Washington and Caesar

by Christian Cameron

  The armed sloop Tryal, anchored next to them, began to invite visitors to their drill, and it became part of the spectacle of the fleet. Sometimes officers would come and watch, as amused by the sight of black men at drill as they would have been by a bear dancing or other frolics that seemed to go against the natural order. But they drilled anyway, and gambled, and dreamed of ways to spend their pay.

  After a few days, the Tryal and some larger frigates dropped down the river past the rebel posts there, and there was firing for several hours. Royal Navy ships around them beat to quarters, but they never knew what the purpose of the maneuver was, unless simply to strike confusion and terror in the king’s enemies.

  It was the middle of August before they showed any signs of disembarking again; most of the army lived in camps on Staten Island, but the Ethiopians were kept aboard their ship. It was cleaner, in the cooler air of Sandy Hook, the breezes were more frequent, and the spirits of the men and women aboard were higher than they had been in the Chesapeake. They waited. They watched the preparations, witnessed the arrival of Sir Henry Clinton’s force that had failed to take Charleston in the south, watched the seaborne skirmishes up the river and the attack by the rebels with fireships on HMS Rose and the Tryal. No one seemed to know why they were waiting or for what.

  On the 21st of August, everything began to move. Peters received orders through the former governor of Virginia that the “black pioneers” would be wanted with the advance column, and they were issued tools and forage bags—but no arms. They disembarked amongst strangers who paid them no regard. No one exchanged remarks with them, or treated them as comrades. They were placed in the middle of the grenadier column, with the baggage.

  It was not an auspicious start to his second campaign, but Caesar watched it all with anticipation. The grenadiers were magnificent in their fine uniforms, taller than the average soldier, and older, deadly. They performed the motions of the manual with an air of efficiency that was different from the mere expertise he had become used to with the Fourteenth. The grenadiers appeared to him to be hard men, practiced at war. He longed to be one of them. They ignored him. The army prepared to march to war on Long Island.

  And the Loyal Ethiopians, those who were left, were carrying only picks and shovels.

  New York City, July 9, 1776

  The enemy had come.

  At first, when he had sat in New York, listening to the news of disaster from Canada, Washington had begun to fear that he had guessed incorrectly, and that Lord Howe had taken the British regiments out of Boston and used them to defeat Arnold and Montgomery at Quebec. Then it became possible that they had gone to Halifax, and from there would move to Rhode Island, or the Carolinas, or even into the Chesapeake. They controlled the sea, and they could go anywhere, and he sat in New York with all the army he could muster save those regiments he sent to repair the disaster in the north, watching and waiting, hoping that the enemy chose New York and not some other, defenseless morsel of the great coast he had sworn to defend.

  He sent his best generals away, to support the other theaters of war, just as he had expected in January. Charles Lee was off to the south, to defend Charleston and direct the southern war. Horatio Gates and John Sullivan were both off to the north to take commands against Guy Carleton, who had already eaten several generals, capturing some and breaking others. Carleton had held Quebec all winter. He was cutting through the Continental forces like hot iron through snow, driving the remnants of the northern army all the way from Quebec to Sorrel.

  And all Washington could do was to sit near New York, building and training his army as he had in the siege of Boston. It was ironic that he had opened the war with the siege of the British Army, and now bid fair to stand a siege himself.

  He worked, and worried, changed his staff, appointed new officers, wrote regulations, and worried more. He and Charles Lee had guessed that the enemy had to take New York. In the moments after victory at Boston, it had seemed obvious, but now, in light of the other news, it appeared an irresponsible guess. He had built an army. He had raised a corps of officers in his own image, who believed in discipline. He had given them a body of regulations and a manual of arms, and he had created a staff and a series of systems to govern the army, feed it, provide recruits for its continuance.

  And then the first sails were sighted, and soon hundreds of masts appeared off Sandy Hook. He had caught a tiger. And now his army would fight.

  He read through the day’s reports, noted with moderate surprise that the enemy was digging in on Staten Island, and called for the day’s general orders, written out fair by Colonel Reed, the adjutant general. Only one thing was wanting for the army, besides wagonloads of new equipment, and that was a spirit different from mere rebellion, which Washington privately abhorred. Rebellion would lead individual men to rebel, which was not his purpose.

  Colonel Reed had written the orders well. Desertion would now be punished with thirty-nine lashes on the bare back, a sufficient punishment to deter the casual deserter; there were new regulations on obtaining passes for soldiers wishing to travel or visit nearby towns, and an order to provide chaplains for the regiments that did not possess them. Then he came to the meat of the day’s orders, whose meaning would change the army and the whole nature of the war. Washington had a draft of the original document by his elbow, and he had read it with growing delight, the magical words expressing precisely the steps which had led him to war. Once it was read to the troops, they would know exactly what the stakes were in this war, and it would no longer be a mere matter of rebellion.

  The Continental Congress, impelled by the dictates of duty, policy and necessity, having been pleased to dissolve the Connection which subsisted between this Country, and Great Britain, and to declare the United Colonies of North America, free and independent States: the several brigades are to be drawn up this evening on their respective Parades, at Six O’clock, when the declaration of Congress, showing the grounds and reasons of this measure, is to be read with an audible voice.

