Prelude to Glory, Vol. 2

by Ron Carter

  “Watch carefully. These are the steps.” He laid a patch of paper on the table before him. It was fairly large, and was square except for one side that had been cut at an angle. “This is the cartridge paper.”

  He laid a round six-inch stick of maple wood on it, along the edge leading to the angled side. One end of the stick was hollowed out, and that end was about one inch from the end of the paper. “This stick is called the ‘former’ because the paper is wrapped around it to form the cartridge.”

  He slowly, deliberately rolled the former inside the paper.

  “You see that the hollowed end of the former is recessed about one inch from the end of the rolled paper tube.”

  All the girls nodded, eyes large as they watched intently.

  He picked up a lead bullet and inserted it in the open end of the paper tube, then pushed it with his finger until it was settled inside the hollowed end of the former. The bullet was out of sight, nearly an inch from the end of the paper tube.

  “Now, please observe.” He pinched the end of the paper tube to a point over the bullet, then reached for a ball of thread. He cut a piece about ten inches long and deftly wrapped it around the pinched end of the paper tube, three wraps, then tied it off, clipped the excess string, and held up the tube.

  “Did you all see how that was done?”

  Murmuring broke out and all heads nodded.

  He carefully pulled the wooden former from the paper tube, put it aside, and laid the paper tube on the table before him. He then dipped a small, long, narrow scoop into the pewter powder box and carefully measured powder to an exact level. He inserted the scoop into the open end of the paper tube, carefully emptied it, then laid the scoop back on the table.

  “Now, please watch.” He jiggled the paper tube slightly between his fingers to settle the powder, then deftly twisted the paper at the open end of the tube several times, closing it firmly. He held the finished cartridge up before the girls.

  “There it is, a finished cartridge.” He waited while they exclaimed.

  “Now let me show you how the soldier uses it.”

  He inserted the cartridge into one of the holes in the block of wood. “Cartridges are given to the soldier in these blocks. He draws one from the block of wood like this, sets the end with the bullet in the palm of his hand like this, grasps the twisted end between his fingers and pinches it off so powder cannot spill, like this.”

  He paused to be certain each girl had followed, then continued. “Then he bites off the twisted end with his teeth, like this.” He grasped the twisted end in his teeth and ripped it from the cartridge, then removed the torn paper from his teeth with his left hand.

  “Then he drops a small amount of the powder into the pan of his musket and the balance of it into the muzzle. That leaves the bullet in his hand, still wrapped in the paper. He simply thrusts that into the muzzle of his musket, both bullet and paper, and rams it down to the powder with his ramrod, and he’s ready to fire. When the flint on his musket strikes a spark into the steel pan, the powder burns. The flame reaches through the touchhole into the powder inside the barrel. It explodes and shoots the bullet out of his musket while it burns the paper.”

  The girls around the table were ecstatic, exclaiming, pointing, and Halliwell waited for a time before he raised his hand and they quieted.

  “I’ll go through this all once again, and you stop me for questions any time. When I’m finished you can divide into two groups and try it yourselves. Be careful when you measure the powder. It has to be level to the top of the measure scoop and no more.”

  Once again he methodically worked through the steps and held up the finished cartridge. Then under his keen eye the girls gingerly began their first efforts at fashioning paper, lead balls, and gunpowder into acceptable cartridges, clumsily at first, biting their lips, silent, then giggling, then intense as they worked on. They rolled the papers badly, could not pinch the end to a peak, could not take three wraps with the thread without losing control of the former inside the paper, spilled gunpowder and recovered it, and did not twist the closure tight enough behind the powder.

  Patiently Halliwell watched and corrected, and slowly the mistakes became fewer, and unaccustomed fingers became more nimble. At eight o’clock they finished their first cartridge that passed Halliwell’s critical inspection. By eight-twenty the girls had six acceptable cartridges. By eight forty-five they had eighteen. By nine o’clock they had thirty acceptable cartridges in the wooden cartridge block, and they inserted it into the battered leather case and snapped the lid shut. Their eyes shined with excitement and pride in their newly learned craft, and their chatter filled the room.

