The Heart of Liberty

by Thomas Fleming

  “Yes,” she said.

  “I’m not so sure it’s foolish,” he said somberly. “I think - if I may say so, Mrs. Skinner - that you overestimate enthusiasm for the American Cause. Especially if Congress declares for independence. I suspect a good half of. the people in this neighborhood might be susceptible to an appeal in the King’s name - and to this.”

  He handed the golden guinea back to her. “It looks so Much better than Congress’ paper.”

  With an angry cry, Caroline Skinner flung the guinea into the shadowed grass. “Doesn’t courage enter into your calculations, Captain Gifford? The courage of free men fighting for their natural rights?”

  “I see you have been reading the papers issued by Congress very carefully.”

  “I’ve done better than that. I’ve read John Locke himself.”

  Perhaps by the time this book is read, John Locke’s name will be forgotten and a German or Russian or a Chinese will be considered the fountainhead of political wisdom. For the men and women of 1776, the great Englishman’s reasoning on natural rights was the philosophic foundation of American resistance. But few Americans had read the philosopher himself. His books were as dry and devoid of warmth and imagination as an anatomy lesson.

  “Ideas can give a man the courage to go to war. But they won’t do him much good on a battlefield, if the other side has better guns and better training.”

  “I can see you haven’t made up your mind which side is going to win, Captain Gifford.”

  “I also have some thoughts about the rights and wrongs, Mrs. Skinner,” Jonathan Gifford said. “I’m not a scholar enough to read Locke. But I think Edmund Burke was much to the point when he said last year in Parliament that a great empire and little minds go ill together. Does your husband know where you stand on independence?”

  “No. But he suspects the worst. He caught me reading Cornmon’s Sense two months ago and flung it into the fire. I called for my horse and rode straight to Amboy and bought another copy. Tom Paine is my favorite writer. Did you read the Occasional Letter to the Female Sex that he wrote in the Pennsylvania Magazine last summer?”

  Jonathan Gifford shook his head.

  “He called for equal rights for American women. He said it was ridiculous for a new country to let one half the human race be robbed of their freedom of will by the laws. That’s common sense too, don’t you think, Captain Gifford?”

  “I - I suppose it is,” Jonathan Gifford said.

  A startling thought struck Jonathan Gifford. In spirit if not in law, American women were more inclined toward independence than American men. Like most Europeans, he had been amazed by the freedom Americans south of New England allowed their unmarried daughters. He still found himself instinctively protesting when Kate blithely announced that she was off to spend the night skating or sleighing or dancing with Anthony Skinner or one of her several previous beaux and had no intention of returning until the next day.

  In Sarah, this freedom of spirit had become sheer willfulness, a continuous, finally exhausting explosion of defiance and bad temper. But Caroline Skinner had her independent spirit under severe control. Perhaps that was why Captain Gifford found himself encouraging her.

  “If the King’s ministers met a few more American women,” he said with a smile, “I think they might change their minds about conquering - you with five thousand men.”

  “Why don’t you say ‘us,’ Captain Gifford - conquer us? Don’t you feel that you belong here yet?”

  “I did feel it, Mrs. Skinner, but the terrible thing - that happened.” His voice dwindled to a choked whisper. “You know what I mean - ”

  Now, with even less warning, it was Caroline Skinner’s turn to feel a deep throb of sympathy. She saw the intensity of his suffering. “That was not your fault,” she said. “I know it wasn’t.”

  “How - how do you know?” Jonathan Gifford asked.

  “How?” said Caroline, almost as agitated now as he was. “The way a woman knows - certain things. I also knew my sister, Captain Gifford.”

  Without thought, moved by the deepest feeling, Jonathan Gifford took her hand. “That means more to me than I can ever tell you.”

  For a moment, Caroline Skinner saw herself standing beside the bed on which her husband sprawled drunkenly, his muddy boots smearing the blue damask spread. A violent tremor shook her spirit, redoubling her wish to comfort the man who was holding her hand. “I only wish - I had said it sooner.”

