The Heart of Liberty

by Thomas Fleming

  Lieutenant Rawdon did not realize it but he was seeing a phenomenon of our Revolution - the emergence of American women as thinking as well as feeling beings. The books Caroline Skinner had given Kate, the conversations they had had over the past year were bearing fruit. She was becoming her own woman in a very personal way.

  Rawdon was too blinded by melancholy and prevailing masculine pride to see this. He still wanted Kate’s love on his terms or not at all. In his secret, darkest self, he really preferred not at all.

  “Perhaps some people can change,” he said grudgingly. “But for others it is out of the question.”

  Kate almost lost her temper. But she sensed it would be a mistake, possibly a fatal one. She took Lieutenant Rawdon’s hand and gave him her warmest smile. “Let’s go on being honest with each other, Thomas, and do the best we can.”

  “You are talking to me as my nurse,” Rawdon said.

  “As long as you continue to be a patient, how else can I talk?”

  Rawdon left Kate in the garden without another word. He strode to Jonathan Gifford’s office and asked him if he could borrow a pistol. Captain Gifford politely refused to give him one.

  “You are a prisoner of war, Lieutenant.”

  “I assure you I have no intention of using it for warlike purposes.”

  “What then?”

  “I want to kill myself.”

  Captain Gifford considered this calmly for a moment. “Why?”

  “No explanation is necessary - or possible.”

  “Perhaps you can’t explain it to yourself - much less to me.”

  “Perhaps. But that has no bearing on my decision.”

  “Why not wait a week, Lieutenant? She may change her mind. Women do, you know.”

  “This goes beyond a woman, Captain Gifford. It involves the nature of the universe. I find it meaningless. It is true I hoped one person could give it meaning for me. But she has failed me.”

  “Lieutenant, if you are talking about Kate - I know you are - you are being worse than stupid. You are being downright damnably perverse. If you don’t appreciate what she has done for you, maybe you ought to shoot yourself. I am almost tempted to give you the pistol. But I won’t because I want to keep you alive for her sake. Go down by the brook and take ten deep breaths. That’s what we used to do with green lieutenants who started to panic before a battle.”

  I am not sure whether Rawdon was serious that day. There is a great deal of posturing in romantic self-pity. Kate remains convinced that his melancholy ran deep enough to make his threat genuine. Unquestionably, it became serious on a day soon to come.

  TOWARD THE END of January 1778, General Slocum appeared at Liberty Tavern early on a weekday morning. There was no one in the taproom. Slocum ordered his usual pint of stonewall, sat down before the fire, and asked to see Kemble.

  Jonathan Gifford sent Barney up to his son’s room. Since his return from the saltworks, Kemble had been avoiding his father, agonizing over what he should do about Slocum. He refused to ask his father’s advice, which meant that Jonathan Gifford kept a wary distance while trying to find out what was troubling his son. He got little more than monosyllables from attempts to converse and sadly concluded that Kemble’s sullen isolation was aimed at him.

  Barney returned to the taproom alone. “The lad says he’s busy and has no time to see you.”

  “What the devil,” said Slocum, “he’s not going to let that little misunderstanding we had a month ago set him down now, is he? Tell him I’m here to make him a fair offer.”

  “What would that be, General?” Jonathan Gifford asked. “Why, to buy out his share of Kemble Manor, in advance of sale. And his sister’s too.”

  “If you want to make an offer, make it to me. I’m still Kate’s legal guardian. She won’t be twenty-one until June.”

  Slocum hesitated. He had not expected to deal with Jonathan Gifford. “I ain’t no lawyer. But I understand they have some share in the place, since old Skinner never managed to sire nothing off his wife - ”

  “As far as I know, General, the manor isn’t for sale.”

  “It will be soon enough. The honorable Provincial Congress has appointed commissioners to take charge of confiscated estates, and ordered local courts to begin condemnation proceedings without the waste Of a day. As I hear it, the manor will be condemned. at the first sitting of our court of general sessions next week.”

