by Ron Carter
The coach stopped momentarily at Fifth Street, then continued west on Market, to stop at the greatest and grandest mansion in Philadelphia. Brick, three stories, many windows, large, exquisitely furnished rooms, stables for twelve horses, and vacant lots on both sides filled with sculpted flower beds and decorative trees and fruit trees and a great garden filled with growing vegetables, the entire estate enclosed in a high, white picket fence. The name Robert Morris was beautifully scrolled in black cursive on a small sign beside the high white gate. Matthew watched four cavalrymen dismount and loosen the straps on the baggage rack at the rear of the coach, then carry the trunks and bags of Washington through the high gate, up the broad brick walk, and through the great, polished double doors into the house. They returned to remain standing, holding the bridles of their horses. The throng of people stepped back respectfully to allow Washington to step down from the coach, followed by Robert Morris, and the four dismounted cavalrymen escorted them to the front door. Washington turned, waved once more, bowed slightly, and stepped into the cavernous entryway of the Morris mansion while Robert Morris closed the doors. The coach rolled on with the cavalry escort, and the milling crowd began to drift away, pausing to look back, then moving on, talking loudly among themselves, pointing, gesturing. Matthew waited for a time before he continued west on Market Street into the golden glow of a sun half set, exulting in the growing realization of the pivotal meaning of what he had witnessed.
Washington is here and he’s staying at the Robert Morris mansion! He came. He came. He came—he will be a Virginia delegate at the Grand Convention—not at the gathering of the Society of the Cincinnati. With him at the convention, we have a chance. Maybe. Maybe.
He turned onto Thirteenth Street and returned to the boardinghouse. Mother Asher and the guests were out in the yard talking loudly, and they came to meet him as he opened the gate and came up the walk. Mother Asher exclaimed, “People said all the noise was about George Washington. He came for the Grand Convention. Did you see him?”
“I did.”
Instantly they all gathered around, silent, waiting, alive with anticipation.
“He came in a carriage. A large, polished carriage. Four matched gray horses. A troop of mounted cavalry escorted him. Robert Morris was beside him, and they went to the Morris mansion on Sixth Street. They took all the baggage inside. I believe that’s where Washington will be staying during the Convention.”
“Were there people? A lot of people?”
“The streets were filled.”
“Cannon?” Mother Asher exclaimed. “Was it cannon we heard?”
“Twenty-four of them. Twelve on each side of the street.”
She clasped her hands. “Oh, I wish I could have seen it. Do you know Washington? Did he see you?”
“About eleven years ago I met him. During the war. We talked. I was a navigator for the Continental Navy. He didn’t see me today—too many people. I doubt he’d remember.”
The dour, long-faced guest with the crippled leg asked, “You talked with Washington eleven years ago? Face-to-face?”
“Yes.”
“You were an officer in the navy?”
“I was. Six years.”
“That where you got that scar?” He gestured toward Matthew’s cheek.
“Yes. At the battle of Lake Champlain.”
The old man straightened. “October of ’76? You were with Arnold?”
“Yes. On his boat. The Congress.”
A look of recognition crossed the aged man’s face, and for the first time a light came into his eyes. “I was there—helped build those boats that summer. Got this crippled leg when we was sunk in the fight. Nearly lost it when we had to walk out. More’n a hundred miles. They wanted to take it off, but I wouldn’t let ’em.” A wry, crooked smile came as he continued. “Said I’d die if they didn’t take it off, but I wouldn’t let ’em, and I didn’t die.” He stopped, and his face settled, and the light faded from his eyes.
For a moment the ten people around him stared in silence, and then Mother Asher put her hand to her mouth and uttered a quiet “Ohhhh.”
Matthew asked, “Which boat were you on?”
“Washington.”
For a few seconds Matthew stared at the ground, reaching back in his memory before he spoke, loudly enough for all of them to hear. “The Washington survived the first day. When fog settled that night and the hole opened in the British fleet, it was the Washington and the Congress that covered the escape of the other boats that were still afloat.”
