FOR the unbroken period of one hundred years, the name of MUHLENBERG has been associated with the national developments in Religion, Letters, Politics and Arms; and during all that period has been upheld by a succession of Democratic men, equally distinguished for their private as for their public virtues. It is a pious duty to rescue the fast perishing memories of the good and true men, to whose labors in all that constitutes the real glory of a State, the Republic owes so much. The bright example of their patriotism, of their self-denial, of their pure devotion to principle, is part of the great legacy of the past to the future. It was the pride as it was the policy of Rome, to hand down from age to age the story of the early fathers, to render their names and deeds familiar as household words, in order that the ever present memory of their stern virtues might penetrate the souls of the Roman youth, and fill them with the spirit of

emulation.

The melancholy event, that has so lately bereaved the Democracy of Pennsylvania, presents an appropriate occasion for offering to the readers of this Magazine a sketch, however slight and unworthy, of some members of a family, the history of which is most intimately blended with that of the party, to whose interests these pages are devoted.

Henry Melchior Muhlenberg, from whom is descended all of the name in the United States, was born at Eimbeck in Saxony, in the year 1711. The early death of his father, who exercised some judicial functions upon which the support of his family depended, arrested the education of the boy, and at a very tender age cast him upon the resources of his own industry for subsistence. In the school of domestic adversity and affliction was formed that apostolic character of courageous energy combined with lowly humility, of patience under suffering, and of hopeful perseverance, that so greatly distinguished his after life. The deep-toned piety of the poor orphan, and his love for learning which poverty could not repress, attracted to him friends, whose generous assistance

enabled him to pursue the path their wise counsels pointed out. Always, however, self-relying and self-sustained, he did not permit himself to eat the bread of charity, but by imparting instruction to others honorably obtained the means of instruction for himself. At Göttingen his merits as a scholar drew the marked attention of Gesner; whilst his active practical piety, devoting itself to the spiritual illumination of the darkest and most neglected portions of society, procured him the blessings of the poor, and the grateful notice of the authorities of the University. It was here that he originated a society among the Theological Students, for the reclamation of those wretched children, the vices and crimes of whose parents doom them to the heritage of ignorance and immorality. From Göttingen, where his reputation as a scholar and his amiable and benevolent disposition had raised him powerful friends, he removed, under the auspices of the Count Reuss, whose chaplain he was, and of the Count Heukel, to Halle. There, as at Göttingen, he was constantly engaged in the abodes of misery, in the Hospital and in the Orphan House, ministering to the souls of the sick and the afflicted, or giving instructions to the poor. The friendly and intimate relations that he formed at Halle, with some of the most eminent men of that University, with Franke, with Cellarius, and with the Inspector Fabricius, were never interrupted during their lives, but continued to cheer and encourage him in the arduous mission, to which their confidence invited and promoted him. At the earnest solicitation of those friends, he accepted, in the year 1741, the appointment of Missionary to the German Lutherans of Pennsylvania. What personal sacrifices he made in leaving Europe, in abandoning the direct pursuit of learning and the career of distinction opened to him in the church and in the Universities of his fatherland, he esteemed as nothing compared with the duty of accepting this appointment.

The field of his labors was then one vast wilderness, in which, rude and un

reclaimed as was the face of nature, it was not more wild and desolate than that portion of its inhabitants who constituted his particular charge. The emigration from Germany to the British Colonies, but more especially to Pennsylvania, increasing annually from its beginning in the latter part of the seventeenth century, had, previous to 1741, become very great. Many thousands of the Pennsylvania colonists, scattered sparsely over a vast extent of country, were German Lutherans. Among all this people there was not at that time one altar or one priest consecrated to the service of God. Here and there some outcast, whose life was a reproach to his profession, assumed the office of the Ministry but to bring Religion into further disrepute. A generation had grown up, native of the soil, among which the duties and the observances of Religion were unknown. In fact that devotional spirit, one of the finest characteristics of the German race, was well nigh extinguished among this German people.

Such was the field upon which the missionary, ardent and zealous in his calling, entered a solitary laborer. The work before him he stopped not to measure, but began it at once. Of his toilsome progress, of his triumphs over every obstacle, this is not the place to speak. With what success he cried in the wilderness, let those venerable churches, the just pride of the Lutherans, monuments of his efficient zeal, founded by his hand, declare. And when, years after his arrival, there came to his assistance other missionaries, with what astonishment did they behold the results of his labors. The church which he planted like a mustard seed, had become a tree under whose wide spreading branches were gathered the lost and scattered sheep of his fold.

