Captain Putnam for the Republic of Texas

by James Haley

  Still, the fall of these two former pillars of Litchfield’s culture, notwithstanding that they were succeeded by others equally worthy, left a sense that their past was slipping away, and that the town was sliding slowly down the hierarchy of prominence. At the turn of the last century it had been the fourth largest community in Connecticut, but at the next census in 1840 they might show to be tenth, or twelfth, for the great avenue of commerce developed along the coast, in New Haven and Bridgeport, and the burgeoning new industry of hunting whales for their lamp oil was centered in New London and New Bedford. And there was a spur of business that extended up the Connecticut River through Hartford, which was halfway between New Haven and Springfield in Massachusetts. From all this Litchfield was removed, and began to blend into Connecticut’s restful, rural background, bucolic but not ignorant, unhurried but not indolent. Bliven and Clarity found great contentment there, from their shared history but also from its present attitude toward the world. They had no desire to remove, in their mature years, to any scene of greater activity.

  The religious atmosphere had moderated since the Beechers departed for Ohio, and even the Unitarians gained a foothold—a telling testament to the weight that a single advocate could press onto his community, given he was dedicated and ferocious enough. Lyman Beecher had sold his high, drafty house, where Clarity had encouraged young Harriet in her composition, and where poor Roxana had birthed Beecher children until she died of sheer overproduction. After Beecher left for Ohio with Harriet in tow as his scribe, their Litchfield house declined under a careless and distracted new owner, which saddened Clarity to see, and made her feel the more fortunate that they had sold the Marsh manse on favorable terms, salvaging the library, saving numerous fine furnishings or those of sentimental value, and bringing Polly down to the farm as their housekeeper.

  Bliven had taken to spending chilly mornings in the library by the Franklin stove they installed, under a blanket in old Marsh’s chaise longue. It seemed an indolent posture, but in his middle age he had noticed his ankles beginning to swell as a day progressed, and he felt he had earned the privilege of keeping his feet up when he could. Clarity encouraged his time in the library as the most effective incentive to make him finally retire from the Navy, and she took out subscriptions to newspapers from all over the Northeast to keep his mind from wandering back to sea. The one he came to favor above the others was the Boston Atlas; it was in business for only three years so far, but was capably edited, included the most important news, and was strongly Whig in its opinions, which was agreeable to them both.

  Bliven did not know that Dr. Allison had fulfilled his promise to inform the Navy of his illness until he began receiving letters inquiring into his health from old friends in the service: Hull, Jones, Downes, even Miller, which delighted him. There was no mention of a further assignment through the winter, but then, he expected none before spring. His sons came home from their respective schools for Christmas—Ben from Yale College and Luke from boarding school in New Haven. He took them hunting on their property near Cornwall, inquired into their studies and their interests. Ben he found as domestically dutiful as his namesake old Benjamin had been; to his surprise it was Luke who reminded him more of himself: restless, inquisitive, unsatisfied. Both seemed deeply happy to have their father in residence, and if they resented his long absences, they said nothing of it. Instead they were enthralled by his moment-by-moment accountings of Barbary pirates, of having the Tempest shot from beneath him off Brazil, of having walleyed native priests charge at him in the Sandwich Islands. Clarity observed all this, hoping and praying that he would find this newly discovered domestic bliss more than he could bear to leave again. She would not ask directly but was determined to rekindle their former romance and maintain her own active intellectual life to match his in case she failed.

  The spring thaw of 1835 was well underway, with the first green grass and crocuses, when Bliven noticed he had received nothing from the Navy other than monthly drafts for his half-pay. He began to wonder if, perhaps, like old Dr. Cutbush, his opinion of Andrew Jackson had become known and he had been quietly dropped from the Navy’s rolls. But then Dr. Allison provided a less political theory of the case when he admitted that after sending them first word of his malarial fever, he had not written anyone news of his improving condition and now apparent recovery. What thrilled Clarity was the fact that he did not seem to mind. He and Meriden and the boys planted heavily that spring, including a new field that he had purchased across the road and farther south. They dug and lined with rocks a second root cellar, so that in coming years they would be all but self-sufficient. They entertained, as Clarity took advantage of the church’s less strident doctrine and took a more social part, bringing home those whom Bliven would find the most interesting.

  With the first spell of summer’s humid heat he felt again the slight dizzy chill and resumed his taking of quinine water with his tea, and as he never gave the malady a chance to take hold, it did not persist. Its mere reappearance, however, prompted Clarity to enlist Dr. Allison as an ally in suggesting that he was not yet ready for duty. Putnam Farm’s fields and orchard produced another crop, excellent fruit this year, and Meriden had enough help that Bliven allowed himself on chilly mornings to lie up in the library on the chaise longue by the stove once more, with the newspapers, and books, and now with frequent callers.

