Imagine trying to hide a massive like 2000 pound
bronze bell in the back of a bumpy farm wagon.
Oh, man. Right. And meanwhile, the greatest army
on earth is literally marching into your city.
It's such a crazy image. It really is. It's 1777
and the British are closing in on Philadelphia.
The city's defenders know that if the British
get their hands on those bells, they are going
to melt them down into musket balls. Right. For
artillery and ammo. Exactly. So two local farmers
are tasked with hauling 11 bells, including the
one we now call the Liberty Bell out of the city.
Just dragging them away. Dragging them north
to Allentown and literally burying them under
the floorboards of a church basement. Welcome
to today's deep dive. It is such a visceral story.
I mean, we tend to view history in these grand
sweeping strokes, but it is actually built on
those exact moments of physical desperation.
Yeah. And what makes that specific story so fitting
for today is, well, where it happened. Exactly.
Today, we are exploring the comprehensive history
of Pennsylvania. And as I was digging through
this material, preparing for you to join us,
I kept thinking about holograms. Holograms, okay.
Yeah, there's this fascinating concept in physics
where if you shatter a holographic plate of an
apple, you don't just get a fragment of the apple
on each broken shard. Right. If you shine a laser
through even the smallest piece, you see the
entire apple. The whole is contained within the
part. And honestly, looking at Pennsylvania is
exactly like looking at one of those sharks.
I love that analogy, actually. Because if you
want to truly understand the vast, contradictory,
incredibly complex history of the United States,
you don't actually need to look at the whole
map. No, you really don't. You just need to look
closely at this one specific patch of land. I
mean, it is a true microcosm of the American
evolution. So our mission today is to shortcut
this immense timeline for you. We are going from
at least 15 ,000 years ago all the way to the
21st century. It's a big journey. A huge journey.
We want to extract the most surprising aha moments
and explore exactly how the ground beneath this
one state shaped the modern world. Okay, let's
unpack this. Let's do it. Because to understand
the land that William Penn eventually claimed,
we first have to rewind the clock way, way back
to understand the ancient civilizations that
were already operating there. And we are talking
about deep time here. Right. A prime example
is the Meadowcroft Rock Shelter down in southwestern
Pennsylvania. The archaeological evidence there
shows signs of human activity dating back over
10 ,000 years. Wow. And just to put that in perspective
for everyone, that potentially predates predates
what archaeologists call the Clovis culture.
Yes, exactly. And for a long time, the Clovis
culture, which was known for these very distinct
fluted stone spear points, used to hunt, like
mammoths and big dames. I've seen pictures of
those. Yeah. They were widely considered the
absolute first distinct human culture in the
Americas. So finding human activity at Meadowcroft
that predates Clovis completely disrupts the
traditional timeline of human migration into
North America. That is massive. It is. And these
populations were incredibly adaptable. By the
year 1000 CE, the native populations in this
region had transitioned from nomadic hunter gatherers
into societies with highly developed agricultural
techniques. You know, I have to say. My perspective
really shifted reading the source material for
this. I think a lot of us grew up with this misconception
of early Native American history as this static
map. Oh, completely. Like, this tribe lives in
this zone, and that tribe lives in that zone,
and they are all just... I don't know, passively
waiting for European explorers to arrive. Which
couldn't be further from the truth. Right. The
landscape you see just before European contact
was incredibly dynamic. You had the Lenape in
the east, the Susquehannock holding a massive
region stretching from New York down to West
Virginia, plus the Iroquois, the Erie, the Shawnee.
Yeah. And they were in the middle of a massive
upheaval. They really were. What the historical
record reveals is a period of intense internal
conflict and reorganization among these nations,
primarily driven by what are known as the Beaver
Wars. Okay, I want to pause here because this
blew my mind. How did the Beaver Wars actually
work? Because it reads less like a traditional
territorial dispute and more like a cutthroat
corporate monopoly. That is a brilliant way to
frame it, actually, because it was absolutely
about controlling a supply chain. Wow. As Europeans
began arriving on the coast, they wanted beaver
pelts, which were hugely valuable back in Europe.
Right, for fashion and hats and stuff. Exactly.
So the Iroquois Confederacy, which was based
primarily in upstate New York and northern Pennsylvania,
wanted to completely dominate that fur trade.
So they basically wanted to be the sole supplier.
