It was December. Though the weather remained surprisingly mild by day, it was seasonably cold by night. Slocum sat there, jaws clenched, and had three more buckets of that icy water flung in his face. He stumbled into the kitchen and bellowed for his wife. A frightened-looking woman in a calico nightgown appeared from a bedroom just off the kitchen. “Get me some dry clothes,” said Slocum, “and make me the strongest goddamn pot of tea you’ve ever made, old woman.”
Jonathan Gifford did not miss the, irony of the great Whig, Colonel Slocum, drinking tea, but now was not the time for sarcasm about minor matters.
“How many men do you think I can raise, Gifford?” said Slocum, changing his clothes right there in the kitchen while his wife stuffed green tea leaves into a large earthenware pot.
“At least a hundred. Maybe two hundred.”
“And then what? We charge the British camp at New Brunswick? Two hundred against five thousand?”
“I think it would be fatal if you tried to operate as a regiment. The Sixteenth Dragoons would hunt you down and carve you up in a day. Better to operate in groups of twenty or thirty with specific assignments. You must put some men on horses and have them patrol the roads so you will know when wagon trains are coming up from Amboy. Station riflemen at likely spots along the Raritan. If they pick off the pilot or the helmsman of a ship, she may run aground and block the channel. Send five or ten men to potshot the sentries at Brunswick and Amboy. It doesn’t matter whether they hit anybody. The point is to keep them excited, wondering if they might be attacked the next day by five hundred or a thousand. You must have a central place to gather, where the men can get some food and drink and fresh orders.”
“Where would that be?”
“The tavern is dead center. If we work out a system - a hut in the woods where they can stack their arms - I think we might be safe enough.”
Mrs. Slocum put a steaming mug of tea in front of her husband. He drank it down in one long swallow.
“All right,” he said, “let’s get to work.”
That was the closest Colonel Slocum ever came to thanking Jonathan Gifford for giving him a plan that was infinitely beyond his own military capacities. Nor did he thank him for volunteering Liberty Tavern as our partisan headquarters. For the first two weeks of December there was, I must admit, little to be thankful about. Captain Gifford’s hopes of turning out a hundred or two hundred men proved much too optimistic. The number was closer to twenty-five and never more than fifty. Colonel Slocum took anyone he could get on any terms. I volunteered on his promise that I could serve secretly. My father had forbidden me to join the militia. Captain Gifford decided I might make a rifleman. He spent a day in the woods teaching me to fire one of those long-barreled monsters from Pennsylvania. He had a half dozen of them in Liberty Tavern’s armory. I turned out to have some talent as a marksman. Don’t ask me why. It has something to do with the mysteries of the nervous system.
In the next few weeks I picked off a half-dozen helmsmen on British sloops coming up and down the Raritan. One ran aground and blocked the channel for two days. It was not the kind of war I had pictured myself fighting in my boyish dreams. It was hard to hate those distant figures on the decks of the ships, hard to believe I had killed or wounded them as they slumped to the deck without a sound. It made a human life seem cheap.
British dispatch riders and officers out for exercise, or on a visit to a young lady with loyalist leanings, frequently heard bullets whistle past their ears. The sentries around Amboy and New Brunswick spent more than one nervous night challenging every breeze that blew a tree branch, after a volley from a half dozen of our boys.
But most people only thought about rescuing themselves from the wreck of the Revolution in that gloomy December of 1776. Pardon seekers continued to stream into Liberty Tavern to stand before Charles Skinner, one hand on the Bible, the other raised high while they swore they had quit the militia and would henceforth remain “in peaceful obedience to His Majesty.” Cornelius Talbot, who had been the closest thing to an independence man that the Talbots produced, took a job as an assistant commissary with the British army. Anthony Skinner and his loyalist militia captured Richard Stockton, one of New Jersey’s signers of the Declaration of Independence, not far from Liberty Tavern. He was hiding on the farm of a local friend. A few weeks later, we heard that Stockton had signed one of Lord Howe’s pardons and issued a statement urging everyone else in New Jersey to do the same thing. When Anthony Skinner mustered his loyalist regiment at Kemble Manor, three hundred men appeared. Skinner told them the war was over, and the time for punishing the “criminals” would soon be at hand.
