Revolution Song

by Russell Shorto

  Meanwhile, he bided his time in Manhattan, attending to other matters before the Congress, scribbling essays against the growing sentiment for national power, and getting news from home. He had much to be happy about. He and Anna now had four grandchildren, all under the age of six, living, along with their parents, in their Albany house. His son-in-law, Abraham Lansing, sent regular updates on the goings-on in the family and the town, and even added some literal sweetness: in one letter, Lansing told Yates he had sent him “a small Cake of Maple Sugar about 5 or 6 lb.”

  Then things turned sour. Yates had worried that the seemingly indomitable Alexander Hamilton would exert his will over his two antifederalist colleagues in Philadelphia. In the beginning of June he received a letter from his nephew, Robert Yates. He was bound by an oath of secrecy not to reveal details of the convention, but “my forbodings,” he indicated darkly, “are too much realized.”

  There was a spring rain falling outside the windows. By twos and threes, officious-looking men in waistcoats, breeches and stockings entered the red brick State House in downtown Philadelphia shaking off the weather, voices echoing in the vestibule as they greeted one another. It had been a long while since most had seen each other. There were twenty-nine of them: a quorum. They could begin.

  Robert Morris stood before the wood-paneled walls and indicated that, on behalf of the Pennsylvania delegation, he wished to propose that George Washington, late commander in chief of the Continental Army, be named president of the convention. All knew that Morris was a stand-in for this ceremonial function. Benjamin Franklin, the only other American to rival Washington in stature, was supposed to enter Washington’s name, but Franklin was too unwell to travel the few blocks from his home. John Rutledge of South Carolina seconded the motion. The delegates voted unanimously to approve the selection. Washington was conducted to the chair at the front of the room by Morris and Rutledge. James Madison was taking notes; he recorded that Washington “thanked the Convention for the honor they had conferred on him, reminded them of the novelty of the scene of business in which he was to act, lamented his want of better qualifications, and claimed the indulgence of the house towards the involuntary errors which his inexperience might occasion.” Despite all he had achieved, the presence of such an array of educated men seemed to stir Washington’s old feeling of inferiority regarding his own lack of formal education.

  It was a Friday; they did little more that day. The following Monday they began in earnest. Franklin was well enough to be carried to the State House in a litter and took his seat among them. There was a presentation and discussion of the rules that would govern the convention. Among the rules was one for secrecy, which prohibited delegates from advertising the debates until their business was concluded. Their worry was that antifederalists such as Abraham Yates, if they got wind of the actual intent of the convention, would cause an uproar that would shut it down.

  The next day Edmund Randolph of Virginia outlined the main business of the convention, detailed the defects in the Articles of Confederation and—in an indication of how organized the federalists were—suggested a new structure for the government, including a bicameral legislature, a “national executive” and a national judiciary. Charles Pinckney of South Carolina then presented his own “Plan of a Federal Constitution,” which declared the manner in which the new nation should be formally styled: “The United States of America.”

  They were underway. They had cast off the pretension of revising the Articles of Confederation, under which they had gathered. In secrecy, they were creating a new government.

  Throughout, Washington said little. He knew that his mere presence at the head of the gathering was more resonant than any amendments or revisions he might offer. The small group of men had little in the way of authority for what they were doing. To one such as Abraham Yates—who was desperate to know what they were about even as he all but intuited it—they were in fact stealing the Revolution, taking it away from the states and the people who had fought it, assuming command like so many dictators. Eventually, they would present their results to the states, to the people. But in the meantime they needed weight, ballast, foundation. Washington, who had first risen to renown in the colonies back in the days of Braddock’s march, when American militiamen fought alongside British regulars against the French; who had in fact helped bring about that war with his youthful blunders and then overcame disaster through his dogged commitment to decency and decorum, his painstaking efforts to teach himself the rules of military engagement and apply them in the raw real world; who had become convinced, as had they, that an idea that had been building for a century and more, in which individual human beings were seen as fundamentally and necessarily important and thus to be empowered; who had then, on the strength of that conviction, led a loose and wayward soldiery through the uncharted thicket of an eight-year war against the parent nation; who had suffered more defeats than victories and who had battled his own insecurities and foibles as much as he had enemy generals; and who had come to the realization that even final military victory did not ensure the underlying commitment to individual human freedom that had underlain their efforts: he was the only man who could provide that ballast and foundation.

  The delegates were not all of like mind. The deliberations soon descended toward chaos. The split was most evident in the New York delegation. John Lansing and Robert Yates were opposed to the movement to craft a new system that would give the national government clear power over the states. Alexander Hamilton, the other member of the delegation, believed just as strongly that the plan put forth by Virginia delegates did not go far enough. In one long, hot June afternoon, Hamilton lectured his colleagues for six straight hours, arguing that central strength was the paramount need, that they should create a system in which the states gave up power to the federal government, and that the government should be led by an elected official who would rule for life.