  Washington cleaned the nib of his quill on a rag, dipped it, and wrote carefully at the bottom of Reed’s copperplate.

  The General hopes this important event will serve as a fresh incentive to every officer and every soldier, to act with Fidelity and Courage, as knowing that the peace and safety of his Country depends (under God) solely on the success of our arms: and that he is now in the service of a State, possessed of sufficient power to reward his merit, and advance him to the highest honors of a free country.

  George Lake mustered his men quickly enough and fell in on the parade. Neither of the drummers who had replaced Noah had the spirit or the strength of wrist to beat any call as loud as Noah had, and the muster now involved the corporals racing about the camp yelling for their men, and the sergeants going to their place on parade and yelling for the company to be brought to them. George missed Noah. He had made them a better company. In his absence, they had lost some hard-won skills, like the ability to load and fire volleys to the drum. Noah had had some peculiar mixture of skill and intelligence that allowed him to listen to the sergeants and officers and beat the order just fast enough to allow the best fire.

  Lake thought of Noah often, because he now had to contend with Bludner every day. Bludner was very much in command of the company. Mr. Lawrence mustered them, and stood at the front during inspections and reviews, but it was Bludner who set the tone. Lake missed the skill that McCoy had exercised, and the attention to detail, but most of all, he missed the distance McCoy had placed between himself and the other men. And he knew that Bludner had driven McCoy out as surely as he knew that McCoy had nothing to do with the loss of Noah. Bludner was friendly with the other back-country men, and no friend at all to the other apprentices.

  Despite which, Lake continued to serve as a corporal and knew he was being considered for sergeant. He was smart, smarter than Bludner, and he only needed experience. He read everything he could find, borrowed manuals from officers in o
ther companies, used his pay in Philadelphia to buy books. His section looked smart and drilled well, and they were often the first on parade. This evening, for instance, he’d taken the precaution when morning orders were read to tell them off and ask them to “lie handy” for a six o’clock formation, and they had.

  Walters and Miller still had a lot of baby fat in their faces, and Miller still used a fowler from home that couldn’t carry a bayonet, but every one of his men had a cartridge box and a bayonet strap, even if Miller and Neldt lacked bayonets. Their hats were cocked just so, and they looked like soldiers. That could not be said for every man in the company.

  The company fell in gradually, a section at a time, a few men running up late, and they were no longer the sharpest company in their battalion, as they had been before Philadelphia. Other officers worked their men harder, or perhaps had better drummers and sergeants. Either way, the battalion formed with the brigade, and Captain Lawrence, who was serving his turn as brigade major, stepped to the center of the parade with grave steps.

  “Shoulder your firelocks!” he called, and they did, in passable unison, twelve hundred muskets going to twelve hundred left shoulders.

  “Attention. General Washington has directed that the following be read at the head of every brigade.” He looked around, cleared his throat, and held a piece of paper before him.

  “When in the course of human events…”

  It took several minutes to read, and muskets quickly get heavy, but no one noticed, so solemn was the moment. No one grumbled in the ranks, or demanded to be allowed to go back to the order. No one made jokes. They stood together at attention as the powerful words flowed over them, until the very end.

  Captain Lawrence rolled the papers crisply and looked from left to right along the front of the brigade.

  “Three cheers for the Continental Congress and the Independence of the United Colonies! And let them hear you in Philadelphia!”

  He raised the hand with the papers, and the first cheer rang out over the parade.

  “HUZZAH!

  “HUZZAH!

  “HUZZAH!”

  Long Island, August 29, 1776

  John Julius Stewart was a short man, and no one who had not seen him in action would call him graceful or even handsome. His red hair was thick, but it wouldn’t stay in a queue, and his features were snubbed, as though someone had pushed his face against something hard before they were set. His wide-set green eyes were too large for fashion, and gave him a faintly comical air. His limbs were too long for his trunk, and he never seemed to have gotten around to learning the use of them: long legs that he stuck out at odd angles, long arms that his tailor couldn’t really conceal.

  But it was the hair that his vanity hated most, and it was his hair that generally got the most attention from various dressers, though to little effect until he met Jeremy.

  Jeremy had received every boon of nature denied to his master. He was as handsome as a Roman statue, proportioned aptly, so that, though he stood an inch less in height than his master, people who had met them in London or on a hunt remembered the man as towering over the master. Jeremy had brown eyes and carefully straightened dark hair that always sat perfectly on his head. In fact, it was the experience of dressing his own hair and his family’s that prepared him for the struggle of his new master.

  John Julius had no more been born to the aristocracy than Jeremy had been born to service. John Julius Stewart was the son of a prosperous Edinburgh merchant, and had been to Smyrna and Alexandria before he was fifteen. His father had packed him off to the army lest he run away to sea. Being an officer made him a gentleman, though his mercantile connections ensured a certain number of sneers.