Early in the fourth week of December, Jonathan Gifford received an invitation from Charles Skinner to join him for “an old-fashioned English Christmas” at Kemble Manor. Kate refused to go. Jonathan Gifford pleaded the extraordinary number of wartime travelers and the not entire untruth that Kate was more or less housebound. Toward the end of the day he rode down to the manor to have a Yuletide drink with his old friend. Captain Gifford found the Squire sitting before the fire in, his library, drunk and alone. My father had also made excuses, and with a burst of independence that surprised me, had forbidden my mother and Sally to go without him. Anthony was celebrating Christmas with British army friends in New Brunswick. Caroline was upstairs in her bedroom. She was so disconsolate about the collapse of the American Cause, Mr. Skinner feared for her health.
“To what a pass these madmen on both sides of the water have brought us, Gifford,” Charles Skinner said.
Jonathan Gifford nodded and sipped a glass of brandy while his friend descanted upon the danger of women becoming involved in politics. Their emotions were too violent, their natures too fragile.
“And Anthony talks about Americans like an Englishman,” Skinner sighed. “I don’t remember hating the Frenchies. They were good fellows, brave enough – ” His big head drooped. “Tis this war - a civil war. The worst kind.”
Jonathan Gifford picked up the brandy decanter and put it on a sideboard. “Lay off this stuff, old friend,” he said.
In the center hall, the moment he closed the library door, a troubled voice called to him. It was Sukey, Caroline Skinner’s maid.
“Captain Gifford, do you have any news?”
Sukey’s black skin gave her small, heart-shaped face a special solemnity. She was a very intelligent young woman. Caroline had taught her to read and write.
“News of what?” he said warily.
“Of General Washington. Mrs. Skinner is so upset. If there was the smallest reason to hope – ”
Involuntarily, Jonathan Gifford looked over his shoulder at the library door. Even a hint of what Brigadier Maxwell had told him about Washington’s plans might reach British ears from this house. But he was surprised by the strength of his sympathy for Caroline Skinner. He would trust her.
“Perhaps if I spoke to her in private - ”
Sukey led him upstairs and asked him to wait in the hall while she vanished into Caroline Skinner’s bedroom. The black girl left the door open a crack and he heard Caroline exclaim, “Oh no, Sukey, no. My hair - my dress - ”
He could not hear Sukey’s reply. But a moment later she was beckoning him into the room. It was a combination bedroom-sit-ting room, furnished in Queen Anne style, the draperies and the curtains around the canopy bed in matching light blue. Caroline Skinner was standing by the window fussing with her hair. “I am ashamed to face you, Captain Gifford,” she said.
She looked ill. Her face had dwindled, giving it a pathetic childlike cast. Even in the gray light of a late winter afternoon, he could see she was deathly pale.
“Mrs. Skinner,” he said, “the Squire told me how troubled you are.”
“I can imagine how he put it.”
“He may not share your political opinions. But he is genuinely concerned for your health.”
She dismissed these words with a despairing wave of her hand. “It is so hard to bear, Captain
Gifford. The thought that Americans will be considered contemptible by all of Europe.”
“I suspect that is something you are hearing from Anthony.”
She nodded. “Perhaps that aggravates my feelings.” She looked at him with eyes that seemed close to tears. “Is there no hope?”
“Of course there’s hope,” he said in a low nervous voice, hoping that Sukey was not listening just outside the door. “Washington is planning an attack in a day or two. All we need is a single victory and the country will take heart again.”
“Did you say - “we,” Captain Gifford? I never heard you use that expression before.” A smile transformed her face. “I like it.”
“I’m glad - but I wish – ”
“What?”
“That you wouldn’t - allow the fortunes of war to invade your mind - your feelings.”
“I can’t help it. I used to think that we could control our feelings. Now I begin to wonder if we are really responsible for them.”
“Up to a point - we’re not, I’m afraid.”
“Yes - up to a point,” she said, a mournful note rising, in her voice.
