“I started life as a soldier and I’m prepared to end it as one,” Charles Skinner said, “if that is what must be done. I have made up my mind, Gifford.” Slowly, ponderously, Skinner turned to his wife. “As for you, madam, I cannot let you remain here alone with the countryside so aroused against us. You must come to New York with me.”
“I will not!”
The words rang out in the high-ceilinged center hall as fiercely as an Indian yell. “I will not live in that stinkhole of a city as a British dependent. I am an American. This is my family’s land. I intend to live on it until I die.”
“I order you to come, madam.”
“You’ll have to bind me and gag me and carry me to the carriage.”
“You will live here in an abandoned house, madam. I am taking all the servants with me. All the cattle, the horses, the furniture; everything we can carry. And I will not undertake to support you with a farthing.”
“You may do as you please. I would rather beg along the roads. than live with you in New York.”
“Then I give you up. God knows you’ve never been much of a wife to me. A dry hitch with a barren womb.” Charles Skinner sighed. It was like the sound of a dead tree falling. “We must get on with loading the wagons. When did you say we should be in Amboy?” he asked Anthony.
“Two hours. I must get back, there to help Mrs. Franklin. The poor woman is almost distracted.”
Anthony strode to the door, hesitated, and turned back, to Caroline. “I am ashamed of you, Mother, deserting your husband at a time like this.”
“As I see it, he is deserting me - and his country - as you are. I’m sorry - ”
Anthony Skinner shook his head and slammed the door. Charles Skinner seemed to consider renewing the argument with Caroline, then abandoned the idea. He lumbered back into the library. Jonathan Gifford wanted desperately to follow Anthony out the door but he could not leave without saying something.
“I’m sorry I’ve intruded. I only thought I was - ”
“You came as a friend. Let your conscience rest quiet on that point, Captain Gifford. Anything I said is my own affair.”
“I really think - it would be better if you went to New York.”
Her face twisted with pain as if he had struck her. “Captain Gifford, please don’t say another word. If you turn against me too - ”
“I’m only thinking - ”
“I know - of my welfare. But I’m not a child, Captain Gifford. I am a grown woman.”
“But you can’t live here now,”
“I will live here. I will borrow money and hire a horse, borrow a plow and work enough land to feed myself and Sukey. My father gave her to me. Mr. Skinner can’t take her away with the others.”
“But the countryside is full of vagabonds - I couldn’t sleep at night thinking of - ”
“I will not be driven off my land, Captain Gifford. I brought it to him as my dowry. It was why he married me, you know that as well as I do,”
“I didn’t know - ”
“Yes, our marriage was a business arrangement which has now gone bankrupt. I must survive it - as best I can.”
“You will need help.” He took her hand and held it for a moment. “You have a friend here. A friend who - ”
Words, inexpressible impossible words were suddenly crowding in his throat. He stifled them with an enormous effort of his will.
“ - A friend who, like all of us at Liberty Tavern, will come the moment you call.”
“Thank you. You will never know - ”
She turned and fled up the stairs.
Charles Skinner re-emerged from the library carrying the bust of George III. “Did you talk to her, Gifford? I hoped you might change her mind. She puts great stock in your opinion.”
Looking up the stairs, Jonathan Gifford slowly shook his head. “I don’t think anyone can change her mind, old friend,” he said.
THE NEXT MORNING Kemble and I and my friend Billy Talbot rode to Amboy in the wake of the departed British army. Billy and I were the same age. We shared neutralist fathers and loyalist mothers, and a confirmed hero worship of Kemble Stapleton. But what we saw that morning was so appalling and disheartening, it shook our commitment to the Revolution. House after house was a charred ruin with wives, husbands, children picking dolefully through the blackened, still smoldering boards in the hope of finding a few surviving bits and pieces of value - a plate or a cup, perhaps, a pot or two, andirons. There was little to look for because the British and Germans stripped the houses before burning them.
“My God,” I said, looking at the desolation, “is it worth it, Kemble? Maybe my father is right. Maybe we should have paid those stupid taxes.”
