The Heart of Liberty

by Thomas Fleming

  “If he kills you I will hunt him down and blow his brains out.”

  “You will do no such thing. You will have to take charge of this property and the tavern, too. If the war lasts, you will have a devil of a time saving either of them. Kate and Kemble don’t have half a business head between them - ”

  “Stop! Stop! You are talking as if you were already dead.”

  “A duel is an unpredictable thing. The best shot in the world can be killed by a fool with a hand that shakes like a case of palsy. I swore I’d never fight another one - after Havana.”

  He had his breeches on and his boots. He began buttoning his shirt. “I - I had wronged, as they put it, the daughter of one of the best families. She had been more than willing. But her brother challenged me. They said he was twenty-one. He looked fifteen. His father, or the girl, or someone had obviously put him up to it. He was terrified. I planned to pink him in the arm. But as we fired he panicked and lunged to one side. I hit him in the heart.”

  Beneath her warm quilts, Caroline Skinner felt cold clutch at her. This was not the man she loved, this stranger who talked in that flat somber voice about killing and being killed. She had seen him as the wounded victim of her sister’s cruelty. This man reeked of death. But she vowed that she would love him in spite of it, she would somehow help him triumph over the years of war which had, seemed to end for him not in glory but a kind of grim loathing of it all, a loathing that included himself.

  “You see what a noble fellow you’ve fallen in love with. Maybe now you won’t be so sorry if. General Slocum scores a lucky hit.”

  “I will die!”

  She sprang from the bed naked into the cold to fling her arms around him.

  “I promise you - I will do everything I can to prevent it from coming to bullets.”

  “Let me fix you some breakfast.”

  He shook his head. “A bullet in an empty belly does less damage. I will get a little rum at the tavern.”

  He rode away, leaving her in torment. At Liberty Tavern, Barney, Kemble, and Dr. Davie were waiting for him. Barney had the dueling pistols oiled and ready in their ivory case. He was nervous and talkative, Kemble somber and silent.

  “Begorra, if it don’t seem like old times, Captain, with half the regiment betting everything but their hats on you. I never had the honor to serve you in this way before, not being a gentleman born.”

  “Don’t worry. We’re not dealing with a gentleman.”

  Jonathan Gifford turned abruptly to Kemble. “I hope your new country - our new country - will pass a law, making this a crime.”

  “Let me second that motion,” Dr. Davie said. “I’ve been on too damn many of these expeditions. I never saw one that made sense.”

  Kemble did not agree with them. The College of New Jersey was heavily attended by Southerners and he had imbibed their high ideas about honor. “How else can a gentleman defend himself - or a lady - from men like Slocum?”

  “I don’t know. A horsewhip or a fist seems better on the whole. You may get your hands dirty, but you get dirty dealing with swine anyway. I just want you to know - as your father-that I have done this often enough to loathe it. I hope you never do it.”

  As usual when Jonathan Gifford and Kemble talked as father and son, the air was charged with suppressed emotion, Also as usual, there was no agreement. “I don’t see how I could refuse if someone called me out,” Kemble said.

  General Slocum and two friends were waiting for them in a field beside a burned out farmhouse about midway to Amboy. His seconds turned out to be Deputy Commissary Beebe and Deputy Quartermaster Beatty. They were wearing their buff and blue army uniforms. General Slocum was also wearing his uniform. Jonathan Gifford instantly divined their purpose. They were forcing him to fire at a soldier, a defender of his country, in a time of war.

  Dismounting, Captain Gifford took Kemble’s arm. “Inform these gentlemen that if General Slocum will retract what be said about the lady he has injured, I am prepared to disregard his aspersions on my character. I will even admit equal rudeness to him. We were both speaking in a great temper.”

  Kemble delivered this message to Deputy Commissary Beebe. He repeated it to General Slocum. His big black head swung to glare at Kemble. “I always knew that goddamn limey had no guts.”

  “For your information, General,” Kemble said, “it is common practice for a gentleman to do everything in his power to avoid the fatal moment in these encounters. A gentleman does not wish to spill anyone’s blood.”

