The Heart of Liberty

by Thomas Fleming

  Slocum had received a message from Kemble urging him to call out every available militiaman. “We must give them the farewell they deserve,” Slocum roared exultantly.

  “Why not let them go in peace?” Jonathan Gifford said. “If they are going.”

  “I saw it with my own eyes. They’re retreating.”

  “Hoping Washington will follow them, so they can turn and demolish him. Slocum, you’re asking your men to attack an army that’s spoiling for a fight.”

  “Damn you, Gifford. I am the Colonel of the militia in this district. If I say turn out, I don’t want you arguing with me. If I find out you’ve told one militiaman not to turn out, I’ll hang you for treason. And that includes him,” Slocum said, pointing to Barney McGovern.

  “The Captain has never said a word to me about turning out of not turning out,” Barney said. “He lets me make up my own mind. If you’re askin’ me if I’ll come now, the answer is yes. You’re the commander of the regiment and you’re calling us out.”

  “We’ll meet at my farm at ten o’clock.”

  Slocum sent his sons, his nephews, his brother, and his cousins racing through the district. In spite of a steady drizzle some two hundred men turned out under the impression that the British had been muted and were fleeing down the Amboy road in a panicky mob, hotly pursued by victorious American regulars.

  About two o’clock, Samson Tucker appeared at the back door of Liberty Tavern, his face streaked with black powder and caked with mud, his eyes bulging with fright and anger. “Where’s Dr. Davie?” he said. “We’ve got poor Tharp over there in the woods with a bullet in his head.”

  Dr. Davie hustled across the brook. Jonathan Gifford asked Samson what was happening. He had heard very little firing so far.

  “You’ll hear even less,” said Samson. “I don’t know who said them lobsters were beaten. “Whoever it was forgot to tell them. They saw us and chased us a good two mile. We lost a half dozen of our boys. There’s fifty men over there in them woods. All they want to do is get home as fast as possible.”

  Rain continued to drip from the lowering leaden sky. Dr. Davie came back, shaking his head. There was no hope for John Tharp. Samson Tucker began to cry. The young ex-Quaker was one of the favorite soldiers in the regiment. “Damn it, Captain, it don’t make sense,” he said, “sending us to attack a whole army on the march. Is General Washington crazy?”

  “General Washington didn’t give you that order.”

  “Then who did?”

  “I don’t know,” Jonathan Gifford said. It would have been easy to blame Slocum. But Kemble was equally responsible for this madness.

  “What did the army do, besides chase you two miles?” “I didn’t stop to find out,” said Samson.

  “Some of the men there in the woods say they’re burning every house on the road,” Dr. Davie said.

  At first Jonathan Gifford could not believe it. It was one thing for a single regiment on a foraging expedition to burn barns and loot. But for a British army under a general’s immediate command - especially a general named Howe - to do such a thing was unthinkable. Dr. Davie or the man who told him the story must be exaggerating.

  Barney McGovern, equally sodden with mud and streaked with powder, came puffing around the barn to change Captain Gifford’s mind. “I’ve never seen troops in a worse mood, Captain. They’re burning and looting everything from churches to outhouses. If I were you, I’d put up the old sign and the old King’s face over the bar. If you don’t they’ll torch us sure as rain is wet.”

  Jonathan Gifford stood in the center of the empty taproom pondering that sincerely meant advice. Into the silent room filtered the distant sound of drums and fifes. The British were less than a half mile away.

  “I’ve got a better idea - I hope,” Jonathan Gifford said. “Help me get three barrels of rum out of the cellar.”

  In ten minutes of hard work they had the barrels upright in front of the tavern. Jonathan Gifford stove them open and hung a half-dozen dippers from each of them.

  “Do you still have your regimentals?” Jonathan Giffotd asked Barney.

  “Sure I do,” said Barney. “There’s a few moth holes in them and I doubt if they fit over this belly of mine.”

  “Get them. And get mine from the closet in my bedroom.”