Yes. They acquired firearms through trade with
the Dutch, and they used that immense military
and financial advantage to literally blockade
other Native nations from accessing the Ohio
River Valley. That's wild. They were aggressively
cutting out the middlemen. So they're essentially
executing a hostile takeover of the regional
economy. Exactly, and the human cost was just
staggering. I mean, this economic warfare caused
massive tribal fragmentation. Entire populations,
like the Erie and the Susquehannock, were decimated,
displaced, or forced to assimilate into the Iroquois
Confederacy long before European colonization
really reached its peak. And then on top of this
intense internal warfare, you introduce the biological
devastation of European arrival. Right. European
diseases, particularly smallpox, tore through
these trade networks. The mortality rates were
catastrophic. Just devastating. Yeah. There is
a distinct culture in southwestern Pennsylvania
known as the Monongahela. The evidence suggests
they were nearly wiped out by disease before
European explorers ever even physically set foot
in their territory in the 17th century. Oh, wow.
So by the time European empires began seriously
pushing into Pennsylvania, they weren't stepping
into some pristine, untouched wilderness. They
were stepping into a post -apocalyptic landscape
that had already been profoundly destabilized.
Which creates this massive power vacuum. And
suddenly European empires see a wide open door.
In the early 1600s, the Dutch arrived to set
up fur trading posts. Then, in 1638, the Kingdom
of Sweden establishes the colony of New Sweden.
I had no idea Sweden was a major colonial player
in North America. It's one of those weird historical
footnotes. Yeah, and apparently it was the Swedish
and Finnish colonists who actually introduced
the log cabin to America. I know, right? It completely
rewrites our mental image of the American frontier.
But the European turf wars were just as ruthless
as the Beaver Wars. The Dutch eventually conquer
the Swedes, and then the English, wanting total
control of the eastern seaboard, sweep in and
take control of the Dutch holdings. And this
is where William Penn enters the story. In 1681,
King Charles II of England grants Penn this massive
tract of land. But I was reading this and it's
crashing my head. How does one guy just get handed
a piece of real estate the size of a country?
It sounds absurd today. Did he buy it? He didn't
have to. The king was actually settling a massive
debt. King Charles II owed Penn's father £16
,000. Which was a lot back then. Oh, to put that
into modern terms. Adjusting for inflation to
roughly 2008 numbers, we are talking about well
over £2 million. £2 million, wow. Yeah. So for
the king, carving out a massive chunk of North
American wilderness and handing it over was far
easier than liquidating his own royal treasury.
Hence the name Pennsylvania, which means Penn's
Woods in Latin. Though apparently Penn was incredibly
embarrassed by the name because he thought people
would assume he named it after himself in a fit
of ego. Which is pretty funny. But this wasn't
just a standard royal colony, it was a proprietary
colony. What did that actually mean for the people
living there? It meant that William Penn effectively
owned the land personally. Unlike a royal colony
governed directly by the Crown, a proprietary
colony gave the owner massive, almost futile
authority to dictate the laws, distribute the
land, and set the cultural tone. Here's where
it gets really interesting. William Penn was
a Quaker. He belonged to a religious minority
that was severely persecuted back in England.
So he decides to use his absolute authority to
create a utopian startup. A utopian startup.
I like that. He establishes a refuge based on
strict religious tolerance. He even acts as a
city planner, designing Philadelphia on a grid
system, making it the first planned city in the
colonies. And that policy of radical tolerance
acted as a massive demographic magnet. It didn't
just attract English Quakers. You suddenly had
German Mennonites, Scots -Irish Calvinists, French
Huguenots, and Jewish settlers pouring in. Because
it was safe. Exactly, because it was one of the
only places on earth where they wouldn't be imprisoned
for their beliefs. But, you know, utopias rarely
survive contact with reality. Sadly true. Penn
had a reputation for honest dealings with the
native Lenape. He famously learned their language
and negotiated treaties fairly. But after he
dies, his sons take over the proprietary colony,
and they completely shatter that peace with something
called the Walking Purchase of 1737. Yeah, that
was a dark turning point. How did they pull that
off? It was a notoriously deceptive land grab.
Penn's sons essentially produced a forged decades
-old deed that supposedly granted them as much
land as a man could walk in a day and a half.
Which sounds reasonable if you're just walking.
