In the Days of Poor Richard Part 27

BOOK TWO

CHAPTER XIII

THE FERMENT

On his voyage to New York, Jack wrote long letters to Margaret and to Doctor Franklin, which were deposited in the Post-Office on his arrival, the tenth of March. He observed a great change in the spirit of the people. They were no longer content with words. The ferment was showing itself in acts of open and violent disorder. The statue of George III, near the Battery, was treated to a volley of decayed eggs, in the evening of his arrival. This hot blood was due to the effort to prevent free speech in the colonies and the proposal to send political prisoners to England for trial.

Jack took the first boat to Albany and found Solomon working on the Irons farm. In his diary he tells of the delightful days of rest he enjoyed with his family. Solomon had told them of the great adventure but Jack would have little to say of it, having no pride in that achievement.

Soon the scout left on a mission for the Committee of Safety to distant settlements in the great north bush.

"I'll be spendin' the hull moon in the wilderness," he said to Jack.

"Goin' to Virginny when I get back, an' I'll look fer ye on the way down."

Jack set out for Philadelphia the day after Solomon left. He stopped at Kinderhook on his way down the river and addressed its people on conditions in England. A young Tory interrupted his remarks. At the barbecue, which followed, this young man was seized and punished by a number of stalwart girls who removed his collar and jacket by force and covered his head and neck with mola.s.ses and the fuzz of cat tails.

Jack interceded for the Tory and stopped the proceeding.

"My friends, we must control our anger," he said. "Let us not try to subdue tyranny by using it ourselves."

Everywhere he found the people in such a temper that Tories had to hold their peace or suffer punishment. At the office he learned that his most important letters had failed to pa.s.s the hidden censors.h.i.+p of mail in England. He began, at once, to write a series of articles which hastened the crisis. The first of them was a talk with Franklin, which told how his mail had been tampered with; that no letter had come to his hand through the Post-Office which had not been opened with apparent indifference as to the evidence of its violation. The Doctor's words regarding free speech in America and the proposal to try the bolder critics for treason were read and discussed in every household from the sea to the mountains and from Maine to Florida.

"Grievances can not be redressed unless they are known and they can not be known save through complaints and pet.i.tions," the philosopher had said. "If these are taken as affronts and the messengers punished, the vent of grief is stopped up--a dangerous thing in any state. It is sure to produce an explosion.

"An evil magistrate with the power to punish for words would be armed with a terrible weapon.

"Augustus Caesar, with the avowed purpose of preserving Romans from defamation, made libel subject to the penalties of treason.

Thenceforward every man's life hung by a thread easily severed by some lying informer.

"Soon it was resolved by all good judges of law that whoever should insinuate the least doubt of Nero's preeminence in the n.o.ble art of fiddling should be deemed a traitor. Grief became treason and one lady was put to death for bewailing the fate of her murdered son. In time, silence became treason, and even a look was considered an overt act."

These words of the wise philosopher strengthened the spirit of the land for its great ordeal.

Jack described the prejudice of the Lords who, content with their ignorance, spurned every effort to inform them of the conditions in America.

"And this little tail is wagging the great dog of England, most of whose people believe in the justice of our complaints," he wrote.

The young man's work had set the bells ringing and they were the bells of revolt. The arrival of General Gage at Boston in May, to be civil governor and commander-in-chief for the continent, and the blockade of the port twenty days later, compelling its population who had been fed by the sea to starve or subsist on the bounty of others, drove the most conservative citizens into the open. Parties went out Tory hunting.

Every suspected man was compelled to declare himself and if incorrigible, was sent away. Town meetings were held even under the eyes of the King's soldiers and no tribunal was allowed to sit in any court-house. At Salem, a meeting was held behind locked doors with the Governor and his Secretary shouting a proclamation through its keyhole, declaring it to be dissolved. The meeting proceeded to its end, and when the citizens filed out, they had invited the thirteen colonies to a General Congress in Philadelphia.

It was Solomon Binkus who conveyed the invitation to Pennsylvania and Virginia. He had gone on a second mission to Springfield and Boston and had been in the meeting at Salem with General Ward. Another man carried that historic call to the colonies farther south. In five weeks, delegates were chosen, and early in August, they were traveling on many different roads toward the Quaker City. Crowds gathered in every town and village they pa.s.sed. Solomon, who rode with the Virginia delegation, told Jack that he hadn't heard so much noise since the Injun war.

"They was poundin' the bells, an shootin' cannons everywhere," he declared. "Men, women and childern crowded 'round us an' split their lungs yellin'. They's a streak o' sore throats all the way from Alexandry to here."

Solomon and his young friend met John Adams on the street. The distinguished Ma.s.sachusetts lawyer said to Jack when the greetings were over:

"Young man, your pen has been not writing, but making history."

"Does it mean war?" Jack queried.

Mr. Adams wiped his brow with his handkerchief and said; "People in our circ.u.mstances have seldom grown old or died in their beds."

"We ought to be getting ready," said Jack.

"And we are doing little but eat and drink and shout and bl.u.s.ter," Mr.

Adams answered. "We are being entertained here with meats and curds and custards and jellies and tarts and floating islands and Madeira wine. It is for you to induce the people of Philadelphia to begin to save. We need to learn Franklin's philosophy of thrift."