  Within two minutes Barney was back wearing a faded red coat with the blue facings and lapels of the King’s Own Regiment. There were even remnants of the traditional blue zigzag lace on his sleeves. Jonathan Gifford shrugged into his equally faded red officer’s coat. The silver lace on his sleeves was relatively intact. Both coats were ridiculously old-fashioned, with long drooping tails. In 1767, the British army had redesigned its uniforms to achieve a snugger, more modern style.

  As the head of the British column appeared on the road, Kate joined them at the post of danger beside the rum. “They won’t make Thomas - I mean Lieutenant Rawdon - go with them, will they? It would kill him, I’m sure of it.”

  “Tell him to stay in bed and look as sick as possible.”

  A moment later they were surrounded by some two dozen men from the regiment at the head of the British column, all eager for a quick gulp of rum. As Jonathan Gifford had foreseen, the sergeants, lieutenants, and captains made no protest. In fact several of them partook of the impromptu hospitality. While they drank, Jonathan Gifford casually questioned them.

  “What’s in the wind, lads, are you retreating to New York?”

  “Damned if I know and damned if I care if it was all the way to England,” said a grizzled old sergeant, helping himself to an extra clipper of rum. “We’ve marched our shoes off without firing a shot at Washington and his boys.”

  A major came riding up roaring curses and drove everyone back into the line of march. Jonathan Gifford did not know him. He had the curt manner of those trained in the German school of the British officer corps.

  “What the devil are you doing, man?” he bawled.

  “I saw no harm in giving the men a little refreshment,” Jonathan Gifford said. “From what I hear they’ve been marching and countermarching until their tongues are as long as their gaiters.”

  “If you were ever an officer as that coat you’re wearing suggests, I would think you’d know better than, to disrupt the discipline of a march,” the Major said.

  “I would think if you took this coat seriously you would hesitate to talk to me in that tone of voice,” Jonathan Gifford said.

  “In England we don’t consider tavern keepers gentlemen,” snarled the Major. “Get these barrels back in your cellar or I’ll dump them out myself.”

  “My name is Gifford,” Jonathan Gifford said. “Does that mean anything to you, Major?”

  “Gifford of the Fourth?” The Major’s manner changed remarkably. “Well, I suppose if you want to give away your damn rum it’s your own business,”

  “Who is Gifford of the Fourth?” Kate asked as another party of redcoats swirled around the rum barrel.

  “Only the deadest-eyed, quickest man with a dueling pistol that the British army’s ever seen,” said Barney McGovern.

  Jonathan Gifford whirled on Barney. “Didn’t I tell you to forget all that ten years ago?”

  “True enough, Captain, but you just - ”

  “Well, forget it again.”

  For the next three hours Jonathan Gifford and Kate and Barney stood by the side of the road handing out dippers of rum to thirsty soldiers. The men were grateful. They flung hurried thanks and blessings on them. But the liquor did nothing to change their attitude toward the houses along the road to Amboy. Columns of smoke soon rose from that direction as well. The reason was visible with almost every passing regiment. Two or three wounded men were being half-carried, half-walked along the road.

  But these casualties did not justify such savage vengeance on defenseless civilians. As smoke and flame billowed from his neighbors houses, Jonathan. Gifford grew more and more angry. Toward the rear of the royal army he saw General H
owe and his staff officers. There seemed to be even more of them this time, almost enough to make a cavalry troop. They all wore glum faces. The General himself seemed to be staring fixedly at the back of his horse’s head without the slightest interest in the burning houses on both sides of the road.

  Jonathan Gifford limped into the road, dodged past the horses of the outer ring of aides, and reached Howe’s stirrup. “General,” he said, trotting beside him, “I can’t believe British troops are doing this to peaceful subjects. I had the honor to serve with your brother, Lord George Augustus - ”

  “These are not peaceful subjects, Captain,” Howe said in a thick, dull voice. “They are getting exactly what they deserve.”

  Behind him, Jonathan Gifford heard one of the aides indignantly asking, “Who is that cheeky fellow?”

  “Gifford. A tavern keeper,” another aide replied.