  “I must go,” he said, releasing her hand.

  A chaos churned inside Caroline’s mind. She only heard fragments of what he said to her. “Must think carefully . . . extremely dangerous . . . grateful for her . . . confidence.” If he had held her hand for another fraction of a second, she was certain she would have flung her arms around him, pressed her lips to his sad, solemn mouth. It was incredible. She was so proud of her good sense, her self-control, above everything else in her life, even, she grimly thought, above her own happiness.

  With a gasp of pain, she fled into the trees until she reached the other side of the grove where the brook’s waters glistened in the sunlight. Wasn’t there a philosopher who said that life was constant change? Nothing stood still and no one ever looked into the same stream twice. There was an enormous change heaving in the depths of America, like an immense child struggling out of the womb. Perhaps this great shapeless thing would transform her life. Perhaps it would even give her dry, bitter, barren self the courage to act, to speak words of love from a living heart before she died.

  Why did she dread this possibility? For the same reason that she dreaded the thought of losing her safe, comfortable life as mistress of Kemble Manor? No doubt, no doubt. In calmer moments she could sympathize with her husband’s anguish as the world and men changed into shapes and sounds and sizes he despised. But in another part of her spirit, a voice whispered: Let it come, let it come.

  AT SUPPER THAT night, Jonathan Gifford asked Kate if she had been seeing Anthony Skinner lately. “No,” she said with a pout. “He has become a great man of business. He goes to Amboy for days on end, running goods from the West Indies. He says if things go well, he will be the richest man in New Jersey.”

  “Have you been to Amboy with him?”

  “No. He says it’s dreadfully boring and he’s probably right. But ships are coming in from the islands, sure enough. He brought me a batch of the latest novels the day before yesterday. And a London baby.”

  “A London baby?”

  “Yes. Would you like to see it?”

  In a moment Kate was back with a small doll, perhaps a foot high, dressed in a precisely detailed gown of brocaded silk, covered with tiny ruffles and ruchings and a looped-up kirtle. The powdered hair was twice the height of the little head, with an infinitesimal hat perched on top of the pile. This was the way the latest London fashions were displayed in America in the 1760s and 1770s.

  “She’s hardly wearing any hoop,” Kate said. “I’ve been telling everyone the hoop would be exploded soon and I was right. Now if only stays would go the same way.”

  “The fellow should be arrested,” Kemble said. “Smuggling British fashions into the country. Look at her. She’s seduced already.”

  “Oh, he’s seduced more than me. He’s given a half dozen of these babies to Sally Kemble, the Van Home sisters, and I know not who else. But you have no need to worry, Mr. Lord Protector. Poor old Bridget Terbune, our favorite New York dressmaker, has been driven out of the city by your friends and has settled in Amboy. She will make our dresses for us. We won’t have to import a thing from London but pins.”

  “Where will she get the cloth?”

  “She had the foresight to lay in a great supply.”

  “I bet. The old harpy is probably in league with Skinner.”

  “I rode down to Amboy today,” Jonathan Gifford said, trying to change the subject. “Great excitement. General Washington is expected tomorrow.”

  “So I’ve heard,” Kemble said. “On his w
ay to Philadelphia to confer with Congress. I suppose he plans to inspect Amboy’s defenses.”

  “Such as they are,” Jonathan Gifford said.

  Kemble nodded glumly. “They should have left at least one New Jersey regiment in the colony. I’ve heard a lot of people saying that Congress has taken advantage of us. Sending twelve hundred of our best men to Canada.”

  “You should be able to muster ten times that number,” Jonathan Gifford said.

  “If every man would come out,” Kemble said. “But we’re lucky to get a third, most of the time. In some districts it’s much worse.”

  “The colonel of the Shrewsbury regiment resigned, I hear. He couldn’t turn out a half company.”

  “We’ll have to march in and disarm that place. They’re: worse than the Tories in Queens County.”

