they should make any impression.” Some of his English staff-officers urged him to send the rangers in advance and to deploy his Indians as scouts, but he rejected their prudent suggestions with a sneer. On July 9th his army, comprising twenty-two hundred soldiers and one hundred and fifty Indians, was marching down the south bank of the Monongahela. The variant color and fashion of the expedition,—the red-coated regulars, the blue-coated Americans, the naval detachment, the rangers in deerskin shirts and leggings, the savages half-naked and befeathered, the glint of sword and gun in the hot daylight, the long wagon train, the lumbering cannon, the drove of bullocks, the royal banner and the Colonial gonfalon,—the pomp and puissance of it all composed a spectacle of martial splendor unseen in that country before. On the right was the tranquil river, and on the left the trackless wilderness whence the startled deer sprang away into a deeper solitude. At noon the expedition crossed the river and pressed on toward Fort Duquesne, ten miles below, expectant of victory. What need to send out scouts when the King’s troops are here? Let young George Washington and the rest urge it all they may; the thing is beneath the dignity of his Majesty’s General.

But here, when they have crossed, is a level plain, elevated but a few feet above the surface of the river, extending nearly half a mile landwards, and then gradually ascending into thickly wooded hills, with Fort Duquesne beyond. The troops in front had crossed the plain and plunged into the road through the forest for a hundred feet, when a heavy discharge of musketry and arrows was poured upon them, which wrought in them a consternation all the greater because they could see no foe anywhere. They shot at random, but without effect, while the hidden enemy kept up an incessant and destructive fire. In this distressing situation their courage forsook them, and they fell back into the plain. Braddock rode in among them, and he and his officers persistently endeavored to rally them, but without success. The Colonial troops adopted the Indian method, and each man fought for himself behind a tree. This was forbidden by Braddock, who attempted to form his men in platoons and columns, making their slaughter inevitable. The French and Indians, concealed in the ravines and behind trees, kept up a cruel and deadly fire, until the British soldiers lost all presence of mind and began to shoot each other and their own officers, and hundreds were thus slain. The Virginia companies charged gallantly up a hill with a loss of but three men, but when they reached the summit the British soldiery, mistaking them for the enemy, fired upon them, killing fifty out of eighty men. The Colonial troops then resumed the Indian fashion of fighting from behind trees, which provoked Braddock, who had had five horses killed under him in three hours, to storm at them and strike them with his sword. At this moment he was fatally wounded, and many of his men now fled away from the hopeless action. Washington had had two horses killed and received three bullets through his coat. Being the only mounted officer who was not disabled, he drew up the troops still on the field, directed their retreat, maintaining himself at the rear with great coolness and courage, and brought away his wounded general. Sixty-four British and American officers, and nearly one thousand privates, were killed or wounded in this battle, while the total French and Indian loss was not over sixty. A few prisoners captured by the Indians were brought to Pittsburgh and burnt at the stake. Four days after the fight Braddock died, exclaiming to the last, “Who would have thought it!”

FROM AN OIL PAINTING IN THE POSSESSION OF THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF PENNSYLVANIA.]

Despondency seized the English settlers after Braddock’s defeat. But two years afterward William Pitt became Prime Minister, and he thrilled the nation with his appeal to protect the Colonies against France and the savages. His letters inspired the Americans with new hope, and he promised to send them British troops and to supply their own militia with arms, ammunition, tents and provisions at the King’s charge. He sent twelve thousand soldiers from England, which were joined to a Colonial force aggregating fifty thousand men,—the most formidable army yet seen in the new world. The plan of campaign embraced three expeditions: the first against Louisburg, in the island of Cape Breton, which was successful; the second against Ticonderoga, which succeeded after a defeat; and the third against Fort Duquesne. General Forbes commanded this expedition, comprising about seven thousand men. The militia from Virginia, North Carolina and Maryland was led by Washington. On September 12, 1758, Major Grant, a Highlander, led an advance-guard of 850 men to a point two miles from the fort, which is still called Grant’s Hill, where he rashly permitted himself to be surrounded and attacked by the French and Indians, half his force being killed or wounded, and himself slain. Washington followed soon after, and opened a road for the advance of the main body under Forbes. Fort Frontenac, on Lake Ontario, had just been taken by General Amherst, with the result that supplies for Fort Duquesne were cut off. When, therefore, the French commandant learned of the advance of a superior force, having no hope of reinforcements, he blew up the fort, set fire to the adjacent buildings and drew his garrison away.