He touched her hand for the briefest moment. “Goodbye,” he said.
Outside, he found sleet blowing on a northeast wind. He turned his horse’s head homeward, his mind far away along the Delaware with Washington’s men. The river would be choked with ice. It would be difficult to cross. They would move by night. He suddenly wished he was with them, ruined knee and all, a musket on his shoulder. He hated this role he was playing. It made him feel not only dishonest but helpless. He understood (he thought) what Caroline Skinner was feeling - what every woman must feel in war - the helplessness of the spectator, sharpened in her case by feelings that were as passionately hungry for victory as any Son of Liberty in Washington’s ranks. Strange how talking to her ignited similar feelings in him.
What else did she ignite, Captain Gifford? he asked himself wryly. She was so different from Sarah. It was still hard to believe they were sisters. But she was a pretty woman and it had been two years now, two lengthy widower’s years.
The import of what he was thinking, or half-thinking, struck him like a stone flung up by his horse’s hoofs. He almost reined in Narragansett Jack at full trot - which might have been fatal to either him or the animal. It was as if his very muscles and nerves cried out Stop. Charles Skinner was one of his oldest and closest friends.
I begin to wonder if we are really responsible for our feelings. The memory of those words spoken by that soft, sad voice gnawed at his will. But we are responsible for our acts, he told himself, and drove the rest of the way home in gloom as gray and total as the lowering winter sky.
JONATHAN GIFFORD did not sleep very well that Christmas night. He was up at three a.m. prowling his greenhouse. Was it a kind of premonition or simply the instinct of a veteran soldier that made him suspect with something close to certainty that this was the night Washington would attack? It was the time when an overconfident enemy would be most likely to expect a peaceful respite. The weather was foul. The northeast wind continued to drive snow and sleet across the state. He shuddered to think of Kemble exposed to such punishment. Kemble or any other American. The regiments he had seen march past Liberty Tavern during the November retreat were wearing summer clothes.
What fools the Americans were, to think that they could end the war in one or two battles and beat the biggest and best army Great Britain ever sent overseas. But reflection softened his asperity. Almost every war began with expectations of quick triumph on both sides. The Americans were new at the game, new at everything. Think how difficult it was to graft two kinds of roses. The Americans were trying to blend thirteen different species into a single immense flower.
The next day, the twenty-sixth of December, the news began to seep across the icebound, snow-swept state like a soft breeze from never-never land. Hearts, hopes, unfroze, rejected the news as impossible, and leaped like colts in springtime when it was confirmed.
“True, aye, true, so help me God,” said mud-splattered shivering Abel Aikin at the bar of Liberty Tavern. He took a great gulp of Scotchem, holding the steaming mug in both numb hands. Jonathan Gifford seldom served this drink, which consisted of applejack, boiling water, and a hefty dash of ground mustard. He considered it closer to: a medicine than a refreshment. But Abel’s half-frozen state justified the potion. Our mailman had become an army dispatch rider when the post office ceased to function in New Jersey. He shuddered as if he were still out there in the winter wind. “True we took the town of Trenton and twelve hundred of those unconquerable Hessian heroes at eight o’clock yesterday morning. Damn me if it isn’t true. I saw it with my own eyes.”
“By God,” roared someone in the back of the crowd, “let’s go get our guns and shoot up the British at Brunswick. We can’t let Washington do all the work.”
There was a roar of agreement and a surge out the door. All across New jersey, as the news filtered through the countryside, resistance flared. British dragoons carrying mail and messages were shot down on the roads. Anthony Skinner and his friends no longer roamed our neighborhood with such confidence. Shots were fired at the manor house and he stationed a company of his loyal militia on the grounds, at great expense, to guarantee his own safety. There was news of a fierce battle between a militia army and a brigade of British at Springfield and the ambush of a regiment of Germans near that same town, almost directly north of us.
On December 3o came word from New Brunswick that the British were rushing reinforcements across the state. They were determined to smash Washington’s army and revenge their defeat at Trenton. Washington had recrossed the Delaware and announced his intention of doing battle with them for the possession of New Jersey. We huddled over Jonathan Gifford’s army maps in the taproom of Liberty Tavern, wondering what Washington would do - or could do. Reports had ten thousand British troops advancing on him. Unless the Americans fought far better than they had in any previous battle except Trenton, the prospect was extremely alarming.
