Dreams of Glory

by Thomas Fleming

  Then came a blow that seemed direct from God’s hand. Early in December it had begun to snow. Caleb watched the soldiers, many of them shoeless, up to their knees in icy drifts, struggling to build log huts. On January 2, 1780, the intermittent storms became a blizzard that lasted four incredible days. By that time the army was a freezing, starving mob. The men swarmed into the countryside, robbing local farmers at gunpoint. Since that storm the temperature had not risen above zero. The northeast wind had never ceased its punishment. The man were on half, often one-third rations. Some said another blizzard or even another week of cold would be the end of the army.

  Failure, defeat, was engulfing America. Why? There had to be a reason. Was the army - above all the enlisted men - the victim of a fundamental spiritual flaw? A moral inertia traceable to the character of America’s leaders? Caleb Chandler had begun to think that was the answer.

  By now the chaplain was well past the center of Morristown’s long rectangular green; he was approaching the Ford mansion, George Washington’s headquarters. Was this man, as rich as any English earl, the source of America’s, the army’s, corruption? John Hancock of Boston was as wealthy as George Washington, but his money had come from trade. Washington’s fortune was in land, worked by hundreds of black slaves. How could a slaveowner lead a revolution in the name of liberty?

  When Caleb Chandler had raised the question at Yale, his classmates had laughed in his face. The best people in Connecticut owned slaves; there were thousands of them in neighboring New York and New Jersey. Rome and Greece, the great civilizations of antiquity, sanctioned slavery. Caleb had dropped the subject. It did not seem important enough to argue about, in the warm comfort of his room on Chapel Street. He never dreamed the question would haunt him in the freezing hell of Morristown.

  Caleb trudged into the wind, brooding on George Washington. His ownership of slaves was not the only reason the chaplain saw him as an evil influence on the army. More than once, in Lebanon, he had heard Joel Lockwood’s best friend, William Williams, one of the Continental Congressmen for Connecticut, criticize Washington for his attempts to mold the army in his own aristocratic image, with extravagant pay and pensions for the officers. Worst of all, Williams had fumed, Washington, like most Southerners, despised New England men.

  The Ford mansion’s windows were still aglow with yellow candlelight. Often, on his way back from the hospital, Caleb had heard drifting from the house the sort of hearty laughter created by port wine and a full belly. Now he saw an oblong of light appear in the front door. A man carrying a lantern. Caleb heard jovial goodnights. The lantern bobbed toward him.

  A gust of wind burst under Caleb’s cloak. He clutched at the flapping cloth. His toes, his fingers, were totally numb. He stopped and stamped his feet, hoping to restore a little circulation. The wind faltered for a moment and he heard something else: the groan of a human being. The wind whirled and died again. Caleb stood there, his heart pounding. Uhhhhh. There it was again. An unmistakable, separate sound. A death groan. It came from the deep snow in the center of the green. But he could see nothing in the darkness.

  “Sir,” he called to the man with the lantern. “Sir, could you bring your light over here? I think there’s someone hurt nearby.”

  The man approached. Muffled to his ears in a greatcoat of brown fur, he might have been a bear. They stood together for a moment while the wind gusted and died again. Once more it came: Uhhhhhhhbh. The groan.

  Caleb seized the lantern and plowed his way through the unpacked snow on the green. The man in the fur coat followed him, calling somewhat querulously, “Sir, that’s my light-”

  They both stopped. Caleb, holding the lantern at arm’s length, looked down at the outline of a soldier almost covered by blowing snow. A bayonet protruded from the center of his chest.

  Caleb dropped to his knees beside him. “Who did this to you?”

  The man’s lips worked. He gasped what sounded like numbers. “Forty-Twenty-Six.” He tried to say something else, but it was beyond his strength.

  “Let’s get him into the guard hut,” Caleb said to his fur-clad companion.

  “I think he’s dead.”

  “A fire may revive him.”

  They picked up the possibly dead, certainly dying man and labored through the drifts to the hut in front of Washington’s headquarters. “Halt,” barked the sentry on duty. “Who goes there?”

  “There’s been a man stabbed,” Caleb shouted.

  “D’Estaing,” growled the sentry.

  That was the name of a French admiral. It was also the sign for the night. What was the countersign? Caleb could not remember. “Lafayette,” he guessed.

  “Wrong,” said the soldier. Click went the hammer as he cocked his gun.

  “I’m Caleb Chandler, chaplain of the Second Connecticut Brigade.”

  “And I’m Hugh Stapleton, congressman from New Jersey,” said the man in the fur greatcoat.

  “You may be the Lord Almighty and the Archangel Gabriel,” the sentry said. “But put your hands up or by Christ I’ll make a lane through you.”

  They put up their hands. The corpse - by now Caleb was sure the man was dead - thudded to the snow. The sentry called for the officer in command. He and five other members of General George Washington’s Life Guard came stumbling out of the hut, rubbing sleep from their eyes. Their half-awake state did not say much for the discipline of these picked troops, who were supposed to protect the commander in chief. Two of the soldiers carried the corpse into the hut. The officer ordered Caleb and Congressman Stapleton to follow him. “Keep your hands up,” he said.

