Editor’s Letter

Natural rights, individual liberties and the social contract — these Enlightenment ideals were at the core of the transformation of America in the second half of the 18th century. Such values would serve as not only the basis for the American Colonies to dissolve their “political bands” with Great Britain but also the catalyst for internal revolutions that were beginning to foment in the new United States. In 1776 Pennsylvania, already primed by the religious and civil liberties granted in William Penn’s 1701 Charter of Privileges, was at the center of it all, the locus of the nation’s birth. With the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence now upon us, this edition reflects on ideological shifts within revolutionary Pennsylvania.

At the outset of the American Revolution, Pennsylvania was still a British colony in the hands of the Penn family, with William Penn’s grandson John serving as proprietary governor. As the Continental Congress moved toward severing ties with Great Britain, delegates from Pennsylvania’s counties convened at Carpenters’ Hall in Philadelphia where they would decide to support independence and draft a state constitution. In this issue, Philadelphia-area historian Lorett Treese tells the story in “A Radical Shift,” following Pennsylvania’s progression from its last days as a British province to its new identity as one of the “united states” of America with a constitution that would test the limits of democracy.

Another revolution was brewing in the era of independence, as some women were beginning to challenge the traditional roles set out for them. Jennifer Eaton Barndt has written about many of these pioneering individuals in these pages — Esther DeBerdt Reed, who advanced the role of women in public service through an organization she inspired and cofounded to support the Continental troops; Margaret Corbin and Mary Ludwig Hays, who took up arms in battle, both becoming known as “Molly Pitcher”; and now, Elizabeth Graeme Fergusson. Barndt’s article “A Woman of the American Enlightenment” chronicles the ultimately tragic life of Fergusson, a poet, translator, salon hostess, mentor to other emerging women writers of the period — a “woman of uncommon talents,” as her close friend and founding father Benjamin Rush described her — who was respected in intellectual and cultural circles in colonial Philadelphia, among women and men alike.

As the Declaration of Independence was being drafted, some of the founders recognized a glaring contradiction regarding the “self-evident truths” that the document espoused: If “all men are created equal,” then how can slavery in the new United States be permitted to exist? Thomas Jefferson, a slaveholder himself, had included a condemnation of the slave trade in an early draft of the Declaration, but several Southern delegates objected and it was removed. Four years later, however, Pennsylvania had decided to chart a course for eliminating slavery within its own boundaries with the General Assembly’s passage of an act for gradual abolition. In “Understanding Pennsylvania’s Gradual Abolition Act of 1780,” regular contributor Todd M. Mealy places the act in context, explaining its provisions, its strange loopholes, and what gradual abolition actually meant to those who were in bondage when the law was enacted and to their children born after it was adopted.

Other articles related to the American Revolution in Pennsylvania, and in some cases the subsequent anniversaries that commemorated it, appear in Marking Time, Our Documentary Heritage, Picturing PA, A Place in Time and Trailheads to complete a commemorative issue that I hope will give you not only a stronger sense of the commonwealth in the era of independence and its keystone role in the founding of the nation but also how this transformative age continues to impact us today.

Kyle R. Weaver
Editor