On Saturday, November 25, 1758, the English took possession of the place, and on the next day General Forbes wrote to Governor Denny from “Fort Duquesne, now Pittsburgh, the 26th of November, 1758,” and this was the first use of that name. On this same Sunday the Rev. Mr. Beatty, a Presbyterian chaplain, preached a sermon in thanksgiving for the superiority of British arms,—the first Protestant service in Pittsburgh. The French had had a Roman Catholic chaplain, Father Baron, during their occupancy.

The English proceeded to build a new fort about two hundred yards from the site of Fort Duquesne, which they called Fort Pitt. This stronghold at Pittsburgh cut off French transportation to the Mississippi by way of the Ohio River, and the only remaining route, by way of the Great Lakes, was soon afterward closed by the fall of Fort Niagara. The fall of Quebec, with the death of the two opposing Generals, Montcalm and Wolfe, and the capture of Montreal, ended the claims of France to sovereignty in the new world.

The new fort being found too small, General Stanwix built a second Fort Pitt, much larger and stronger, designed for a garrison of one thousand men. The Indians viewed the newcomers with suspicion, but Colonel Henry Bouquet assured them, with diplomatic tergiversation, that, “We have not come here to take possession of your country in a hostile manner, as the French did when they came among you, but to open a large and extensive trade with you and all other nations of Indians to the westward.” A redoubt (the “Block-House”) built by Colonel Bouquet in 1764 still stands, in a very good state of preservation, being cared for by the Daughters of the American Revolution. The protection of the garrison naturally attracted a few traders, merchants and pioneers to Pittsburgh, and a permanent population began to grow.

But the indigenous race continued to resent the extension of white encroachment; and they formed a secret confederacy under Pontiac, the renowned Ottawa chief, who planned a simultaneous attack on all the white frontier posts. This uprising was attended by atrocious cruelties at many of the points attacked, but we may take note here of the movement only as it affected Pittsburgh. At the grand council held by the tribes, a bundle of sticks had been given to every tribe, each bundle containing as many sticks as there were days intervening before the deadly assault should begin. One stick was to be drawn from the bundle every day until but one remained, which was to signal the outbreak for that day. This was the best calendar the barbarian could devise. At Pittsburgh, a Delaware squaw who was friendly to the whites had stealthily taken out three of the sticks, thus precipitating the attack on Fort Pitt three days in advance of the time appointed.

The last stick was reached on June 22, 1763, and the Delawares and Shawanese began the assault in the afternoon, under Simon Ecuyer. The people of Pittsburgh took shelter in the fort, and held out while waiting for reinforcements. Colonel Bouquet hurried forward a force of five hundred men, but they were intercepted at Bushy Run, where a bloody battle was fought. Bouquet had fifty men killed and sixty wounded, but inflicted a much greater loss on his savage foes, and gained the fort, relieving the siege. As soon as Bouquet could recruit his command, he moved down the Ohio, attacked the Indians, liberated some of their prisoners and taught the red men to respect the power that controlled at Pittsburgh.

In 1768 the Indians ceded their lands about Pittsburgh to the Colonies, and civilization was then free to spread over them. In 1774 a land office was opened in Pittsburgh by Governor Dunmore, and land-warrants were granted on payment of two shillings and sixpence purchase money, at the rate of ten pounds per one hundred acres.

With the French out of the country, the Colonies began to feel the oppression of a British policy which British statesmen and historians to-day most bitterly denounce. Their opposition to tyranny found its natural expression in the battle of Lexington, April 19, 1775. The fires of patriotism leapt through the continent, and the little settlement at Pittsburgh was quickly aflame with the national spirit. On May 16th a convention was held at Pittsburgh, which resolved that

“This committee have the highest sense of the spirited behavior
of their brethren in New England, and do most cordially
approve of their opposing the invaders of American rights and
privileges to the utmost extreme, and that each member of this
committee, respectively, will animate and encourage their
neighborhood to follow the brave example.”

No foreign soldiers were sent over the mountains to Pittsburgh, but a more merciless foe, who would attack and harass with remorseless cruelty, was impressed into the English service, despite the horrified protests of some of her wisest statesmen. American treaties with the Indians had no force against the allurements of foreign gold, and under this unholy alliance men were burnt at the stake, women were carried away, and cabins were destroyed.

