Prelude to Glory, Vol. 9

by Ron Carter

  Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, regarding the provision for a parcel of land ten miles square to become the capital of the United States, is quoted verbatim. The first financial report of Alexander Hamilton, which triggered a division among the political leaders of the time; the dispute that arose as to where the ten square miles for the Capital city was to be located; the persons involved; Jefferson’s preference of a “rural location”; the deadlock between Madison and Jay; the chance meeting between Jefferson and Hamilton on the street in front of the residence of the president; the banquet arranged by Jefferson that resolved the conflict; the naming of the French-born Major Pierre Charles L’Enfant to be the designer of the city; the selection of Benjamin Banneker, an ex-slave, to assist L’Enfant; and other related affairs are all accurate. See Bernstein, Thomas Jefferson, pp. 86–100.

  The plethora of embargoes between the United States, England, and France, and the lust of Napoleon Bonaparte to rule the world as described in this chapter fall short of the actual ongoing undeclared commercial war between these countries that was occurring on the high seas and ports from 1790 until the end of the War of 1812. The “Rule of ’56” had been in place since the year 1756, the second year of the Seven Years’ War between France and England for ownership of the thirteen colonies; the Rule of ’56 is explained in Hickey, The War of 1812, p. 10. For an exposure to some of the nearly unending embargoes between the three countries and Russia, see Stagg, Mr. Madison’s War, pp. 3–47. The commercial war between Britain, France, Russia, and America drove insurance rates to prohibitive levels for all participants. See Hickey, The War of 1812, pp. 217–218.

  The recollections of Matthew regarding the sea battle on Lake Champlain on October 11, 1776; the battle twelve miles off the eastern English coast on September 23, 1779 between the Bon Homme Richard commanded by John Paul Jones and the British gunboat Serapis; and the Chesapeake Bay battle between the French and British navies near Yorktown are described in Leckie, George Washington’s War, pp. 297–306, 499–501, and 632–48, respectively.

  The use by the British of Native Americans against the United States, including the Shawnee leader Tecumseh and his brother Tenskwatawa, also known as The Prophet, all as described herein, is set forth in some detail in Stagg, Mr. Madison’s War, pp. 177–203; Hickey, The War Of 1812, pp. 24–26; and Antal, A Wampum Denied, pp. 19–25.

  The thoughts of James Madison regarding the taking of Canada from England, first as secretary of state and later as president, are set forth in Stagg, Mr. Madison’s War, pp. 3–47, and Wills, James Madison, 97–105.

  The political conditions prevailing in New Orleans as described herein, including the positioning of Jean and Pierre Lafitte as persons of power and the nearly impossible task given to Governor William Claiborne to unify the various cultures found in the area, are described in Saxon, Lafitte, the Pirate, pp. 20–26.

  New Orleans

  May 1808

  CHAPTER III

  * * *

  He was slightly taller than average, built strong, face tending toward square with a prominent chin and nose, middle aged, dressed in a quality business suit of deep brown broadcloth, and wearing a tricorn pulled low in front. He leaned against the chest-high railing of the south-bound Mississippi riverboat Antoinette as she nosed east on the river, toward the docks of New Orleans. The gather of ships was like nothing he had ever seen before. All along the black, ancient pilings and the worn, foot-thick planking, the wharves and piers were jammed with schooners, frigates, flat-bottomed freight boats, barges, longboats, rowboats, and great three-masted merchantmen flying flags from Europe, Africa, the Orient, South America—more than thirty nations. Some were working their way into the docks, some riding low in the water impatiently forcing their way out. Some were tied to the docks, unloading tea, silks, spices, ivory, opium, ebony, perfumes, and a hundred other exotic products from the world over. Others were taking on tobacco, baled cotton, indigo, nails, bolts, stoves, plows, and countless other American manufactured goods to be delivered to foreign ports.