Right. But instead of taking a casual stroll,
the Suns hired three of the fastest professional
runners in the colony, and they secretly cleared
a path through the woods ahead of time. Oh, that
is so sneaky. They ended up taking over a million
acres of prime Lenape land in eastern Pennsylvania.
That is incredibly underhanded, and it completely
ruins relations with the native tribes, pushing
them westward into the arms of the French. which
triggers a domino effect, turning the western
frontier of Pennsylvania into the literal flashpoint
for the French and Indian War. Exactly. We even
see a young George Washington accidentally igniting
a global conflict by ambushing a French force
at Jumunville Glan. and then he has to surrender
at Fort Necessity. So did Penn's peaceful Quaker
vision basically doom itself by expanding too
fast and inviting in everyone? It is the core
paradox of early Pennsylvania. The Quaker policy
of radical tolerance was a demographic triumph,
but it fundamentally altered the colony's DNA.
By bringing in tens of thousands of diverse,
independent -minded immigrants, especially the
Germans and Scots -Irish who populated the rugged
Western frontier, they created a society that
looked completely alien to the rigid aristocratic
structures of Europe. So they weren't used to
bowing down to lords and kings. Exactly. They
inadvertently built a robust, highly self -reliant
middle class. There is a fantastic quote from
a writer in the 1756 Pennsylvania Journal that
perfectly captures this shift. Oh, I think I
remember this from the notes. Yeah, the writer
noted. The people of this province are generally
of the middling sort, and the meanest among them
thinks he has a right to civility from the greatest.
The middling sort. That mindset changes everything.
people of the middling sort who believe they
deserve respect from kings and lords. That explains
exactly why Pennsylvania became the geographical
and ideological headquarters for the American
Revolution. Precisely. You have a massive population
that bristles at upper class or foreign control.
Furthermore, during the French and Indian War,
those frontier settlers felt completely abandoned
by the pacifist Quaker government back in Philadelphia.
Right, because the Quakers didn't want to fight.
Right. They initially refused to fund any military
defense for the frontier. That bred a deep permanent
anti -authoritarian streak. Which makes it the
perfect crucible for a revolution against the
British Empire. It's no coincidence that Philadelphia
hosted both the first and second Continental
Congresses. Definitely not a coincidence. It's
where they founded the Continental Army. It's
where they adopted the Declaration of Independence.
Well, Philadelphia was the largest city in British
North America at the time. It was the intellectual
and financial epicenter of the colonies. But
being the epicenter made it a massive target.
Which brings us back to that frantic image of
farmers hiding the Liberty Bell on a wagon. Yes.
The British actually captured Philadelphia in
1777, forcing the entire revolutionary government
to flee. It really highlights the literal physical
desperation of the revolutionary cause. The freezing,
starving winter at Valley Forge followed shortly
after, where Washington's army barely held together.
Which we all learn about in school. Right. But
even while the state was occupied and bleeding,
the ideological engine of Pennsylvania kept churning.
In 1780, while the war was still raging, Pennsylvania
passed the gradual abolition of slavery act.
Making it the first state to pass such an act.
Now, Vermont did it earlier, but they weren't
officially a state yet. And it was gradual, meaning
that children born to enslaved mothers were legally
free, but they were forced into indentured servitude
until they were 28 years old. Yeah, it was a
deeply flawed compromise. Very flawed, but still
a massive legislative shift for the era. Absolutely.
But, you know, we also have to be careful not
to view Pennsylvania through a lens of perfect
harmonious patriotism. Yeah, I am actually stuck
on something here. Let me push back on this idea
of unity. OK. We think of Pennsylvania as the
cradle of liberty. They bled and froze to create
this brand new country. But right after the revolution,
from 1791 to 1794, we get the Whiskey Rebellion.
Oh, yes, the Whiskey Rebellion. Western Pennsylvania
farmers. are literally taking up arms against
George Washington over a federal tax on distilled
spirits. It got so violent that Washington had
to personally lead a 15 ,000 soldier militia
into Pennsylvania to put it down. He did. Why
are they rebelling against the exact government
they just helped create? I mean it makes no sense.
It makes perfect sense when you look at the internal
geography. Pennsylvania was deeply, deeply divided
between the wealthy urban merchant class in the
East and the agrarian frontier farmers in the
West. Well, right, the East versus West divide.