  * * *

  * * *

  It was almost November, the harvests were in, the boys were long back at school, and more than once Bliven found himself thinking what a happy thing it would be if this was what life would be like after the Navy. Their Boston Atlas came to be the first newspaper that they read each day. The number for the twenty-sixth contained an article that caught his eye especially. It was on the second page, and it was distant news, reprinted from the paper in Cincinnati, but the headline was urgent and declamatory and demanded attention. “highly important from texas! war!!” The article had originated in New Orleans, dated October 13, 1835, less than two weeks previous. The news must have been brought by special courier to Cincinnati and been of signal importance.

  He looked up at a rustle in the doorway and saw Clarity enter, pushing their wheeled tea cart, laden with a silver service and cakes. After their return from the Pacific, they had sampled various teas from China before settling upon Young Hyson, picked green and tightly rolled without the violence of chopping and roasting. The first time he had tried it, Bliven recognized it as the same golden-yellow tea that Nathan Dunn had served him in China, pungent and grassy. It needed no milk or sugar, but Bliven had grown fond of it with a spoon of honey and just a dash of rum, and when necessary two spoons of honey to offset his reduced dosage of quinine water, which at Dr. Allison’s next visit he would inquire about eliminating altogether. The rum, of course, he had learned from Beecher in his youth, but in all the intervening years he had never betrayed the reverend’s confidence.

  “Tea, dearest,” she said.

  “Excellent. Thank you. Listen to this.” He repeated the article’s opening declamation and read further, “‘War in Texas. General Cos landed near the mouth of the Brazos with four hundred men.’” He mumbled, “And so on, so on,” omitting the journalist’s sources and obsequies, then read more deliberately again, “‘with the intention of joining the seven hundred federal troops stationed at San Antonio de Béxar, and marching upon the people in Texas. He has issued his proclamation, declaring that he will collect the revenue, disarm the citizens, establish a military government, and confiscate the property of the rebellious.’ And so on . . . There is more—ah. ‘Stephen F. Austin has written to several citizens of Nacogdoches, that a resort to arms is inevitable.’”

  “Oh, dear. That does sound ominous.”

  “I should write to Sam and make sure he is not in any danger.”

  Clarity huffed. “Knowing Mr. Bandy, he is likely in the very middle of it, or perhaps the cause of it.”

 
; “Oh, pooh. Well, it goes on. There are several dispatches attached to the article. Here is one, a letter sent by one of the American leaders. ‘War in defence of our rights, our oaths and our constitution, is inevitable in Texas! If volunteers from the United States will join their brethren in this section they will receive liberal bounties of land.’” Bliven looked up from his copy of the Atlas. “Well, there it is. That explains how news got here so fast, they want volunteers.”

  “Yes, I see.”

  “‘We have millions of acres of our best lands,’” he read on, “‘unchosen and unappropriated. Let each man come with a good rifle and one hundred rounds of ammunition—and come soon. Our war cry is “liberty or death.” Our principles are to support the constitution, and down with the usurper!! Your friend, Sam Houston.’”

  “Houston!” Clarity burst out laughing. “Was he not that fellow from Tennessee a few years ago? He was in Jackson’s entourage, I think, and utilized that association to win favor and become governor, then had to resign and flee the state after a marital scandal, am I right?”

  “Your memory is as accurate as it is unsparing.”

  “And now he turns up in Texas to lead an American rebellion? How convenient, after Jackson has failed for years to buy the province from Mexico!”

  Bliven smiled gently. “We should move to Washington. Your powers of forecast are much wanted in the State Department.”

  “Bah! If I were a man I would die before I would serve in Jackson’s government.”

  “Yes, a sentiment that I share, but you could prove useful in advising this new Whig Party in how to oppose him.”

  Clarity inclined her head in acknowledgment. “Thank you, dearest. But come, now, does the timing of all this not suggest that if there is trouble now among the Americans in Texas, it must be Jackson who is pulling the strings?”

  Bliven leaned back and took a long, satisfying sip of the Young Hyson. “That may be,” he said at last. “But look: that Austin fellow seems in on it, too, and he has been loyal to Mexico from the start, at least until they put him in jail for wanting Texas to have its own statehood within their confederation.”

  “True,” she said, “that was pretty extreme punishment for not much of an offense. That new president they have down there—what is his name?”

  “General Santa Anna.”

  “He sounds like a hard case.”

  “Yes. Do you remember reading about it? Last spring, he tore up their constitution and began ruling by personal decree. Several states rebelled against him and were crushed for their trouble. Santa Anna allowed his soldiers to sack one city near the capital, called Zacatecas, and they massacred thousands.”

  Clarity nodded and smiled. “Only you would remember the name of the place. You looked it up in the atlas, I’ll wager.”