Late that night Cornelius Talbot arrived with news that dispelled these larger military matters from the minds of Liberty Tavern’s family and friends. You will recall that he had become an assistant, commissary - a buyer of food and firewood - for the British army in New Jersey. He had been captured at Trenton but General Washington had given him a parole of honor on his promise to remain neutral for the rest of the :war.
“I really think,” said the fellow, shivering before the big fireplace in the taproom, “that I got off because he wanted me to deliver this to you, from General Putnam.”
Jonathan Gifford ripped open the dirty envelope and read Israel Putnam’s scrawl.
Olde Frend,
Com atto ounce fore yore lad. He is dedlie sicke but wont quitt tho he cann butt breethe. He is withe the arme.
Putnam
“Where is the army?” Jonathan Gifford said.
“They may be in the Delaware, for all I know,” said Talbot. “I left the morning of the British advance, and a devil of a time I had of it ducking bullets along the way.”
Jonathan thanked the neutralized Mr. Talbot and gave him a pint of brandy to warm him on his way home. He rushed across the snowy lawn to the residence and awoke Kate. He showed her the letter. “Will you come with me?” he asked. “Barney’s out with the militia. Kemble may need a nurse - ”
“When do you want to leave?”
“Now.”
“I’ll be ready in ten minutes.”
“I’ll have the sleigh hitched in the tavern yard.”
Ten minutes later, Kate climbed up beside him on the sleigh. Bertha, Sam’s wife, stood beside it in the snow, declaring she was ready to come too. “I raised that boy from a baby, Captain. If he’s sick he needs a mother and I’m the only one he has now.”
“Someone’s got to run the tavern, Bertha.”
Jonathan Gifford turned to Sam, who was standing on the other side of the sleigh. “You’re in charge
, Sam. Here’s the key to the money chest in my office. Keep a loaded gun handy and don’t let anybody push you around.”
“I’ll do my best, Captain,” said the dark voice.
Jonathan Gifford flicked the reins of the two-horse team and they trotted into the night, their bells jangling. A saw-toothed wind blew out of the north. Captain Gifford wore a bearskin matchcoat but the cold seemed to penetrate it as if it were summer silk. Kate was wearing a fur muff and fur-lined boots and a cloak lined with marten fur. The same thing happened to her.
Within minutes she was in agony. The cold penetrated each lash wound on her back with devilish skill.
By dawn they were on the Princeton road. They had scarcely gone a half mile when they collided with an incredible sight - the entire British army - ten thousand men - slogging toward them through the snow, staggering with weariness. A squadron of the 16th Dragoons was at the head of the column. A young lieutenant dashed forward, saber in hand. “What the devil are you about, man? Talk fast or I’ll hack you in two.”
Jonathan Gifford calmly identified himself and told him where they were going. The Lieutenant looked skeptical. He was about to order them to turn around when his commanding officer, Colonel William Harcourt, rode up. “Gifford,” he said, “what in God’s name are you doing out in this weather?”
Jonathan Gifford explained his mission. Harcourt was immediately sympathetic. “You’ll probably find your boy somewhere about Princeton. There was some nasty fighting there yesterday morning. Washington gave us the slip, got into our rear, and tore three of our best regiments apart. I’m afraid he’s taught us a damned hard lesson.” He sighed. “Not the last lesson I fear we must learn before we quit this detestable war.”
Jonathan Gifford carefully concealed his emotions. “Would the rebel army be at Princeton then?” he asked.
Harcourt shook his head. “Only their sick and wounded and some of ours, poor fellows. It was a damn bloody fight. We lost a half-dozen officers and a good hundred men. Washington moved off for New Brunswick. That’s where we’re heading to protect our stores. We had no alternative but this forced march, which is likely to put half the army in hospital. The countryside is so damn hostile, we were afraid they’d join Washington and storm the place if we didn’t get there first.”
The Heart of Liberty Page 23
