COPIES of a printed invitation, each one personally addressed and bearing the signature of Frank M. Etting, entered the mails in the fall of 1875, destined for an extensive yet somehow “strictly limited” roster of “American historians, biographers and literati.” The writers receiving this missive numbered around 200 by Etting’s count. Some of them were nationally famous, but the majority were unknown to most of the reading public.
With this communication Etting aimed to build, in his words, “a literary cenotaph,” an archive of biographical sketches of those who’d had a hand in the founding of the republic. He asked recipients to write profiles of these individuals and bring them to Philadelphia on the 2nd of July 1876, the very place and one hundred years to the day since the Second Continental Congress approved a resolution of American independence, “that forerunner that paved the way for the passage of the more celebrated act” two days later.
Each author was assigned a subject to write on, or asked “in case of a preference for another subject to communicate the fact.” Those who couldn’t be present on the 2nd might send their sketches, but in any case they “should not exceed two pages of foolscap….” The brief memoirs would be deposited in a “national museum” housed in the venerable building where, a century before, representatives of the colonies debated and decided for independence.
Over its more than fifty years as property of the city of Philadelphia, the chamber where that debate was decided, inside the former Pennsylvania State House (“what we are fond of calling our Temple of Liberty,” said Etting), had become a cluttered storeroom of paintings, prints and sometimes dubious artifacts:
Occasionally a public-spirited citizen would be moved to present to the city a Portrait, a Photograph, a Bible, a casting, or a relic,–real or imaginary,–and it was at once stored in this room. The latter became a general receptacle for framed resolutions of Councils, the abortive contribution to the Washington National Monument,–in fact it served as a living, ever ready, response to the often embarrassing question in Councils, “What shall we do with it?”
The grand design of Frank Etting, as head of a municipal committee for the restoration of Independence Hall, had as its centerpiece the return of the chamber to its appearance in 1776, through removal of the mostly irrelevant objects and recovery of as many “original” furnishings as possible. The July 1876 gathering of writers and their short biographies would consecrate the newly restored room, as a place of quiet veneration for the founders and what they had done.
William A. Whitehead of Newark received Etting’s circular, as did a dozen other New Jersey luminaries. The subject of Whitehead’s sketch–whether Etting’s choice or his own is not recorded–was one of the five signers of the Declaration of Independence from his state: Richard Stockton of Princeton. While as conversant as any contemporary with the evidence for New Jersey’s Revolutionary era, the 66-year-old Whitehead was constrained by Etting’s page limit and the demands of other work to pass over many details of Stockton’s life. He drew unapologetically from prior treatments, right down to the lines from Shakespeare that an earlier biographer had used to sum up Stockton’s “salient characteristics”:
He was a scholar, and a ripe and good one,
Exceeding wise, fair-spoken and persuading,
Lofty and stern to them that loved him not,
But to those who sought him, sweet as Summer.
Further discoveries and new scholarship have since rendered Whitehead’s sketch of Stockton largely obsolete, but it remains a compelling artifact of Whitehead’s life and of the circumstances in which it was produced.
Pedigree, schooling and talent marked Richard Stockton for a radiant future. Born in 1730 to a prosperous Princeton family that, as Whitehead wrote, was “identified with that locality for half a century,” Stockton was one of six graduates from the inaugural class of the College of New Jersey, “taking the first honors at the first Annual Commencement of that institution, in 1748; thus manifesting his eminent mental abilities at the early age of eighteen.”
The young Stockton continued his studies in Newark with David Ogden, “one of the most prominent lawyers in the Province,” and himself mentored a number of distinguished lawyers and future statesmen, William Paterson and Elias Boudinot among them.
Around 1757, he was married to Annis Boudinot, the accomplished sister of Elias, and they moved into the house of Stockton’s late father. The poetically inclined Annis Stockton would give this house the name of Morven, which it bore ever after.
To a burgeoning law practice Richard added service as a trustee of the College, which had since removed from Newark to Princeton. He raised funds for the school, handled its accounts, and penned and delivered addresses on its behalf to governors passing through Princeton from one side of the province to the other, or staying to preside over commencements.
Provincial politics, always turbulent, were soon to enter a new and uncertain era, as irritation with Parliament’s colonial policies coalesced into a distinctly American patriotism. Stockton privately urged the speaker of the provincial assembly to send a delegation to the Stamp Act Congress in New York. “I am humbly of opinion that the Representatives of the people ought not to be silent,” he wrote. “They ought to complain constitutionally–they should complain to the King, not to the Parliament, whose authority they do not, and ought not to acknowledge.”
