Caption: After serving as Quartermaster General during the War for Independence, Thomas Mifflin served in Pennsylvania state legislature and Continental Congress, and then as Pennsylvania's president of council, or governor, in 1788 and 1789. From 1790 to 1799, Mifflin was Pennsylvania's first governor under the new state constitution. During a period of bitter political rivalries, Mifflin by and large remained outside the partisan divisions, and did much to promote "[n]ational felicity and opulence" through his support of economic development and a well-trained state militia.
Independence National Historical Park
Caption: When Charles Willson Peale painted this dual portrait in 1783, Robert Morris, on the right, was the United States Minister of Finance. Gouverneur Morris, on the left, was then his assistant. A New York patriot who moved to Philadelphia during the war for independence, Gouverneur Morris would be a Pennsylvania representative to the 1787 Constitutional Convention, and one of the principal draftsmen of the Constitution.
Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia. Bequest of Richard Ashurst
Caption: There are no portraits of Paine during his first residence in the United States, primarily in Philadelphia, between 1774 and 1787. Returning to the United States in 1802 after his residence and imprisonment in France, Paine again became a lightning rod for controversy because of his support of the French Revolution and his attacks on Christianity. In 1809, Paine died at the age of seventy-two in New York City.
Courtesy of the Kirby Collection of Historical Paintings, Lafayette College Art Collection, Easton, Pa.
Caption: One of Philadelphia's wealthiest and most respected black businessmen, James Forten employed both black and white workers in his sail loft. Active in a broad range of reforms, Forten supported the struggle for the abolition of slavery and opposed the colonization movement, led by African-American ship owner Paul Cuffee, a personal friend, for black Americans to resettle in west Africa.
Courtesy of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania
Caption: Even though John Dickinson was born in Maryland and raised in Delaware, Pennsylvanians considered him one of their own. As a delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1787, having served both the small state of Delaware and the large state of Pennsylvania, Dickinson added his voice to Ben Franklin's as an advocate for compromise. When Charles Willson Peale painted this portrait, Dickinson was president of Pennsylvania's Supreme Executive Council.
Independence National Historical Park
Caption: Two portraits of Joseph Priestly speak volumes about the differences of his life in Great Britain and his last years in Pennsylvania. In this portrait, British artist Ozias Humphrey painted Priestly in formal wig and clerical robes, peering off expressionless into the distance.
Courtesy of the Chemical Heritage Foundation Image Archives. Chemists" Club Collection
Caption: When Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton took charge of the operation to quell the Whiskey Rebellion, he promised President Washington he would roundup a long list of French-inspired opposition leaders in western Pennsylvania. Hamilton was especially interested in French Swiss immigrant Albert Gallatin, his strongest critic in Congress. When he reached the Forks of the Ohio, Hamilton found there was no French connection of any significance. Gallatin would go on to become Secretary of the Treasury under President Thomas Jefferson, and live a long and productive life.
Independence National Historical Park
Caption: In 1796, Dr. David Ramsay had this portrait painted by seventeen-year-old Rembrandt Peale (1778-1860). The son of famed Philadelphia artist Charles Willson Peale, Peale was visiting Charleston, South Carolina, to advertise the collection of portraits in his father's Philadelphia museum as well as his own artistic talent.
Independence National Historical Park
Caption: If ever there was a man who defined the term "itinerant preacher" it was British cleric Francis Asbury (1745-1816). After arriving in Philadelphia in 1771, Asbury spent the next 45 years traveling up and down America on horseback, where he is said to have crossed the Allegheny mountains sixty times during the course of his life. In 1784, Methodist founder John Wesley named Asbury superintendent of all Methodist work in America. During Asbury's leadership, Methodism grew from about 5,000 members at the outbreak of the American Revolution, to near 214,000 at the time of his death in 1816.
Reproduced by permission of the Methodist Church of Great Britain. Image courtesy of Wesley Centre, Oxford Brookes University, England
Caption: A native of Ireland, William Findley (1742-1821) immigrated to Pennsylvania in 1763 where he farmed in Cumberland County for twenty years. In 1783, he moved his family to Westmoreland County near Pittsburgh, where he soon became a political champion for western Pennsylvania.
Independence National Historical Park
Caption: David Rittenhouse,1732-1796, by Charles Willson Peale, from life, 1791-1796.
Independence National Historical Park
Caption: Thomas McKean, by Charles Willson Peale, 1776.
Courtesy of the Westmoreland Museum of American Art. Gift of the Mary March and Woods Memorial Fund.
Caption: After a long record of bloody service during the American Revolution, Pennsylvania hero "Mad" Anthony Wayne (1745-1796) was a logical choice to lead a new expedition–the previous two had failed– against hostile Indians in the Ohio Valley in 1794. Wayne's defeat of the Ohio Indians at the Battle of Fallen Timbers ended forty years of fighting along the Ohio-Allegheny watershed. British pastelist James Sharples, Sr. probably completed this portrait in June, 1796 before Wayne left Philadelphia to return to his post in Detroit.
