Endure and Succeed
To the editor:
Days after the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, we recall a lesson learned in Boston after the battle of Bunkers Hill, June 17, 1775. Dining forks, water buckets, and horse fodder were “weapons” as mighty as muskets and canons for achieving independence. People defending homes and families are formidable. Four months before the Declaration, on March 17, 1776, General Howe withdrew 11,000 troops and 1,200 Loyalists from Boston by sea. New England militia starved them out and made them thirsty. The British reoriented their campaign plans which included the southern plan. The siege of Charleston (March 29-May 12, 1780) by General Clinton and Lord Cornwallis resulted in the surrender of most of the southern Patriot army.
One of the Declaration signers, John Penn (1741-1788) of North Carolina, became vital to this reorientation; history so focuses on Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Virginia that Patriots such as Penn are forgotten. He signed the Declaration and served in the Continental Congress for its duration, six years. As the war became more of a southern strategy, the Carolina’s became pivotal, ending with Cornwallis surrendering at Yorktown. By 1781-1782, Penn became a significant leader in North Carolina, organizing militia to torment Loyalists and Red Coats.
John Penn was born on May 17, 1741, near Port Royal, Virginia with a solid pedigree. His extended family settled Virginia with Kings’and Parliament’s blessing; they created a colonial replica of the British governmental system, blending commercial farming and the established Church of England. His modest education ended when his father died when John was 18; his uncle, the notable Edmund Pendleton, took him under his wing. Pendleton was an accomplished attorney and “the greatest orator” in the colonies, said his friend Thomas Jefferson. In Pendleton’s library, Penn read history, biography, religion, and philosophy. Penn’s wife, Susannah Lyne’s family’s British origins included the Norman Conquest. Thus, John Penn had every reason to remain loyal to Britain, but he declared, “My first wish is for America to be free.”
Soon after Penn moved his family to Granville County, North Carolina, in 1774, he criticized the King in public, condemning taxes and duties without representation. He was charged for disrespectful and perhaps treasonous public remarks about King George. A friendly jury found Penn guilty, but the judge limited his fine to one penny. A man of principle, Penn refused to pay the fine, sticking his neck out further.
North Carolina colonials became increasingly concerned about British heavy-handedness coupled with local rule controlled by commercial interests in the eastern part of the state: big plantation owners and wealthy merchants. Patriots resented being treated as ignorant upstarts, denied positions in local government. He became a leader in the Provincial Congress that first met in Hillsborough, NC in August 1775, and was elected as a delegate to the Continental Congress in October 1775. Through his leadership, all three North Carolina delegates signed the Declaration. Penn was the glue that held that delegation together.
InApril 1776, he headed up the Provincial Congress committee to specify the usurpations and violence committed against America. North Carolina supported other colonies by justifying independence from Great Britain.
On August 23, 1780, the Provincial Government appointed Penn to its three-man Board of War to prepare for British invasion. Conflict in the Carolina’s became a chaotic civil war, including defeat of the American army under General Gates at Camden on August 16, 1780. Penn communicated effectively with General Greene (who replaced Gates), raised recruits, found funding for the military, provided transportation and supplies, disarmed Loyalists, and spurred Patriots into action. American victories at King’s Mountain and Cowpens, and Greene’s standoff with the British at the Battle of Guilford Courthouse compelled British troops under Cornwallis to hurry through North Carolina to link up with the British navy in Virginia. In the Carolina’s, Patriots’ scorched earth tactics, fevers, fate, and the weather weakened Cornwallis’s army, which was defeated at Yorktown.
Penn regularly attended committee meetings and sessions of the Continental Congress for six years, without salary. It took him two weeks to travel from Granville County to Independence Hall, 400 miles by horseback or stagecoach. Travel was dangerous and difficult. In good weather, dirt roads were rutted Indian trails, which storms turned into quagmires. Taverns were few, food was awful. Travelers slept on floors and could wake up missing boots and other personal belongings. Under these hardships, delegates suffered poor health; many died young. Penn’s life demonstrates another lesson learned from America’s revolution: organic, bottom-up leadership defeats static top-down leadership, policy dictated by ruling classes. We the people endure and succeed.