  Earlier in the year, militia from New Jersey had been hurried to New York to crush loyalist opposition on Ling Island. They had confiscated over seven hundred muskets and arrested a dozen or so leading citizens. Kemble had begged his father to let him go as a volunteer. The general in command, Nathaniel Heard of Woodbridge, was an old family friend and more than willing to have Kemble as his aide. When Jonathan Gifford had said no, a nasty argument had erupted.

  Now Kemble revived the argument, insisting that patriotic Americans had a duty to disarm and harass internal enemies. Jonathan Gifford once more told him bluntly that it offended his idea of English liberty, “if you’ll excuse the expression,” he added with a taut smile.

  “But we’re fighting a war, Father. We can’t let internal enemies destroy us.”

  “No one’s declared war yet. The King is sending a peace commissioner.”

  “That’s all a game - to divide us,” Kemble said.

  “I can’t believe anyone named Howe would play such a game.”

  Jonathan Gifford was swept back eighteen years in time. He wore a buckskin hunting shirt and leather leggings. Deep in the forests of northern New York, he warmed his hands before a fire. Beside him sat a young man who personified everything that noble blood was supposed to bestow. Lord George Augustus Howe had thrown aside his stiff regimental uniform and asked the Americans to teach him how to fight in the woods. He had invited a half-dozen spirited young officers to join him. A kind of desperation gripped Jonathan Gifford as he remembered his last attempt to explain to Kemble what he felt about Lord George Howe. I was perfectly at ease with him. Never once did he make me feel inferior. Yet he was the leader. Always, without question, the leader. His courage was unbelievable. We would take cover behind trees. He would stand in the open, directing our fire. I was only a few feet away from him when he was hit. He fell without a sound. 1 couldn’t believe it. None of us could believe it.

  His voice had choked with tears. Incredible, after eighteen years, he still wept for this man. Now his brother, Lord Richard Howe, was coming to America as a peace commissioner - and also as commander of the British fleet. Another brother, William Howe, was in command of the British army. Kemble - and other pro-independence Americans - were quick to point out the contradictory nature of the Howes’ assignments. But Jonathan Gifford could not stop hoping that this second Lord Howe, younger brother of the dead George Augustus, would somehow re-create faith in England’s integrity.

  Kate touched his arm to interrupt his reverie. “I remember the poem Kemble used to recite. The ode about Lord Howe’s death,” Kate said. “The Unfortunate Hero. Give us a rendition now, Kemble.”

  “I’ve forgotten it,” Kemble said.

  “Father used to give you a shilling every time. I can still see you, taking a deep breath to finish the last stanza - “

  Softly, Kemble began to recite:

  “But thee, dear Youth, long shall thy Country mourn

  With grateful tears bedew thy dust And future ages to thy mem’ry just

  Shall dress with Glory thy distinguish’d urn. Long as these regions know th’. insulting Gaul,

  America shall deplore thy Fall.”

  “Oh, Father,” Kate said. “That’s worth a guinea at least, now.”

  “At least,” Jonathan Gifford said, forcing a smile that Kemble did not return. Were they both thinking the swine thing - the distance, the harsh cold distance that had opened between them in the last two years?

  “I can’t understand why you are still sentimental about that man, Father,” Kemble said. “Didn’t you fell me once that you quit the army because a soldier who wasn’t an aristocrat had no hope for promotion?”

  “I freely admit I’m no admirer of aristocracy as a system,” Jonathan Gifford said testily, “but I am not so closed-minded as to despise all aristocrats.”

  “But you allow one of them to sentimentalize you into neutrality.”

  Jonathan Gifford could not decide which irritated him most, Kemble’s impudent tone or the fact that his son was largely correct. Hearing again the exaggerated language of the old poem, Captain Gifford realized he was not mourning Lord George Howe nearly as much as he was mourning his own youth, his pride in his prowess with pistol, musket, and bayonet in a body that could match an Indian’s endurance, in the sense of importance, even arrogance, that came from belonging to one of the best regiments in the best army in the world. The word “independence” separated him from that past, separated him from memories, history that had continued to give him importance and pride, Yes, he had complacently enjoyed the worship on Kemble’s small face when he recited The Unfortunate Hero. Now that it was gone, gone with the reason for it, he was forced to ask himself why Kemble or anyone else should admire much less love Jonathan Gifford, ex-captain of the King’s Own.