Exactly. To those Western farmers, a federal
excise tax handed down by politicians in Philadelphia
felt exactly like a tax handed down by a king
in London. But, and this is crucial, this internal
friction was actually necessary. The Whiskey
Rebellion acted as the ultimate stress test for
the brand new United States Constitution. How
so? Well, the previous American government under
the Articles of Confederation was notoriously
weak. It had no power to enforce its laws or
levy taxes. When George Washington successfully
mobilized a federal army to enforce a federal
law in western Pennsylvania, it proved that the
new constitutional government actually had teeth.
Oh, I see. It proved the American experiment
could sustain itself. OK, so Pennsylvania's internal
friction literally helps forge the nation's political
infrastructure. Yeah. But as we move into the
19th century, the sheer cost of building and
defending this nation forces Pennsylvania to
shift gears entirely. It does. It has to build
the nation's physical infrastructure. But not
before experiencing the ultimate national division,
the American Civil War. Pennsylvania was a powerhouse
for the union. But again, it was internally fractured.
You had radical Republicans like Thaddeus Stevens
demanding the total abolition of slavery and
immediate civil rights for African Americans.
But you also had a significant population of
copperheads. Copperheads. I've heard the term,
but what was their actual political mechanism?
Yeah. Copperheads were northern Democrats who
strongly opposed the Civil War. They wanted to
immediately cancel the war effort and negotiate
a peace settlement with the Confederacy, even
if it meant allowing slavery to continue. Wow.
Yeah. Union loyalists viewed them as venomous
snakes hiding in the grass, which is where the
nickname came from. And the state physically
paid the price for the war. The Confederate army
raided Pennsylvania multiple times. They burned
the city of Chambersburg to the ground. And of
course, the Battle of Gettysburg became the bloodiest
battle of the war and the major turning point.
Right. But following the war, Pennsylvania's
trajectory just goes vertical. The sheer material
demand of the Civil War forced Pennsylvania to
rapidly industrialize its massive natural resources.
It became the 19th century equivalent of modern
day Silicon Valley. The scale of the postwar
industrial boom is almost hard to comprehend
today. You have Andrew Carnegie building a global
steel empire in Pittsburgh. Charles Schwab with
Bethlehem Steel, John D. Rockefeller operating
there. It's basically a who's who of industry.
Truly. The birth of the global oil industry happened
in western Pennsylvania in Titusville, which
supplied the vast majority of the world's early
kerosene. They were inventing iron bridges, air
brakes, railway switching signals. I was fascinated
by this detail about a man named Frederick Winslow
Taylor. He basically invented the field of scientific
management in Pennsylvania. But what did that
actually look like on a factory floor? It meant
treating human beings like interchangeable machine
parts. Taylor would literally stand on the factory
floor with a stopwatch timing every single microscopic
movement a worker made. A stopwatch. That is
intense. Oh, yeah. How many seconds it took to
lift a shovel? How long it took to pivot? How
long to dump the coal? He eliminated any movement
he deemed wasted. It created unprecedented, staggering
wealth and efficiency for the owners, but it
completely dehumanized the labor force. At what
cost, right? I see a middle class grow and living
wages eventually emerge, but only after literal
bloody wars between unions and corporations.
I saw a mention of coal and iron police. What
were those? What's fascinating here is how the
state essentially allowed private corporations
to buy their own standing armies. Buy their own
armies? Basically, yeah. A mining or skill company
could pay a nominal fee to the state of Pennsylvania.
And in return, the state would commission a private
officer with full legal police powers. But that
officer was paid by and answered exclusively
to the corporation. That is terrifying. It was.
They were used specifically to brutally bust
unions, break strikes, and evict striking workers
from company -owned homes. That explains why
this era defined the modern American labor movement.
The state was the site of the great railroad
strike of 1877, the massive coal strike of 1902,
and the 1922 United Mine Workers strike that
involved over 300 ,000 miners. Huge numbers of
people. And these industries required so much
cheap labor that it triggered a massive demographic
shift. Yes. While earlier immigration was mostly
from northern and western Europe, the industrial
era saw millions arriving from southern and eastern
Europe. And simultaneously, Pennsylvania became
a major destination during the Great Migration
with millions of African Americans moving from
the oppressive Jim Crow South to take factory
jobs in northern cities. So you have these powerful
corrupt political machine bosses like Cameron
and Quay dominating state politics, working hand
in glove with big business to crush labor. But
out of this exact pressure cooker of corruption
and labor strife, we see the progressive movement
emerge. Exactly. The extreme conditions forced
social progress. Right. eight -hour workday,
the expansion of public education, the painful
but necessary integration of these massive new
ethnic populations. And this staggering industrial
might is what eventually carried the United States
through the global conflicts of the 20th century.