The gray head nodded, and Matthew went on. “We were seventeen small boats, and the British were twenty-eight, some of them three-decked battleships. We lost the battle, but we damaged the British so badly they had to return to their ports in the north. They were unable to come on down the Hudson to cut the United States in two as they had planned.” He faced the old man directly. “You helped save the revolution in that fight. I am honored to know you, Mr. Bouchard.”
Matthew stepped forward and thrust out his hand. For a moment the old eyes opened wide in surprise, and then the man extended his bony hand with the too-large knuckles, and looked up into Matthew’s eyes. He attempted to speak, and could not, and he swallowed and nodded. For a moment all eyes looked elsewhere, then back to Ira Bouchard. Mother Asher broke the awkward silence.
“Come on back into the dining room. We still have two mince pies that need attention. Come on.”
Dusk fell as they sat at the table savoring the sweet, spicy pies while Mother Asher scurried about, lighting the lamps. It was dark before the married couples and the three men seated opposite them placed their forks on their plates, exclaimed about the pie, and made their way to their separate rooms. Bouchard grasped his cane and started to rise to leave when Matthew spoke to him quietly.
“Sir, Mother Asher mentioned you are a widower?”
Bouchard settled back into his chair and the craggy old face turned, surprised. “Yes.”
“How long?”
“Agnes—my wife—passed on twenty-four years ago. August of 1763. Died giving birth to our daughter, Caroline.”
Matthew saw the pain. “Your only child?”
Bouchard shook his head. “No, we had a son in 1760. Chad. Chad Bouchard. I lost him in 1781. October. He was at Yorktown. He was twenty-one—seventeen when he joined and fought Burgoyne at Saratoga. Fought most battles after that, on through to Yorktown. Died when we stormed Redoubt Number Ten, there on the river.”
There was a silence as the old man worked his jaw, and swallowed hard. Matthew spoke quietly. “I was there. At Yorktown. I had a brother there, too, and a friend.” Matthew could think of nothing more to say, and quiet held for a moment.
Then the old man drew and released a great breath, and asked, “Did they live?”
“Yes. Both. I lost my father at Concord in ’75.”
Bouchard nodded his head gently, but said nothing, and Matthew asked, “Your daughter—is she living?”
“Yes. Married a minister from South Carolina. They’re fine.”
“You hear from her?”
He shook his head. “Not often. She writes sometimes. Someday I’m going down to visit her. Four grandchildren. I’ve got to see my grandchildren. When I get enough money.”
“You live here? In this boardinghouse?”
He shook his head. “In Reading. I’m a cobbler—make shoes. Owned a farm before I got hurt, but I couldn’t keep it after. Saved my money for more’n a year to come here to see the start of the convention. I want to see the men when they get here tomorrow. Got to find out if they can fix the country. Need to know if this leg and my only son was worth it.”
“That’s why I’m here, too, sir. To find out.”
The old man struggled to his feet. He paused for a moment, and it was plain he wanted to say something but could not find the words. He turned, and Matthew watched him put most of his weight on the cane as he hobbled down the hall to his room. Matthew rose and was pushing his
chair in when Mother Asher walked through the archway from the kitchen.
“Matthew—may I call you Matthew? I heard part of it. About Mr. Bouchard. That dear, dear man! That leg, his son, a daughter with four grandchildren he’s never seen—and him coming here to see if it was all worth it.”
Matthew stared at the tabletop for a moment before he answered. “I wonder how many more there are like him. The ones who faced the British when there was little hope. If it was all for nothing. . . .”
Mother Asher was firm. “No, sir, the Almighty isn’t going to let that happen. You hear? It’s going to be all right!”
Matthew looked into the determined blue eyes, and said, “I hope you’re right, Mother.”
He climbed the stairs, lighted the lamp on his desk, and once more checked his papers to be certain they were in order. He unbuckled his shoes and dropped them beside the bed, worked his toes against the carpet, then went back to his desk to sit down in the steady yellow light of the lamp. With quill in hand, he set a clean sheet of paper on the desk, dipped the feather in the inkwell, and thoughtfully wrote.
May 13, 1783. Phila. Penn.
My Dearest Kathleen,
I must first say that you have scarce been out of my mind since I left Boston. I am not complete without you. My greatest concern is that you are well and happy. You, and John.