At this distance of time and in the present improved condition of the country, it is not easy to appreciate the toils and perils of a life passed as was that of this devoted man. The discharge of his ordinary duties among his remote congregations must have been oppressive, but they were light compared with his duties to the church at large. From New York to Georgia, wherever there arose a difficulty, his fatherly presence and counsels were invoked, and never were withheld. No consideration of

the personal inconvenience of those then dangerous and difficult journeys ever held him back.

The education of Dr. Muhlenberg qualified him, in an especial manner, to be the head and founder of the American Mission. He preached in all the languages in which the doctrines of the German Reformation were taught. In New York he frequently held forth in three languages on the same Sabbath. Besides a profound acquaintance with theology, he was well versed in other departments of science. In medicine and surgery his aid was sought extensively; indeed, he practised them for the benefit of the poor. To these were added most of those polite accomplishments which serve to embellish the learning of the scholar, and to render him the delight and ornament of society. But great as were his qualifications in these respects, he was endowed with others of far more immediate importance to the success of his labors. To a disposition the most kind and gentle were united a firmness and integrity of purpose that could not be shaken. His knowledge of the human heart, deceitful as it is, was such that he was said "to read the character of men as in an open book;" and to this quickness of perception, perhaps more than to any other gift, he owed his extraordinary powers as a teacher. His manner of speaking, adapting itself to the nature of his audience, was such as could equally rivet the attention of a Synod or of the rude congregations of the frontier: he could appeal with equal force and effect to the head and to the heart of man. With all these rich endowments of Nature and of Art, he was a meek,lowly and humble Christian, whose daily walk and conversation nobly illustrated the purity and sincerity of his teachings. To the poor, the weak, the friendless, the fatherless, he was a refuge: his charity was free as the liberal air-his good counsels open to all who sought them.

For forty-five years this venerated man labored in accomplishing the purposes of his mission. He had lived to see that church which he alone planted grow into honor and usefulness: its numerous clergy distinguished for learning and piety-its laity for all the virtues that appertain to the true Christian character. He had exhorted and encouraged the people of his charge to

mouth. He commanded the reserve at the storming of Stony Point in '79. When Leslie invaded Virginia in 1780 he was opposed to him with the chief command. Upon the after movement on the same State by Benedict Arnold and Philips, he acted under the Baron Steuben, and when Cornwallis entered Virginia he was next in command to Lafayette. During this last campaign, by his prompt action, though without orders, at the battle of Green Spring, he rescued the Pennsylvania Line from impending destruction.

Services like these, rendered over almost every part of the wide field of the Revolutionary contest, and during the whole time of its continuance, were fitly terminated at the Siege of Yorktown. In that siege he commanded the first brigade of Light Infantry, to which belongs the glory of furnishing the American division of the troops that carried the British redoubts by assault. The surrender at Yorktown virtually ended the struggle. He, however, continued in the army until it was disbanded; and received, in the last promotion, the commission of a Major General-an honor well earned on many a hard fought field, the highest with which his country could testify her sense of his military services.

Upon his return to civic life, he took up his abode in Pennsylvania, and was immediately elected a member of the Supreme Executive council of that State. In 1785, he was chosen Vice President of the Commonwealth, Dr. Franklin at the same time being chosen President. To this office he was reelected the two following years. Upon the adoption of the Federal constitution he was elected, the vote being then by general ticket, to the first Congress of the United States. Of that body he was an active and useful member, always to be found at his post, and distinguished for his resistance of every measure that in his judgment was of an anti-republican tendency. He was also a member of the third and sixth Congresses.

During the period of General Muhlenberg's congressional service, the political parties were developed, which have ever since, under whatever change of name, agitated the country. In that day they were known as Federal and Republican, and then, perhaps more than at any subsequent time, did party spirit

run highest. As a leader of the Republican party in Pennsylvania, General Muhlenberg took an early and decided stand. He was not a man to flinch from the responsibilities of his party position; and bringing to it, as he did, great weight of character and of personal popularity, his influence in building up and sustaining the ascendency of his party was felt and freely acknowledged. In 1799, as in 1844, the Gubernatorial election in Pennsylvania was made the battle ground of the approaching Presidential contest. It is matter of history what means were resorted to in order to overawe the Republicans of that State upon that occasion. The part that General Muhlenberg then took was admitted at the time to have mainly contributed to the success of the Republican candidate, Thomas McKean. The result in Pennsylvania saved the Republican party.