During World War II, Pennsylvania alone manufactured
an astonishing 6 .6 percent of the total military
armaments for the entire country. Over a million
Pennsylvanians served in the armed forces during
that war, but, you know, eventually the massive
industrial engine that won World War began to
rust. And this forces Pennsylvania into yet another
painful modern reinvention. The mechanism of
deindustrialization fundamentally reshaped Pennsylvania.
Politically speaking, the devastation of the
Great Depression finally broke the long held
Republican lock on the state. Franklin D. Roosevelt
won the electoral dose and the state instituted
its own little new deal. Just a massive political
realignment. Right. But the real economic pain
hit later in the 20th century. The Rust Belt
era. Exactly. As global competition increased
and cheaper labor became available overseas,
those massive fiery steel mills in Pittsburgh
and Philadelphia simply weren't economically
viable anymore. And when a steel mill closes,
the entire surrounding town dies unless it finds
a way to pivot. And pivot they did. We see a
massive transition toward the service sector.
Pittsburgh leveraged its high concentration of
universities to become a leader in technology
and robotics. Philadelphia leaned into its medical
and university expertise. The meds and eds. Exactly.
The state shifted heavily into what economists
call meds and healthcare and education. And just
like the industrial boom, this new economy required
a new workforce, causing the demographics to
shift once again. Puerto Rican communities grew
massively to fill new economic roles. In Allentown,
for instance, they became 40 percent of the city's
population by the year 2000. Oh, wow. And Mexican
migrants began reshaping the agricultural and
service industries in places like Chester County.
It is a continuous cycle of reinvention. And
as we move into the 21st century, Pennsylvania
continued to find itself at the very center of
national history. On September 11th, 2001, it
was the site where United Airlines Flight 93
went down in Shanksville. The passengers on that
flight revolted against the hijackers and forced
the plane into a field, intentionally sacrificing
themselves to save the nation's capital from
being struck. Just unimaginable heroism. It is
a profound reminder of how national history continually
intersects with this specific geography. So what
does this all mean for us today? If you look
at the political map right now, Pennsylvania
is known as the ultimate highly contested swing
state. Very much so. You generally have Democrats
winning the urban cities, Republicans winning
the rural areas, and the suburbs constantly acting
as the tiebreakers. Was this modern divide born
entirely out of the collapse of the steel mills?
It's more accurate to say that Pennsylvania's
current political map is the culmination of its
entire history layered on top of itself. The
rural agricultural roots established by the Germans
and Scots -Irish in the 1700s are still fiercely
present. Right. The intense pro -labor union
history of the industrial era is still there.
And the modern, highly educated, diverse populations
of the Meds and Eds Hums are there. Pennsylvania
is a swing state because its internal divides
perfectly mirror the economic and cultural transitions
of the entire United States over the last hundred
years. It really is the ultimate cheat code.
Whether you are prepping for a trivia night or
you just want to deeply understand how America
evolved, looking at Pennsylvania gives you the
entire blueprint, from ancient indigenous trade
monopolies and Quaker utopias to the crucible
of the revolution, from a gritty industrial titan
that literally armed the world to a post -industrial
swing state trying to navigate the future. It
leaves us with a fascinating question to consider
too. Think about the pure blind chance of geography.
What do you mean? If the Appalachian Mountains
had not hidden that incredibly specific combination
of massive coal veins and oil reserves right
next to a network of easily navigable rivers.
Oh, I see. Pennsylvania might have remained a
quiet agricultural Quaker utopia forever. It
makes you wonder. How much of our modern political
and cultural destiny is dictated not by human
philosophy or grand ideals, but simply by the
rocks and rivers sitting beneath our feet? Phenomenal
thought to leave on. Thank you for joining us
on this deep dive. The next time you look at
a map, or better yet, the next time you step
outside, remember that history isn't just trapped
in textbooks. Just like a single shard of a hologram,
the entire story of the modern world is hiding
right there in the layers of history beneath
your own feet. Keep exploring.