There are many things you will want to hear. First, we made a safe passage, although the last night was a challenge. We crossed Delaware Bay and made our way up the river to Philadelphia in heavy fog. Adam did a master’s job navigating. I did nothing to help him.
I am staying with a Mrs. Asher at her boardinghouse. You can write me here, at Market Street and Thirteenth Street, Phila. Penn. I must smile as I tell you, I now have a new mother. Mrs. Asher insists on being called Mother Asher and has ordered me to call her Mother, while she calls me Matthew. She is an excellent cook and most gracious hostess. She is a widow. The other guests staying here—there are ten of us—are all good people and we get along well.
Today, Sunday, George Washington arrived in a grand coach, escorted by a company of light cavalry. He was greeted by a cannonade and people crowding the streets, cheering him on. He will be staying at the home of Robert Morris, the financier of whom I have often spoken, who resides in the finest estate in Philadelphia. It is late, and I am going to bed soon. I will add to this letter tomorrow after I have attended the opening of the Grand Convention.
I worry about you. If need arises, see Billy for money, or Caleb for help at the house. If John obeys, let him sit at my place at the table. I miss you all.
Your loving and obd’t husband,
Matthew Dunson.
He read the letter slowly, laid the quill down, knelt beside his bed, and with bowed head and hands clasped before him, finished his day.
Notes
Market Street was a great thoroughfare dividing Philadelphia from east to west, from the Delaware River on the east, past the Schuylkill river on the west. See maps appearing in F. E. Compton Company Division of Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., Compton’s Encyclopedia and Fact-Index, volume 19, pp. 251a, 251b.
Robert Morris, the richest man in America in May of 1787, owned and lived in the greatest mansion in Philadelphia, on Market Street, just west of Fifth Street. Morris insisted Washington stay with him in his mansion during the convention, and Washington did so. Washington arrived in Philadelphia on Sunday early evening, May 13, 1787, having traveled the short distance from the small town of Chester, just southwest of Philadelphia. He was greeted by a cannon salute and a company of Philadelphia City Light Dragoon cavalry commanded by Colonel Miles, which escorted him into the city amid ringing church bells and cheering crowds that filled the streets. He was to have stayed at the boarding residence of Mrs. House on Fifth Street, at Market. However, as above indicated, he excused himself to Mrs. House and stayed at the residence of Robert Morris, who had invited him to do so as early as April 23, and constantly thereafter. The Morris estate was the greatest estate in Philadelphia, which is accurately described herein. Rossiter, 1787: The Grand Convention, p. 159; Warren, The Making of the Constitution, pp. 99–101, and see especially the footnote on page 100, describing the Morris estate.
The background of the delegates who participated in the convention of May, 1787, as recited by Matthew Dunson, i.e., thirty-nine had served in Congress, eight had signed the Declaration of Independence, eight had helped form their state constitutions, etc., is accurate. Warren, The Making of the Constitution, p. 55.
The battle between 17 small, hastily built, flat-bottomed boats and 28 British warships on Lake Champlain, as recounted in this chapter between Matthew Dunson and the fictional Ira Bouchard is accurate. The British ordered their ships down Lake Champlain to carry enough infantry to continue down the Hudson past Albany, to New York, to cut the American states in two, and thus divided, conquer them. Benedict Arnold was ordered to do what he could to stop them long enough to let the oncoming winter force them back north into Canada. The lopsided battle took place October 11 and 12, 1776, with the result that the Americans lost every boat, and the survivors of the crews had to walk home. However, they damaged the British fleet severely enough that they were forced back to Canada for repairs, essentially saving the Revolution. The night of October 11, following the battle of the first day, a fog set in, and the Americans were able to find a hole sufficient for their remaining boats to slip through, with the American boats Congress and Washington, covering their maneuvers. Leckie, George Washington’s War, pp. 297–306.
Hot chocolate was a drink commonly used in America at the times in question. Earle, Home Life in Colonial Days, p. 165.
In 1785, Rufus King and Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts both made public statements opposing the Grand Convention, and the quotation herein set forth is taken verbatim from a letter written by them in 1785, and published in many newspapers, in which they were highly critical of the proposal for the Convention, insisting it would lead to a “baleful aristocracy.” Rossiter, 1787: The Grand Convention, p. 87; Warren, The Making of the Constitution, p. 88.