  Slocum guffawed. “Well, I ain’t no gentleman. I intend to spill that limey’s blood and splash his brains all over this road.”

  For the first time, Kemble felt a clutch of fear. Slocum’s animal courage was up, fueled by a canteen of stonewall which Beebe was holding ready. “If he should by a stroke of luck cut me down, lads,” said Slocum, raising his voice even louder, let it be known far and wide that I died defending my country’s rights against this damned insidious agent of the enemy.”

  “You can depend on us, General,” said Beebe.

  Kemble returned to Jonathan Gifford with an anxious face. “He rejected it with contempt.”

  “So I heard,” said Jonathan Gifford,. who had been watching Slocum’s performance. “You had better load the pistols. I’ll take two ounces of rum, Barney, and no more.”

  Barney handed the pistols to Kemble and took a flask of ruin from his saddlebag. He poured it into a leather cup and Jonathan Gifford drank it off in one swift gulp.

  “There’s only one place a bullet will stop that bugger,” Barney said, studying Slocum. “Between the eyes.”

  Jonathan Gifford shook his head. “I don’t want to kill him.”

  “Then you’ll give him a shot at you, sure as I’m here.”

  “I will have to take that risk.”

  “I’m told he’s been practicing with a pistol three hours a day this whole week.”

  “I will shoot for his gun arm,” Jonathan Gifford said.

  The sun had risen, but the sky remained a wintry gray. Ground fog swirled in the nearby fields. Kemble and Beebe met between the two antagonists to discuss the rules. Beebe would call off ten paces, then each man would be free to turn and fire. Dr. Davie spread a white cloth on the ground and calmly laid out his surgical instruments on it.

  The pistols were inspected by the duelists. Jonathan Gifford added a few grains of powder to his firing pan. Deputy Commissary Beebe was summoned to General Slocum’s side. They conferred and he strutted over to Jonathan Gifford and his party. “The General wishes to be magnanimous,” he said with a smile that revealed his bad teeth. “He is prepared to apologize to the lady - if Mr. Gifford will surrender his illegally gotten title to Kemble Manor.”

  “Not interested,” Jonathan Gifford said.

  “Oh, kill him, Captain. Kill the bugger,” Barney said.

  Jonathan Gifford shook his head. He refused to change his plan. He knew that killing Slocum would arouse an army of enemies. Better than any of us, he knew how fickle men were, how inclined they were to hate a man because of his place of birth or his wealth, however modest, or his associations.

  General Slocum said he was ready. Jonathan Gifford agreed with a nod. Both men advanced to the center of the field, turned their backs, and waited for Beebe to begin the count.

  “One,” he called, and they began pacing away from each other. “Two - three - four - five - six - seven - eight - nine - ten.”

  Kemble’s eyes were on his father. A surge of voiceless regret throbbed through his body, almost strangling him. If he dies believing that I hate him, I won’t be able to bear it.

  Jonathan Gifford turned and fired all in one incredibly swift motion. Slocum cried out in agony and his gun fell from his hand. His right arm hung useless at his side, streaming blood. But Barney had been right. Only a bullet between the eyes would have stopped this man. Slowly he bent his knee to pick up the pistol with his left hand.

  “I can fire as well with either han
d, Captain Gifford,” he-said.

  According to the code duello, Jonathan Gifford had no choice but to stand unflinching, while Slocum slowly raised his gun with his left hand. But when he tried to level it, the muzzle wavered. A musket ball does harsh things to any part of the body it strikes. Blood was gushing from Slocum’s wounded right arm. His cheek muscles bulged like knotted whipcord as he struggled to control his pain and nausea. With a guttural gasp, he staggered violently and fired the pistol into the ground at his feet.

  Slocum fell to his knees. “Stonewall,” he roared. “Stonewall.” He swung his head back and forth like a beaten boxer.