With the aim of regaining the friendship of the Indians, Congress appointed commissioners who met the tribes at Pittsburgh; and Colonel George Morgan, Indian agent, writes to John Hancock, November 8, 1776:

“I have the happiness to inform you that the cloud that
threatened to break over us is likely to disperse. The Six
Nations, with the Muncies, Delawares, Shawanese and Mohicans,
who have been assembled here with their principal chiefs
and warriors to the number of 644, have given the strongest
assurance of their determination to preserve inviolate the
peace and neutrality with the United States.”

These amicable expectations were not realized, and General Edward Hand came to Pittsburgh the next year and planned an expedition against the Indians. Colonel Broadhead took out Hand’s expedition in the summer and burnt the Indian towns.

The depreciation of paper currency, or Continental money, had by this time brought the serious burden of high prices upon the people. The traders, who demanded apparently exorbitant rates for their goods, were denounced in public meetings at Pittsburgh as being “now commonly known by the disgraceful epithet of speculators, of more malignant natures than the savage Mingoes in the wilderness.” This hardship grew in severity until the finances were put upon a more stable basis.

By 1781, there were demoralization and mutiny at Fort Pitt, and General William Irvine was put in command. His firm hand soon restored the garrison to obedience. The close of the war with Great Britain was celebrated by the issue of a general order at the fort, November 6, 1781, requiring all, as a sailor would say, “to splice the main-brace.”[27]

Up to this time the Penn family had held the charter to Pennsylvania; but as they had maintained a steadfast allegiance to the mother country, the General Assembly annulled their title, except to allow them to retain the ownership of various manors throughout the State, embracing half a million acres.

In order to relieve the people of Pittsburgh from going to Greensburg to the court-house in their sacred right of suing and being sued, the General Assembly erected Allegheny County out of parts of Westmoreland and Washington counties, September 24, 1788. This county originally comprised, in addition to its present limits, what are now Armstrong, Beaver, Butler, Crawford, Erie, Mercer, Venango and Warren counties. The act required that the court-house and jail should be located in Allegheny (just across the river from Pittsburgh), but as there was no protection against Indians there, an amendment established Pittsburgh as the county-seat. The first court was held at Fort Pitt; and the next day a ducking-stool was erected for the district, at “The Point” in the three rivers.

In 1785, the dispute between Virginia and Pennsylvania for the possession of Pittsburgh was settled by the award of a joint commission in favor of Pennsylvania.

A writer says that in 1786 Pittsburgh contained thirty-six log houses, one stone and one frame house and five small stores. Another records that the population “is almost entirely Scots and Irish, who live in log houses.” A third says of these log houses, “Now and then one had assumed the appearance of neatness and comfort.”

The first newspaper, the Pittsburgh _Gazette_, was established July 29, 1786. A mail route to Philadelphia, by horseback, was adopted in the same year. On September 29, 1787, the Legislature granted a charter to the Pittsburgh Academy, a school that has grown steadily in usefulness and power, and is now the Western University of Pennsylvania.

In 1791, the Indians became vindictive and dangerous, and General Arthur St. Clair, with a force of twenty-three hundred men, was sent down the river to punish them. Neglecting President Washington’s imperative injunction to avoid a surprise, he led his command into an ambush and lost half of it in the most disastrous battle with the redskins since the time of Braddock. In the general alarm that ensued, Fort Pitt being in a state of decay a new fort was built in Pittsburgh at Ninth and Tenth streets and Penn Avenue,—a stronghold that included bastions, blockhouses, barracks, etc., and was named Fort Lafayette. General Anthony Wayne was then selected to command another expedition against the savages, and he arrived in Pittsburgh in June, 1792. After drilling his troops and making preparations for two years, in the course of which he erected several forts in the West, including Fort Defiance and Fort Wayne, he fought the Indians and crushed their strength and spirit. On his return a lasting peace was made with them, and there were no further raids about Pittsburgh.