  Halliwell waited until they quieted before he continued. “Now that you know how to do this, the question is, do you want me to leave enough equipment at the church tomorrow so you can make more cartridges?”

  “Of course!”

  Halliwell snapped the locks on the satchel and faced the girls. “Thank you. Would you let your minister know the wagon will be there about four o’clock?”

  “I’ll tell him.”

  Halliwell bowed and Brigitte walked him to the door. “Thank you.”

  The captain nodded as he reached for the door handle. “Good night.” He walked out into the sultry, hot night air and glanced upward. The wind had died, and the black heavens were clear, star-studded.

  Brigitte turned back to the girls, who were wrapping themselves in their shawls and tying on their bonnets, as required of all proper Bostonian girls before presenting themselves in public.

  “It’s past nine o’clock. We’ll meet at the church tomorrow night at seven, and there will be at least twenty more women to make cartridges. We’ll teach them, and in a few days we’ll have enough to make a load, with the blankets and other things.”

  Brigitte opened the door and walked them all to the front gate, where they said their good-byes, then divided two and two to walk hurriedly home through the crooked, narrow cobblestone streets of Boston. Brigitte waved and waited until they were all out of sight, then turned and walked quickly back into the house and closed the door.

  Margaret was waiting. “Get Caleb and the children for prayer.”

  Half an hour later Margaret sank onto a chair at the dining table, and for a long time she sat, working her hands together, staring at them in the yellow lamplight. Brigitte came dressed in her nightshirt, her hair down her back in a long single french braid.

  Margaret came from deep thought to speak quietly. “Sit down.”

  Brigitte settled onto a chair and waited.

  “It’s all happening too fast.” Margaret pursed her mouth for a moment. “The war. Your father gone. Matthew somewhere far, we don’t know where, or even if he’s alive. You working at the bakery. Caleb at the print shop, and wanting more every day to go to the fighting. Me trying to be both mother and father to the children.” She shook her head.

  An unexpected rush of compassion rose in Brigitte, and she reached to grasp Margaret’s hand in hers.

  Margaret raised eyes that mirrored her weary, exhausted, frightened soul. “Now you want to leave.” She drew and released a great sigh. “Three hundred miles with bullets for war.” She slowly shook her head. “I never dreamed these things could ever happen to all of us. Divided. Gone. Leaving.”

  Her eyes brimmed with silent tears and she wiped at them.

  “You’re young. You have no notion, not any, of what could happen to you if you go with wagons to New York. Our soldiers, their soldiers, any of them could use you for sport and you couldn’t stop them. Accidents. Sickness. Taken by the British. I doubt they’d hang a girl, but I have no question they’d put you in prison.”

  Margaret faced her daughter and impulsively reached to tenderly touch her cheek for a moment. “Do you know what it would do to me if they damaged you? put you in prison? if you got sick and died? Do you know? I wouldn’t want to live.” A sob caught in Margaret’s throat, and she swallowed hard and wiped her ey
es.

  Brigitte had never seen or heard her mother like this before. Her breathing constricted, and it seemed that a hidden door in her heart unexpectedly opened enough for her to sense the endless, selfless love of her mother, and with it for the first time in her life came flooding the bright understanding of the terrible price love demands of all true mothers. It humbled her to the core of her being, and she reached to seize her mother’s arm. She tried to speak and could not. Her eyes brimmed with tears that slowly worked down her cheeks, and she wiped at them with the sleeve of her nightshirt.

  The two women sat thus for a time in the yellow lantern light, silent, wordless, eyes locked, each silently speaking to the soul of the other in the purest language a mother and daughter can share.

  In the magic of those moments Brigitte understood that her mother had accepted her as a grown woman, an equal. The child that had been was no more. Never again would Margaret speak down to her, order her, demand obedience. In the flash of understanding Brigitte felt both the thrill of full freedom and the grab in her heart that the precious time of childhood was past and gone.

