by Ron Carter
Again Matthew paused, slowly lowered the document to the tabletop, and quietly said, “There it is. We change, or we die.”
For a time the only sound was the creaking of the ship, and then Adam spoke. “Did Congress do anything about it?”
Matthew picked up the next document. “May thirteenth, last year. Pinckney moved Congress for the appointment of a general Committee to propose a plan to save us. August seventh the Committee reported. They had a long list of acts Congress had to approve, or they predicted that the Union would dissolve into chaos. The list was too long. Congress did nothing. The report was tabled and the whole project died.”
Adam was incredulous. “Congress ignored it?”
Matthew nodded. “They did. Facing a prediction of dissolution of the thirteen states, they ignored it. North against the south. That’s when talk began in the backrooms of Congress about appointing a king. When Washington heard of it, no one could remember fury like they saw in him. He wrote, ‘What astonishing changes a few years are capable of producing! I am told that even respectable characters speak of a monarchial form of government without horror!’”
Adam’s eyes widened. “Washington? He wrote that?”
Matthew laid a paper before him. “There it is.”
For fifteen seconds Adam studied the paper, then shook his head and laid it down while Matthew went on.
“Backroom whispers became open talk in Congress. The State legislatures. Leaders everywhere were shaken.” Matthew sorted out two more documents and scanned them for a moment. “Here. Last August. August nineteenth. James Monroe to Thomas Jefferson. ‘I am sorry to inform you that our affairs are daily falling into a worse situation . . .’ And here. Monroe again, this time to Patrick Henry. Governor Patrick Henry. ‘Certain it is that Committees are held, in this town, of Eastern men and others of this State upon the subject of a dismemberment of the States east of the Hudson from the Union and the erection of them into a separate government.’”
Matthew stopped and for a time said nothing. Then he quietly continued. “That was nine months ago. Leaders getting ready to break up the Union. The leaders!”
Adam saw the pain and the fear, and he did not know what to say or what to do.
Matthew dropped his eyes to the tabletop and put his hands together, working them one with the other, thoughtful, sorting out his thoughts. Then he raised his head.
“Is this what Father died for? Father and thousands of other good men? Valley Forge. Trenton. Morristown. Saratoga. Yorktown. Is this what they died for? Suffered for? Mother. You. Brigitte. Prissy. Six years of it. Is this what we bought with all the blood and tears and suffering?”
For a time the two brothers sat in silence, each remembering, each deep in his own thoughts. Then Adam spoke. “I heard about a convention—maybe two conventions—of leaders trying to find a way to stop all this.”
Matthew nodded. “Madison organized one between Virginia and Maryland to settle arguments about the Potomac and Pocomoke Rivers. In Alexandria, Virginia. March twenty-first of 1785. Madison and the Virginia delegates came, but none of the Maryland delegates appeared. George Washington heard about it and quickly sent an invitation for all of them to come to Mt. Vernon. They did. Most of their disputes were handled, but it didn’t stop the talk about splitting the union.”
Adam drew a breath and asked. “Was there a second convention? Do I remember a second one?”
“One was arranged for 1786 on September eleventh in Annapolis. All states were invited to send a delegation. Connecticut, South Carolina, Georgia—all failed to send any delegates at all. The delegations from Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, North Carolina—all arrived too late to participate. A total of twelve men—twelve men—from New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Virginia appeared. It was a disaster. They met for three days, then appointed Alexander Hamilton and James Madison to write a report of the failure. They did, and it was a thing of pity. The report ended with one last, final request. Every state was requested to send a delegation to Philadelphia on the second Monday in May of this year—May fourteenth—in one last try to save the country. I have their report here.” For a moment Matthew handled papers, then laid one on the top of the stack.
“Let me read the last three lines. ‘ . . . to devise such further provisions as shall appear to them necessary to render the constitution of the Federal Government adequate to the exigencies of the Union.’”
Matthew looked up and then asked, “Any question about what Madison and Hamilton meant by that?”
Adam shook his head. “None. One last try. Do or die.”