“It is worth it,” Kemble said, looking steadily at a half-dozen burned houses on the outskirts of Piscataway town. “Forget about the taxes. They were never more than an excuse to run those rotten Englishmen out of our country. It’s our country, Jemmy. We’ll build it again without their help, without their corrupt arrogant influence. We’re going to build a country different from anything in history. Where every man has a chance to make something of his life if he’s willing to work hard. A country where the government exists for the people - ”
We listened, mesmerized. When Kemble talked this way, his face became transformed. The shadow of shyness, of intense intellectuality that normally made it difficult for him to speak freely with other men, vanished. He was like a medieval saint preaching a holy crusade, and we became his converts again.
But that day his spell was broken by a bizarre figure. George Bellows’ wife Mary wandered out of the woods, her clothes torn and mud-streaked, her hair streaming in fantastic disarray around her face. She and her husband had moved to her family’s home on the outskirts of Piscataway. After the birth of her child, her behavior became more and more disturbed. She was often found wandering along the road, weeping. One day she rose at her Quaker meeting and denounced God for taking away her husband’s hand.
“Oh, sir,” she said, “are you servants of the King? Why didn’t you mind our house?”
“We are not servants of the King,” Kemble said.
“The soldiers burned our house. We showed them our protection. They laughed and threw it in the fire. Why did they do that, sirs?”
“Because – ”
Kemble saw the futility of explaining anything to her.
“From now on I think I will sing Yankee Doodle,” Mary Bellows said. “So will my husband. He’d play it on his flute, if he could. He played a flute, you know, until they took his hand away. Why did they do that, sirs?”
“Take her home,” Kemble said abruptly to me and Billy Talbot. He wheeled his horse and rode back to Liberty Tavern.
There he found Daniel Slocum and his clan, surrounded by numerous followers. Slocum was buying drinks - on credit - for the house and roaring a liberty song. You would have thought the war was over and American independence impregnably established. Tiring of his own music, Slocum began contemplating the future with gloating satisfaction. He went down a list of loyalist estates like a Catholic reciting a litany. Kemble Manor was, not too surprisingly, at the head of the list.
“The old Squire’s gone, can you believe it?” he said. “Things change faster than anyone expects in a war. Three years ago, Skinner’s word was as good as law in this district.”
“I hope from now on we will have no more squires,” Kemble said. “And no man’s word will be law. The people will make the laws from now on, Colonel Slocum.”
If Slocum was not too drunk to- get the point, he was shrewd enough to ignore it.
“Mrs. Skinner is still living at the manor,” Jonathan Gifford said. “She refused to go to New York with her husband. She’s on our side, and always has been. I would hope this means the estate is not open to confiscation.”
“What the devil?” said Slocum. “What does. a woman count? She owns no land in the eyes. of the law.”
“She owned half that manor before she married Mr.
Skinner,” Jonathan Gifford said.
“Be that as it may, she lost it the second she signed her marriage contract.”
“The manor’s the least of our worries,” Kemble said. “We’ve got two or three hundred houses to rebuild.”
“And about three thousand miles of fences,” said Samson Tucker. “I don’t think there’s a fence rail left in all south Jersey. First the damn Philadelphians took’m and then the lobsters.”
“We’ll tend to those things soon enough,” Slocum said. “But first we’ve got some scores to settle.”
He took out another list, five times as long as the list of loyalists who had fled to New York with the British army. He began, discussing who would be charged with treason, who would be heavily fined, and who would simply be taken out behind their barns and beaten up.
“If I were you, Colonel Slocum, I’d try to bring these people over to our side by being generous,” Jonathan Gifford said.
“You don’t understand a Tory, Gifford,” said Slocum. “He don’t know the meaning of generosity.”
“I agree with Colonel Slocum,” Kemble said.
So Slocum and Kemble returned to Tory hunting, guaranteeing the continued antagonism of the loyalists and neutrals. But they did not get much cooperation from our militia. In that humid summer of 1777, few could shake off a daze of disgust and despair when they looked at the ruins the contending armies had left behind them. While Washington prepared to defend Philadelphia, we struggled halfheartedly to rebuild burnt homes and barns, to re-fence pastures and reclaim cattle wandering half starved through the woods, to plant fresh seed in ravaged fields in the dim hope that weather would permit a late harvest.