  Margaret sighed and broke off, then shrugged, and she spoke in matter-of-fact tones once again. “I know it’s impossible to put old heads on young shoulders, but every generation has to have their try at it. You’re going to have to follow the best that’s in you and hope it’s good enough, and take your bruises and learn your lessons, the same as all of us who came before.”

  Brigitte wiped her eyes and remained silent.

  Once again Margaret’s voice came with low intensity. “You’ll have to follow your heart about your British captain. You feel what you feel. But remember, you’re trying to live with one foot in each camp, ours and theirs, and eventually it will catch up. You’ll choose him and England, or us and here. All I ask is, be very sure when you choose. You’ll be a long, long time living with it.”

  Brigitte remained silent because there was nothing to be said.

  Margaret stood. “We better go to bed. Tomorrow’s going to be a long day for both of us.” Arm in arm the two women walked through the archway and separated to their bedrooms.

  Brigitte sat on her bed for a long time, staring at her hands, then at the yellow lantern glow, while her thoughts led her deep inside herself. Am I wrong in helping the army fight for liberty? Daddy didn’t think so. He died for liberty. Matthew’s fighting for it. Billy. If it’s right, then am I wrong about Richard? A cartridge I make could be the one that kills him.

  She shuddered at the thought, and in her mind she saw him once again—tall, strong, the deep scar in his eyebrow, the eyes that were gentle and strong and sensitive. She remembered the evening he shared supper with the family and won them over, as she knew he would. And once more she closed her eyes and recalled the few moments they shared together alone in the backyard before he left that night, near the bench that circled the old oak tree, when she had embraced him briefly and brushed her kiss on his cheek. She felt once again the few moments of magical transport from this world into a place where only he existed with her.

  She sobered as Margaret’s words echoed. One foot in each camp, ours and theirs—him and England, or us and here.

  Words came to her. A house divided against itself . . .

  She blew out the lamp, slipped between the sheets of her bed, and for a long time lay in the darkness beneath the great goose-down comforter, unable to force a reconciliation between helping the battle for liberty and the deep feelings in her heart for an enemy captain. The quarter moon was high in the heavens before she drifted into an uneasy sleep.

  Three days later, in the evening, there were twenty-eight girls and women gathered at the church to make cartridges, among them Dorothy Weems and Margaret Dunson. On the fourth evening there were thirty-four, and the blankets and shoes and bandages filled the choir seats and first six rows of pews on the east side of the chapel.

  On the fifth evening a blocky man in worn homespun appeared in the open doorway of the church, threadbare cap in hand. His long sandy-red hair was uncombed, and he forced a quick, shy, nervous smile as Brigitte approached him.

  “Ma’am, a friend read me the notice in the newspaper. Might you be needin’ strong, willin’ men to help freight supplies to the army in New York?” His eyes were pleading as he spoke.

  “Yes, we might.”

  “Sure, and I would be countin’ it a blessin’ if I could help.”

  Brigitte heard the decidedly Irish twang in his words and studied him briefly. “What’s your name? your usual line of work?”

  “Name’s Cullen. Deckhand on a ship, ma’am. Earned my way here to Boston from Ireland, and I’ll be wantin’ to go to New York to join the fightin’.”

  “It’s possible you could go with the wagons. How can we find you when we’re ready?”

  “If you’ll be tellin’ me when that might be, I’ll come back here if I’m still around, ma’am.”

  “It might be three weeks or more.”

  “So long as that? Well, if I haven’t already gone, I’ll be back here, ma’am, and thankin’ you for your kindness.”

  He smiled and backed out of the church, bowing his head to Brigitte before he cocked his cap over one ear and disappeared in the darkness. The man hurried to the corner, crossed the cobblestone street, and disappeared in the shadows of the maple trees lining the street. He stopped, looked furtively about, and whistled once, softly. From a black doorway the dark form of a taller man silently appeared and waited. The shorter man looked about once more, then quickly walked to him.

  “They’ll be leavin’ in three weeks or so.”

  “You with them?”

  “They said come back.”