  Deputy Commissary Beebe rushed to give him the benefit of the canteen filled with his favorite drink. Dr. Davie cut open Slocum’s sleeve and began examining the wound. The duel was over.

  “Another round,” roared Slocum after a gulp of stonewall. “I demand another round.”

  “I am the challenger,” Jonathan Gifford said. “I have the right to decline. I am satisfied with the damage done.”

  “You can expect a challenge from me the moment this arm is ready,” Slocum said.

  “The next time, Slocum, I will kill you,” Jonathan Gifford said.

  The controlled ferocity in these words struck Slocum with the force of a bullet. He was mute. Jonathan Gifford walked to his horse. For a moment Kemble felt a fleeting sympathy for Slocum. He too had flinched before that murderous menace he had always sensed in his father. Kemble approached Slocum. The General was glaring straight ahead, his eyes bright with liquor and hatred, while Dr. Davie worked on his arm.

  “Is it possible for us to come to some understanding, General? For the sake of the Cause?”

  “You are wasting your time, Kemble,” Jonathan Gifford said from the saddle.

  “Your pappy is calling you. Get the hell out of here, little boy,” Slocum said.

  Flushed with anger, Kemble walked slowly back to his horse.

  “Wouldn’t it be better to negotiate with him? Arrange a truce - at least until the war is over?” he said as they rode away.

  “He doesn’t understand the meaning of the word negotiate, Kemble.”

  “You mean I don’t. I am too stupid.”

  “If you had done what I told you in 1776 - supported honest men instead of him and his toadies, it would never have come to this - he wouldn’t be worth shooting.”

  “I knew you would throw that up to me,” Kemble said. “I knew I would be reminded for the rest of my life about my failure to follow the great Jonathan Gifford’s advice.”

  “I will take the satisfaction of doing it, just this once.”

  It was not Jonathan Gifford speaking. It was the tension and danger of the duel, the memory of Slocum’s pistol slowly leveled. By a sad paradox, it was also the memory of what he had experienced last night at Kemble Manor that made death doubly unbearable. This too became part of his anger at this son who seemed indifferent to what he had just risked.

  Behind the anger other words fumbled blindly like cattle in a dark wood. My son, my son, I don’t mean - Father, I am sorry. I am proud - But the words remained unspoken, mute as beasts, as father and son rode silently home beneath the gray sky in the cold March wind of the third year of the war.

  ABOUT A WEEK after the duel, Kate rode down to Kemble Manor to visit Caroline. She instantly sensed that something extraordinary had happened. In spite of the weather continuing to wear its gray March face, her aunt was brimming with high spirits. They had tea in her bedroom-sitting room and Caroline talked excitedly about her plans to raise Kemble Manor’s productivity. She had been reading up on crop rotation fertilization, drainage, and other techniques of scientific farming and had concluded that her husband - and most other American farmers - were fifty years behind the times.

  “I’m determined to pay off that monstrous debt your father has incurred on my account.”

  “I think he rather enjoys it,” Kate said. “I have never seen him in such a cheerful mood. Nothing else in his life has changed as far as I can see. Prices are still going up by leaps and bounds. Kemble still barely speaks to him. General Slocum’s friends are riding about the countryside slandering him. It must be the debt that is making him happy.”

  “You are teasing me.”

  “I am trying to solve a mystery.”

  “You have grown up a great deal, Kate, in the last year. But - there are certain things . . .”

  Caroline could not bring herself to tell Kate what had happened. After all, she was still her aunt, and Jonathan Gifford was her father. But Caroline found herself wishing she could tell Kate something - no - more than that - everything.

  Who else would understand it as well as Kate? She would share it with her, Caroline promised herself. But not now. It was all too unbelievable, it might dwindle away like morning fog at the beach. That forgotten part of the Revolution, our almost unbearable uncertainty, our perpetually clouded future, combined with Caroline’s natural diffidence to silence her.

  Kate was a little hurt by Caroline’s. reticence. But her feelings were not inflamed by that natural (or is it unnatural?) resentment that fuels arguments between parents and children. Caroline had lost her parental aura for Kate. In the past six months they bad become friends.