  “I wouldn’t be too sure of that. Mrs. Skinner has hired a good lawyer, and intends to plead her dowry rights to prevent the con-’ demnation. I believe Kemble and Kate will join her in the suit, declaring themselves ready to yield their rights to her.”

  Jonathan Gifford did not bother to tell Slocum that he was the architect of this strategy. His surprise at the news of the manor’s condemnation was also pretense. He had been expecting this crisis ever since Charles and Anthony Skinner fled to New York. None of this concern was visible in the cool gambler’s face he showed to General Slocum. But Slocum was not easily intimidated. “Gifford, don’t be a damn fool. What chance have you got? She can quote the Declaration of Independence until doomsday, she’s still the wife of the second worst Tory in the state and mother of the worst one. And your daughter ain’t exactly a living endorsement of patriotism. If I want to go to the trouble, I can find some hard things to say about your boy’s loyalty too. After all, he lives in this damn tavern, which was thick with your fellow British officers for the best part of eight months. He conducted himself as a damn spy when he visited my saltworks, and only my friendship prevented them Yankees from hanging him.”

  “I don’t know what the hell you are talking about, Slocum.”

  “I’m telling you to sell now, at a good price, and drop that stupid suit. If you let things go on, I will get the whole farm without paying them a cent for it. Do you think there is a judge in this county who don’t take orders from me? Ain’t they sitting at my appointment? Don’t my Continental troops protect them? Wake up, Gifford.”

  “Maybe the confiscation commissioners will take a different approach.”

  Slocum laughed heartily: “Do you know who they are? There is Matt Leary as chief, my cousin Joe as the second, and honest George Winston as the third.”

  Leary was the owner of the grog shop to which Slocum kept directing customers, largely in vain. His cousin Joseph Slocum was an illiterate drunk, one of the few who could tolerate Leary’s liquors. George Winston was the major of our militia regiment, a total Slocum toady.

  “I see what you mean,” Jonathan Gifford said. “In that case, you won’t be the only bidder on the manor, General Slocum.”

  “Oh, who is going to join? Old George Kemble? From what I hear, he will be pawning his plate to repair what is left of his house, after the Yankees paid him a visit.”

  “I’m going to buy it. I don’t see any other way to protect my children’s property.”

  “What the devil, Gifford . . . ?” Slocum added some choice obscenities to this opening curse and then tried threats. “Stay out of Slocum’s way, Gifford. There will be a time when you need him - a time when he won’t be there.”

  “The way your brave Yankees are protecting us, I will take my chances with Barney here and Black Sam for a garrison.”

  Slocum finished his drink and rose for a farewell salute. “Goddamn you, Gifford, you don’t want that place for those brats. You want it to hold far that Tory bastard Skinner. He has slipped you the money. At the very least he will have the laugh by forcing Slocum to pay three times what it’s worth. You are a goddamn Tory stalking-horse.”

  Slocum departed, roaring. Jonathan Gifford went upstairs and told Kemble what had just transpired in the taproom. “You are over twenty-one,” he said stiffly. “I probably should have consulted you. But since you said you didn’t want to see him - ”

  “You told him exactly what I would have told him.”

  “You no longer are - enthusiastic about General Slocum?”

  “I will not put up with you
r sarcasm, Father. That is just what I thought you’d say.”

  “I had no intention of being sarcastic. I – ”

  “No, it just comes out that way. You can’t help it. You must tell little Kemble he is wrong as usual.”

  “Let’s try starting over. What happened between you and Slocum down at the saltworks?”

  Kemble told his father the story. His language was full of halting, disconnected phrases. But his anger drove him to the grisly final scene, when Slocum almost shot him.

  “The son of a bitch!” Jonathan Gifford said. “He has overreached himself this time, by God. I think we can bring him down, Kemble.”

  “It will ruin the Cause in this part of the state.”

  “I hope the Cause is larger than General Slocum. If it isn’t we are all in trouble. We’ll beat him at the polls, Kemble. We’ll tie that saltworks and that Continental regiment around his neck, like a pair of lead anchors.”