“Are you aware of how Congress reacted to that?”
“Not good.”
“Ignored it. And things got worse. Here.” Matthew extracted another document from the stack. “October twenty-seventh, 1786. Benjamin Rush from Philadelphia to Richard Price in London. ‘Some of our enlightened men who begin to despair of a more complete union of the States in Congress have secretly proposed a Northern, Middle, and Southern Confederacy.’”
Adam rounded his lips and gently blew air. “Benjamin Rush? Of Pennsylvania? He wrote such a thing?”
“Yes. Dr. Benjamin Rush of Pennsylvania.”
“Hard to believe.”
“Washington heard of it, and November fifth last year—five months ago, wrote to James Madison. His letter is very nearly a prophecy. Here.” He picked up a copy of a letter and read. “‘ . . . Let prejudices, unreasonable jealousies, and local interests, yield to reason and liberality . . . No morn ever dawned more favorably than ours did; and no day was ever more clouded than the present . . . We are fast verging on anarchy and confusion . . . Thirteen sovereignties pulling against each other, and all tugging at the Federal head, will soon bring ruin on the whole.’”
Adam interrupted. “Ruin on the whole? When did Daniel Shays rise up? Wasn’t it about then?”
“December of last year. Forced courthouses to close, because if judges couldn’t get inside to sign orders, they couldn’t foreclose farmers from their land, or send men to debtor’s prison. Shays and the Massachusetts Militia fought a pitched battle at the Springfield armory on January twenty-fifth, and another one on February fourth at Petersham, and their last one on February twenty-seventh. Altogether about forty-five men were killed. Think of it! Americans killing Americans! I was there. With Billy and Eli Stroud. Trying to stop it. It broke my heart.”
Adam took a deep breath. “If I understand it right, Shays lost, but his rebellion put enough pressure on Congress to do something.”
“James Madison saw the value of the rebellion and began writing letters to leaders all over the country. They put pressure on Congress. February twenty-first, Congress passed a resolution. I have a copy.” Matthew read from another document. “‘ . . . That in the opinion of Congress, it is expedient that on the second Monday in May next, a Convention of delegates who shall have been appointed by the several states, be held at Philadelphia, for the sole purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation . . . adequate to the exigencies of Government, and the preservation of the union.’”
Adam asked, “And the states responded?”
“Some did, some didn’t. New York and the four New England states rejected it. They claimed the Articles of Confederation had its own provision for amendments, and they had to originate in Congress, not in the states. They said any amendments would be illegal if they originated with the states.”
“What changed their minds?”
“Madison persuaded George Washington to attend. At first Washington was reluctant, but when he realized what was at stake, he consented. And when he did, it turned the dissenters around. They’re coming, or at least most of them.”
“Have any states refused?”
“We don’t yet know about Rhode Island.”
Adam shook his head in puzzlement, then pointed to a second large stack of papers on the table. “More letters?”
“No. Notes and documents on the
background of most of the men who will be attending the convention. I’ll need that if I intend talking with them.”
“Any appear to be the leaders?”
Matthew reflected for a few moments. “Hamilton. Madison. Mason. Washington. Randolph. Morris. Rutledge. Maybe Pinckney. A few others. One never knows.”
“Which Morris? Robert? The financier?”
“No, Gouverneur Morris. New York. Strong thinker. Writes well. Robert Morris will be there, but I don’t know how effective he’ll be.” Matthew smiled. “Gouverneur Morris has one wooden leg. Rumor is he lost the leg jumping from the second floor window of a lady’s boudoir. It isn’t true—he lost it in a carriage accident—but it made a good story. I think he enjoyed it while it lasted. Looks to be a typical politician.”
Adam grinned, then sobered. “Any others? Perhaps some from Massachusetts?”
“Gorham, Strong, Gerry, and King. Any one of them could be a surprise. On paper, Gerry appears to be an eternal pessimist. Everything is wrong if he wasn’t the one that thought of it.”