  “Do you think General Washington may stop here on the way to Philadelphia, Father?” Kate asked.

  “I doubt it.”

  “You met him once, didn’t you?”

  “No, but we share a friend, Captain Mackenzie of my old Fourth Regiment. He served with Washington in Virginia during the last war. Remember in September he sent me a letter that Washington had written to him?”

  “Oh yes,” Kate said, “in which he solemnly vowed that there wasn’t a man in America who wanted independence. I could have introduced him to a half dozen, including the one on your right.”

  “I was not for independence a year and a half ago when Washington wrote that letter,” Kemble said sententiously. “The English have forced independence on us - “

  “Oh, God, not another political lecture,” Kate said and retreated to her room.

  “Is she going to marry Anthony Skinner?” Kemble asked. “I hope not,” Jonathan Gifford said.

  “Why don’t you forbid it?”

  “What good would that do?”

  “She would obey you. I know she would.”

  “And on her twenty-first birthday she would marry him, no matter what happened.”

  Kemble nodded ruefully. “You’re probably right,” he said. “When can I join the army, Father?”

  “When you’re twenty-one, or a college graduate - whichever conies first.”

  This last exchange may sound odd to modern readers. Napoleon has taught our era to muster whole populations for war. But in 1776, war was considered the, profession or inclination of the martial few. There was no universal compulsion to become part of the national army. Only when a man’s immediate neighborhood was invaded was there any expectation of his services. But patriotism was assumed to be sufficiently widespread to provide the country with enough soldiers to maintain the army.

  “What will you do if Congress declares independence, Father?” “I honestly don’t know, Kemble.”

  Jonathan Gifford watched Kemble’s hands fingering his coffee cup. He was obviously about to say something that had been churning inside him for a long time. “I think you should know, Father - that if you don’t join my country’s side, I would consider myself free of all obligation - to obey you in any way.”

  Jonathan Gifford nodded wearily. For a moment he was overwhelmed with self-pity. Why couldn’t Kemble see that al
l he wanted was peace? Why was he insisting that love and loyalty were indivisible? It was unfair to demand both from a divided man with a withered heart.

  That night, Jonathan Gifford slept poorly. He arose with the first light and retreated to his greenhouse to work with his roses. He was in the middle of transplanting five or six fragile plants from the propagation box to individual pots when the door burst open, Kemble stood there, enormously excited.

  “Father,” he said, “General Washington is outside. He wants to speak to you.”

  Jonathan Gifford looked with dismay at his dirt-smeared apron and grimy hands. “It can’t be more than six o’clock,” he muttered. “Does he want breakfast?”

  “No. He’s waiting in the road.”

  Outside Strangers’ Resort, Barney McGovern and his wife, Black Sam and his wife, Kate and a number of other people were standing at a respectful distance. Washington sat easily on the back of a big bay stallion. The horse was scuffling and skittering impatiently. Washington stilled him with a swift sure motion of the reins. The men around him were all young - in their twenties.

  “Are you Mr. Gifford?” Washington asked. “Formerly captain in the King’s Own Regiment?”

  “I am, sir.”

  “I was told if I passed this way not to fail to give you the compliments and best wishes of your friend, General Putnam.”

  This was said with a smile, in a soft, surprisingly light voice for such a big man.

  “Thank you, General,” Jonathan Gifford said. “I trust General Putnam is his old hearty self.”

  “Indestructible,” Washington said with a slightly broader smile in which several of his aides joined. “He tells me that you were at the Monongahela.”

  Jonathan Gifford nodded. “I was a mere ensign in those days. I remember you well, though we never had the pleasure of meeting.”