Colonel Was.h.i.+ngton was a member of the Virginia delegation. Jack wrote that he was in uniform, blue coat and red waistcoat and breeches; that he was a big man standing very erect and about six feet, two inches in height; that his eyes were blue, his complexion light and rather florid, his face slightly pock-marked, his brown hair tinged with gray; that he had the largest hands, save those of Solomon Binkus, that he had ever seen. His letter contains these informing words:

"I never quite realized the full meaning of the word 'dignity' until I saw this man and heard his deep rich voice. There was a kind of magnificence in his manner and person when he said:

"'I will raise one thousand men toward the relief of Boston and subsist them at my own expense.'

"That was all he said and it was the most eloquent speech made in the convention. It won the hearts of the New Englanders. Thereafter, he was the central figure in that Congress of trusted men. It is also evident that he will be the central figure on this side of the ocean when the storm breaks. Next day, he announced that he was, as yet, opposed to any definite move toward independence. So the delegates contented themselves with a declaration of rights opposing importations and especially slaves."

When the Congress adjourned October twenty-sixth to meet again on the tenth of May, there was little hope of peace among those who had had a part in its proceedings.

Jack, who knew the conditions in England, knew also that war would come soon, and freely expressed his views.

2

Letters had come from Margaret giving him the welcome news that Lionel Clarke had recovered and announcing that her own little revolution had achieved success. She and her father would be taking s.h.i.+p for Boston in December. Jack had urged that she try to induce him to start at once, fearing that December would be too late, and so it fell out.

When the news of the Congress reached London, the King made new plans.

He began to prepare for war. Sir Benjamin Hare, who was to be the first deputy of General Gage, was a.s.signed to a brigade and immediately put his regiments in training for service overseas. He had spent six months in America and was supposed, in England, to have learned the art of bush fighting. Such was the easy optimism of the cheerful young Minister of War, and his confreres, in the House of Lords. After the arrival of the _King William_ at Gravesend on the eighth of December, no English women went down to the sea in s.h.i.+ps for a long time.

Thereafter the water roads were thought to be only for fighting men.

Jack's hope was that armed resistance would convince the British of their folly.

"A change of front in the Parliament would quickly end the war," he was wont to say. Not that he quite believed it. But young men in love are apt to say things which they do not quite believe. In February, 1775, he gave up his work on _The Gazette_ to aid in the problem of defense.

Solomon, then in Albany, had written that he was going the twentieth of that month on a mission to the Six Nations of The Long House.

It was unusual for the northern tribes to hold a council in winter--especially during the moon of the hard snow, but the growing bitterness of the white men had alarmed them. They had learned that another and greater war was at hand and they were restless for fear of it. The quarrel was of no concern to the red man, but he foresaw the deadly peril of choosing the wrong side. So the wise men of the tribes were coming into council.

"If we fight England, we got to have the Injuns on our side er else Tryon County won't be no healthy place fer white folks," Solomon wrote.

"I wished you could go 'long with me an' show 'em the kind o' shootin'

we'll do ag'in' the English an' tell 'em they could count the leaves in the bush easier than the men in the home o' the south wind, an' all good shooters. Put on a big, two-story bearskin cap with a red ribband tied around it an' bring plenty o' gewgaws. I don't care what they be so long as they s.h.i.+ne an' rattle. I cocalate you an' me could do good work."

Immediately the young man packed his box and set out by stage on his way to the North. Near West Point, he left the sleigh, which had stopped for repairs, and put on his skates and with the wind mostly at his back, made Albany early that evening on the river roof. He found the family and Solomon eating supper, with the table drawn close to the fireside, it being a cold night.

"I think that St. Nicholas was never more welcome in any home or the creator of more happiness than I was that night," he wrote in a letter to Margaret, sent through his friend Doctor Franklin. "What a glow was in the faces of my mother and father and Solomon Binkus--the man who was so liked in London! What cries of joy came from the children!

They clung to me and my little brother, Josiah, sat on my knee while I ate my sausage and flapjacks and maple mola.s.ses. I shall never forget that supper hour for, belike, I was hungry enough to eat an ox. You would never see a homecoming like that in England, I fancy. Here the family ties are very strong. We have no opera, no theater, no b.a.l.l.s and only now and then a simple party of neighborhood folk. We work hard and are weary at night. So our pleasures are few and mostly those shared in the family circles. A little thing, such as a homecoming, or a new book, brings a joy that we remember as long as we live. I hope that you will not be appalled by the simplicity of my father's home and neighborhood. There is something very sweet and beautiful in it, which, I am sure, you would not fail to discover.

"Philadelphia and Boston are more like the cities you know. They are getting ambitious and are beginning to ape the manners of England but, even there, you would, find most people like my own. The attempts at grandeur are often ludicrous. In Philadelphia, I have seen men sitting at public banquets without coat or collar and drinking out of bottles."

Next day, Jack and Solomon set out with packs and snow-shoes for The Long House, which was the great highway of the Indians. It cut the province from the Hudson to Lake Erie. In summer it was roofed by the leaves of the forest. The chief villages of the Six Tribes were on or near it. This trail was probably the ancient route of the cloven hoof on its way to the prairies--the thoroughfare of the elk and the buffalo. How wisely it was chosen time has shown, for now it is covered with iron rails, the surveyors having tried in vain to find a better one.