Jonathan Gifford guided a Jersey wagon down to Kemble Manor, thinking he was on his way to help an isolated woman cope with an even more difficult problem of survival. He brought with him enough furniture to make two or three rooms in the big house habitable. He also brought two pistols and a musket, which he spent several hours teaching Mrs. Skinner to load and fire. He was pleased by the matter-of-fact way she handled these weapons. It made him feel a little better about her safety. With Little Egg Harbor becoming an ever busier privateering port, south Jersey was attracting the flotsam of war, runaway slaves and indentured servants, deserters, merchant sailors who had jumped ship.
Putting away the guns, Captain Gifford spread $500 on the kitchen table to buy a horse and cow and some chickens, and hire a farm band. “One man should be able to raise enough food and chop enough wood to keep you comfortable,” he said.
“Sukey and I can chop our own wood and milk our own cow, Captain Gifford,” Caroline said. “Why not loan me five thousand dollars so I can hire enough men and horses to harvest the crop that is in the ground? I will pay you six percent interest.”
“Mrs. Skinner, that would involve a gang of men. You would need a foreman - ”
“I will be the foreman.”
Jonathan Gifford took a deep breath. This small dark determined woman upset all his preconceptions about the opposite sex. But the admiration that her courage aroused in him made the upset surprisingly tolerable.
“You can have the money interest-free.”
“No. I am not asking you to support me, Captain Gifford. I expect to make a good profit on the crop. I can pay interest and I will pay it.”
With so many farmers in desperate need of money to repair their own wrecked farms, Caroline had no trouble hiring hands. True to her announced intention, she was her own foreman, riding out each day with the men in an old calico dress and a wide-brimmed sun hat. She got a full day’s work for her wages, from the grumbles Jonathan Gifford heard at Liberty Tavern as more than one of her weary toilers stopped for some refreshment on his way home.
Caroline wisely concentrated her efforts on Kemble Manor. She hired Samson Tucker to run the mill and one of Jasper Clark’s sons to run the Colt’s Neck farm. Both showed a modest profit but compared to them, Kemble Manor was a bonanza. With the help of almost perfect weather, Caroline harvested forty bushels of wheat and ninety bushels of corn an acre. She sold most of the crop - some thirty thousand bushels - to the Continental army. At the end of October, she triumphantly repaid Jonathan Gifford his $5,000 loan at 6 percent interest, and had about $2,000 left to invest in next year’s planting.
“Did my husband ever make as much with his slave labor?” Caroline asked Jonathan Gifford.
“I don’t know. You have had the advantage of high prices,” Jonathan Gifford said. “But I’m sure he is - will be - proud of you.”
“I am proud of myself, Mr. Gifford. That is more important. A woman has so little chance to do things that give her real pride.”
“To be honest, I have never given it much thought. I have been inclined to take things as they are. But Kate has made me think about women. The way you have awakened her mind - ”
“What shall she do with it, now that it is awakened? We must make sure this country gives her a chance to use it. How is the war going?”
Jonathan Gifford looked doleful. He had posted a half-dozen proclamations and exhortations on the door of Liberty Tavern, urging the militia to join Washington for the defense of Philadelphia. Kemble rode through the countryside, making speeches that thrilled us sixteen-year-olds. But no one else listened, and everyone stayed home. Kemble almost despaired. Captain Gifford was inclined to be philosophic. He had little faith in the militia anyway.
“I wouldn’t turn out if I was a militiaman,” he told Caroline. “Not after what the British did to the regiment on the retreat to Amboy. Maybe the men have more sense than the Congress. They’re the ones who have left Washington no alternative but militia. I can’t believe he really wants them, if he could get regulars.”
Caroline Skinner shook her head. “Over-optimism is the great American weakness,” he said.
It was very comforting for Jonathan Gifford to find agreement with his opinions at Kemble Manor. When he expressed his doubts about the militia to Kemble, he was usually treated to a tirade about his lack of faith in the people, supposedly rooted in his weakness for aristocracy. Before the argument ended, both then lost their tempers and Kemble went another week without speaking to him.