  Dockhands of every color and description swarmed, calling, shouting, jabbering in a dozen languages and dialects. Some with dusky skin and tattoos wore turbans and flowing robes. Some with a yellow cast were pigtailed, with broad pointed straw hats. Others were black, or white, or bronze, or a mix—barefooted, stripped to the waist, wearing only ragged, threadbare trousers that reached just below their knees and were held up by a piece of cord tied at their middles. Some were bearded, some smooth shaven, some sheared bald, some with long hair tied behind their heads by a bit of string. Children of all ages darted about, clad in worn clothing, some with no clothing at all. All were dripping sweat in the stifling heat and humidity that hung heavy over the river and the sprawl of the docks and the burgeoning town of New Orleans.

  The tall man set his feet to take the jolt of the riverboat as it thumped into the dock. Hawsers were cast, and dockhands heaved into them and deftly looped them with the backhand figure eight to huge, black, iron cleats anchored in the planking. The man wiped at his face with a damp handkerchief and bent to pick up his two horsehide suitcases with the broad leather straps and buckles that bound them shut, then stood waiting with half a dozen other passengers while seamen lowered the gangplank. Etched into the tough, scarred leather beneath the handles of his luggage was the name M. E. HICKMAN. He waited his turn, then walked down the gangplank, feeling the slight give with each step. On the dock, he slowed for a moment, breathing shallow in the wave of odors that washed over him. Pungent spices, perfumes, the stink of decaying entrails from dead fish, raw sewage, and the sweetness of orange blossoms coming from the orchards on the far fringes of the city. From the south came the taint of ocean water.

  Hickman moved on toward the place at the north end of the docks where men in sweated shirts or broadcloth jackets, some with turbans, others with soft, shapeless, broad-brimmed felt hats or dilapidated stovepipe hats that shaded their heads and faces, sat in the driver’s seats of scarred hacks with eight-foot horsewhips in the sockets, and horses standing like statues, heads down, hipshot, half asleep. From the crowd a hand reached to seize the handle of one of his suitcases, and Hickman jerked back, looking. A small black boy with dirt on his face and his hands, not yet ten years of age, grinned up at him, wide-eyed, stripped to the waist, wearing only a pair of too-big, faded, dark-blue trousers held up by a piece of knotted string. The ragged, torn garment reached just below his knees.

  “Carry for two-bits,” the boy exclaimed. “Two-bits.” He reached again for the handle of the heavy suitcase.

  Instantly Hickman peered over the boy’s head to a man in the crowd with a broken nose and a scarred face who was watching every move the boy made. Hickman shook his head. “No,” he growled. “Get away.”

  The boy seized the handle and again looked up at Hickman, grinning. “Carry for two-bits.”

  Hickman pushed him back. “No! Move back.”

  The expression on the boy’s face soured, and he kicked at the suitcase with a bare, calloused, dusty foot, then darted back into the crowd to the broken-nosed man behind him, head ducked, one arm raised for protection. The man struck the boy on the top of the head, then seized him by the shoulder and jerked him away and disappeared into the press of people.

  Hickman watched until they were gone, all too aware that if he had allowed the boy to carry his suitcase, it would have disappeared with the boy and the man.

  He pushed through the teeming mass and stepped across an open ditch filled with standing human waste to reach the place where the hacks waited for fares. He eyed the worn vehicles and their drivers, picked one that wore a black, dusty, battered stovepipe hat and was dressed most like an American, and stopped beside the front wheels.

  “You speak English?” In Hickman’s voice was the unmistakable nasal twang of an American Yankee from a northern state.

  The man nodded.

  “Can you take me to the Absinthe boarding house?”

 
“Absinthe? Yes.”

  “Is it far?”

  “In distance? No. In time? Twenty minutes.” The words were decidedly flavored with French.

  “How much? The cost?”

  The man eyed Hickman and his two suitcases and scratched at his whiskered jaw for a moment. “Two dollars, American. You are responsible for your baggage.”

  “Two dollars? Sounds like too much.”

  The expression on the man’s face did not flicker. “There are other hacks.”

  Hickman glanced at the next hack, then loaded his bags in the rack at the back of the one before him. “Two dollars. Done.”