  Those were brave words, but for the time being, General Slocum remained in charge of our political and military affairs. As he predicted, the court of general sessions, meeting with the courthouse surrounded by Major Yates and his regulars, condemned Kemble Manor and a dozen other estates as the property of “virulent enemies of this country” and ordered them sold at public auction. The court also issued an order, putting the Kemble Manor gristmill in immediate control of “the military power of this county” - i.e., General Slocum - in order to assure its continued operation. All fees were to be paid to the General, who would pass them on to the government, after deducting his “expenses.” He promptly appointed one of his cousins as his deputy and threw out Samson Tucker, whom Caroline Skinner had hired to run the mill.

  That lady did not accept the news of General Slocum’s preliminary victory with philosophic resignation. “I will burn this house to the ground before I let that man get his hands on it,” she said.

  “I hope it won’t come to that,” Jonathan Gifford said with a smile. He did not stop to analyze it, but he liked her most when she was angry. She was so small and fragile, and her defiance was so large.

  “Why are you smiling, Captain Gifford?”

  “I’m imagining the expression on Slocum’s face if he laid out twenty or so thousand dollars for the manor and then learned you had burned it down.”

  “It would be amusing if it were not so serious,” Caroline said. “Isn’t it outrageous, Captain Gifford, that a woman forfeits her property rights the moment she signs a marriage contract? If this country is serious about those opening lines of the Declaration of Independence, they ought to correct that inequality as the first act of the legislature. They ought to correct it now.”

  Jonathan Gifford nodded wearily. He had had this conversation before. “I told you I would write to Governor Livingston about it. I got his answer yesterday. Every county is practically slavering over loyalists’ lands, and a lot of the saliva is coming from the legislators themselves. They are not going to let anyone introduce novel ideas that might complicate things.”

  “In the eyes of the law I do not exist as a person. Do you think that is fair or honest or even sensible, Captain Gifford, especially when I have proved I can run this place at a profit?”

  Captain Gifford felt a need to separate himself from that part of the male sex on which her indignation was being so righteously poured. “I am no lawyer,” he said. “Let me assure you, Mrs. Skinner, you exist as a person for me.”

  “I - I hope so,” she said, her anger dwindling into feelings so different, and so visible, he could only avoid naming them with an effort of the will.

  “I’ve brought you the latest newspapers,” he said, trying to change the subject. He took a sheaf of them from the inside pocket of his cloak. At her request, he had been bringing her periodic collections of American papers for several months now. He had plenty of them, left by travelers passing from east and west, north and south. Soon they were spending several pleasant hours together each week discussing them. He was amazed by her knowledge of English and Continental European politics. She knew all the factions at the court of France and all the party leaders in the English Parliament. Politics had always fascinated Jonathan Gifford and before he realized what was happening, a whole afternoon often slipped away. But when she asked him to stay for supper, he invariably refused, pleading business at the tavern. Much as he enjoyed her company, he obviously feared enjoying it too much.

  “Is there any news in them?” she asked, picking up the first few papers and scanning them.

  “Rumors of a French alliance, not much else.”

  “I dislike that idea. I would rather sec us win this war with no help from Europe. Then we could begin a real revolution in this country. We would have the authority to root out all the Old World’s hypocrisies and prejudices that afflict us.”

  She was as fanatic as Kemble about the Revolution, Jonathan Gifford thought. But when Kemble talked this way he inevitably felt hackles of disagreement rising. He had never had much faith in changing the world for the better, having grown up in Ireland, where things had changed steadily for the worse for generations. Here he was for some mysterious reason inclined to do the opposite - agree with almost anything Mrs. Skinner said.

  “You may be right. I’m sure you are,” he said. “But we can’t do much about the big war. We must fight our own little battles as best we can. Let’s concentrate on keeping Kemble Manor out of Daniel Slocum’s hands. If you hear anything about a public sale or receive any notice of one, let me know immediately. Send Sukey on your horse.”

  “Do you think he will try some trick? The law very clearly specifies a public sale.”