  Inside, Stapleton began to seethe. “Damnation, sir, will you allow me to lower my hands? Or must I send one of your men to General Washington to identify me? I’ve just finished dining with him.”

  The soldiers paid no attention to the congressman. They were staring at the dead man on the floor before the fire. The sheen of snow that had covered his face was melting, revealing skin of deep, luminous black. He was huge. His shoulders were twice the width of any man’s in the hut. He wore buff breeches and a dark blue coat with buff facings on the cuffs and lapels - the uniform of the New Jersey brigade.

  “It’s Caesar. Caesar Muzzey.” One of the privates said.

  “I was down to the old regiment yesterday,” another private said. “They told me he’d gone over the chain.”

  “Gone over the chain?” Hugh Stapleton said.

  “Deserted,” Caleb translated.

  “Then what the hell was he doing on the green in his uniform? The lieutenant asked.

  The first private smirked, revealing several gaps in his teeth. “Caesar Muzzey came and went pretty much as he pleased.”

  “Like the rest of you damn Jerseymen,” the lieutenant said. “Just because you’re close to home, you think you can walk out of camp whenever you feel like it.”

  The first private stared somberly down at the dead man. “That wasn’t it with Caesar. Most officers was scared of him. You can see why. Look at the size of the black bastard.”

  “Get him out of here,” the lieutenant said. “He’s making a mess.”

  Dark rivulets of melting snow, suggesting streams of blood, ran from the corpse across the raw wood floor. The two New Jersey privates picked up Caesar Muzzey and lugged him out the door of the hut.

  “What will be done about this, Lieutenant?” Caleb asked.

  The lieutenant shrugged. “What can be done? One of his own kind probably killed him. Down in Delaware, where I come from, they’re always cutting each other up over wenches, gambling debts, and the like. I lost one of my prime bucks in ‘77. Throat slit from ear to ear.”

  “You mean the army will make no investigation?” Caleb said.

  “That’s nor for me to say,” the lieutenant grunted. He was a heavyset, thick-bodied man, probably in his late twenties.

  “Would you be more eager to find the murderer if Muzzey were white?” Caleb asked.

  “Why, I don�
��t know,” the lieutenant said, scratching his head morosely. “My orders are to protect General Washington, not guard every square foot of Morristown. If some damned deserter gets himself stabbed in the dark, why should it be my affair, whether he’s white or black?”

  “I wonder if you really mean that, Lieutenant,” Caleb said. “I’m afraid you’re like most Americans. You look down on black men because so many of them are slaves.”

  The lieutenant stared at Caleb with growing astonishment.

  “Caesar was a human being, Lieutenant,” Caleb continued. “With the same right to life and liberty as the rest of us. I sometimes wonder if the troubles under which we’re laboring are not being sent by God to awaken us to our indifference to our black countrymen.”

  “Go sing that song to General Washington,” the lieutenant said. “I only own six slaves. He’s got a good two hundred down in Virginia.”

  “There are men in America, even men in Congress, who don’t think everything General Washington does is right. I wouldn’t be surprised if Mr. Stapleton here is one of them.”

  Caleb knew that New Jersey usually voted with New England against the Southerners in the Continental Congress. He had heard William Williams tell Joel Lockwood that Jerseymen were “sound.” But Chandler saw no welcoming agreement on Hugh Stapleton’s handsome face.

  “Chaplain,” he said, “I own twenty slaves. I would gladly free every one of them - not for moral but for economic reasons. They’re literally eating me alive. Owning them has never troubled my conscience for a single instant.”

  Everyone in the hut grinned his approval. Caleb heard an inner voice whisper, Fool. It was not the first time he had heard it. During his years at Yale the secret voice had often made him writhe and sweat. But he clung to his indignation. “I’m sorry to hear you say that, Congressman. I hope someday to have a chance to change your opinion. Meanwhile, a full report of this crime will be on its way to William Williams, member of Congress from Connecticut. He happens to be one of my neighbors in Lebanon. Mr. Williams not only feels as I do about Negro Americans, he concurs with my opinion that the officers of this army have much too callous an attitude toward the enlisted men. I wonder if you’d be so indifferent, Lieutenant, if an officer had just been found murdered?”

  “You can bet your ass I wouldn’t be, Chaplain,” the officer snapped. “An officer murdered is mutiny. Which more than a few of us begin to think is the aim of those sermons you’ve been preaching.”

  “My aim is justice. An end to the soldier’s sufferings.”

  “Who do you think is responsible for starving this army? The officers? I ain’t had a bite of fresh meat in two weeks. But I bet your friend Congressman Williams has had his share of prime beef in Philadelphia. You can report whatever you please to him, Chaplain. If you think anyone in this army’s going to stand up and salute at the word ‘Congress’ your noodle’s loose.”

  The lieutenant shifted his gaze from Caleb to Hugh Stapleton as he spoke. He meant his defiance for both of them.

  “There are men in Congress who want to help the army,” Stapleton said. “I’m one of them.”

  “Yeah, I know,” the lieutenant said. “We all know what’s happening in Philadelphia. Those goddamn cheapskate Yankees are the ones who’re starving us. While they and their cronies get richer by the day.”