  A large part of Kate’s growing self-confidence had come from the books she had read and discussed with Caroline. At first she had concentrated on the issues around which the quarrel between England and America revolved. Once her mind was made up on these matters, she turned naturally to another topic that absorbed her as much as Caroline. The nature of the Revolution and the future of American women in their new country.

  This is a subject that has almost dropped from sight as I write these words in 1826. The first fifty years of our American history have been a triumph of the male ethos. We have succumbed totally to the European idea of the lady and shoved all our women into the shadow of their men. Yet I cannot believe, as long as they can read and understand the opening lines of the Declaration of Independence, as long as they can remember (or learn through history to remember) that a different dream, a yearning for a truly equal partnership, suffused the women of the Revolution, that American women will tolerate this supine state indefinitely.

  This consciousness of their unequal status as women was particularly acute the day Kate visited Caroline after the duel. That murderous encounter would never have taken place, Caroline pointed out, if she had retained her legal right to Kemble Manor. “I begin to think there is only one way we can gain our rights, and protect them when we gain them,” Caroline said. “We must be free to vote with the men. Then they will have to listen to us.”

  “They will say we lack the education.”

  “There is an easy answer to that. When clods like Samson Tucker can vote and you and I cannot.”

  Kate asked Caroline if she had read the latest political news in the New York Gazette, a loyalist paper. The British were preparing to send another peace commission to Arnerica. “They say they will give us everything we asked for in ‘75.”

  “But now we have added something - independence,” Caroline said. “We would be fools to go back to them now. Remember the history of the Dutch fight for, independence from Spain. They agreed to a truce, negotiated a new relationship - and as soon as Spain felt strong enough the war broke out again. This happened over and over, until the Dutch finally realized total independence was the only answer.”

  “Some New York Congressmen who stopped at the tavern overnight told Father the peace commission was a trick to stop us from signing an alliance with France. They said that would mean the end of the war. England will have to call home her army to fight in Europe. They got drunk just thinking about it.”

  “I’m not so sure they are right,” Caroline said. “If the French become allies - that could change the attitude of a great many people in England. The opposition in Parliament has been gaining strength by criticizing the government for making war on the Americans, using foreign mercenaries li
ke the Hessians. If we have the French on our side, that argument is destroyed. It will give the government a cry to arouse all the patriotism that beat the French in the last war.”

  Kate sighed. “Sometimes I think I will be a dried-out old spinster in a rocking chair when they finally get tired of killing each other.”

  Caroline laughed. “A woman with your looks need never worry about dying a spinster, Kate.”

  “I’m not so sure. The only offers I’ve gotten lately have been from a British officer and a loyalist”

  “You mean Anthony?”

  Kate nodded. “He writes me a letter a week, so he says. Only a few arrive. He is unhappier than ever. The best rank he could get in Skinner’s Greens was captain.”

  Officially, Skinner’s Greens were the New Jersey Volunteers. They were a loyalist brigade, attached to the British regular army. The British took no Americans except career soldiers like young Oliver De Lancey into their home regiments.

  “Anthony says the British give the loyalist regiments all the drudge jobs.”

  “How is - his father?”

  “Even more miserable, as far as I can tell. Anthony rarely writes more than a sentence about him. Does Mr. Skinner ever write to you?”

  “No.”

  “Did you ever really love him?”

  Caroline shook her head. “I told myself I could love him - eventually. But the marriage was arranged between him and my father. He - my father - told me it was the only offer I was likely to get.”

  “He would never have done such a thing to a son.”

  “Of course not.”

  “That is what infuriates me - the way men feel we are objects they own. Anthony is that way. He insists on claiming me. He calls me his wife. It is true, we did speak of that night in Shrewsbury as our wedding night. In my mind I made a promise like a wife. My conscience would not let me do it any other way.”

  “But now your conscience - ”

  “Tells me I am free of him. That is one of the strange things about a revolution, isn’t it. Things happen that free us.”