  The other delegates were mostly appalled by Hamilton’s speech, which they saw as all but demanding an American monarchy. Lansing and Yates took this opportunity to enact the emergency plan they had worked out with Abraham Yates: they left the convention in protest over its direction. Hamilton—whose impetuousness had dissipated only slightly since he had huffily quit Washington’s military staff—also announced that he was suddenly needed back home in New York, and left. Meanwhile, the delegates were deeply divided on slavery, and on how the chambers of the legislature would be apportioned. Small states were afraid of being engulfed; larger states wanted to be sure their populations were represented.

  There was an adjournment. Washington dined with Robert Morris and his wife. He took tea at the Indian Queen, the same hotel where Cornplanter had been put up the year before. He went fishing. He and Gouverneur Morris rode out to Valley Forge; he recalled there was a fine trout stream in the area. They cast their lines and enjoyed the summer peace, then he rode alone among the remains of the American encampment, pondering the terrible winter of 1777–78 that he and his army had endured here. It gave him time to ruminate on what they had done then and what they were attempting to do now: that the two tasks were of a piece.

  Hamilton wrote him from New York. He had seemingly regretted the fit of pique that caused him to leave so abruptly. He wanted Washington to know that Americans were aware of what the delegates were about in their secret gathering. Riding through New Jersey, he had heard from ordinary people that they believed a stronger government was necessary, that the leaders must not give up their effort to fashion one. “I am more and more convinced that this is the critical opportunity for establishing the prosperity of this country on a solid foundation,” he told Washington. Washington wrote back, saying he fully agreed with the sentiment, and went so far as to add, “The Men who oppose a strong & energetic government are, in my opinion, narrow minded politicians.” Then, stirred maybe by the wartime affection he had felt for the younger man, he added, “I am sorry you went away—I wish you were back.”

&nbs
p; A breakthrough came. Few antifederalists were as strident and unyielding as Abraham Yates. Those in Philadelphia compromised, as did the federalists. They reached agreement on the manner in which the Senate and the House of Representatives would be apportioned.

  Another breakthrough, of sorts, came on the matter of slavery. They chose not to end it, not to curtail it. They agreed, for purposes of determining the population of each state, to count each slave as three-fifths of a person, thus giving slave states even more control over the country’s future. As to the slaves themselves—roughly 500,000 people, 20 percent of the country’s population—the delegates, nearly half of whom were themselves slave owners, voted that the federal government would not have the authority to decide the legality of their status. For all the complex array of powers they were giving themselves with the new Constitution, and in the wake of their historic revolution, which they had boldly declared to be in the service of human liberty itself, America’s leaders extravagantly failed their own challenge. Liberty was an inalienable right for all people. But economic considerations crimped the leaders’ moral beings. When they finally read out in the chamber their laboriously crafted and finely wrought words, which were intended to “secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,” they had a distinctly hollow ring.

  By September, the delegates had their consensus: they had a constitution. On the evening of the seventeenth, Washington sat down with pen and candle and noted the day’s momentous event with laconic brevity: “Met in Convention & Signed the proceedings—all except Govr. Randolph, Colo. Mason & Mr. Gerry. Dined all together at the City Tavern & returned to my lodgings.”

  Chapter 19

  GLOWING WITH ZEAL FOR THE GENERAL HAPPINESS AND IMPROVEMENT OF MANKIND

  A man might come as Nobody. Or a Cherokee chief. Or—a carrot. A society matron might be dressed as a Greek slave, or a harlot. A harlot might appear as a society matron. The mansion would glitter from the light of thousands of candles; musicians would be placed throughout the building. Tables groaned with food and drink. Sometimes, in darkened corners, the revelers paired off.

  Circa 1785, Margaret Coghlan was a regular at these London masquerades, the masked balls that were vital social outlets, in which a rigidly formal society could let its hair down. And there were many other affairs to attend: teas and soirees and society dinners. It was seven years since she had been wrenched away from America by the man she had been forced to marry, whom she had then escaped, and she was now a fixture in London society. In that time, Americans had won their freedom. Perhaps she had not quite attained her own, but she had proven herself to be a survivor.

  Of course, she owed her acceptance at society functions to the fact that she arrived on the arm of an important man. She had broken off her relationship with Samuel Fazakerley after returning to London from their long and languorous Grand Tour of Europe. At around the same time, a charming, gracious, good-souled aristocrat named John Augustus Hervey had also arrived in the city, back from his service as a captain in the British navy in Quebec. He was married, but by now Coghlan understood that a woman who dared to be independent would have to situate herself in a certain niche of society. Among the upper classes it was proper—or at least expected, or at the very least tolerated—for a nobleman to have a mistress. And such a mistress, if she knew how to comport herself—what to say and wear, where to be seen and with whom to be seen—could be a figure of some regard, maybe even of some respect. Most important, of course, was the quality of gentleman to whom one attached oneself. Captain Hervey, aka Lord Hervey, was of the very highest quality. He knew everyone. He was young and stylish and serious, with a career in the diplomatic service ahead of him.

