to obey his officers when called upon." Judge Hanson then sentenced the men as follows:150

Peter Sueman, Nicholas Andrews, John George Graves, Yost Plecker, Adam Graves, Henry Shett, Casper Fritchie, attend. It has been suggested to the court that notwithstanding your guilt has been ascertained by an impartial jury, you consider the proceedings against you nothing more than solemn mockery, and have adopted a vain idea, propagated by the enemies of this country, that she dare not punish her unnatural subjects for engaging in the service of Great Britain. From the strange insensibility you have heretofore discovered, I was indeed led to conclude that you were under a delusion, which might prove fatal to your prospects of happiness hereafter. I think it is my duty, therefore, to explain to you your real situation. The crime you have been convicted of, upon the fullest and clearest testimony, is of such a nature that you cannot, ought not, to look for a pardon. Had it pleased heaven to permit the full execution of your unnatural designs, the miseries to be experienced by your devoted country would have been dreadful even in the contemplation. The ends of public justice, the dictates of policy, and the feelings of humanity all require that you should exhibit an awful example to your fellow-subjects, and the dignity of the State, with everything that can interest the heart of man, calls aloud for your punishment. If the consideration of approaching fate can inspire proper sentiments, you will pour forth your thanks to that watchful Providence which has arrested you at an early date of your guilt. And you will employ the short time you have to live in endeavoring, by a sincere penitence, to obtain pardon from the Almighty Being, who is to sit in judgment upon you, upon me, and all mankind.

I must now perform the terrible task of denouncing the terrible punishment ordained for high treason.

You, Peter Sueman, Nicholas Andrews, Yost Plecker, Adam Graves, Henry Shett, John George Graves, and Casper Fritchie,

150 Scharf's "History of Western Maryland," Vol. I., p. 143.

and each of you, attend to your sentence. You shall be carried to the gaol of Fredericktown, and be hanged therein; you shall be cut down to the earth alive, and your entrails shall be taken out and burnt while you are yet alive, your heads shall be cut off, your body shall be divided into four parts, and your heads and quarters shall be placed where his excellency the Governor shall appoint. So Lord have mercy upon your poor souls.

Four of these men were pardoned, the other three being executed in the court-house yard at Frederick. One of those executed was Casper Fritchie, the father of John Casper Fritchie, who was the husband of Barbara Fritchie, the heroine of Whittier's poem.151

With the close of the Revolutionary War the inhabitants of the western part of Maryland settled down to a peaceful life, turning all their energies to the development of the country. The population increased rapidly. Many of the Hessians who had come to fight the colonists took up land in that section and became their neighbors. Many emigrants came to Maryland from Germany without first stopping in Pennsylvania, so that the additions to the population lost the distinctively Pennsylvania-German type, but the influence of the first settlers was never lost.

Two hundred years have passed since the first Germans from Pennsylvania made their way through the trackless wilderness of Maryland: two hundred years which have seen that wilderness blossom into one of the fairest gardens

151 Barbara Fritchie was a Pennsylvania-German. She was born in Lancaster, Pa., December 3, 1766, the daughter of Nicholas and Catherine Hauer. Although it has been conclusively shown that there is no foundation in fact for the incident given in Whittier's poem, yet, like the equally mythical story of Betsy Ross and the flag, the tale will no doubt continue to find believers in its authenticity.

on earth. Through the trials and sufferings of those early pioneers the foundations were laid upon which has arisen an empire, than which no more enduring monument to their memory could be erected. Their descendants have continued the work so well begun and have spread out and helped to conquer new fields and make them add to the wealth of the nation. To the south and west this stream of emigration made its way unceasingly. It would be impossible to particularize, but there is no part of the country, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from the Gulf to the frozen borders on the north, where the descendants of those early German settlers of Maryland cannot be found. Many of them have set their mark high in the record of the world's progress: in science, in art, in mechanics, in whatever makes for the betterment of mankind, and in reaching high honors themselves have honored the memory of those brave men and women who, leaving behind them all the comforts of civilization, and taking their lives in their hands, carved out a home in the forests of the western continent.