  “Good. See to it you’re with them.”

  In the dim light of a waxing quarter moon and the stars, the smile of the taller man could be seen in his full black beard, and he reached to pull the bill of his black seaman’s cap lower as he turned on his heel and walked rapidly away from the church, with the shorter man hurrying beside him.

  ______

  Notes

  The process of making paper cartridges and cartridge boxes, including the necessary tools and materials, is well illustrated in Wilbur, The Revolutionary Soldier, pp. 22–24.

  American women performed unnumbered acts of heroic patriotism during the Revolution, including melting pewter and lead for bullets; making cartridges; spinning flax for material to make clothing for the soldiers; making shirts for the soldiers; supplying food, clothing, and shoes; and serving as soldiers, spies, messengers, and nurses. The Daughters of the American Revolution very kindly provided the author with a number of articles and pamphlets recounting such inspiring deeds, including reference to a book in which the names of thousands of such women are listed and a brief sketch of their deeds given (see Claghorn, Women Patriots of the American Revolution, all pages, but specifically, 4, 10, 22, 117, 232, 246, 290).

  Long Island

  July 8 and 9, 1776

  Chapter XI

  * * *

  Gather round, you lovelies, and pay attention if you want to stay alive when the big guns start exchanging greetings.”

  Sergeant Alvin Turlock, Company Nine, Boston regiment, stood with feet spread as he slapped one hand on the touchhole of a cannon that was aimed point-blank into the sloped face of a great dirt breastwork forty feet distant. He glared at his men, who stood or squatted in the sweltering heat of midafternoon, with the sun bearing down, sweat running off their noses and chins, wet shirts clinging.

  Since dawn they had set timbers and thrown dirt to build breastworks on a ridge nearly two miles south of Brooklyn. They paused only long enough to eat a noon meal of watery fish soup and wormy hardtack and weak coffee, then once again swung picks and axes and drove shovels into rocky soil to dig trenches in front of the breastworks, and fill the space between the parallel rows of timbers, sunk five feet into the ground. At two-thirty Sergeant Turlock had bawled out orders. “Gather for gunnery instruction,” and
Ninth Company laid down their tools and assembled.

  “This is a cannon,” he announced, and waited for the muffled murmuring to stop. “Cannon are made of brass or iron. This one’s iron, a French Valliere six-pounder. This is one of those Colonel Knox brought from Fort Ticonderoga last winter.”

  He paused while Company Nine remembered and exclaimed about the unbelievably daring and heroic epic of Colonel Henry Knox and his company of picked men who had crossed three hundred miles of hopeless wilderness in the dead of winter to reach the critically strategic Fort Ticonderoga that commanded the Hudson near the junction of Lake Champlain and Lake George. Earlier, Fort Ticonderoga had been held by the British, but on May 10, 1775, a scant three weeks after the battle of Concord, Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys, with Benedict Arnold, had silently scaled the high eight-foot-thick stone and cement walls before dawn, taken the British pickets without a sound, then pounded on the door of the commanding officer’s quarters just at daybreak. The groggy, half-dressed British commander opened the door with raised lantern to stare into the muzzles of pistols and muskets, while Ethan Allen loudly declared the mighty Fort Ticonderoga captured “in the name of the great Jehovah and the Continental Congress,” not quite sure which had the more authority in the circumstances. The gaping British commander surrendered without so much as one shot being fired.

  The following winter, Colonel Henry Knox, Washington’s officer in command of all Continental army artillery, led an expedition from Boston to Fort Ticonderoga, dismantled nearly sixty cannon, mounted them and their carriages and accoutrements onto handmade skids and sleds, and with oxen dragged them cross-country through the deep mountain snows back to Boston, where General Washington positioned them in a ring around the city to lay siege to General Gage and General Howe and their British army within. The siege succeeded. On March 17, 1776, General Howe led the British from Boston north to New York. None had forgotten the ingenuity and gritty determination of Allen, Arnold, and Knox in capturing the guns of Fort Ticonderoga for the Patriot cause.