  The spiritless horse answered the reins and the pop of the whip, and the hack creaked as it moved toward the heart of the city. The dirt streets were crooked and narrow, with trash and refuse piled against the walls and near the doorways wherever people chose to throw it. Cul-de-sacs and dead-end side-streets shielded courtyards and buildings between which there was no break. Foot traffic paid little attention to the carts and wagons and hacks; everyone took their chances in the streets.

  Men in doorways and shielded places covertly studied him, some with dirks and daggers hidden in their shirts or robes, and eyes that were shrewdly calculating how much gold he might be carrying in his suitcases or inside his coat. Other men in business suits seated in open-air restaurants peered, judging who and what he was, and whether he had come to buy silks or silverwork or slaves or perfumes or spices or opium from the dealers and the auctions, and if so, in what quantities. Women standing erect walked with filled baskets balanced on their heads. Incredibly beautiful bronze and golden girls in loose gowns, with painted cheeks and dark eyes that peered from beneath long, dark lashes, stood on balconies to watch who came and who went. Old men and old women with small tables set on the dirt hovered over objects of every description, calling out to come, buy their precious goods, come, buy. Catholic priests, two by two, walked the streets in their robes. A few British soldiers were there, always in small groups, obvious in their crimson tunics. There was no pretense. No dominant dress or appearance or standard or language. It was all wide open, a morass of saints and sinners, of cultures and dress, and of trades and professions, with very few pretending to be other than what and who they were.

  Coming into the old section of the city, Hickman could not mistake the influence of the French in the stone buildings. Intricate facings, balconies, stairways, cafes and restaurants in proliferation, all built in the fifty-year span from 1718 to 1768, during which the French founded and laid the foundations of the city and built the core. Some buildings showed the dark stain of fires from long ago and pockmarks and jagged holes from muskets and cannon that remained from the Indian wars and the wars with pirates and between the countries that lusted after the wealth that was accumulating in the city. Others bore the marks of past hurricanes that had toppled chimneys and buildings and church steeples.

  Hickman saw the subtle change that began in 1769 when the Spanish took New Orleans from the French by force, and for the next thirty-four years imposed its own culture and language on the French inhabitants. The architecture showed a shift from the delicate grace of the French to the more practical notions of the Spanish. Spanish officers found the French colonial girls irresistible, and intermarriages became common. The two cultures and the two languages became entangled and confused, and the Creole was born—a new blood, a new society, neither French nor Spanish but a jumbled mix of the customs and traditions of both, with its own new language. Then, in 1803, when President Thomas Jefferson bought the whole of the Louisiana Territory from the Spanish, hardheaded, impatient, practical American businessmen came flocking to the irresistible lure of land and riches, and the American influence spread quickly. Hickman could not miss the many newly painted business signs with American names at the entrances to the old buildings.

  As for the people, they were all there—the aristocrats, adventurers, outcasts, criminals from the jails of Paris and London and Amsterdam, the nuns and priests, pirates, smugglers, and the solid, productive men and women from the middle class who had jumped at the chance of owning land. He saw the influence of the hard-headed, thrifty Germans who had come to settle the wilderness, to grow orchards and farms and to help build the levees that lined the riverbanks and crisscrossed the town to hold back the flood waters of the Mississippi.

  The crooked, narrow street entered onto a large, open public square crowded with people and small shops, and the driver pulled the horse to a stop.

  “The Absinthe House,” he said without expression and pointed to a huge black wrought-iron gate set in an eight-foot-high stone wall, between two massive stone pillars. The gate was open, and through it Hickman could see into a spacious courtyard with magnolia trees in bloom and orange trees heavy with fruit, and the spider-web filigree of Spanish moss hanging from it all. Hickman drew a leather purse from inside his coat, handed the hack driver a five-dollar gold piece, took his change, and hefted his two suitcases from the rack. The driver clucked and slapped the reins on the rump of his dispirited horse, and the hack groaned quietly as it rolled away in the dirt street. Hickman pushed his way past the crowd, through the gate, and stopped.