  With him, Margaret found her way in London. He set her and her daughter up in style, with a fine home in a fashionable neighborhood. Margaret was twenty-three: a very young woman by most standards, but with the life she had led she could only consider herself a veteran. As she aged, she came to value education and perspective. Her own formal education had been spotty, thanks to the war, but she was a keen student of society; she did everything she could these days to learn from those around her. Women in England were certainly not treated as the equals of men, but she had discovered that they had more involvement in public affairs than did American women. The Houses of Parliament were stuffy and cramped quarters for airing ideas; men in government preferred to conduct much of their political discussion in other settings. There were clubs and taverns for all-male conversation, but England’s leaders also valued the role that women could play. The wives of government ministers and members of Parliament hosted dinners at which public policy was aired and debated. Women were conduits of information and could also influence policy.

  Despite the fact that the American war was over, many of the issues that had animated it still dominated these gatherings. English leaders were fiercely divided on the topics of republicanism, the monarchy, religious freedom and individual rights. Coghlan’s former lover, Charles James Fox, and other Whigs, including Edmund Burke, were still active; Burke had moved from decrying British injustice against America to recently declaring that the exploitative practices of the British East India Company in India were devastating that country; meanwhile, theologians like Richard Price and Joseph Priestley, who had also supported the American cause, were championing the separation of church and state in England and trying to reconcile Christian beliefs with science.

  There was much in these ideas to attract Coghlan. As the teenaged daughter of a British officer caught in the middle of the Revolutionary War, she had stridently supported the British cause, but these days she openly professed her attachment to, as she wrote, “my native country (America),” and she declared herself to be “by no means a friend to arbitrary principles.” Even as she settled herself into English society, she identified with the new American nation and with the “natural rights” on which it was founded. Her public persona was not merely that of a mistress but a proud expatriate American.

  She had also become deft at managing her feelings. She knew where she stood with Hervey; she understood her role, accepted it, played it adroitly. With him she enjoyed, as she said, “all the comforts and delights of domestic life”—or at least all that could be expected considering that he had a wife and daughter at home. She knew that their relationship would end eventually. It lasted until sometime in 1786, when Hervey received the news that he had been appointed by the king to be minister to the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. He was sweet and gracious in parting, and generous—he left her money.

  That was just as well, for he also left her another child. The baby, a girl again, was born several months following his departure, but she died soon after. Coghlan spent some months in mourning. Then she found herself another position, as it were. The new lover—whom she chose not to name when she later wrote about him—was also a renowned captain, this time in the British army. He was a sweet man; he doted on her. With him, however, she made a fatal mistake: she allowed herself to succumb to, as she said, his “tenderest affection.” She fell in love. She knew better, but suddenly she desperately wanted to be wanted, both for the transcendent joy of it and for the security. She hoped that some lasting bond was forming between them. When she became pregnant, and gave birth to a son, she allowed herself to feel that that was happening. Then the next year she bore him a second son. Surely they were becoming a family.

  Maybe she dared let herself hope that he would offer to marry her. If so, it was doubly cutting when he informed her, as gently as he could, that he was engaged to be married. His fiancée, he reported, expecting that Margaret would understand, was a lady, an aristocrat, a fixture in polite society. She would make an appropriate wife. And she would make a fine mother. For, he also quietly added, he was taking their two sons, to be raised by him and his new wife. Since Margaret loved the boys and cared about them, he was sure she would agree that this would offer them the best future.

  It was a man’s world: she had no s
ay in the matter. She tried as hard as she could to put a good face on the situation. The woman, she told herself, repeating what he had told her, possessed “every virtue and every necessary accomplishment to secure his happiness.”

  But the psychological blows were enormous. In a short span, death had taken one child and fate—society—had taken two others as well as the man she loved. She staggered, felt desperately alone. She needed help. To comfort herself, she indulged in what had already become something of an addiction. When she was still with her beloved captain and all was well, she had allowed her taste for luxury to flare dangerously. She had spent freely, and put everything on account. Her lover had paid off some of the debts, but, she acknowledged once he was gone, “his fortune could not keep pace.”

  After he left her, she lost all restraint. London’s population was pushing toward 1 million; with such a consumer base, all the world’s finest and most delicate items were on display in its shops. Surely she wasn’t compelled by addiction alone. Just as, before the war, George Washington, the gentleman farmer, was driven to continue spending by his straitened finances so as to project an image of success, Coghlan understood that a mistress to the highest class of gentlemen needed to be seen at the right balls, at the theaters and soirees in Soho and Covent Garden. She needed not just a horse-drawn hackney carriage but one of the latest model, with a driver properly outfitted. She needed to spend lavishly on her hair. She needed the most fashionable gowns, the subtlest perfume, petticoats and riding habits, parasols and corsets and combs and scarves. Because there were occasions for entertaining at home, her rooms in Cavendish Street had to be exceedingly well appointed. One needed elegant chairs and fashionable candelabra, a card table, a finely wrought tea board and service, sculptures and paintings to suggest ease of living and cultural richness. And a lady’s bedroom had to fairly ripple with silky folds.