Courtesy of Independence National Historical Park.
Caption: Protesting that their three-year enlistments were up, nearly half of the 2,500 men in the Pennsylvania Line in the Continental Army mutinied from their camp at Morristown, New Jersey on January 1, 1781. Intending to march on the Continental Congress at Philadelphia and demand back pay, the mutineers traveled to Princeton, New Jersey, where they met with President Joseph Reed of the Pennsylvania Executive Council, who agreed to terms that ended the mutiny.
Courtesy of Capitol Preservation Committee, http://cpc.state.pa.us and John Rudy Photography, http://www.johnrudy.com
Caption: The son of Moravian immigrants, Simon Snyder was educated in a Quaker school, then ran a store and gristmill in Selinsgrove before his election to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives in 1797. In 1805, Snyder made an unsuccessful run as the Jeffersonian candidate for governor against McKean. In 1808 he became the first person of German descent to win election as governor of Pennsylvania, an office he held until 1817. In the decades that followed, seven of Pennsylvania’s first fifteen governors would be of German descent.
Courtesy of Capitol Preservation Committee, http://cpc.state.pa.us and John Rudy Photography, http://www.johnrudy.com
Caption: Born in Scotland in 1726, Hugh Mercer was twenty-one when he stepped off a ship in Philadelphia in 1747. He drifted west to the Scots-Irish settlements of the Pennsylvania's Cumberland Valley, where he spent the next eight years practicing medicine. Commissioned a captain in the Pennsylvania regiment in 1756, Mercer was a hero of the French and Indian War, leading the daring Kittanning Expedition on western Pennsylvania hostiles along with John Armstrong. He died on January 12, 1777, after being repeatedly bayoneted at the Battle of Princeton. Mercer County, New Jersey is also named in honor of this valiant general.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Robert W. de Forest, 1906.(06.1346.2)Photograph, all rights reserved, Metropolitan Museum of Art
Caption: A signer of both the Declaration of Independence and the federal Constitution, George Clymer purchased Summerseat in 1798 during the bankruptcy sale of Robert Morris's properties. In 1805 Clymer deeded the property to his son, Henry, who sold it seven years later.
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of W.B. Shubrick Clymer
Caption: In 1780, General Arthur St. Clair commissioned a miniature of himself from renowned Philadelphia artist Charles Willson Peale. A few years later, Peale created this duplicate for his own collection, and later added St. Clair's portrait to his Philadelphia Museum, possibly in honor of his rescue of the Fort Ticonderoga garrison. The City of Philadelphia later bought St. Clair's portrait at the 1854 Peale Museum sale.
Independence National Historical Park
Caption: "Next to him, I was but a candle in the noon-day sun." So said Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall when describing Alexander Hamilton. Born on the West Indies in 1755 to a debt-prone father of noble Scottish lineage and a beautiful mother of French Huguenot blood, Alexander Hamilton did not begin life with any better than an average prospect of success. By the summer of 1787, Hamilton was in Philadelphia as a new York delegate and went on to be the primary author of The Federalist; 85 essays that helped turn the tide of opinion and see the Constitution ratified. As first Secretary of the Treasury, Hamilton was tasked to establish national credit where none existed, and on the morning of July 11, 1804, he was shot in a duel by Vice President Aaron Burr and died the next day.
Courtesy of the United States Treasury Collection of Fine Arts and Antiques.
Caption: Born in York County, Pennsylvania, James Ross (1762-1847) culminated a distinguished career in law with his election to the U.S. Senate in 1794. Ross made three unsuccessful runs to become governor of Pennsylvania, in 1799, 1802, and 1808.
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
Caption: Born in Scotland, Hugh Henry Brackenridge (1748-1816) moved to the small frontier settlement of Pittsburgh in 1781. There, he became an important political leader, started Pittsburgh’s first newspaper, and wrote Modern Chivalry, the first novel published west of the Alleghenies, in which he voiced his concerns about the excesses of democracy and his own ideas about what was best for the new nation.
Courtesy of Dickinson College Archives and Special Collections
Caption: After immigrating to Pennsylvania from England at the age of thirteen, Robert Morris (1734-1806) went on to become the most famous financier of the American Revolution. In the 1790s Morris went bankrupt, then spent three and a half years in debtor's prison. He lived his final years in a small house in Philadelphia, according to friend, "a nearly forgotten and much pitied man."
Independence National Historical Park
Caption: The leader of two major Episcopal churches in Philadelphia (Christ Church and St. Peter's Church) Reverend William White served as chaplain of the Continental Congress during the American Revolution, and then as chaplain of the U.S. Senate. In 1787, White became the first bishop of the Episcopal Church in the new United States. An important advocate of African American attendance in the Episcopal church, White supported formation of the Free African Society, and after St. George's attempted to force black worshippers into the balcony - the action which precipitated Richard Allen's formation of the AME church - continued to support Absalom Jones, whom he ordained in 1802.
Courtesy of The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Bequest of William White.