On a 1766 trip to England for private business, Stockton had entrée to “the most eminent and refined circles,” and the recent repeal of the Stamp Act prompted an address of thanks to George III on the College’s behalf, which Stockton delivered in person. London society welcomed the young New Jerseyan, but he was candid and steadfast about the rights of the American colonies, which he knew could not stay united to the Crown on the same terms as before.
Stockton’s sojourn at the seat of empire left him unaffected by the ways and wiles of the powerful, or of those longing to be so. He wrote home to Annis at Morven:
I am happy that I have had nothing to ask of government, and, therefore, dare speak my sentiments without cringing. Wherever I can serve my native country, I leave no occasion untried. Dear America–thou sweet retreat from greatness and corruption! in thee I choose to live and die.
Perhaps Stockton’s most crucial contribution to the American cause was an unwitting one. While abroad, he made the long journey north to Scotland, carrying a plea from the trustees of the College to minister John Witherspoon to accept the offer of its presidency. The influential Scots divine confessed to having little knowledge of New Jersey or the College, but Stockton managed to obtain his agreement. (It took the exertions of another emissary, the physician–and future son-in-law to Stockton–Benjamin Rush, to bring Witherspoon’s wife around to the idea.) With Witherspoon at its head, the Princeton college became known as a “nursery of rebellion,” and as a New Jersey delegate to Congress he would cast a vote for independence by Stockton’s side.
The Philadelphia convention was some years ahead when, in 1768, Governor William Franklin chose Stockton to fill a vacancy on his Council, calling him “a Gentleman of the Law, eminent in his Profession, of unblemished Character, and possessed of a good Estate in the Province.” Stockton’s place of residence, midway between the colony’s two capitals, further recommended him, for it would be as easy to travel to legislative sessions in Burlington as to Perth Amboy.
Stockton’s expertise in the law was highly prized, and he was active in colonial affairs for as long as the government existed, but the written record gives scant information as to his actual influence. During his first year on the Council, discontent with the legal profession degenerated into riots, and while contemporary sources are silent on Stockton’s part in quelling these disturbances, he was eulogized after his death as the one chiefly responsible for restoring order.
Although the severing of ties to the mother country would soon divide them, an appointment to the Supreme Court of the province united Stockton with his former preceptor David Ogden in 1774. That December, Stockton wrote urgently to London of the need to stem the rising tide of discord. If no resolution was reached, “we shall be involved in a civil war the most obstinate awful and tremendous that perhaps ever occurred since the Creation of the world.” He thought that an American parliament, independent of the one in England yet still loyal to the Crown, might avert such horrors. But the British ministry moved too slowly, and events too quickly, for his theory to be tested.
On 22 June 1776, the provincial congress in Burlington chose Stockton and Witherspoon of Princeton, Abraham Clark of Elizabethtown, John Hart of Hopewell and Francis Hopkinson of Bordentown as delegates to Philadelphia. In the original minute book are found their instructions, written in a hurried manner:
The Congress empower & direct you in Name of this Colony to Join with The Delagates of the Other Colonies in Continental Congress in the Most Vigorous Measures for Supporting the Just rights and Liberties of America, and if you shall Judge it Necessary or Expedient for this purpose We Impower you to Join with them In declaring the United Colonies independent of Great Brittain entring into a Confedercy for Union and Common Defence making Treaties with foreign Nations for Commerce And Assistance and to Take such Other Measures as may Appear to them and you Necessary For these great Ends promising to support them with the whole force of this Province….
The late arrival of Stockton, Witherspoon and other delegates delayed the final vote on independence until 2 July, so that the arguments for and against could be recapitulated for their benefit. Witherspoon, it was recalled, was impatient to vote on the resolution, while Stockton listened quietly, then delivered a “short but energetic speech” in its favor. The precise day and content of his speech are unknown.
Congress in the fall of 1776 sent Stockton to inspect Continental forces in the upper Hudson Valley. There, he found most of the soldiers from his home state cheerful, if “barefooted and barelegged.” But it was a mission that proved disastrous for Stockton and his family. Morven lay in the path of Washington’s retreat and the British advance, and after rushing home to move Annis and their children to a semblance of safety in Monmouth County, he was betrayed by local Tories and handed over to British forces. They committed him first to the old Perth Amboy jail, then to the notorious Provost prison in New York City. It was believed that his “ignominious treatment” in the former place, combined with “extreme cold weather and subsequent sufferings in New York,” left his health permanently impaired.
