Revolution Song

by Russell Shorto

  Washington unfolded himself to his full height. Remaining at his table rather than step to the front of the room, he took out a paper and read the response he had carefully prepared: “Mr. President, Tho’ I am truly sensible of the high honor done me in this appointment, yet I feel great distress from a consciousness that my abilities and military experience may not be equal to the extensive and important trust. However, as the Congress desire it, I will enter upon the momentous duty and exert every power I possess in the service and for the support of the glorious cause. I beg they will accept my most cordial thanks for this distinguished testimony of their approbation. But lest some unlucky event should happen unfavourable to my reputation, I beg it may be remembered by every gentleman in the room, that I this day declare with the utmost sincerity I do not think myself equal to the command I am honored with.” Money was never far from his thoughts and he ended with what he no doubt felt to be a magnanimous flourish: that he would accept no pay beyond having his expenses met.

  He was surely sincere in his admission that he did not feel equal to the task. His military career was years in the past, and nothing he had done then compared with what he was now asked to do. He wrote as much to his wife, saying that he had “a consciousness of its being a trust too great for my Capacity.”

  And yet, this was another instance of a familiar tactic: to feign at the last minute not to want the very thing he had long desired. The advice of his old mentor, William Fairfax, to be “Roman,” to couple a burning ambition with a frosty exterior of gentlemanly reserve, was ingrained in him. Surely, he did want this, had hungered for it even, for it was the very honor he had longed for decades earlier, but now in a different context and for a wholly different cause.

  Something more than two months later. It was fall: the leaves of the maple trees surrounding the Seneca village of Conawaugus were burning red; the houses were ornamented with braids of corn hung up for drying. People were stringing beans, hanging tobacco leaves. One day a runner appeared from the eastward trail. Everyone gathered to hear the news. Cornplanter was among them: he was in his late twenties or early thirties now, and, while not a hereditary chief, he had shown bravery and wisdom and was gaining stature as a leader. The messenger approached the chiefs and handed them the wampum belt he carried, the panel of woven beads that certified his mission. There was a tally stick attached to it, with notches to indicate a date in the future. The date was tied to an event. The message was that the leaders of the American colonies wished to meet with the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy.

  The Senecas knew what was afoot. Runners went off eastward, to the other five Iroquois nations, to arrange a council at Conawaugus. In time, delegations arrived from the Cayugas, Onandagas, Oneidas, Mohawks and Tuscaroras. The request from the Americans was that they assemble at Fort Pitt, at the Forks of the Ohio; the Iroquois chose representatives from each nation to go. The Seneca delegation included Cornplanter, a young chief called Red Jacket, and Cornplanter’s teenaged nephew, whom the English would come to know as Governor Blacksnake. Blacksnake was young and eager; this was his first notable adventure, and he would remember it vividly all his life. The diplomatic party traveled westward to the shore of Lake Erie, then followed the shoreline southwest for 70 miles. The boy took note of remote cabins of white settlers. At one spot, where the Iroquois stopped to construct bark canoes, an old white man came out of the forest like a ghost and offered them bread; they gave him venison in return.

  Several days later the Iroqouis delegation reached the Forks. The morning after their arrival their white hosts fed them breakfast. A man who introduced himself as commissioner of the American Continental Congress arranged places in an open field for the various parties, then he began, reading an address that had been prepared weeks earlier by Washington, Adams, Jefferson and the others of the Congress:

  Brothers, Sachems, and Warriors,

  We, the Delegates from the Twelve United Provinces* . . . now sitting in general Congress at Philadelphia, send this talk to you our brothers. We are sixty-five in number, chosen and appointed by the people throughout all these provinces and colonies, to meet and sit together in one great council, to consult together for the common good of the land, and speak and act for them.