  “General Slocum has shown very little interest in obeying the law since I’ve known him. But at the very least, a notice will have to be posted somewhere. I don’t see how they could skip the taverns. I’ve asked every innkeeper in this part of the state to be on the watch for me.”

  We still lacked a newspaper in our part of New Jersey. The New York papers that we read before the war were now all royalist - and notices in taverns, churches, and other public places were the only way the government could communicate with the people.

  Jonathan Gifford seriously underestimated General Slocum’s capacity for chicanery. On a cold wet day toward the end of March 1778, we sat around the fireplace in Liberty Tavern’s taproom worrying over the alarming rumors about General Washington’s army starving at Valley Forge. We were roundly damning the greedy Pennsylvania farmers, who had had their best harvest in years, for refusing to take paper money for their produce. Kemble declared that if he were General Washington, he would seize food from these crypto-traitors at the point of the bayonet. Jonathan Gifford disagreed. One of the things that impressed him most about the way the Americans were fighting the war was Washington’s steady adherence to the civilian control of Congress. “Once you give soldiers the right to take anything with a bayonet, it is hard to draw a line. You’re on your way to a military dictatorship.”

  “When you have legislatures that let men like Slocum make fortunes, maybe the only way you can set things right is with bayonets,” Kemble said.

  A traveler, soaked and shivering from the weather, came in. We made room for him at the fireplace. He was an inspector from the Commissary Department headquarters in Trenton, touring New Jersey to spur the deputy commissaries and quartermasters into activity. We began damning these characters as a disgrace to the Revolution. Our local pair, Beebe and Beatty, were typical of the breed. They had gotten into politics with Slocum and bought only from farmers who sided with him. Beebe was drunk much of the time and let Beatty buy for both of them. He had been a plasterer in Philadelphia and barely knew wheat from barley. With Slocum’s help they had lately gotten into speculating with the government’s money. Jonathan Gifford told the inspector how it worked.

  “They have resold a lot of the corn they bought to John Barrows, down on Middletown Point. He’s got eight or ten barns practically exploding with corn that he’s holding f
or a jump in price.”

  “What can I do?” the inspector said. “They have friends, do you know what I mean? I just left them an hour ago at Leary’s tavern, witnessing General Slocum’s buying of Kemble Manor.”

  “What?” said Jonathan Gifford, leaping to his feet.

  “Aye, Leary is commissioner of Tory estates, haven’t you heard? They’re having the first sale today.”

  “Kemble,” said Jonathan Gifford, “tell Sam to saddle three horses. You and Barney be ready to ride with me in five minutes. And bring your guns.”

  He limped to the bar, took two beautifully embossed pistols from their box on the bottom shelf, and stuffed them into the waistband of his breeches. In five minutes he and Kemble and Barney were pounding down the muddy road toward Amboy like the leaders of a cavalry charge. They maintained the pace, although Kemble was sure it would kill either them or the horses, until they sloshed to a stop in front of Leary’s tavern. Inside they found General Slocum, the three confiscation commissioners, and several followers sitting around the otherwise empty taproom clinking glasses. Deputy Commissary Beebe and Deputy Quartermaster Beatty were in the midst of congratulatory gulps. Slocum and his scrawny Scottish partner McIntosh were presiding over the merry party, looking as smug as a pair of pirates who had just captured a Manila galleon.

  “Well,” Slocum boomed, “if it ain’t my old friend Gifford and his patriot son. How goes the Revolution at Liberty Tavern?”

  “I just heard - by accident - that confiscated estates were being sold here today.”

  “They were,” Slocum said, “but the business is done. You’re too late, friend Gifford.”

  “The hell you say,” Jonathan Gifford snarled. “What kind of a public sale do you call it when no one in our part of the county has even heard about it?”

  “Why, the commissioner here sent a crier along the roads a week or two ago. You must have been busy when he came by Liberty Tavern.”

  “Mr. Leary,” Captain Gifford said to the snub-nosed, slack-mouthed Irishman, “I’m here to bid on Kemble Manor.”