  “Yes . . . yes, I did.”

  “But I do seem to recall it. And I imagine that the Americans in Texas did not take kindly to having their constitution taken away and replaced by military decree.”

  Bliven sipped more tea. “Right. So, if Jackson is indeed encouraging an American revolt in Texas, Santa Anna is most admirably playing into his hand.”

  Clarity sagged. “Jackson in Washington and Santa Anna in Mexico. My God, you can’t shake a stick on this continent without hitting a tyrant.”

  “Then let us shake no sticks.” Bliven rose and set his cup onto the cart and picked up a cake. “We shall have nothing to do with them, and just now this aging Cincinnatus is going out to the cider mill and see how Freddy is doing.”

  Further news items received in the coming week described in greater detail how, on the second of October, 1835, several dozen American colonists in Mexican Texas had opened fire on Mexican troops. It seemed that four years previous, the military garrison in San Antonio had lent the community of Gonzales, some fifty miles distant, a small cannon as an aid in defense against Indians. Now, as trouble in Texas threatened, the commander dispatched a company of dragoons to reclaim the gun so that it could not be used against the government if the discontent should grow into rebellion. When they arrived in Gonzales, they were met, on the opposite side of a coursing river, by a flag depicting the cannon, over the legend “come and take it.” It was the American colonists who crossed the river, turned the gun on the Mexican dragoons, and scattered them.

  Cos must have sailed long before news of this reached Mexico, and he would have learned of it as he landed his army to march to San Antonio and establish military authority. Volunteers were gathering from all over the American colonies in Mexico, and there seemed now to be no way to avoid a war. Bliven had written to Sam, but he would not expect any reply for at least two months. Of the American newspapers, by and large, those of a Democratic persuasion were elated at the news of an American revolution in Mexico and the accompanying prospect of adding that huge province to the mass of the United States. They pointed out the benighted dictatorship that governed Mexico and the forced conversion of the Americans allowed to live there to the Catholic religion, the denial of their basic political rights, and the staggering wealth that a place as vast and fertile as Texas would bring to the Union. The Whig newspapers, however, cautioned that this was likely the project of American planters in Texas, who had been planters in the South, meant to add slave territory to the Union. This, they pointed out, would wreck the carefully crafted balance between slave and free states in the United States Senate and would be a result that must not be countenanced.

  Again, he noticed, all the issues of the day seemed to reduce to slavery. There was no end to it. Ever since his last cruise to the Caribbean, it was omnipresent. That, and Catholicism, always seemed to have a hand in things, with Florida, with Beecher, and now this. At least he could assure himself that a year and a half previous he was not going out of his mind when he perceived that, everywhere he turned, he was confronted by matters of slavery and religion.

  There was a knock at the library door, and Polly entered when bidden. “Excuse me, Captain Putnam, there is a Captain Miller here who wishes to see you.”

  “What! Miller? Here? It cannot be, show him in!” He just had time to kick off the blanket and get to his feet. “Miller! My God! What in hell are you doing here? I had no word.”

  They shook hands for only a second before embracing like long-lost brothers once thought dead. “Oh, Putnam, it is good to see you. How are you? How is your health?”

  “I am in admirable health, sir. Why, did someone tell you that I died?”

  Miller laughed. “No. Where is your family? I wanted to meet them.”

  “The boys have gone off back to school; my wife is attending some charitable meeting at her church. Polly, bring tea! My God, Michael, what brings you out to these hinterlands?”

  Miller’s smile faded slowly, but his rich hazel-brown eyes with their flecks of green never shied from Bliven’s own. “We had best get it over with quick.” He reached within his tunic and withdrew a letter sealed with red wax.

  Bliven regarded it for a second. “Am I being dismissed from the service? If so, let me assure you that news will not be unwelcome. Polly! Forget the tea; bring brandy! Michael, we will celebrate.”

  “You may need both, Bliv. Let us sit down. It is true, I am on leave, on my way home to Philadelphia, and I would have stopped to see you in any case. But knowing this”—he handed over the sealed letter—“the Navy used me as their courier. I have orders for you: you are still Captain Putnam, United States Navy. They have allowed you a generous period of recuperation, and now they need you. It is a matter of both the gravest urgency and the greatest secrecy.”

  Bliven exhaled suddenly, trying to laugh it off, but uncertain how most appropriately to respond. “Will we be back together? That would be some compensation.”

  “No. They sent me because they know we are friends.”

  “But where am I going, and on what ship?”

&
nbsp; “I cannot tell you. At this moment your orders are to report, posthaste, to Pittsburgh. There is a riverboat there, the Zenobia. She is scheduled to depart in five days, but if you are not there in five days, they will wait for you. You will be a passenger on this boat all the way down to New Orleans. Your ship, and your further orders, will be waiting for you there.”