In the electoral college of '97 he voted for Jefferson for the Presidency, and afterwards, in 1801, as a member of the House of Representatives, when the election of President came into that body, he voted for him on every one of the thirty-six ballotings that were held.

In 1801, he was elected to the United States Senate, his seat in which he resigned in the summer of that year. In the following winter, Jefferson appointed him Supervisor of the Revenue for the District of Pennsylvania-and in 1803, Collector of the Port of Philadelphia, which office he held at the time of his death, on the 1st of October, 1807.

Gen. Muhlenberg was one of those characters which in revolutions always find their level. He was by nature a soldier. The frolic incident of his youth indicated the turn of his mind. He en tered the church, doubtless with as sincere and honest purposes as any of her ministry, but the agony of his country called him from the altar with a voice that touched every chord of his soul. The time for fighting had come-the time to try men's souls. His whole heart was with his country; rebellion against tyrants was obedience to God-and so feeling and so thinking he went forth from the Temple to the Field.

He was brave and generous to a fault-a proper Brigadier to Wayne and Greene, who loved him. Cool in danger, sound in judgment, indifferent to fame, zealous in duty-these were

his distinguishing traits as a soldier. His virtues in private and in political life were all cognate to these.

The second son of Dr. Muhlenberg, Frederick Augustus, was born at the Trappe on the 2d of June, 1750. He remained at the University of Halle some years after his brother Peter had left, and acquired a very finished education. His father's wishes and his own inclination coinciding, he followed the theological course of that celebrated school, and was ordained in the ministry of the Lutheran Church in Europe. On his return to America, he took charge of a remote country congregation, from which he was soon called to a church in the city of New York. His reputation as a preacher was high and well merited. În him were singularly united all the qualities that adorn and dignify the clerical character-piety, education, eloquence, polished manners. His ministry, however, in the midst of its usefulness, was suddenly arrested, soon after the outbreak of the Revolution, by the taking of New York. The ardor of his Whig principles, not less than the activity of his whole family, rendered his name obnoxious to the British, and imposed upon him the necessity of seeking personal safety by flight from that city. Passing into Pennsylvania, he took up his residence near the place of his birth, and for the following two or three years was in charge of a congregation or assisted his venerable father. The progress of the great contest during this time, though it had reached its lowest depths of gloom and despondency, did not in the least dishearten him. He was full of hope and confidence in the destinies of his country, and bent every energy of his mind to the advancement of her holy cause. So marked was his patriotic devotion, that in 1779 the Legislature of Pennsylvania, to testify their sense of his service, elected him a delegate to the Continental Congress, and in the next year renewed that honorable appointment. Having served those two terms, he became constitutionally ineligible to Congress for the ensuing three years. But the people of Philadelphia county, who had observed his work as a public man in the national councils, not willing to lose his services, immediately sent him to the Legislative body of the State, upon taking his seat in which he was chosen

its Speaker. This confidence of the people, and this honor at the hands of their Representatives, he enjoyed for three successive years: the jealous spirit of the constitution of 1776 allowed no more.

By that constitution, which, though framed in the spirit of pure and antique Democracy, was, from its curiously complicated machinery, impracticable as a system of organic law, there was created a supervising power in the State, designated the Council of Censors. This body could meet but once in seven years, but when it met, its authority extended over every department of government, even over the constitution itself. To this council, the only time it was ever convened, Mr. Muhlenberg was elected, and was called, by its unanimous choice, to preside over its deliberations. It consisted of such men as Wayne, and St. Clair, and Bryan, and Smilie, and Finley. It was indeed a body whose members were "noted for wisdom and virtue." The journal of its proceedings presents matter full of interest and instruction to the student of political history. In this council, Mr. Muhlenberg took the lead in favor of calling a convention to revise the constitution, and to his early exertions and ablereports the call of the convention of 1790 is largely attributable. That convention, transcending the objects of its original projectors, overthrew not merely the forms but the principles of the Revolutionary constitution. It is, however, a striking illustration of the selfpreserving tendency of Democratic institutions, that after a forty-eight years' trial of the constitution of 1790, the people of Pennsylvania have fallen back upon most of the rejected principles of the constitution of 1776.

In 1787, he was elected a delegate to the State Convention, called to consider the Constitution of the United States, and act upon its ratification. He was chosen President of this body, and exerted his influence in favor of adopting the federal constitution.

Being elected a member of the first Congress, that of 1789-91-on the assembling of the House, his long and eminent parliamentary services indicated him as the proper person to be raised to the Speakership. A happier selection could not have been made. The forms of legislation, then about to be settled, required in the first Speaker, all