Images of patriots toppling New York's equestrian statue of King George III and molding the material into musket balls, or of Philadelphia ladies sacrificing their table service to provide lead for suppling the Continental Army with ammunition capture the popular imagination.
This paper focuses upon three contemporary issues: 1. According to the Constitution, who has the power to make war? 2. According to the Constitution, what is the nature of the Senate's role in confirming presidential nominees to the federal courts? 3. How should one attempt to understand or interpret the Consitution?
Cumberland County History prints below excerpts from the 1912 entries in the diary of John A. Smith of Dickinson Township, taken from the original in the possession of his, the Editor. Besides giving insight into life three generations ago in the County, the entries represent an expansion of a matter mentioned in passing by Dr. Warren Gates in his article in this journal one year ago.
A number of authors writing during the period knew of his enterprise. An 1882 work described the factory as "One of Mechanicsburg's industries worthy of more than passing notice" and went on to state that "this thriving town (Mechanicsburg) had no industry of more promise of enlargement and growth than this establishment which bids fair to become one of the largest houses of its line of manufacturing to be found in the country."
The frontier in American history, in fact and in fiction, was everywhere the site of excesses, violence, and license. Cumberland County from its first settlements through the post revolutionary years was no exception.
Wife-sale was never acknowledged officially but seems to have been an ingenious (if sexist) answer to a bad marriage among the less respectable parts of society in eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries England and America. Divorce at the time was out of reach for all those who could not afford great expense but were willing to see their reputations ruined in a lengthy court trial.
Shippensburg, the second oldest town west of the Susquehannah river, was named for Edward Shippen, but the founding and naming of the town is much more than these simple facts.