The Fair Play Men were illegal settlers (squatters) who established their own system of self-rule from 1773 to 1785 in the West Branch Susquehanna River valley of Pennsylvania in what is now the United States. Because they settled in territory claimed by Native Americans, they had no recourse to the Pennsylvania colonial government. Accordingly they established what was known as the Fair Play System, with three elected commissioners who ruled on land claims and other issues for the group. In a remarkable coincidence, the Fair Play Men made their own Declaration of Independence from Britain on July 4, 1776 beneath the "Tiadaghton Elm" on the banks of Pine Creek.
Read more about Fair Play Men: The 1768 Treaty of Fort Stanwix, The Fair Play System, The Pine Creek Declaration of Independence, The Big Runaway, After The War, Legacy
Famous quotes containing the words fair play, fair, play and/or men:
“When all is said and done, friendship is the only trustworthy fabric of the affections. So-called love is a delirious inhuman state of mind: when hot it substitutes indulgence for fair play; when cold it is cruel, but friendship is warmth in cold, firm ground in a bog.”
—Miles Franklin (1879–1954)
“This fair homestead has fallen to us, and how little have we done to improve it, how little have we cleared and hedged and ditched! We are too inclined to go hence to a “better land,” without lifting a finger, as our farmers are moving to the Ohio soil; but would it not be more heroic and faithful to till and redeem this New England soil of the world?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Our graves that hide us from the searching sun
Are like drawn curtains when the play is done.
Thus march we, playing, to our latest rest,
Only, we die in earnest—that’s no jest.”
—Sir Walter Raleigh (1552?–1618)
“Now I see that going out into the testing ground of men it is the tongue and not the deed that wins the day.”
—Sophocles (497–406/5 B.C.)