Peter Muhlenberg is the subject of one of the two statues representing Pennsylvania in the National Statuary Hall Collection in the U.S. Capitol.
He was born October 1, 1746 in Trappe, located in southeastern Pennsylvania.
Peter’s father Henry Muhlenberg, was a German Lutheran pastor sent to North America as a missionary requested by Pennsylvania colonists. He founded the first Lutheran church body in North America and is considered the patriarch of the Lutheran Church in the United States.
Peter’s mother was Anna Maria Weiser, daughter of Pennsylvania Dutch pioneer and diplomat Conrad Weiser.
Peter was educated at the Philadelphia Academy (University of Pennsylvania). When he was 18-years-old, he and two of his brothers went to Halle, Germany, for further education.
Peter returned to Pennsylvania in 1767 and attended the Academy of Philadelphia, which is today the University of Pennsylvania.
In 1768 he was ordained and headed a Lutheran congregation in Bedminster, New Jersey. He later moved to Woodstock, Virginia and married Anna Barbara “Hannah” Meyer, the daughter of a successful potter in 1770. They went on to have six children.
Muhlenberg visited England in 1772 and was ordained into the priesthood of the Anglican Church although he served a Lutheran congregation. Since the Anglican Church was the state church of Virginia, he was required to be ordained in an Anglican church in order to serve a congregation in Virginia. Besides his new congregation, he led the Committee of Safety and Correspondence for Dunmore County, Virginia.
Peter Muhlenberg was elected to the House of Burgesses in 1774, and was a delegate to the First Virginia Convention.
He was authorized to raise and command as its colonel the 8th Virginia Regiment of the Continental Army. George Washington personally asked him to accept this task, which he did.
Peter’s brother Frederick, also a minister, did not approve of Peter going into the army, but when the British burned down Frederick’s church, he joined the military!
This is a recount of Reverend Peter Muhlenberg’s last sermon on January 21, 1776 given in the Lutheran church in Woodstock, Virginia, according to a biography written by Peter Muhlenberg’s great nephew, Henry A. Muhlenberg in 1849…
“In this spirit the people awaited the arrival of him whom they were now to hear for the last time. He came, and ascended the pulpit, his tall form arrayed in full uniform, over which his gown, the symbol of his holy calling, was thrown.
He was a plain, straightforward speaker, whose native eloquence was well suited to the people among whom he laboured. At all times capable of commanding the deepest attention, we may well conceive that upon this great occasion, when high, stern thoughts were burning for utterance, the people who heard him hung upon his fiery words with all the intensity of their souls.
Of the matter of the sermon various accounts remain. All concur, however, in attributing to it great potency in arousing the military ardour of the people, and unite in describing its conclusion. After recapitulating, in words that aroused the coldest, the story of their sufferings and their wrongs, and telling them of the sacred character of the struggle in which he had unsheathed his sword, and for which he had left the altar he had vowed to serve, he said in the language of holy writ, that there was a time for all things, a time to preach and a time to pray, but those times had passed away; and in a voice that re-echoed through the church like a trumpet-blast, “there was a time to fight, and that time had now come!”
The sermon finished, he pronounced the benediction. A breathless stillness brooded over the congregation. Deliberately putting off the gown, which had thus far covered his martial figure, he stood before them a girded warrior and descending from the pulpit, ordered the drums at the church-door to beat for recruits.
Then followed a scene to which even the American revolution, rich as it is in bright examples of the patriotic devotion of the people, affords no parallel. His audience, excited in the highest degree by the impassioned words flocked around him, eager to be ranked among his followers.
Old men were seen bringing forward their children, wives their husbands, and widowed mothers their sons, sending them under his paternal care to fight the battles of their country. It must have been a noble sight, and the cause thus supported could not fail. Nearly three hundred men of the frontier churches that day enlisted under his banner; and the gown then thrown off was worn for the last time. Hence forth his footsteps were destined for a new career.”
Muhlenberg’s unit was first posted to the South, to defend the coast of South Carolina and Georgia. In early 1777, his regiment was sent north to join Washington’s main army. Muhlenberg was later made a brigadier general of the Virginia Line and commanded that Brigade in Nathanael Greene’s division at Valley Forge.
Muhlenberg saw service in the Battles of Brandywine, Germantown, and Monmouth. After Monmouth, most of the Virginia Line was sent to the far south, while General Muhlenberg was assigned to head up the defense of Virginia using mainly militia units. At the Battle of Yorktown, he commanded the first brigade in Lafayette’s Light Division.
At the end of the war (1783), Peter Muhlenberg was brevetted to major general and settled in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania.
He was elected to the Supreme Executive Council in 1784 and served as Pennsylvania’s vice president from 1785 to 1788. He was elected to the First Congress (1788-1789), of which his brother Frederick was Speaker, and served in several successive Congresses. Elected to the Senate in 1801, he resigned shortly thereafter to accept the appointment by President Thomas Jefferson as supervisor of revenue for Pennsylvania in 1801 and customs collector for Philadelphia in 1802. He served in this post until his death on October 1, 1807.
Pennsylvania sent his statue to Washington D.C to represent them in the National Statuary Hall Collection in 1889.
Diana Erbio is a freelance writer and author of “Coming to America: A Girl Struggles to Find her Way in a New World”. Read more in her series Statues: The People They Salute visit The Table of Contents and the Facebook Page. (I’ll be adding to the Substack Table of Contents as I transfer the Blog Posts. Please subscribe to this Substack 😊🇺🇸🤓)
That must have been a heck of a sermon and site to draw 300 men.
Of all the Patriots in Pennsylvania to honor with a statue, Muhlenberg gets one. I think it’s because his Christian spirit of Revolution, “No King but King Jesus”, best represented America at that time!