  Jeremy’s father ran a prosperous and fashionable grocers in London. As a boy he had gone away to serve the Earl of Linsford’s lovely, silly wife. She had a passion to have a black boy, and treated Jeremy more as a pet than a servant. He first loved, then resented it, but he received the best education possible, as well as an accent and a set of manners that couldn’t be learned in any other school. In fact, he had more breeding than his master, which John Julius readily owned. Of course, when the pretty plump black boy became a young man, the lady was done with him. Black men were not the beau ideal of society; besides, his apparent age served all too well as a reminder of her own.

  Jeremy went home for a while, but home was a difficult, cramped place after an estate and a series of grand London houses. His mother and father seemed a little vulgar, his peers simple or just low. He had no way to make a living, nor any particular interest in learning one, and black men who could fence and write verse were not as much in demand as he had hoped. Despite his father’s desire that he follow in the shop, he had chosen service as the best of a bad set of options, and had looked for a military man. His former mistress’s husband had been a colonel of militia; the pageant had fascinated him, and so had the toys.

  The two men shared a passion for popular novels, a knowledge of the military sports, and a hope for adventure. Jeremy looked around the tiny bedroom of their marquee with satisfaction, enjoying the rustic comforts of the folding beds, the padded close stool and the campaign desk. A curtain of linen canvas separated the bedroom from the tent’s sitting room, where his master might have his brother officers for a glass of brandy or a cup of chocolate or coffee. Jeremy had a proprietary air toward the marquee, which he had earned by supervising its manufacture according to a French book on castramentation that he had found in a London bookseller when they were making up their equipment. It was the best furnished in their regiment, which gave them both a great deal of quiet satisfaction.

  When the regiment left England to take the field in earnest, several of the more aristocratic officers who had given Stewart to understand that his position as a Scot and a merchant’s son was very low indeed, had quit the regiment, exchanging with officers who sought active service. Those who stayed were either more tolerant or simply quiet.

  The Edinburgh merchant’s son had one thing most of them lacked—ready money. He used it carefully, and without too much display, and bought a vacant captaincy in the light company, the regiment’s scouts and skirmishers, and good horses and weapons. Jeremy saw to their comforts; he ordered the tent and the desk and the beds. The four good chairs in the sitting room had been “acquired” by a patrol of the light company, and had probably adorned a local house.

  “I left Evelina on your bed, Jems.” The touch of the Scot was still there, although London had removed a great deal of it.

  “Sorry, sir?”

  “Evelina! The book we heard so much of on the ship. Don’t be wooly-headed, Jems, there’s a good fellow. Remember Lieutenant Burney?”

  “I do, sir. A naval gentleman. He was out with Cook.”

  “Just so.”

  “And knew the Tahitian, Odiah.”

  “More to the point, Jems, he has a sister.”

  “Who writes. Yes, sir. My pardon, I don’t know where my head was at. Miss Burney, who writes.”

  “Just so. Her first is on the bed, called Evelina. A novel of very deep sensibility.”

  “Are you finished, then?”

  “Oh, yes. I had it off Waters. He recommended it, and I dare say I devoured it.”

  Jeremy found the little brown volume, still only paperbound, with the covers curled and many pages bent. He sniffed at it—horse sweat. Most things smelled of horse, lately. Horses had a handsome aroma anyway.

  “Did you get us any mail while I was off, Jems?”

  “Yes, sir. Two from Miss McLean.”

  “Give, you criminal!”

  Jeremy walked to the little door between the tent’s two rooms and poked his head around.

  “They’re on your hat.”

  The hat, a small and fashionable bicorn trimmed in the regimental manner and boasting a spray of cock’s feathers, was the sole ornament of the tent’s central piece of furniture, a camp table. Tucked upright in the stiff Nirvenois back of the hat were two le
tters in travel-smeared outer envelopes.

  “Ahh!”

  Jeremy smiled and muttered “just so” as he went back to tidying the bedroom.

  “I’d like to get a piece of Turkey carpet to put in here, sir.” Requests put during one of Miss McLean’s letters were apt to be granted.

  “Jeremy, when this army moves, we have to move all this, you know.”

  “We have bhat horses and baggage allotment.”

  “Jeremy, trust a man who’s at least chased the odd smuggler in Ireland. When we move, half this stuff will vanish never to be seen again, and by the time we see action we’ll be sleeping in greatcoats and drinking soldiers’ tea.”

  “I can get one for a shilling or two, sir.” Patiently, because John Julius did not always know what was in his own best interest.

  Jeremy had not expected to like his employer. He would have left a man he detested or who misused him. When he applied to be valet to a merchant’s son with manners to match, he had not expected humor, or tolerance, or a master willing to be a student in the arcane arts of the culture of the upper class. If John Julius Stewart had any flaws, they were the flaws of idleness. He seemed to have no temper at all, he didn’t fight duels, and his taste in women seemed entirely limited to just one, Miss McLean, a daughter of property and gentility in the wilds of Scotland. And Stewart had much to teach: he was a superb horseman, a crack shot, and had other skills that seemed, like the blades of a folding knife, to appear when wanted and then vanish, never to be hinted at. On board the naval ship that had carried them to America, he had endeared himself to the officers by knowing the names of every line and spar, a rare feat for a passenger and rarer for a redcoat.