Philadelphia
May 14, 1787
Chapter IV
* * *
In the night, a strange, uneasy mix of excitement and anxiety had settled over the city. This was the day that seventy-four duly commissioned men were to convene in the Pennsylvania Statehouse to make a nation from thirteen independent, infant states. They were to make a nation, or admit they could not, then stand helplessly by while they and a waiting world watched one hundred sixty-seven years of blood and sweat and tears, wins and losses, joys and sorrows, and priceless inner awakenings of thoughts and concepts, dwindle and fade and die. From the day in 1620 when the tiny Mayflower dropped her anchor off the Massachusetts coast, until 1787—all for nothing? Today would be the day.
In the gray before dawn, Matthew swung his legs from beneath the thick goosedown quilt in his boardingroom and sat hunched forward, staring at the dim blur of his bare feet on the braided oval rug, arms down stiff on either side, palms flat on the bed, head bowed in the deep darkness of his room. In less than four hours he would be among the men into whose hands nature and history had delivered the awful burden of a land and a people and a principle, which if they could be melded, could change the history of the world forever. It had all come down to here, and now, or lose it forever. Thoughts came in the dead silence, and Matthew carefully defined them, weighed them, put them in order.
The land? In the treaty that formally ended the war between America and the British, signed in Paris in 1783, England had grudgingly conceded to the United States all claims westward past the Appalachian Mountains, on beyond the reaches of the pristine Ohio Valley, to the Mississippi River! Overnight, the size of the United States had more than doubled; sprawling from the Atlantic to the Mississippi, and from the Great Lakes to the West Indies. A land mass large enough to swallow up France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Britain, and Ireland, with ground to spare. Endless for
ests, so thick with timber of every description, that one standing on the forest floor could not see the blue sky overhead. Beneath the green canopy was an abundance of animals and creatures of every shape, there for the taking for furs and food. In and above the canopy were birds and waterfowl of every size and hue, flocks at times so dense they darkened the noonday sun in their flight. Coal, iron, copper, and silver lay buried in the mountains and valleys, waiting for those with the nerve and sinew to come digging. Soil that had lain fallow for millennia, made rich and fertile by the cycle of nature that dropped leaves and ancient forest giants to Mother Earth, there to molder and return tenfold the strength they had received.
Great rivers abundant with fish flowed from west to east, and from north to south—the Potomac, Delaware, Hudson, Connecticut, Santee, PeeDee, Broad, Yadkin, Schuylkill, Raritan, Richlieu, Savannah, Mississippi, York, James, and more—giant water highways to carry the freight and the people of a nation. The rivers gathered sweet water from ten thousand creeks and streams that networked the unending forests, which would sustain those with the heart and the will to carve out farms and homesteads. And in the negotiations preceding the treaty with England, the stubborn, recalcitrant John Adams had bullied the British until they granted New England fisherman the immeasurable gift of rights to fish the rich waters of the Grand Banks, off the coast of Nova Scotia.
Matthew shifted his weight and for a few moments listened to the stirrings in the kitchen on the first floor below. A faint smile passed as he thought of plump Mother Asher in her apron and kerchief, humming a spontaneous bit of something known only to her, bustling about in the kitchen, preparing breakfast for her ten boarding guests. He sobered at the thought—ten ordinary Americans, representatives of the nearly four million other Americans living in the cities and towns and hamlets and on the homesteads in the forests. These were the people who bore the nation on their bowed shoulders as they silently accepted the relentless grind of eking out daily existence in a world where but three things were certain: they would work for what they wore on their backs and the shelter over their heads and their daily food; they would live their entire lives in the constant, bewildering uncertainty of life that is the common denominator of all humanity; and no matter what they did, or how they believed, sooner or later they would die. Matthew slowly shook his head in reverent awe at the terrible faith and courage and endurance of the faceless, nameless masses that bear the burden while they build nations, neither asking nor expecting much beyond their daily bread. For a time he pondered and then his thoughts deepened.
