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Page 44
"Commandant Price opened their valves and sank them in the basin."
"And the American army, where is it now?" I asked.
"They've retreated south of the Brandywine--what's left of them. Our new
line is entrenching from Chester to Upland to Westchester with our right
flank on the Delaware; but what's the use?"
So crushing was the supremacy of the invaders that there was no further
thought of resistance in Philadelphia. The German army was encamped in
Fairmount Park and it was known that, at the first sign of revolt, German
siege-guns on the historic heights of Wissahickon and Chestnut Hill would
destroy the City Hall with its great tower bearing the statue of William
Penn and the massive grey pile of Drexel and Company's banking house at
the corner of Fifth and Chestnut streets. Von Hindenburg had announced
this, also that he did not consider it necessary to take hostages.
There was one act of resistance, however, when the enemy entered
Philadelphia that must live among deeds of desperate heroism.
As the German hosts marched down Chestnut Street they came to
Independence Hall and here, blocking the way on their sorrel horses with
two white mounted trumpeters, was the First City Troop, sixty-five men
under Captain J. Franklin McFadden, in their black coats and white
doeskin riding-breeches, in the black helmets with raccoon skin plumes,
in their odd-shaped riding boots high over the knee, all as in
Revolutionary days--here they were drawn up before the statue of George
Washington and the home of the Liberty Bell, resolved to die here,
fighting as well as they could for these things that were sacred. And
they did die, most of them, or fell wounded before a single one of the
enemy set foot inside of Independence Hall.
Here is the list of heroes who offered their lives for the cause of
liberty:
Captain J. Franklin McFadden, First Lieutenant George C. Thayer, Second
Lieutenant John Conyngham Stevens, First Sergeant Thomas Cadwalader,
Second Sergeant (Quartermaster) Benjamin West Frazier, Third Sergeant
George Joyce Sewell, William B. Churchman, Richard M. Philler, F. Wilson
Prichett, Clarence H. Clark, Joseph W. Lewis, Edward D. Page, Richard
Tilghman, Edward D. Toland, Jr., McCall Keating, Robert P. Frazier,
Alexander Cadwalader, Morris W. Stroud, George Brooke, 3d, Charles
Poultney Davis, Saunders L. Meade, Cooper Howell, C. W. Henry, Edmund
Thayer, Harry C. Yarrow, Jr., Alexander C. Yarnall, Louis Rodman Page,
Jr., George Gordon Meade, Pierson Pierce, Andrew Porter, Richard H.
R. Toland, John B. Thayer, West Frazier, John Frazer, P. P. Chrystie,
Albert L. Smith, William W. Bodine, Henry D. Beylard, Effingham Buckley
Morris, Austin G. Maury, John P. Hollingsworth, Rulon Miller, Harold M.
Willcox, Charles Wharton, Howard York, Robert Gilpin Irvin, J. Keating
Willcox, William Watkins, Jr., Harry Ingersoll, Russell Thayer, Fitz
Eugene Dixon, Percy C. Madeira, Jr., Marmaduke Tilden, Jr., H. Harrison
Smith, C. Howard Clark, Jr., Richard McCall Elliot, Jr., George Harrison
Frazier, Jr., Oliver Eton Cromwell, Richard Harte, D. Reeves Henry, Henry
H. Houston, Charles J. Ingersoll.
It grieved me when I visited the quaint little house on Arch Street with
its gabled window and wooden blinds, where Betsey Ross made the first
flag of the United States of America, to find a German banner in place of
the accustomed thirteen white stars on their square of blue. And again,
when I stood beside Benjamin Franklin's grave in Christ Church Cemetery,
I was shocked to see a German flag marking this honoured resting-place.
"Benjamin and Deborah, 1790," was the deeply graven words and, beside
them under a kindly elm, the battered headstone of their little
four-year-old son, "Francis F.--A delight to all who knew him." Then a
German flag!
I began to wonder why we had not learned a lesson from England's
lamentable showing in 1915. What good did all our wealth do us now? It
would be taken from us--had not the Germans already levied an indemnity
of four hundred millions upon Philadelphia? And seized the Baldwin
locomotive works, the greatest in the world, employing 16,000 men? And
the Cramp shipbuilding yards? And the terminus at Point Breeze down the
river of the great Standard Oil Company's pipe line with enormous oil
supplies?
Philadelphians realised all this when it was too late. They knew
that ten thousand American soldiers, killed in battle, were lying in
fresh-made graves. They knew that the Philadelphia Hospital and the
University of Pennsylvania Hospital and the commercial museum buildings
nearby that had been changed into hospitals could scarcely provide beds
and nurses for wounded American soldiers. And yet, "What can we do?" said
Mayor George H. Earle, Jr., to me. "New York City resisted, and you know
what happened. Boston rioted, and she had her lesson. No! Philadelphia
will not resist. Besides, read this."
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