506 ULMUS AMEinCANA. 



liaus, tne same as if a man's body was to be dividt'd into two parls. Takmg 

 up the parchment, he then presented it to the sachem who wore the horn in his 

 chaplet, and desired him and the other sachems to preserve it carefnlly for three 

 generations, that tlieir children might know what had passed between them, 

 when tiiey were no longer living to repeat it. It is to be regretted that the 

 speeches of the Indians on this memorable day, have not come down to us. It 

 is only known that they solemnly pledged themselves, according to the manner 

 of their coinitry, to live in love with William l*enn and his children as long as 

 the sun and moon should endure. Thus ended this famous treaty of wliich 

 more lias been said in the way of praise, than of any other ever transmitted to 

 posterity."' To this may be added the concise eulogium of Voltaire, who j)ro- 

 nounced it to be " the only treaty which was ratified without an oath, and the 

 only one which was never broken."'" 



The tree, under which the foregoing transaction took place, was long regarded 

 by the Pennsylvanians with universal veneration. During the war of indepen- 

 dence, General Simcoe, who commanded a British force at Kensington, when his 

 soldiers were cutting down all the trees around them for fuel, placed a centinel 

 under Penn's elm, to guard it from injury. In 1810, this tree was blown down 

 in a gale of wind, when, on counting the annular riugs, it proved to be two hun- 

 dred and eighty-three years of age. having been one hundred and fifty-five years 

 old at the time the treaty was signed. Shortly after this accident occurred, a 

 large portion of the tree was conveyed to the seat of the representative of the Fenn 

 family, at Stoke, near Windsor, in England, where, it is said, it still remains in 

 a state of complete preservation. 



LIBERTY TREES. 



"When people first thought of making Liberty a goddess," says Dr. Smith, 

 " and consecrating trees to her, we cannot say : but, about the time when the 

 troubles between the American colonies and the mother country commenced, there 

 appears to have been laid, in England, an unpopular excise upon cider, and the 

 sufferers under the act assembled near Honiton, in Devonshire, and appropriated 

 an apple-tree as an altar at which they might sacrifice the image of the minister 

 with whom the act originated. It was in imitation of this exhibition, that, we 

 suppose, our revolutionary Liberty Trees took their rise. The most famous 

 were the ones at Boston, Providence, Newport and New York. It fell to the 

 native elm to be selected for this purpose in America. That which was set apart 

 in Boston, was a wide-spreading and beautiful tree, which stood in front of the 

 house that now makes the corner of Essex and Washington streets,* opposite 

 Boylston market. ***** Several other large elms grew in the vicinity, 

 and our aged inhabitants remember the place by the name of the neighbourhood 

 of the elm-trees. It was on the 14th of August, 1765, that this tree was devoted 

 to the ' Sons of Liberty,' to expose on it the effigies of the men who had rendered 

 themselves odious by their agency in procuring or favouring the passage of the 

 Stamp Act ; and, on the 11th of September following, they fixed a copper plate, 

 two feet and a half, by three feet and a half in dimensions upon it, bearing the 

 inscription, in gold letters, the tree of liberty, Aiig. 14, 176.5. Ever after, most 

 of the popular meetings of the 'Sons of Liberty' were held in the square round 

 this tree. ***** The British made it an object of ridicule. The soldiers 

 made poor Ditson. whom they tarred and feathered, parade in front of this tree, 

 before they would let him go, and one of the greatest exploits during the siege 

 was the felling of this famous eye-sore. This w as effected about the la^t week 



* It was remarked by La Fayette, at the time he visited Boston, in 1824, that " The world should never 

 forget the spot where once stood the Liberty Tree, so famous in your annals." 



