Background
Robert Whitehill, son of James and Rachel (Cresswell) Whitehill, was born on July 21, 1738 in the Pequea settlement, Lancaster County, Pa. , where his father, a native of the north of Ireland, had settled in 1723.
Robert Whitehill, son of James and Rachel (Cresswell) Whitehill, was born on July 21, 1738 in the Pequea settlement, Lancaster County, Pa. , where his father, a native of the north of Ireland, had settled in 1723.
Robert had the advantages of a good elementary education; he studied for a time under the Rev. Francis Alison, and added further to his knowledge by diligent reading.
In 1770 he purchased from the proprietaries of Pennsylvania two tracts of land, comprising 440 acres, in Lauther Manor beyond the Susquehanna (now Cumberland County). The following spring he erected the first stone house in the manor on a site about two miles from the Susquehanna, near Harrisburg. Here he made his home until his death. In the pre-Revolutionary period he manifested to a marked degree the democratic sentiments of frontier Pennsylvania. He was a member of his county committee, 1774-75, and as early as the spring of 1776 was outspoken in his advocacy of independence, primarily as a means of overthrowing the control of the eastern counties in provincial politics. In the Pennsylvania convention of 1776 he was the right hand man of George Bryan, and played a conspicuous part in drafting the new constitution. With the organization of the state government he began a service which, in various capacities, continued almost uninterrupted until 1805. He was a member of the Assembly, 1776-78; served on the council of safety, October to December 1777, and on the supreme executive council, December 28, 1779, to November 30, 1781; and was again a member of the Assembly, 1784-87, 1797-1801, and of the state Senate, 1801-05. A devout Constitutionalist, he was one of the small group which in this period fanned jealousies and suspicions of the Pennsylvania back country into an opposition which was probably the most vehement experienced by any state and nearly resulted in armed conflict. Robert Morris said of his obstinacy in debate, "Even were an angel from Heaven sent with proper arguments to convince him of his error, it would make no alteration with him". At no period of his official career did Whitehill reflect better his back-country views than as a member of the Pennsylvania convention to ratify the federal Constitution (1787). In the Assembly he sought a delay in the election of delegates in order to allow the inhabitants of the remoter regions of the state to become more familiar with the frame of government. In the convention he resorted to every device to delay or defeat ratification. He insisted that there were inadequate safeguards against a tyranny and on the day of ratification attempted, without avail, to have fifteen articles incorporated as a bill of rights. Three years later, as a further mark of his disapproval of governments with a strong executive and an independent judiciary, he refused to sign Pennsylvania's new constitution on the ground that it was too undemocratic. His suspicions of the judiciary never lessened, and in January 1805, as speaker of the state Senate, he had the satisfaction of presiding at the celebrated impeachment trial of three Pennsylvania supreme court justices. Whitehill was elected to Congress to fill a vacancy in 1805 and served in that body until his death. A stanch Jeffersonian, he supported the administration regularly, and manifested the same hostility toward the federal judiciary that he had previously shown toward Pennsylvania judges. A proposed amendment introduced by him in 1808 would have limited the tenure of judges to a term of years and would have made them removable by the president on joint address of both houses of Congress. In trials of impeachment he proposed a simple majority only for conviction. Whitehill died at Lauther Manor.
His wife, whom he married in 1765, was Eleanor, daughter of Adam Reed, western Pennsylvania pioneer.