John Penn
John Penn was born in Caroline County, Virginia, on May 17, 1741. He was the only child of Moses Penn, who married Catharine, the daughter of John Taylor. The education of the son was a common school.When John was but eighteen years of age, his father died and left him a small fortune. Mr. Penn surmounted the barriers that lay before him with an astonishing rapidity. Before some of his friends supposed he had mastered the elementary principles of Blackstone, he presented himself at the court for examination, and was admitted to the Bar and at once exhibited the bright plumage of a successful lawyer. In 1763, he was married to Susannah Lyme.
In 1774, Mr. Penn moved to North Carolina and became a member of the General Congress. On September 8, 1775, he was appointed to the Continental Congress and repaired to the post of duty and honor the ensuing month.
When that city of Charleston, South Carolina, fell into his hands, Lord Cornwallis issued a proclamation promising all who would desist from opposing the authority of the king the most sacred protection of person and property on condition that each should sign an instrument of neutrality which obligated the signers not to take up arms against the mother country and exonerated them from serving against their own. Penn became a prisoner and was separated from his wife and six small children, then residing in the country, his lady confined with the smallpox.
Soon after his return to his dying wife and little ones, the British called his house and ordered him into the army of the mother country and threatened him with close confinement if he refused. In vain, he referred them to the conditions upon which he so reluctantly signed the article of neutrality. In vain, he claimed protection under the provincial militia law that imposed a fine when a citizen chose not to render personal service. To his relentless oppressors, all was a dead letter. He pointed them to the wife of his bosom, the mother of his children, sinking under the smallpox and rapidly approaching another world. Their sympathy was sealed and their compassion frozen up. In a few short hours, Mrs. Hayne closed her eyes in death. She rested in peace. A different fate was in reserve for the afflicted husband. The order to enter the British army must be obeyed, or immediate imprisonment would follow. By violating the pledges made to him on their part, he correctly considered himself absolved from all obligations to the crown officers. He once entered the American army, preferring death to the invaders ranks. A brilliant but short career in the service of his country awaited him. He was soon made a prisoner and sent to Charleston where Lord Rawdon, a general of his most Christian majesty, loaded him with irons, andsubmitted him to a mock trial,ex parte in its proceedings and conclusions,based on revenge and cruelty, resolved on the speedy and shameful death of his victim. Colonel Hayne was sentenced to hang!
Spare the Life of Colonel Hayne
A large proportion of the friends of the crown deemed the transaction as murder. A petition, headed by the royal governor and numerously signed by persons of high standing who still adhered to the mother country was presented to Lord Rawdon on behalf of the unfortunate prisoner, but all in vain.The ladies of Charleston petitioned that the life of Colonel Hayne be spared. The plea was met with a cold reception and peremptory refusal. As a last effort to rescue their father from the gallows, his infant children, dressed in deep mourning and bathed in tears, were led before Lord Rawdon. Upon their knees, with their suffused eyes fixed upon him, they addressed the monster in a strain of heart-moving eloquence that none but infant innocents can express, none but fiends resist. " Our mother is dead,spare! O! Spare our dear father!
" Still, he stood unmoved,
Hard as the adamantine rock, Dark as a sullen cloud before the sun."
So melting was this scene that veteran soldiers wept aloud, and all were astounded at the demoniac course of the blood thirsty and relentless Lord Rawdon. Another that Colonel Hayne be permitted to die as a military officer and not be hanged as a felon, was denied. As a devout Christian, the martyr resigned to his cruel fate and prepared his mind for the approaching crisis. His little son was permitted to visit him in prison. When he saw his father loaded with irons, he burst into tears. The parent asked him, " Why will you break my heart with unavailing sorrow? Have I not often told you that we came into this world to prepare for a better? For that better life, dear boy, your father is prepared. Instead of weeping, rejoice with me that my troubles are so near an end. Tomorrow, I set out for immortality. When I am dead, bury me by your mother's side. " No imagination can fully conceive, and no fancy can indeed paint and no pen portray, no language can half express the heart-rending reality of that last sad interview between the father and his son. When upon the fatal drop with the accursed halter around his neck,Colonel Hayne shook hands with his friends and bade them an affectionate farewell, and urged them to persevere in the glorious cause of freedom, and recommended his children to the protection of three gentlemen present, and the next moment was struggling in death. The sight was too much for his son,his brain became disordered, his reason fled,he died insane. With his expiring breath, he faintly whispered: " My mother is dead!Spare! O! Spare my dear father! " Mr. Penn retired to private life where, in 1784, he was the Receiver of Taxes for North Carolina. Penn died in September of 1788.