  The delegates in Philadelphia told the Iroquois that, “as we are upon the same island,” they wanted to inform them of their impending break with Great Britain. The speech was long, beginning with the first English settlers in America. It told of the goodness of King George—the delegates knew well that the Indians had a fondness for the English king, or at least for the idea of him—but noted that “many of his counsellors are proud and wicked men,” and that these men “now tell us they will slip their hand into our pocket without asking, as though it were their own; and at their pleasure they will take from us our charters or written civil constitution, which we love as our lives—also our plantations, our houses and goods.” Against all reason, the evil counsellors had persuaded the king “to send an army of soldiers and many ships of war, to rob and destroy us.”

  The “island” that the commissioner referred to—North America—was the turtle’s back that Sky Woman had landed on when she fell from her home in the Sky World. His implication was that the Americans, as fellow inhabitants of the island of Iroquois mythology, knew the world of the Iroquois and could be trusted.

  Cornplanter and the others listened throughout the morning; toward noon the commissioner came to the point. Congress, he said, had declared that the war was “between us and Old England. . . . You Indians are not concerned in it. We don’t wish you to take up the hatchet against the king’s troops. We desire you to remain at home, and not join on either side, but keep the hatchet buried deep.”

  The American leaders that had met in Philadelphia knew that if all-out war with England was destined they needed at all costs to keep the Iroquois out of it. They tried, in their appeal, to suggest that a British victory would be disastrous for the Iroquois: “. . . for, if the king’s troops take away our property, and destroy us who are of the same blood with themselves, what can you, who are Indians, expect from them afterwards?”

  The Iroquois had previously agreed that Red Jacket would speak for all. Blacksnake remembered him starting by referencing the Iroquois’ God-given right to the land, as “citizens of this island God made us here to inhabit,” and going on to note (completely untruthfully) that they had “never” needed to engage in wars to protect their land. He said that while “we acknowledge it is important to hear” what the Philadelphia congress had to say, the Iroquois leaders gathered at the Forks were not authorized to make a promise without consulting their constituents back home. The commissioner expected this. He told them that the American leaders asked them to attend a later council in Albany, to deliver their answer. Then he invited them into the newly rebuilt fort, to inspect its features, to show them how the Americans were preparing for war. After the tour, the commissioner invited them to take food for their journey home. The Iroquois loaded three canoes with provisions. In the morning the canoes slipped into the water, and they paddled toward home.

  The moment Cornplanter, Blacksnake and the others returned to Conawaugus, runners went out to all villages in Iroquois country as well as to other Indians, spreading word of what was said at the Forks. The next weeks were a time of confusion. Runners came in from every direction. They brought news that the great Mohawk chief Thayendanegea, whom the Americans called Joseph Brant, who spoke English and took to wearing an English suit, had sailed for London to bargain for backing of Mohawk land claims in exchange for fighting alongside the British. Other runners reported that some Mohawk warriors had joined the British in fighting American soldiers who had launched an invasion of British territory in Canada.

  Cornplanter for one did not like this. The six nations of the Iroquois Confederacy had freedom to go their own ways, but he knew that this storm would be larger than others. Unity would be important.

  Then came another mes
senger with the request from the Americans for a second council, at Albany, where they hoped to hear the Iroquois answer to their plea for neutrality. American leadership had by now clearly coalesced around one man, for Blacksnake reported that the request came “from Washington.” Once again the Senecas prepared to go. Following custom in important matters, the chiefs made the decision this time not to choose which warriors would accompany them. Everyone was free to join or not. As a result, said Blacksnake, “quite a large number elected to go with the chiefs.”

  The large party from Conawaugus made its way through the forest to a place where they had arranged to meet with other Senecas. That night, before the fire, all agreed that they would try to “see clear with the naked eyes and open our ears to hear truth” at Albany, that they “did not want to hold their heads down and see nothing.” The Senecas traveled together the next day. The following day they split up into companies.

  Five days later they arrived in Albany. They found the city—civilians and soldiers—in an expectant, nervous mood. Rumors and gossip were flying.