  The courtyard was paved with cobblestones. At the far end was a massive, two-story building that had been a thing of beauty and dignity eighty years earlier; but the hot, humid summers and the hurricanes and storms had taken their toll. The brick chimney was partly collapsed, and the building was weather-stained. But despite it all, the charm of the French architecture remained—worn, tired, eroded, but graceful still. People in dress from countries the world over sat at small tables, sipping tea or wine beneath awnings and umbrellas and shade trees that lined the courtyard. Some were absorbed in gestures and chatter, others leaned back, casually observing. Four British redcoats sat lounging at a table in one corner, a large pitcher of ale before them, their pewter mugs half empty.

  Hickman continued through the spacious yard, to the great mansion that dominated all, and entered through the open double doors into the relative coolness of the parlor, where several people were milling about. He paused long enough to locate a small desk in the far corner, near the carved, dark-wood staircase that curved against one wall, leading up to the second floor. He stopped at the desk and faced a large black woman with a great round face, wearing a tent-like tan garment that hung loose from her neck to her ankles.

  “May I help you?” she asked.

  “You have a room for me. M. E. Hickman.”

  “Yes. Your letter asked for a room on the second floor. At the corner.”

  “Correct.”

  “One dollar a night, ten nights. Ten dollars. Payable in advance.” She waited.

  “My business might keep me here more than ten days.”

  “That will be all right. You can pay for that later.”

  Hickman laid a ten-dollar gold piece on the desk. The woman took it and reached behind the desk for a locked metal box. She produced a small key, opened the box, and dropped the coin inside. As she closed the lock she asked, “Receipt?”

  “Yes. Business expense.”

  She nodded, and Hickman watched while she wrote a receipt, signed it, and slid it across the desk to him. “Is that acceptable?”

  He read the brief document and noted her name. “Matsie.” A single word. Hickman nodded, folded it, and thrust it into his inside pocket while the woman again reached below the counter for a large brass key. “Take the stairs over there”—she pointed—“and the room is at the corner of the hallway. There is a washroom and bath for the second floor across from your room. You can get water there for your washbasin.” She leaned her bulk forward to glance down at his suitcases. “Shall I call someone to carry your baggage?”

  “No. I’ll handle it.”

  His leather heels clicked on the hardwood floor, and on the twenty-one curving stairs up to the second floor, and down the hallway to his room. Inside, he set his suitcases on the floor beside the bed and stepped to t
he window to peer down at the great courtyard. Satisfied, he opened his suitcases on the bed and began hanging his clothing in the wooden wardrobe, casually glancing at the appointments in the room. The walls showed age, and the paintings of ships at sea and pastoral scenes were fading. A nightstand with a kerosene lamp was on one side of the bed, and nearby, against the wall, was a second table with a large, flowered, porcelain washbasin and a matching pitcher inside—both old, chipped. A tall dresser with five drawers stood against the third wall, where he placed his shirts and underclothing and socks. He took a pistol from his suitcase, checked the frizzen, and slipped it beneath the pillow on the bed, then straightened the large comforter. Last, he picked a metal box with a lock from one of the suitcases and slipped it beneath his undergarments in the dresser drawer. Finished unpacking, he untied his necktie, hung it with his coat, rolled up his sleeves, and lay down on the bed to rest and consider what he had seen of New Orleans.

  At six o’clock he walked back down the stairs into the huge parlor, to the desk. Matsie appeared from a door to his right.

  “Yes?” she asked. “Is there something else?”

  “I am to meet a man here. A Mister Ingersol. Amos Ingersol. Is he lodged here?”

  Her brow knitted for a moment in thought. “Ingersol? No, but he comes here often.”

  “Can you tell me how I might find him?”

  She pointed. “He has an office down the street. You’ll find his name—”

  A strong voice boomed from behind. “Mister Hickman? Are you Mister Hickman?”

  Hickman swung around. “Mister Ingersol?”

  “Yes.” Ingersol, short, round-faced, sagging jowls, large, flat nose, thrust out a small, thick hand, and Hickman felt the power as he seized it. “I am delighted to finally meet you,” Ingersol continued. “Been here long?”