  Dust from the hoofs of General Howe’s horse and the horses of his aides swirled in Jonathan Gifford’s throat. He trudged back to his rum barrels, coughing, his face saturnine. A roar of laughter reached him from the road. Major Moncrieff and the King’s Own Regiment were arriving, part of the rear guard. Moncrieff was vastly amused by the sight of Captain Gifford in his old red coat. He let the regiment consume Liberty Tavern’s rum while he himself went into the taproom for some vintage port.

  Moncrieff interspersed his drink with denunciations of General Howe. He swore Howe had lost his nerve at Bunker Hill. “He said as much to me in the boat going back to Boston that day. There was a moment up there I never felt before. That’s what he said. He spent last year trying to caress Washington into surrender. Now he doesn’t know how to fight him. We should have gone up those mountains after him, let it cost us five thousand men.”

  “Instead you burn houses.”

  Moncrieff nodded glumly. “It’s not like the last war. That was a good war.”

  “What are you going to do now?”

  “It’s common knowledge. We’re giving up the colony. The ships are waiting for us at Amboy. We’re sailing to Philadelphia.”

  Jonathan Gifford at first found it hard to believe. “You’re really leaving New Jersey?”

  “Absolutely. We’re under orders to advise all loyal subjects to head for Perth Amboy without delay. You’ve got one of our lieutenants here. What’s his name, Rawdon? Damn fool that got himself shot coming down here to see your daughter. Ignored the General’s explicit orders against riding out alone.”

  “I’m afraid he’s still: flat on his back. Dr. Davie. says it could be fatal to move him.”

  Moncrieff shook his head. “The noodle’s no loss to the regiment anyway. Are you coming with us, Gifford?”

  “I think I’ll be all right here.”

  Moncrieff gave his old friend a rueful smile. “I wouldn’t walk out on this place either. I might even feel the same way about this damned war if I was in your shoes.” He finished his port. “Not bad,” he said. “What year is it?”

  “Seventeen sixty-five.”

  “I must remember that.”

  He shook hands. “I hope it never gets to sighting each other down a gun barrel.”

  Jonathan Gifford picked up the money for the port and slipped it into Moncrieff’s waistcoat pocket. “Good luck,” he said.

  Outside, a weary Kate and Barney McGovern were still ladling out rum to the British rear guard. Jonathan Gifford joined them for another ten minutes. He stood there, too tired to do anything else, watching the last ranks vanish around the curve in the road a half mile below Liberty Tavern. All around him the air was acrid with smoke from burning shops and houses. Only Parmenas Corson’s smithy and Ruben Husted’s cooperage were unscathed - a tribute to their proximity to Liberty Tavern’s rum barrels.

  “Let’s get rid of these barrels and see what we can do to help the others,” he said.

  “I wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes,” said a familiar voice from the porch. Kemble stood there glaring at them. “While Americans are out there fighting and dying for their country, my father stands in the road giving free rum to the British army.”

  “They would have burned the tavern, Kemble,” Jonathan Gifford said mildly.

  “If you really want to be an American, it would have been better for you - and me - if they burned every damned building here.”

  Jonathan Gifford exploded. All his anger and disgust with General Howe and the British army, with the militia’s lack of training and the stupid tactics of Colonel Slocum were flung at his son. “Do you think I liked doing that?” he snarled. “Do you think I like kissing anyone’s ass? Who made me do it? Who guaranteed they would burn everything? You and Slocum and your idiotic mosquito attacks.” .

  “You can sneer all you want,” Kemble said. “Every burned house makes a family of Whigs.”

  “That is as simpleminded as your military tactics,” Jonathan Gifford said.

  Kemble glared at Liberty Tavern with hatred. in his eyes. “I’m tempted to burn it down myself.”

  Those terrible words cooled Jonathan Gifford’s rage. He looked into his son’s face and saw a dangerous stranger. Still his son, still the thin face asking his permission to be a man. But a wall had risen between them, a wall of war. “We all can’t be heroes like you, Kemble,” he said.