  The other Iroquois nations, and other Indians, arrived. They held meetings prior to the start of the council with the Americans. Decisions were made. There was a change in leadership. Red Jacket had recently been the first among Seneca chiefs, and Cornplanter’s uncle, Guyasuta, had been prominent since the time of Pontiac’s War. But when the American commissioner began the council by posing the question “Who is the head man of the Seneca nation?” it was Cornplanter who rose and said, “I am.”

  * Georgia had not sent representatives to Philadelphia.

  Chapter 10

  A NATURAL INCLINATION TO LIBERTY

  Cannon fire lit the icy darkness. The guns’ smoking snouts were swiveled toward New England’s great port city of Boston. General Washington had given the command to fire. His intended target was not, of course, the inhabitants themselves, but the Bostonians didn’t necessarily know that: after each blast the men doing the reloading could hear the screams of women and children huddled in their houses.

  Washington directed his men from nine feet in the air, sitting majestically atop his horse, providing the spectacle of leadership that his lifelong reading and training had pointed toward. The bombardment was aimed at British troops holed up in the city, but in reality the fusilades were a distraction. For Washington’s first operation against the army he had once longed to be a part of was a dodge, a feint. By the time he had reached Boston from Philadelphia—the journey itself was remarkable, surreal, with people at every town coming into the street to cheer him, to shower him with songs and goodwill, calling him “Excellency”—he was fully aware that he had no true army under his command. Instead, four different groups of American would-be soldiers, most of whom had only ever shot at animals before, each under its own commanding officer, had converged on the city. They had no uniforms and carried whatever weapons they possessed. Somehow Washington had to make them into an army. And he had a secret so terrible he kept it from nearly everyone: the army had only enough gunpowder for each man to fire nine shots.

  Maintaining military control of Boston, the seething center of rebellion in the colonies, had been the first order of business for Britain. Its warships patrolled the harbor, and a 9,000-man army—now under the command of William Howe, a forty-seven-year-old veteran who had learned to respect the colonials’ abilities in his service during the French and Indian War—occupied the city. The previous June, colonial forces that had encircled the city clashed with the occupiers; the British had won the so-called Battle of Bunker Hill (whose center was actually nearby Breed’s Hill), but the experience had emboldened the Americans. Nevertheless, Washington knew that attacking the crack British regulars directly with his untrained and virtually unarmed bands of men would be foolhardy. His strategy was to get his troops on top of Dorchester Heights, a hill to the south of Boston. From that vantage they would have a chance. But how to mount the hill without being cut to pieces?

  Deception was Washington’s answer. With bales of hay as screens and the mortar and cannon fire to hide the groans of the wagon wheels, 3,000 men started up the hill by moonlight on the night of March 4, hauling with them the heavy guns whose shot, from the heights, could reach the ships in the harbor. They had mounted the summit and set up a rampart before dawn, to the bewilderment of the awakening British soldiers. “When the Enemy first discovered our Works in the morning,” Washington wrote to John Hancock with satisfaction, “they seemed to be in great confusion, and from their movements to have Intended an Attack.”

  He braced for a fight—he had two more contingents ready to attack—but General Howe surprised him by evacuating the city. Washington had no way of knowing what Howe was up to and was stunned by the amount of goods the British had left behind in their rapid retreat. But the sight of the enemy ships’ receding sails was enough for him to conclude that, without an actual clash of soldiers, he had won a battle.

  Others thought so too. Newspapers crowed about the great victory of General Washington. He became a hero almost literally overnight. When news of the British evacuation of Boston reached Philadelphia, the giddy members of the Continental Congress voted to have a medal struck: Washington’s bust on one side and on the other the general on horseback surveying Boston from Dorchester Heights. Among those who wrote fawning letters to the commander in chief of American forces, a Massachusetts businessman called him “the Savior of your Country” and declared that he was to be congratulated by “every Friend to Liberty and the Rights of Mankind. . . .”