Adam shifted in his chair, then stood to stretch muscles that had set. “I’ve taken too much of your time. I better go shoot the sun and check the chart.”
Matthew stood. “I’ll go up with you. How many times’ve you navigated the Delaware?”
“Twice. This is my third.”
Matthew followed his brother out into the narrow passageway to Adam’s tiny quarters where he opened the scarred case to pick up his sextant, and in those moments Matthew quickly scanned the charts on the small table nearby. He recognized them as the standard charts, created from the best available drawings of cartographers and mariners on two continents, and from eleven years of hard experience he knew that in some details, the charts were flawed. His eyes narrowed as he saw the great number of notes and the tiny drawings that Adam had carefully made on the thick parchments, correcting them, adding to them, making them complete, correct, his own. For a moment he was seeing his own charts, his own notes, and he felt a shock when he realized that Adam—little Adam—the youngest brother—had become a rare navigator.
Adam turned with his sextant in hand, and Matthew ducked to follow him out into the passage and up the stairway so narrow two men could not pass. They both hunched low to clear the doorframe at the head of the stairs, and soon were out on the deck, wind at their backs, the late afternoon sun on their shoulders, hearing the whisper of the rigging and the canvas overhead, and the creaking of the masts, and the quiet hiss of the ten-foot curl being cut by the bow of the ship. For a moment they stood still, caught up in the sounds, and the feeling of the immensity of the sea, and the power of nature, and the slow rise and fall of the deck beneath their feet, and knew once again the humbling truth of their own smallness. Adam again stood still while he took the position of the sun, and nodded in satisfaction.
From the crow’s nest, eighty feet up the mainmast, came the call, “Weather. Due east,” and wherever men were at their work stations, all heads swiveled to peer. Matthew, Adam, and Sturman slowly walked to the portside railing and studied the horizon, but there was nothing. Faulkner, at the wheel, tipped his head back to call the question upwards, “What do you see?”
The lean, bearded, barefooted seaman overhead cupped both hands about his eyes to limit his vision, and seconds later came his answer.
“Fog. Maybe rain.”
Faulkner responded. “Wind?”
“No sign. Fair seas so far.”
Fifteen minutes passed before those on deck could see the thin gray line rising on the eastern horizon, and two minutes later Sturman and Matthew exchanged glances. Within two hours the Adonis would be locked in fog, and fog hid the sea and all that was in it. Everything upon which seamen depended became changed, nearly useless, at times a deadly threat. Sounds were muffled, queer, distorted. Time became warped, meaningless, incalculable. Lights were but a blur, always closer than they appeared. An infinity of invisible water droplets hung in the air to cling to beards, brows, faces, clothing, and make the deck, the wheel, and the sails slick. The ship became swallowed up in a world where there was no sun or star to guide. Subtle shifts in the currents of the sea, or miscalculations of position or speed, could bring disaster on reefs and rocks.
How thick the fog, and for how long it would hold them, was yet to be seen, but of one thing the entire crew was certain. Not far to the south of them, and then due west, was the entrance to Delaware Bay; Cape May on the New Jersey side, and Cape Henlopen on the Delaware side. Ships entering the Bay divided the twenty-mile distance between the two lighthouses equally, to hold to the safety of the deep-water channel, then corrected course from due west to northwest and held steady for forty-two miles before they corrected again, slightly west, up the ever narrowing Bay past Salem on the starboard side and into the mouth of the Delaware River. From there it was a matter of holding to the center of the river, where deep-water ships could pass, on to Chester, then Philadelphia, both on the port side. Making passage from the Atlantic to Philadelphia on a clear night required seasoned navigators and seamen. Making it in a night shrouded in fog required something more. Some captains of the sea refused to risk such passage in fog, choosing rather to drop anchor and wait for the safety of clear skies. All men on the Adonis went back to their duty stations, peering east through slitted eyes as they worked, making their own calculations as the gray line rose in the blue sky, and rolled on toward them.