  Kate was standing in the doorway of the tavern listening to this bitter exchange. As Kemble stalked away from his father, he passed her and she whispered, “You are wrong, Kemble, wrong, wrong, wrong.”

  On the second floor of Liberty Tavern, Kemble was heading for his solitary room when he almost collided with Lieutenant Thomas Rawdon emerging from his supposed sickroom.

  “What the devil, sir?” said Kemble, who predictably disapproved of the large amount of time his sister had been spending with this wounded enemy. “I thought you would have departed with your friends?”

  “My friends? Oh, you mean the British army. Dr. Davie told me I was not strong enough to survive a march.”

  “Then you are my prisoner,” Kemble said, drawing a pistol.

  “I surrender,” said Rawdon with mock solemnity. “Now, I pray you, my good man, stop pointing that thing at my middle.”

  “While we are at it,” Kemble said, “I wish you would cease your attentions to my sister. Like all women she is very impressionable.”

  “And like most men,” said Kate, who had followed Kemble upstairs, “you are totally impossible. If you will permit me to live my own life, my dear brother, I will do my best to let you live yours and welcome to it.”

  “How can you Americans hope to win this war, with such dissension in your ranks?” murmured Lieutenant Rawdon.

  While his children treated each other like enemies, Jonathan Gifford was in his chaise, racing for Kemble Manor. Caroline Skinner met him in the center hall. He told her what he had. just heard - the British were retreating from New Jersey.

  “We know it already. Anthony brought the news early this morning. He is with his father now.”

  The library door crashed open and Anthony Skinner strode into the hall. “What the devil are you doing here?” he said to Jonathan Gifford.

  Behind him in the doorway Charles Skinner wobbled unsteadily. Two Negro servants came down the stairs carrying a trunk. “There is no time to pack anything. We must go helter-skelter,” he shouted to them.

  “Charles,” Jonathan Gifford said, turning to his old friend, “I am here to help. The state government will confiscate this property. There is only one way to protect it now. Sell it to me with the understanding that I will return it to you when the war is over.”

  These words sent Anthony Skinner into a hysterical passion. In one breath he denounced the English, in the next the rebel Americans. “Neither will drive me out of this colony,” be roared. “Nor will I stay here and watch a scheming trimmer cadge our property from this old dru - this sick old man.”

  “Anthony,” Caroline Skinner said. “Control yourself, please.”

  “I’m sorry, Mothe
r, but this is too important for me to keep silent like a dutiful son.”

  Buffeted by this exchange, Charles Skinner was trembling like a man with a fatal ague.

  “Please, please,” he said, the tears starting down his face.

  “You must do what Captain Gifford says, Charles,” Caroline said.

  “You will not,” Anthony Skinner bellowed. “If you do, I will leave you to get to New York as best you can and consider you no more my father than General Howe.”

  Charles Skinner struggled to control himself. He could not look Jonathan Gifford in the face. “I don’t know, ‘Gifford. I cannot go against my own flesh and blood.”

  “What about me?” Caroline Skinner asked.

  “I told you, madam. This is not a matter for women to decide,” Charles Skinner said. “God knows, I respect your intelligence. You have made that a point of honor between us. But - ”

  “The legislature has already passed a law authorizing the confiscation of loyalists’ estates,” Jonathan Gifford said. “You cannot fail to be the first target in this neighborhood. Is it possible that you don’t trust me? I have the money. Or I can borrow it against the value of the tavern and my own land. The way prices are rising, the tavern is worth twice what I paid for it - five thousand pounds, at least.”

  Charles Skinner was staring past him at the lovely carved oak leaves on the lintel above his doorway. “I cannot go against my own son, Gifford. I believe with him that this remove is temporary. I will be back here before the year is out. But I must warn you that I will not come as a friend. I begin to think Anthony is right - there is no way to cut the rebellion out of this people but with a sword.”

  “If you come back that way,” Jonathan Gifford said, “you will have to sleep with a pistol at your side every night of your life. Did you see the smoke hanging over the Amboy road today? People have lost everything they own. They won’t forget who did it.”