As our fog of apathy engulfed both enlistments and the Slocum-Stapleton Tory hunts, the loyalists resumed their clandestine trade with the British in New York, and practically rattled the hard money in our faces to prove it. Colonel Slocum decided to change his tactics from brute force to financial chicanery. He suddenly announced a ferocious enforcement of the law about collecting fines from militiamen who failed to turn out when called. He and his officers rode through the countryside, presenting people with bills for immediate payment.
Slocum swore that there was no other way to raise men. Under militia law, the fines became the property of the regiment and were to be divided among the men who did turn out. “There’s plenty of money in the district,” Slocum said. “People have been selling crops for hard money to the British all winter. They can pay, damn them, and we’ll use the surplus to give a bounty to men who’ll come to Philadelphia with me.”
Kemble agreed with Slocum for the usual reason. It was necessary. But he was a little shocked to discover that Slocum was presenting people with bills for past as well as present failures to turn out. Loyalists in particular got orders for twenty, thirty, fifty dollars depending on how many men of militia age they had in the family. Other loyalists with sons in the royal army got $100 fines. These were large sums to farmers who were always cash-short. For families who had just had houses burned or looted, it was an impossible tax.
For substantial farmers like Richard Talbot and members of prominent families like my father, who had chosen to remain neutral, Slocum had a special treatment. He arranged to have them elected militia officers. Fines were much heavier for an officer who failed to serve. My father got a bill for $250.
Toward the middle of July, about two weeks after Slocum had started his fine-collection campaign, Kate came to Jonathan Gi
fford in a very indignant mood. She and Caroline had been busy helping some of the most distressed families in the district, ones who had lost everything. Jonathan Gifford had contributed $1,000 to a fund they had set up to buy food and replace farm tools. Among the most obvious charity cases were the Tharps. Their house, barn, outbuildings, granary. had been burned. Their son John had been killed harassing the British retreat. Tharp had four other sons who heeded the Quaker injunction against bearing arms. They had been toiling twelve hours a day all summer to rebuild their farmhouse.
“Just as they finish it,” Kate told her father, “Colonel Slocum arrives and presents them with fines of a hundred dollars each for failing to do their militia duty. When it’s against their conscience! That’s unjust, Father.”
“I agree. Let us see what our favorite foe of tyrants has to say about it.”
Kemble said he knew nothing about Slocum fining Quakers. He agreed it was wrong. He rode over to Slocum’s farm to ask him about it. The Colonel exploded. “It’s none of your damn business,” he said. “I fine who I please.”
“It doesn’t make sense,” Kemble said. “You’ll never get Quakers to turn out.”
It made a great deal of sense to Colonel Slocum, because he was pocketing the fines. This had not yet dawned on Kemble. He still saw the whole thing as a fundraising operation for the expeditionary force to assist Washington before Philadelphia.
“Goddamn you,” said Slocum. “You keep turning into a milk and water man. And now a Quaker. Damn spiritual weeds that ought to be rooted out, or I’m not a good Presbyterian. Can’t you see that the more money we raise, the more men we’ll turn out? Let me run this regiment, and we may win this war somehow.”
Kemble went back to Liberty Tavern and told his father he reluctantly supported Slocum’s Quaker policy. “Well, I don’t,” Jonathan Gifford said, “and I’m writing a letter to Governor Livingston about it today.”
Jonathan Gifford knew William Livingston fairly well. He was a New York aristocrat who had moved to New Jersey in 1772. A gifted lawyer, he had handled the probate of Sarah’s will, which had involved considerable property owned jointly with the north Jersey branch of the Stapleton family. Livingston was a man of integrity, who had no use for Slocum and his kind. But he had very little authority to intervene in local matters. A dread of executive power had dominated the writers of our state’s constitution. They had made the legislature supreme, and Slocum’s ability to elect a half-dozen yes men every year guaranteed his immunity there. But the governor, was the commander in chief of the militia. Within two weeks a furious Colonel Slocum appeared in the tavern waving a letter from Livingston.
The Heart of Liberty Page 30