  Of course, that sentiment had to be qualified. Prior to the battle, at a council of war with his officers, Washington had put up for a vote several matters that might improve the military, including whether to allow the enlistment of “any Negroes in the new Army.” Doing so would seemingly make a statement about how far the patriots’ belief in liberty might carry. Washington, with his vast experience of slaves and his conviction that they could not be trusted unless closely watched, had already issued orders against enlistment of “any deserter . . . negro, or vagabond.” After brief consideration, he and his officers voted “to reject Negroes altogether.” Undermanned though they were, the American patriot leaders wanted no help from blacks, not if it involved even the possibility of extending “liberty and the rights of mankind” to them.

  One hundred miles south of Boston, Venture was working on his own expansion of freedom. He went about it in his typical fashion: doggedly, systematically. Having bought himself out of slavery, he next determined that he needed a name. For a slave, one name was generally considered to be enough. Often, as in Venture’s own case, it was given to you by your owner. But parents were often able to name their own children. African-American slaves in the eighteenth century looked all over for names for their children. Some liked the ring of the classics: Caesar, Virgil, Cato, Minerva, Cleopatra. For their daughter, Hannah, and their first son, Solomon, Venture and his wife Meg had looked to the Old Testament. For their second son, Venture had followed an African tradition of naming a child after the day of the week on which he or she was born; Cuff was a West African name that corresponded with Friday. If slaves had two names, the second was usually to help owners and overseers distinguish them on a large plantation: Crippled Rose, Yellow Sam. There was no need to identify them beyond that.

  But freedom changed things. With freedom you wanted a proper surname. It was a marker of your new status, as vivid as a flag. As with first names, people grabbed surnames from different sources. Some went for loftiness: Duke, Prince, King. Others chose a name to signify their change of condition, calling themselves Freeman or Liberty. Others took last names that would serve as an advertisement for their skills: Carpenter, Mason, Weaver, Tailor.

  Venture followed the most common practice among freed slaves: he took his last owner’s name. What might seem counterintuitive was in fact practical, and Venture was practical to his very bones. Freedom, heady as it was, was moorless, a leap into the void. There were no ne
tworks or societies to aid former slaves by teaching them to read or how to negotiate business deals or otherwise become functioning members of society. On the contrary, great swaths of society wanted nothing to do with them; communities passed laws blocking freed blacks from settling. Venture knew he was stepping into a gray zone. He needed to tie himself to whatever was solid, known and reliable. Oliver Smith was a person of substance; everyone in Stonington, and many beyond in southeastern Connecticut, knew him. And the man who had sold Venture his freedom was possessed of one of the sturdiest and most common surnames in America. “Big Venture,” “Venture the Giant,” became Venture Smith.

  Then he got to work. He grew watermelons; by night he fished for eels and lobsters. He stayed on good terms with Oliver Smith, who was in, among other things, the shipping business. Venture took advantage of a chance to go on a whaling voyage on one of his vessels. He had never done such a thing before, and it proved to be a harrowing experience. But it was good money. They sailed back into port seven months later with the ship’s hull packed with 400 barrels of whale oil, the profits from which Venture got his cut.

  Mostly, though, he cut wood. Over a period of four years he traveled all over the region—sailing back and forth between the mainland and Long Island and to various wooded islands in Long Island Sound—in search of jobs. He worked himself to the limit of his endurance. In one six-month span, he said, “I cut and corded upwards of four hundred cords of wood”—enough to heat twenty houses for a year. In the course of four years he cut several thousand cords. While performing what he called “singular and wonderful labors” with his ax, he saved every penny, living on the barest necessities. “All fine clothes I despised in comparison with my interest. . . . Expensive gatherings of my mates I commonly shunned, and all kinds of luxuries I was perfectly a stranger to.” He took particular care to stay away from alcohol. He remained grimly focused, month after sweaty month. He desired only two things: “money and prudence.”