The Patriot Bride

by Woodhouse, Kimberley;

  “I love you so very much, my dear.”

  “I love you too.” She gave him a little smirk. “But one of us has just done a lot of work and needs a nap.”

  Little George yawned. Matthew pointed to their son in his arms. “You mean, him? You are right, he does look tuckered out.”

  Thursday, July 18, 1776

  Faith leaned over little George. He was so sweet as he slept. To think of all that God had done in her life to get her to this moment. It overwhelmed her with gratefulness and thanksgiving.

  Matthew would have to leave her soon and go back with the Continental Army. Faith knew that Matthew and George would look out for each other, but it still made her heart ache to see her husband go off to battle.

  Martha had been a gift from the good Lord above. She’d come as soon as she’d heard and ran the household for Faith so she could focus on her newborn. They had many people to take care of, and Mrs. Washington never tired of helping.

  “Oh, Faith!” Martha appeared at the doorway. “I have received a letter from George. Is Matthew around? George wants me to share it with all of you.”

  “I believe he’s down in the study.” Faith kissed the forehead of their sleeping son and covered his legs with a blanket. “I’ll come down with you.”

  Martha chattered about exciting news all the way down the stairs. She obviously couldn’t wait to share whatever it was that George wrote about.

  As they entered the study, Matthew stood from his seat behind the desk. “Well, you look beautiful this morning, my dear.” He came and kissed Faith on the cheek. She’d never tire of the butterflies she felt inside whenever he was near. He belonged to her. And she to him. It was a wonderful thing.

  “Thank you. Martha has a letter from George that is of some import.” Faith sat in one of the tall wingback chairs by the fire.

  Matthew offered a chair to Martha and then sat on the arm of the chair next to Faith. She adored that he loved being close to her.

  On the edge of her seat, Martha beamed a smile at both of them. “ ‘Tis exciting news. Let me share it with you.” She pulled her glasses up from the chain that hung around her neck, perched them on the end of her nose, and began to read:

  “Dearest Martha,

  This letter is for you to read to Matthew and Faith. Please give them my sincerest congratulations on the birth of their son. I am honored that they chose to name him George.

  Personally, I feel rather grandfatherly. Is that all right? I long to hold the child and run with him around the pond, just like I did with you, dear Faith.

  Matthew, raise him up in the Lord, and you will not go wrong.

  I have wonderful news to share with you all. On the day of George’s birth, July the fourth, the Declaration of Independence was signed by fifty-six men representing their Colonies. Benjamin Franklin was there and sent word to me. The excitement that is here is almost so thick you can taste it.

  So our little George will share his special day with this auspicious occasion. For I believe it to be the birth of our new nation. July the fourth of 1776 will go down in history as the day we declared our independence.

  Matthew, I know it will be difficult to leave your little family, but your presence is greatly missed here.

  Faith, I long to see you again. Take great care of yourself and precious little George. Prayerfully soon we will meet again.

  Martha, my love, I will write to you again very soon.

  In honor of our family’s newest addition and the birth of our nation, I give you a written copy of the Declaration.

  All my love, George”

  IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776

  The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

  When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

  We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

  He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

  He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

  He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

  He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

  He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

  He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

  He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

  He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

  He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

  He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

  He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

  He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

  He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

  For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

  For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

  For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

&nbs
p; For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

  For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

  For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

  For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

  For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

  For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

  He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

  He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

  He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

  He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

  He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

  In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

  Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

  We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

  Signed:

  Connecticut: Samuel Huntington, Roger Sherman, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

  Delaware: George Read, Caesar Rodney, Thomas McKean

  Georgia: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

  Maryland: Charles Carroll, Samuel Chase, Thomas Stone, William Paca

  Massachusetts: John Adams, Samuel Adams, John Hancock, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

  New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

  New Jersey: Abraham Clark, John Hart, Francis Hopkinson, Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon

  New York: Lewis Morris, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, William Floyd

  North Carolina: William Hooper, John Penn, Joseph Hewes

  Pennsylvania: George Clymer, Benjamin Franklin, Robert Morris, John Morton, Benjamin Rush, George Ross, James Smith, James Wilson, George Taylor

  Rhode Island: Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

  South Carolina: Edward Rutledge, Arthur Middleton, Thomas Lynch, Jr., Thomas Heyward, Jr.

  Virginia: Richard Henry Lee, Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Jefferson, George Wythe, Thomas Nelson, Jr.

  NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

  I hope you enjoyed The Patriot Bride as much as I did writing and researching it. I always discover fascinating pieces of history when I’m researching a book. One of the things that struck me the most is the instantaneous world that we live in now and how hard it is to imagine a world where it took months to find things out. For instance, in January 1775, orders were given for General Gage to march on Concord and destroy the arms that were there. That news didn’t reach the British troops in America until much later, and of course, we know that on April 18, those orders were carried out and thus the famous ride of Paul Revere. In the same manner, Parliament declared that Massachusetts was in a state of rebellion on February 9, 1775. We don’t know how long that news took to reach the colonies, but by the time it did, those in America would have said something like the modern equivalent of, “Duh, ya think?”

  This length of communication created quite a mess during the war. Parliament and the King were unaware of things as they happened in America, while the British troops in America were carrying out two-month-old orders (at least). If they’d had the technology and communication of today, would there have been an actual war? We can’t know, but it does give us a chance to learn from the past once again.

  Back to Paul Revere—many of us have heard what has become his legendary phrase, “The British are coming! The British are coming!” In fact, that is not what happened or what he said. The way I portrayed it in the story is much closer to the actual truth. For more fascinating tidbits, see https://www.paulreverehouse.org/the-real-story/, http://www.history.com/news/history-lists/11things-you-may-not-know-about-paul-revere, http://www.masshist.org/database/99, and http://www.masshist.org/database/viewer.php?item_id=98.

  I was taught as a child that George Washington had wooden teeth. Also not true. But he did have false teeth. His face was pockmarked from his horrible bout with smallpox, and he chose not to wear a wig but to powder his own hair.

  One thing I never learned in school was his actual height. I think I might have heard that he was “tall,” but to a kid, tall could mean five feet. His executive secretary—Colonel Tobias Lear—wrote after Washington’s death that the general was six feet, three and one-half inches exactly. Lear was an exact man and had to measure the general for his burial. All of this simply reinforces the fact that Washington was an impressive figure.

  Our first president was such a remarkable man. I want to write numerous stories with him in it because he was just that amazing. Some interesting facts about him that I used in the story were that he wore his military uniform to the Second Continental Congress. Did he know what was about to take place? He was the only one there in uniform. And when he left Mount Vernon for that Congress on May 4, 1775, he was then gone from his beautiful home for eight long years. (He did have one short documented trip home in 1781.) All those years, he spent his time with the Continental Army in the field. Martha often visited in the winter, and it was uplifting to the troops and obviously to George.

  The lady’s fire screen mentioned in chapter five was inspired by an actual fire screen stitched by our first First Lady that resides at the Rosedown Plantation in Louisiana. I’ve been to every plantation in Louisiana and Mississippi, and the artifacts are truly amazing. But since the first time I laid eyes on that fire screen when I was a teen, I was fascinated with our first president and his wife. For a picture of it, go to www.daughtersofthemayflow
er.com under The Patriot Bride.

  I had the incredible opportunity to speak to some preservationists at Mount Vernon on my visit there. Thanks to a rainy, dreary day, I was almost by myself at the historic home, and it gave me lots of time to ask questions. As an author, I do a ton of research—ninety percent of which the reader never gets to see—and it’s a privilege to include tidbits here and there. Mount Vernon’s last expansion was technically done by 1775, but that only meant that the exterior was done. So while I mention the study in this book, and it is fashioned after what we know of to be George Washington’s study after the Revolutionary War, the experts who spend day in and day out studying Mount Vernon don’t know for certain which rooms were used for what prior to this expansion. To make things easier, I used the study from the existing Mount Vernon as inspiration so that if you have the chance to visit the incredible location, it will be the same.

  Benjamin Franklin along with Washington played major roles in this story. But it is important to note that Franklin was actually in England from late 1774 through May 1775 (so he was not even home when his wife died). Rather than give a lot of tedious backstory to you about the relationship between him and Matthew, I chose to show Benjamin Franklin as present in the beginning of the book. Again, it is a fictional story, but I didn’t want anyone to think I didn’t have my facts straight or to mislead about actual historical events.

  Benjamin has become another of my favorite characters of all time. The man was simply fascinating. Eccentric. Amiable. Brilliant. If you read comments from any of his peers, you’ll find he’s more than just fascinating to us. He was to them as well. Something new I learned about him this year was his love of “air baths.” Apparently, it was one of his oddities, and we have no record of what his neighbors thought of this practice as he sat disrobed in front of the open windows, but he proved that he was well ahead of his time with the reasoning behind those baths. He believed that fresh air would aid in airing out the rooms and thus the body because he suspected that people closed up together in houses (especially in winter) tended to spread sickness and disease faster. Hm. Interesting thought.