Caption: Gotthief Henry Earnest Muhlenberg, by Charles Willson Peale from life, 1810.
Courtesy of Independence National Historical Park
Caption: Born in Trappe, Pennsylvania, Frederick A.C. Muhlenberg (1750-1801) was the younger brother of famed Revolutionary War general John P.G. Muhlenberg. During the war, Muhlenberg served in the Continental Congress, and then as the speaker of the Pennsylvania legislature from 1780-1783. President of the Pennsylvania state constitutional convention called to ratify the Federal Constitution in 1787, Muhlenberg then served in the first four U.S. Congresses. At first a Federalist, Muhlenberg ran against Thomas Mifflin for governor of Pennsylvania in 1793 and 1796, as a Democratic Republican or "Jeffersonian."
Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
Caption: Born in Lithuania, then a part of Russian Poland, Tadeusz Kosciuszko came to America in August, 1776, after an extensive education in military engineering in both Poland and France. Polish expatriate Julian Rys probably based this painting on an engraving, which had been based on Josef Grassi's 1792 portrait of Kosciuszko. In 1897 the Polish National Alliance donated Rys" portrait to the City of Philadelphia for the gallery in Independence Hall.
Independence National Historical Park
Caption: "He was brave, but not suited for a commander against Indians, and he was not in sympathetic touch with the frontiersmen." So wrote historian E.K. Alden about Philadelphian Josiah Harmer (1753-1813), who was soundly defeated by the Indians in the first campaign of the "Northwest Indian War" along the Maumee Valley in October of 1790.
Courtesy of the Diplomatic Reception Rooms, U.S. Department of State, Washington, DC., Photograph by Will Brown
Caption: After he took office as the United State's second president in 1797, John Adams led the nation through a Quasi-war with France and struggled with the increasingly bold challenges of his political opponents. The Federalist party's over-reaction to Fries Rebellion infuriated Pennsylvania German voters, whose subsequent support of the Republican party in Pennsylvania may well have cost Adams the presidential election of 1800.
Independence National Historical Park
Caption: A native of Ireland and a graduate of Dublin University where he studied medicine, Dr. William Irvine left the British Navy and in 1764 settled in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Commander of American troops on the northwestern frontier during the last years of the American Revolution, Irvine was the logical choice to survey lands in western Pennsylvania for donation to men who had served during the War for Independence.
Courtesy of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania Collection, Atwater Kent Museum of Philadelphia
Caption: After arriving in Philadelphia in 1793, former English Sergeant Major William Cobbett (1763-1835) soon became one of the most vitriolic writers in the pamphlet war between Federalists and Jeffersonians. Writing under the pen name "Peter Porcupine", he was vicious in his opposition to Jefferson and other supporters of the revolutionary regime in France. During the yellow fever outbreak of 1797, Cobbett called Dr. Benjamin Rush a murderer for his unsuccessful strategy of bleeding and purging his fevered patients. Dr. Rush brought suit for libel and was awarded the then staggering sum of $5,000. In 1800 Cobbett, financially ruined, returned to England, where he enjoyed a long and controversial career as a political journalist.
National Portrait Gallery, St. Martin's Place, London, www.npg.org.uk
Caption: Benjamin Rush, by Charles Willson Peale, after Thomas Sully, 1818.
Independence National Historical Park
Caption: A founder of the Free African Society, Absalom Jones in 1794 founded St. Thomas' African Episcopal Church, the first black Episcopal Church in the United States, then served as a deacon and its leader.
Delaware Art Museum, Gift of Absalom Jones School, 1971.
Caption: After eight long years of war, George Washington returned home to Mount Vernon on Christmas Eve, 1783. "Many, mistakenly, think that I am retired to ease," he repined, "but in no period of my life-not in the eight years I served the public, have I been obliged to write so much myself as I have done since retirement." The spring and summer of 1784 saw a steady stream of visitors pass through the doors of Mount Vernon. On September 1, 1784, Washington set out on horseback to tour his western lands with his old friend Dr. James Craik. What awaited him in Pennsylvania would be an unpleasant surprise.
Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Bequest of Mrs. Sarah Harrison (The Joseph Harrison, Jr. Collection)
Caption: A former mayor of Philadelphia and partner of Robert Morris since the 1750s, Thomas Willing (1731-1821) served as a justice on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court and as president of the Bank of the United States from 1791 to 1807. Willing amassed a huge fortune through his investments in the development of the Commonwealth.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Dr. Earnest G. Stillman, by exchange, 1966(66.46)Photograph ©1983 The Metropolitan Museum
Caption: One of the Revolution's most celebrated commanders, Governor Henry "Light Horse Harry" Lee came to Philadelphia to receive his Congressional commendation for the victory at Paulus Hook and to resign his military commission. Sometime in 1785, "Light Horse Harry" sat for Peale a second time when the artist painted a miniature of him (now in a private collection) that remained in the museum collection until Peale's death.
Independence National Historical Park
Caption: Benjamin Franklin, by Mason Chamberlin, 1762.
Courtesy Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania