The trouble began on May 5, the day Madison rode in for the Convention. He came from the north, from New York, so he could not himself have seen the incident happen, because it took place near the New Market, on the south side of town. An old woman, known familiarly as Korbmacher, lived there. We know nothing about her except that she had formerly lived among the Germans in Spring Garden, on the north side. She had there acquired her nickname—whether she actually made baskets is not clear—and an evil reputation. She was thought to be a witch, and when things went wrong—presumably illnesses among children or cattle—she would be blamed.
On May 5, a Saturday, as the Pennsylvania Packet reported six days later, she was attacked “by some persons of the vicinity.” The story went on,
Upon a supposition she was a witch, she was cut in the forehead, according to antient and immemorial custom, by those persons. This old body long since laboured under suspicions of sorcery, and was viewed as the pest and nightmare of society in those parts of the town where she had hitherto lived; she was commonly called, at Spring Garden Korbmacher, by the Germans: and on that score, on the present and other occasions, unfortunately became the victim of vengeance of some individuals, who afforded her the most pointed abuse which so mislead a passion and resentment, could possibly impose and inflict.
The paper went on to say that Korbmacher, fearing for her life, had applied to the authorities for protection. Though it was not clear what kind of protection they could offer, the paper deplored “the absurd and abominable notions of witchcraft and sorcery,” and hoped that they would “no more predominate in an empire like ours, that has emancipated itself from the superstitions of authority, and in fact every other species of superstition consisting in the bondage of the body or the mind.” Silly fear of witches and witchcraft belonged to the old world; it must have no place “in the free and civilized parts of independent America.” But after a lengthy denunciation of superstition the paper acknowledged that “prejudices, worm-eaten prejudices, as our old companions are hard to be parted with.”
Such prejudices, it was feared, might threaten not only the lives of poor women like Korbmacher but also the success of the coming Convention. In another paragraph in the same issue, the Packet observed “that as the time approaches for opening the business of the foederal convention, it is natural that every lover of his country should experience some anxiety for the fate of an expedient so necessary, yet so precarious. Upon the event of this great council, indeed, depends every thing that can be essential to the dignity and stability of the national character.”
Philadelphians could read the story of the attack on Korbmacher not only in the Pennsylvania Packet but in several other newspapers. One looks in vain, however, for further details. As was their custom, the other newspapers simply copied the story word for word from the one that first printed it. Even the German Gemeinnützige Philadelphische Correspondenz simply translated it from the Packet.
Springtime passed, the Convention met, and summer heat set in. The first week in July was especially hot and humid. It was a bad time for the Convention, for on the second of July the members had become deadlocked over the question of representation, and for the next two weeks, until the so-called Great Compromise was agreed to (consisting mainly of representation for all states equally in the Senate, and by population in the House of Representatives), the Convention was in danger of dissolution. The heat wave broke with a thundershower on July 9, and five days later the Convention was on course again, with the Great Compromise in place. Korbmacher did not fare so well.
Whether the weather had anything to do with it is not apparent. The south side of Philadelphia was not a salubrious place in the summer heat. The fields in the area were a dumping ground for every kind of refuse. Dead horses and dead dogs lay amid the heaps, filling the noisome air with the stench of putrefaction. Nevertheless, nothing untoward happened while the heat wave lasted, other than the usual riotous behavior of the wheelbarrow men. But on July 10, as a cool breeze swept the city and things began to look up at the Convention, the people around the New Market broke out in rage against Korbmacher. Cutting her in the forehead had apparently not put an end to the misfortunes attributed to her. What these were is not recorded, but at least one woman blamed the death of a child on her charms. The whole story, so far as we know it, was carried in the papers in a few lines (this time the Pennsylvania Evening Herald was first, and the others copied from it). “We are sorry to hear,” the story began,
that the poor woman who suffered so much some time ago, under the imputation of being a witch, has again been attacked by an ignorant and inhuman mob. On Tuesday last she was carried through several of the streets, and was hooted and pelted as she passed along. A gentleman who interfered in her favour was greatly insulted, while those who recited the innumerable instances of her art, were listened to with curiosity and attention.
How was she carried? Perhaps in a cart? What was she pelted with? With refuse? With rocks? Who were the people who pelted her? Were they the same people who passed drink to the wheelbarrow men? Were the wheelbarrow men themselves among them? What kind of people still believed in witches in 1787? Nothing in the record tells us. But the picture is extraordinary. While America’s great men sat in solemn conclave, working out the compromise that saved the union and established the form of government under which we still live, Korbmacher was carried through the streets, her tormenters reciting her supposed acts of sorcery, inviting the throng to pelt her. And the story does not end there: eight days later she was dead. The newspapers tell us what she died of:
It must seriously affect every humane mind that in consequence of the barbarous treatment lately suffered by the poor old woman, called a Witch, she died on Wednesday last. It is hoped that every step will be taken to bring the offenders to punishment, in justice to the wretched victim, as well as the violated laws of reason and society.
It was a pious wish, shared by “several respectable citizens” who at the time of the second attack expressed a willingness to testify in the woman’s behalf, and by a “gentleman of the law” who proposed to undertake the prosecution of her tormenters. The case evidently did come to trial at the “city sessions” held by the Mayor’s Court in October. The docket of that court in the City Archives is extant from 1782 to 1785 and from 1789 to 1792, but is missing for the years from 1786 to 1788. Hence once again, we know of the case only from the newspapers, which do not even record the outcome and would perhaps not have mentioned it at all, had not the judge made it the occasion for a labored exercise of tasteless wit. Here is the story, offered first in the Pennsylvania Evening Herald for October 27:
On Monday last [October 22] the city sessions commenced, and on Friday the business of the court was concluded. Several persons were condemned to the wheel and barrow, but the greater number of bills were for keeping disorderly houses, and committing assaults and battery—a melancholy proof of the depraved manners, and the contentious spirit of the times. One woman, who had been indicted for some violence offered to the person of the unhappy creature that was lately attacked by a mob under the imputation of being a witch, maintained the justice of that opinion, and insinuated her belief that her only child sickened and died, under the malignant influence of a charm. Upon which the presiding Justice made the following observation—what! that a poor wretch whose sorrows and infirmities have sunk her eyes into her head, and whose features are streaked with the wrinkles of extreme old age, should therefore become an object of terror, and be endowed with the powers of witchcraft—it is an idle and absurd superstition! If, however, some damsels that I have seen, animated with the bloom of youth, and equipped with all the grace of beauty, if such women were indicted for the offence, the charge might receive some countenance, for they are indeed calculated to charm and bewitch us. But age and infirmity, though they deserve our compassion, have nothing in them that can alarm or facinate our nature.
So the episode closed. What did the great men make of it? Wha
t did Washington think? What did Madison think? What did Roger Sherman or Elbridge Gerry think, or the other New Englanders with their not so ancient heritage of witchcraft? And what did Philadelphians, other than newspaper correspondents and facetious judges, think? Again, the record is silent. The attacks on Korbmacher and her death passed unnoticed in the diaries and letters that have thus far come to light.
That fact may itself suggest something—namely, that the episode did not seem as bizarre to people of the time as it does to us. The year 1787 was less than a century from 1692. It is worth reminding ourselves that Benjamin Franklin once spoke with Cotton Mather. He and the other fifty-four men who labored in the State House that summer may have been working against greater odds than we have realized. Superstition dies hard, and witch hunts have generally proceeded from the bottom up. Even the Spanish Inquisition was less ardent in pursuing witches than popular demand would have had it be. The members of the Constitutional Convention have often been taken to task by historians for their seeming distrust of the people. And although that distrust has been greatly exaggerated, and although it affected some members much more than others, it was real. It shocks us a little, as we read Madison’s notes of what his colleagues said, to find them at the very outset of the Convention fearful of an “excess of democracy,” worried that the people “are constantly liable to be misled.” If, however, we bear in mind the actions of this particular mob (will anyone insist on calling it a “crowd”?) on the very doorsteps of the Convention, we may perhaps take a more charitable view of the bias recorded in Madison’s journal. Enlightenment still had, and has, a long way to go.
—1983
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Contentious Quaker: William Penn
CHRIST SAID THAT his kingdom was not of this world and embodied the message in his other teachings. His followers have nevertheless had to live in the world, trying in spite of his warning to bring it under his dominion or else bending his precepts almost beyond recognition in order to fit them to the ways of the world. Over the centuries Christianity has vibrated uneasily between what its founder prescribed and what the world demands. When the church becomes too fat and comfortable with the world, the contrast between the medium and the message will always prompt some prophet to summon true believers out of so unchristian an institution and into a way of life and worship that will more closely resemble Christ’s. We may call them protesters, but in the course of time they become Protestants, with a capital P, against whom new prophets must in turn raise the flag of protest.
When William Penn was born, in 1644, England was filled with prophets, each with his own version of what the Christian life entailed. The Church of England, which had been Protestant with a capital P from its inception, was under challenge not only by Presbyterians and Congregationalists but by a host of more radical visionaries, many of whom thought that Christ’s kingdom was shortly to commence, not by subduing the world, but by putting an end to it: Antinomians, Muggletonians, Fifth Monarchists, Anabaptists, Seekers, and so on. Penn’s father and mother were none of these. They were genteel Protestants, good Church of England folk, but perhaps with some sympathy for Presbyterianism or Congregationalism. The father, also named William, certainly had no scruples about working for a government run by a Congregationalist, for he made a brilliant career in Oliver Cromwell’s navy, before bringing himself to disgrace in an unsuccessful expedition against the Spanish in the Caribbean. But he also had no scruples about working for Charles II. When Charles returned to the throne in 1660, he restored Penn to his command as admiral and to a handsome living from lands in Ireland that had been confiscated from their Catholic owners. The elder Penn had reason to be content with a world that had served him well.
His son was cut from another cloth. From an early age, at least from his early teens, William Penn was preoccupied with religion to an extent that his parents found disconcerting in a young gentleman with a career in the highest places before him. They wanted him to have all the advantages that his father’s position entitled him to. They saw to it that he met all the right people, that he learned all the social graces. And indeed it all came easy to him. He was lively, energetic, and quickwitted. People liked him, and he liked them, including apparently a lot of pretty girls. But he had this unseemly bent for religion and for pursuing accepted religious beliefs to unacceptable conclusions.
When he was sixteen, they packed him off to Oxford, where the learned clergymen with which the place abounded might be able to keep him on track. But he proved too hot to handle. In less than two years the learned clergy sent him back, expelled for his outspoken contempt for them and their church. In desperation his parents sent him on the grand tour of the Continent with other young gentlemen, in hopes that there he would get the spirit and the flesh sorted out into the right proportions. And though he spent some of his time in France studying theology, when he returned to London in 1664, not quite twenty, his religious zeal had momentarily abated. He was full of fashionable continental mannerisms, and he showed a proper appreciation for the sensual pleasures awaiting a young gentleman in Restoration London.
In London he attended Lincoln’s Inn to learn the smattering of law appropriate to a gentleman of property; and he also attended at the King’s Court, where his father was in high favor, especially with the Duke of York, the king’s brother. The duke was in charge of naval affairs, with Sir William Penn, now knighted, as his leading admiral. The elder Penn, who could not have been more pleased with the way his son had seemingly turned out, introduced him to the duke, and the two quickly became friends. In 1666 Sir William sent the boy to Ireland to look after the family estates, and young William at once made friends among the Anglo-Irish nobility. But his career as proper young gentleman was short-lived. At Cork he met up with Thomas Loe, a Quaker preacher who had entranced him as a teenager ten years before. By the end of 1667, after a brief spell in an Irish jail, he was back in London, where Samuel Pepys, a clerk in the navy office, made that classic entry in his diary: “Mr. Will Pen, who is lately come over from Ireland, is a Quaker again, or some very melancholy thing.”
THE PROPHET
He was indeed a Quaker, and for his father and mother it was indeed a melancholy thing. Quakerism appeared to be another of those visionary, fringe movements that the 1640s and 1650s had continued to spawn, and of them all it may have seemed the most offensive. Its members were not content to depart from established institutions; they seemed to enjoy dramatic confrontations with authority, in which they defied not only the established church and all its ways but also the customary forms of good behavior. They wore their hats in the presence of their superiors, right up to the king himself. They refused to address people by their proper titles: they would not even vouchsafe a Mr. before the names of their betters. Some of them appeared naked at local church services. And instead of meeting in secret, where the authorities could ignore their violation of the laws against dissenting religions, they insisted on making their meetings public, in effect daring the sheriffs and constables to arrest them, a dare that was often taken.
Their beliefs were as offensive as their conduct. They claimed what amounted to direct revelation from God—the inner light they called it—of the same kind that the apostles had had from Christ himself. The Holy Scriptures, therefore, on which the whole Protestant movement rested, were no more to them than an imperfect record of past revelations of people like themselves. They denied that Christ’s sacrifice was sufficient in itself to bring redemption, but they thought that all men were capable of redemption, if they followed the inner light. Thus they denied the central Christian doctrines of atonement and predestination. They rejected not only all other churches and ministers, refusing to pay their tithes to the established church, but also all sacraments and sermons. Their only preaching came from those who claimed to be enunciating messages from on high via the inner light. And they rejected original sin, too, in its usual sense, for they claimed that with the assistance of the inner light t
hey could completely free themselves from sin in their daily lives.
In espousing such beliefs, William Penn appeared to be repudiating his heritage, repudiating the society in which he had grown, repudiating his education, repudiating his class, repudiating his parents. And there can be no doubt that he thought he was doing so. His first important tract, No Cross No Crown, written in 1669 while he was imprisoned in the Tower of London, had as its theme the conflict between the world and the cross, the import of its title being that no crown of eternal glory could be won without taking up the cross and undergoing the suffering and humiliation ever inflicted by the world on those who reject its ways.
There may have been something of adolescent, youthful rebellion in Penn’s stance, but it persisted throughout his life in a posture of no compromise with the world. In counseling other adherents to the cause, he continually admonished them that they should “Keep out of base Bargainings or Conniving at fleshly Evasions of the Cross,” that they should avoid “Reasonings with Opposers,” lest the purity of their commitment be sullied.
This last piece of advice was one that Penn was never able to follow himself, for Penn, in spite of being a likable person, had a contentious streak that impelled him not only to reason with opposers but even to denounce them. Although the Quakers officially professed an aversion to controversy, Penn took it upon himself (with the blessing of other Quaker leaders) to defend them against all comers and especially against the Church of England and the more respectable dissenters of Presbyterian or Congregational persuasion. Nearly all his voluminous writings are polemical. In a three-year span alone, from 1672 to 1674, he published twenty-two tracts, several of them lengthy, in which he went on the attack with no holds barred.
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