The towering fog bank was a quarter-mile to the east and rapidly approaching when Adam took his last shot of the western sun, and immediately went belowdecks to his charts. Ten minutes later he returned to the deck with rolled parchments in his hand and beckoned Sturman and Matthew to the wheel of the ship, where Faulkner stood. He spread the charts before them.
“We are exactly here,” he said, and tapped a place three miles off the New Jersey shore, and twenty-six miles north of the point where the ship was to change course to due west to pass between Cape May and Cape Henlopen to enter Delaware Bay.
He continued. “Right now the tides are beginning to run west, into the Bay. I calculate that if the winds hold and we maintain our present speed running with the tide, we can make a course change to due west at about seven-forty this evening, and pass just about center between the two lighthouses into the Bay.”
He went on, calm, efficient, contained. “Once inside the bay we furl all canvas except the mainmast to reduce speed. We make a course correction about nine o’clock to the northwest. That will take us through the bay to where it narrows to the river. About one o’clock we enter the river.” He was slowly moving his finger on the chart, up the Delaware Bay, as he spoke. “The river will be running against us and slow us a little. Sometime around five o’clock tomorrow morning we should be about here”—he tapped the chart—“here the river makes its bend back to the northeast.” He paused and lifted his finger. “We should pass Chester about ninety minutes later, and be at the Philadelphia docks about eight o’clock tomorrow morning. Sunday. I repeat, this all depends on the winds.”
He turned to Sturman. “Or we can drop anchor and wait for the fog to clear.”
Sturman did not hesitate. “What do you recommend?”
“If we keep men at the bow, both port and starboard, to make depth soundings as we go, and correctly judge the winds and the tide running with us, and the flow of the Delaware against us, we should be able to calculate pretty close where we are. It can be done.”
The crew moved closer on the smooth deck, knowing that the four men who held their lives in their hands were struggling. They turned an ear away from the wind and breathed lightly to listen. Matthew and Faulkner remained silent, eyes on the charts, giving Sturman time to consider all that could go right, and wrong, weigh it, and make the decision that was his and his alone to make. For a time he studied the maps and the notes made by Adam, then turned to stare, first eastward at the incoming fog, then west as though he could see the coast, while thoughts and questions came rushing. Once they cl
eared Cape May, control of the ship would be given to Adam. Young, lacking in experience, did he have the instincts and the gift of dead reckoning that would move the Adonis through the channel into the Bay, then correct course to the north for the forty-two mile run to the mouth of the river, and then the tricky, twisting, turning course upstream? Would he feel shifts in the currents, or changes in the winds, and could he correctly calculate the speed of the tides and the drag of the river current against them in a world blinded by fog? Could the seamen accurately handle the thin lines and the lead balls to make the depth soundings that would keep them in the deep-water channels, away from the reefs and shoals and sandbars and rocks that could ground them or rip open the hull? How long would the fog hold? Hours? Days? Was it worth the risk of a ship and a cargo and a crew to arrive in Philadelphia on schedule?
Sturman took a deep breath and made his decision. “For now, we’ll keep moving. If need arises we’ll stop and drop anchor.”
Adam nodded. “Yes, sir.”
The seamen began to breathe again, and once more turned their heads toward the fog bank, now minutes away and closing. They licked at dry lips and set their jaws and returned to their duties.
Sturman turned to Matthew. “For now, you take the wheel and follow Adam’s orders.”
“Yes, sir.” Faulkner stepped back and Matthew took the wheel, checked the compass heading, and held the ship steady.
Sturman spoke to Faulkner. “We’ll need two experienced men with lines for depth soundings on the bow, port, and starboard. All other hands to duty posts for fog. See to it.”
“Yes, sir.” Faulkner pivoted and gave orders to the waiting crew.
Sturman hesitated for a moment, then turned to Adam. “You be available to the wheel whenever you’re needed. I’ll be at the bow most of the time, and you join me when you can. Understand?”
“Yes, sir.” The murmur of the curl being cut by the bow could tell an experienced ear much about the speed of the ship, and tides, and currents.