Stockton languished in the Provost for close to a month until he accepted an amnesty, on condition that he vow allegiance to the king and give no further aid to the rebellion. At his release, some on the American side felt he’d betrayed his and his fellow signers’ pledge of “our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.” While Stockton abjured the king again the following year, this was no doubt one of the “afflicting dispensations” only alluded to in Whitehead’s brief sketch. Stockton’s damaged health, the sacking of Morven and other wartime losses “rendered the remainder of his life a period of trial,” which a painful and disfiguring cancer brought to an end on the last day of February, 1781.
Annis Boudinot Stockton kept her husband’s memory alive through her verse. Helping to repair whatever damage had been done to his reputation, she may have secured his place as a patriot of the Revolution. Although Whitehead made no use of her compositions in his sketch, what Annis called “the nameless ties of sympathy” between herself and Richard seem to approximate those elements of his character that Whitehead found more convenient to emphasize: his learning, his cultured hospitality, his sense of justice and submission to the will of God.
As the 2nd of July fell on a Sunday in 1876, the raising of Frank Etting’s “literary cenotaph” was moved up to Saturday the 1st. With Philadelphia already its sweltering self, those in attendance were assuredly grateful to know that the biographical sketches, about 175 of them and all but 50 presented in person, would be deposited but not read. An exception to that policy might have been welcomed, however, in the case of the life of Francis Lightfoot Lee. A scarcely remembered delegate from Virginia, his biography was assigned to and, it seems, personally delivered by none other than Mark Twain.
Frank Etting had chosen well. Francis Lee’s “life-work,” the author of Tom Sawyer began, “was so inconspicuous, that his name would now be wholly forgotten, but for one thing–he signed the Declaration of Independence.” From Twain, a few jabs at politicians of the day were inevitable. Although his subject “did no brilliant things, he made no brilliant speeches,” yet Lee “was a good citizen, a citizen of the best and highest type…. Let us gravely try to conceive how isolated, how companionless, how lonesome, such a public servant as this would be in Washington to-day.”
Whitehead had finished his sketch of Richard Stockton, dated it June 1876, and arranged to arrive in Philadelphia early in the morning on the 1st of July. This was not to be the end of his Centennial obligations. He’d been with Frank Etting at a function in the city in early June, but the two had barely spoken. Etting subsequently learned that the best-known and best-selling American historian of the nineteenth century, George Bancroft, would be unable to come to Philadelphia to preside over the ceremonies as planned. On the 22nd, Etting dashed off an appeal whose contents may be inferred from Whitehead’s answer, and from the subsequent course of events.
To Etting’s request that Whitehead take Bancroft’s place at Independence Hall, Whitehead consented in part. He politely declined, however, to be placed in “Hancock’s chair,” the seat where John Hancock of Massachusetts was thought to have presided over Congress, and to have endorsed the Declaration of 4 July with the celebrated flourish of his pen. That chair, Whitehead insisted, “should be filled, undoubtedly, by some one from Hancocks own state,” or failing that, “by some gentleman more extensively known than I am….” Etting apparently then approached Charles Francis Adams, the son and grandson of presidents, a scholar of their lives and a statesman in his own right, but Adams had made other commitments. It’s unknown who, if anyone, sat in the fabled chair.
William A. Whitehead was only one of two New Jersey writers who handed in their sketches in person. Though little known outside the historical community, he no doubt acquitted himself admirably, calling the roll of authors, accepting their memoirs, and setting them down on a table that Etting believed had graced the room, along with “Hancock’s chair,” one hundred years before. The newly neat and restored “Independence Chamber,” to use the name Etting had bestowed on it, must have awed the audience, and many on the dais as well. But most of the writers and their works were fated to remain silent unless authors later chose to read or publish their sketches. Whitehead did both the following year.
His formal duties concluded, Whitehead untied a tattered volume he had brought along. It was the manuscript minute book of New Jersey’s provincial congress from a century ago, rescued, he said, some thirty years earlier from “a collection of waste paper.” There he pointed out, for any who cared to see it, the directive to Richard Stockton and the others, to join in “the Most Vigorous Measures for Supporting the Just rights and Liberties of America.” These words must, on this occasion, have felt more stirring to him than any he could have written.
Copyright © 2026 Gregory J. Guderian