The Whiskey Insurrection demands a brief reference. Whiskey is a steady concomitant of civilization. As soon as the white settlers had planted themselves securely at Pittsburgh, they made requisition on Philadelphia for six thousand kegs of flour and three thousand kegs of whiskey—a disproportion as startling as Falstaff’s intolerable deal of sack to one half-pennyworth of bread. Congress, in 1791, passed an excise law to assist in paying the war debt. The measure was very unpopular, and its operation was forcibly resisted, particularly in Pittsburgh, which was noted then, as now, for the quantity and quality of its whiskey. There were distilleries on nearly every stream emptying into the Monongahela. The time and circumstances made the tax odious. The Revolutionary War had just closed, the pioneers were in the midst of great Indian troubles, and money was scarce, of low value and very hard to obtain. The people of the new country were unused to the exercise of stringent laws. The progress of the French Revolution encouraged the settlers to account themselves oppressed by similar tyrannies, against which some of them persuaded themselves similar resistance should be made. Genêt, the French demagogue, was sowing sedition everywhere. Lafayette’s participation in the French Revolution gave it in America, where he was deservedly beloved, a prestige which it could never have gained for itself. Distillers who paid the tax were assaulted; some of them were tarred and feathered; others were taken into the forest and tied to trees; their houses and barns were burned; their property was carried away or destroyed. Several thousand insurgents assembled at Braddock’s Field, and marched on Pittsburgh, where the citizens gave them food and submitted to a reign of terror. Then President Washington sent an army of fifteen thousand troops against them, and they melted away, as a mob will ever do when the strong arm of Government smites it without fear or respect.

Pittsburgh was incorporated a borough in 1794. Her first glassworks was built in 1797; and both her population and her industries multiplied until she was made a city in 1816. In 1845 (April 10th), a great fire destroyed about one third of the total area of the city, including most of the large business houses and factories, the bridge over the Monongahela, the large hotel known as the Monongahela House and several churches;—in all about eleven hundred buildings. The Legislature appropriated $50,000 for the relief of the sufferers.

In 1877, the municipal government, being, in its personnel, at the moment incompetent to preserve the fundamental principles on which it was established, permitted a strike of railroad employees to grow without restriction as to the observance of law and order until it became an insurrection. Three million dollars’ worth of property was destroyed by riot and incendiarism in a few hours. When at last outraged authority was properly shifted from the supine city chieftains to the indomitable State itself, it became necessary, before order could be restored, for troops to fire, with a sacrifice of human life. The lesson was worth all it cost, and anarchy has never dared to raise its head in the corporation limits since that time.

In 1889, the great flood at Johnstown, accompanied by a frightful loss of life and destruction of property, touched the common heart of humanity all over the world. The closeness of Johnstown geographically made the sorrow at Pittsburgh most poignant and profound. In a few hours almost the whole population had brought its offerings for the stricken community, and besides clothing, provisions and every conceivable thing necessary for relief and comfort, the people of Pittsburgh contributed $250,000 to restore so far as possible the material portion of the loss.

Pittsburgh has thus passed through many battles, trials, afflictions and adversities, and has grown in the strength of giants until it now embraces in the limits of the county a population of over one million. The tax valuation of her property is $554,000,000. Her share is more than one half of the whole production in the United States of steel, steel rails, coke, oil, plate glass, glassware, harness-leather and iron pipe. She mines one quarter of the bituminous coal of the United States. She has 2500 mills and factories, with an annual product worth $250,000,000, and a pay-roll of $75,000,000. Her electric street-railway system multiplies itself through her streets for 250 miles. Natural-gas fuel is conveyed into her mills and houses through 1000 miles of iron pipe. Her output of coke makes one train ten miles long every day throughout the year. Her tonnage by river and rail exceeds the tonnage by river and rail of any other city in the world; it is equal to one half the combined tonnage of the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. Her rail tonnage is three times as large as that of New York or Chicago, double that of London, four times that of Paris, and greater than the combined tonnage of New York, Boston and Chicago. Two hundred and fifty passenger trains and six thousand loaded freight-cars run to and from her terminals every day. Nowhere else in the world is there so large a Bessemer-steel plant, crucible-steel plant, plate-glass plant, chimney-glass plant, table-glass plant, air-brake plant, steel-rail plant, cork works, tube works or steel freight-car works. Her armor sheathes our battleships, as well as those of Russia and Japan. She equips the navies of the world with projectiles and range-finders. Her bridges span the rivers of India, China, Egypt and the Argentine Republic; and her locomotives, rails and bridges are used on the Siberian railroad. She builds electric railways for Great Britain and Brazil, and telescopes for Germany and Denmark. Indeed, she distributes her varied manufactures into the channels of trade all over the earth.