One great source of the Quaker power lay in the sympathy
of the Germans, who always voted on their side and kept them in
control of the Legislature, so that it was in reality a case of
two-thirds ruling one-third. The Quakers, it must be admitted,
never lost their heads. Unperturbed through all the conflicts and
the jarring of races and sects, they held their position
unimpaired and kept the confidence and support of the Germans
until the Revolution changed everything.
The varied elements of population spread out in ever widening
half circles from Philadelphia as a center. There was nothing in
the character of the region to stop this progress. The country
all the way westward to the Susquehanna was easy hill, dale, and
valley, covered by a magnificent growth of large forest
trees--oaks, beeches, poplars, walnuts, hickories, and ash--which
rewarded the labor of felling by exposing to cultivation a most
fruitful soil.
The settlers followed the old Indian trails. The first westward
pioneers seem to have been the Welsh Quakers, who pushed due west
from Philadelphia and marked out the course of the famous
Lancaster Road, afterwards the Lancaster Turnpike.
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