  The lieutenant glared at Caleb Chandler again. “If I were you, Chaplain, I’d warn your friend the congressman from Connecticut that after this war’s over, maybe even before it ends, the rest of this continent is goin’ to settle scores with you pious honkers. We’d all be better off if you started worryin’ about that instead of who killed a runaway nigger.”

  The combination of the man’s hatred of New England and his indifference to Caesar Muzzey’s death coalesced with the disillusion in Caleb Chandler’s soul. This was a test, he told himself. A test of America’s integrity. Did the leaders of the nation’s army believe those soaring words in the Declaration of Independence about liberty and happiness belonging by right to all men?

  “I’ve changed my mind,” the chaplain said. “Instead of appealing to Congressman Williams, I intend to bring this crime to the personal attention of General Washington. I will demand a thorough investigation of Caesar Muzzey’s death, and the apprehension and hanging of his murderer.”

  Again, the inner voice whispered, Fool. But Caleb refused to listen to it. He was more and more certain that God had led him to this confrontation in the January night. It was his destiny to find this dying black man, to hear him gasp those last mysterious words, to rebuke this sneering dismissal of his humanity. It was his chance to challenge the despair, the loss of faith in American and America’s God, that had destroyed Joel Lockwood.

  Congressman Stapleton yawned. “May I have my lantern, Chaplain? I’m going to bed.”

  How happy the soldier who lives on his pay

  And spends a half-crown out of sixpence a day

  Yet fears neither justices, warrants, nor bums

  But pays all his debts with a roll of his drums.

  A half-dozen British officers roared this favorite song into the frigid midnight on Jane Street in New York. They were on their way to the tangle of streets just east of Kings College, known as the Holy Ground. There, no fewer than five hundred willing ladies waited to relieve them of their cash and their frustrations.

  In the comfortable study of his three-story town house on Jane Street sat a man who did not waste his time on carousing or whoring. Work was Major Walter Beckford’s mistress, although a casual observer might have thought it was his stomach. He was one of those large, naturally bulky men who seem unbothered by - in fact seem almost proud of - growing fat. His red regimental coat, with the aiguillette of a general’s aide on the right shoulder, only pretended to encompass his big belly. Youth - he was in his early thirties - gave his spherical pink cheeks and double chins a glow of health. Walter Beckford’s soft white hand gripped a pen with the same determination that other soldiers grasped a sword or a gun.

  On the table before him were a half-dozen books - dictionaries; Laurence Sterne’s novel, Tristram Shandy; Blackstone’s Commentaries. Beside them was a letter composed entirely of numbers. Each number told Beckford where to look in one of the books. Each line came from a different book. “I defy anyone to break this code,” Beckford said to the burly man who sat opposite him, wearing the green coat and buff breeches of the Queen’s Rangers, one of the better provincial regiments. With a flourish, Beckford translated the last line and scanned the message.

  We now have ten men in Washington’s Life Guard.

  Within the week five of them will begin standing the same watch. This should lend itself to making the attempt on his life which we’ve discussed in previous letters. With him eliminated, the success of the mutiny is certain. As long as he remains alive, the possibility of his personal intervention threatens our plan. In spite of all our efforts, the majority of troops refuse to blame him for their daily misery.

  “From one of my best men in Morristown,” Beckford said. “He’s built up a remarkable network inside the American army.”

  Skepticism was unmistakable on the burly man’s face. Major Beckford gritted his teeth. He frequently tried to convince regimental commanders like his guest, Lieutenant Colonel John Graves Simcoe, of the importance of intelligence. Most of them remained indifferent or hostile.

  On the whole, the message was not good news. Beckford thrust it into the top drawer of his desk and summoned from the hallway the two men who had brought it across the Hudson River. The older of the two was short and squat, with a weathered, crafty face. His companion was enormous, with the wide eyes and soft mouth of a trusting child. He wore his silken blond hair loose to his shoulders, completing the impression of overgrown innocence.

  Beckford dropped ten guineas into the older man’s grimy hand. “Here’s your night’s pay,” he said. Turning to Simcoe, he casually added, “These two fellows are my jacks-of-all-trades. They carry
messages, escort escaped prisoners through our safe houses in New Jersey, and, when the necessity arises, they’ll burn down a rebel militia officer’s house or cut a double agent’s throat without a qualm. This one” - Beckford gestured to the squat man, who wore a tattered red British army coat - “Nelson, was a light-infantry sergeant in the Royal Welsh Fusiliers in the last French war. He retired to a farm in Bergen County. Tell the colonel what the rebels did to you in ‘75.”

  “Broke down my door and gave me a coat of red-hot tar,” Nelson said. “Burned my house and barn and left me for dead. Which would have been the case if it weren’t for this lad.” He threw his arm around the young giant.

  “Bogert is his name,” Beckford said. “He carried Nelson on his back some forty miles to New York, where one of our doctors treated him.”

  “Claimed I was fairly cooked by that tar,” Nelson said. “Roasted like a pig. Laid me in a tub of grease and kept me there for a whole month. Called it a bloody experiment. I tell you I was glad to get out of that damned tub.”