14 In the Enemy’s Camp

I felt that it was time to leave New York for Boston, as I had been instructed not to linger in any city, at least on the Northern journey, and though there were several things tempting me to stay longer in New York, which I liked, I arranged to depart on the second morning after the reception to the Pendletons. Courtenay and Mercer adjusted their affairs that they might go with me, for in such troubled times, in the divided state of the country, with plotters hovering about, we saw the need of good strong arms and loyal hearts, which each of us was confident that the others had.

I said good-bye to Marian, and again I was tempted to speak to her words which I believed might not be unwelcome in other times, but the command of self came to my aid and they were unsaid.

Not caring to risk the long trip by schooner, with its doubts and delays and currents and calms, we adhered to our regular plan of travel from Washington, and bought seats on the stagecoach for Boston. These coaches were of lighter make and build than those on which we had come up from the South, and one left New York every alternate morning, Sunday omitted, for Boston, as many running in the opposite direction.

It was with the deepest interest that we entered the New England country, the fame of which has spread throughout the world because of the very strong and peculiar characteristics of its people, their industry, their thrift, their religion, and the wonderful divergence sometimes existing between its preaching and its practice, said to be greater there than anywhere else on the globe; their singular inventive genius, which was already changing the mechanical world, practically unchanged before for thousands of years; and the high esteem in which they held literary pursuits and men of letters, most of us of the West being a little afraid of the latter.

After rejoicing in the sunshine and the fresh winds we looked about at our company of fellow-travellers. As we soon discovered, they were chiefly New Englanders returning home, and not New Yorkers going to New England. They were mostly a sad, sober lot in looks, but quite willing to talk and to talk about many things. They gave us much fatherly advice, which we took in a childlike spirit, when they learned that we were from the South and West, suggesting that we abandon our wild, irreverent ways and barbaric modes of thought and imitate the good fathers of New England in all things, thus finding a spiritual and worldly prosperity, they themselves neglecting neither kind. We promised.

We were well into the Connecticut country when we took on a woman passenger for New Haven, at which town our coach intended to stop for the night. She was a strapping big woman, at least sixty-five years old, with the face of a grenadier, barring the whiskers and mustache, and a figure of great strength and activity. Her complexion was very red and was rimmed around by white hair. Her long, vigorous stride, as she approached the coach, and the ease with which she climbed into it increased her martial appearance. She took the seat beside me, which was the only one then vacant, but remained silent, taking no notice of the talk and staring straight ahead like those who are busy with their own thoughts and see nothing.

The conversation was naturally of the expected war and its probable consequences. One could not escape the talk of war in those days, if not about a war of our own then about some one else’s, for nearly all. the world was fighting the shadow of the twin evils—Bonaparte and England, being over everything.

In New York we had some friends who were willing to share with us the dangers of war for the sake of honour and an independent national existence, but here we had none; the New Englanders, who had brought on the Revolutionary struggle, who had proven themselves so stern and enduring in the conflict, who hardly knew what it was, farmers though they were, to be beaten in the open field by the best regulars of Europe, had now turned to sheep, and the potion which had caused the evil transformation was money. The New Englanders had a great trade and commerce spread throughout the world; they were the best, the most daring, and the most enterprising of all sailors, and with that strange commingling of the New England nature, as I have seen it, which loves God and loves money in about equal parts, they were prepared to endure any dishonour rather than imperil the commerce which was enriching them so fast. I like the dollar, and I know its value. I do not think it should be despised, and a pretence that it is despised is usually an affectation or evidence of an unsound mind; but I believe that a nation should be ready to make a sacrifice even of its prosperity for the sake of what is right and just.

But we three, though we talked our best, were no match for our New Englanders, who had the advantage of age and numbers and could quote innumerable doctrines for which we had no reply, though as sure as ever that we were right. Thus we wrangled for a long time.

“Sir,” said one elder at length with great emphasis, “the men of New England will never be led into any such wild and ruinous measure as this proposed war.”

“Did you say the men of New England?” asked the old woman beside me.

They were the first words that she had spoken, and her voice was deep and harsh like a man’s. Her accent was on the word “men.”

“Certainly, madame,” replied the elder politely.

“Where are they?”

“Where are they? I do not understand you?”

“Where are the men of New England of whom you speak? I live in New England and I have not seen one of them for a long time; I have not heard one of them speak. We used to have plenty of them thirty or forty years ago, but they have all emigrated to the West and South, and now we have left only children and old women like myself and you, sir.”

A heavy and solemn silence fell upon us. I could have embraced that woman then and there. Remember that she was old enough to be my mother, almost my grandmother. Still I did not dare.

“Madame,” said the elder after a while, and timidly, “your remark was violent.”

“A woman might think so,” she replied.

“But peaceful people are opposed to war.”

“They were not in ’76.”

The elder again relapsed into silence. The martial lady imitated his example and did not speak again until we reached New Haven, where she left the coach with a curt adieu, followed, however, by the deep respect of us three.

On the evening of the third day we approached Boston, famous for valour, piety, and good business, all three of us looking about with the deepest interest, as the glorious memories of the Revolution clustered thickly there, and no city, not even New York or Philadelphia, had a larger place in our minds than Boston. We alighted at the Sun Tavern, which you may know is in Faneuil Square, near Faneuil Hall of patriotic fame, and slept soundly in an atmosphere which seemed to be composed of the same elements as that of the other cities we had visited. Yet we felt the next morning that, despite ourselves, a certain primness had left upon us a mark sufficient to be noticed by each of the others, and sufficient, too, to make us feel a trifle constrained, as if we had put on new clothes that did not fit us.

Breakfast finished, we followed our custom of seeing the sights of a town as soon as we could after our arrival, and walked about the streets of Boston with the greatest diligence, as there was much to see. We visited all the cradles of liberty—that is, the places where independence was born—and were surprised to find that they were so numerous. We saw Faneuil Hall, the Old South Church, the Old North Church, the queer old Feather Store, and the Province House, where the royal governors used to live, with the Indian on the weather vane ready to shoot his arrow, the house where the Boston tea party met, and we walked three times around the stump of the old Liberty tree, with the Liberty pole planted in the centre of it. Then, feeling as full as we could hold of patriotism and ready to whip the universe if it needed a whipping, we went off in search of our friend Mr. Jonathan Starbuck, once wild sailor boy of the Bon Homme Richard, now pious merchant of years and wealth. His invitation to call upon him in Boston had been given with such heartiness that we were sure he would be glad to see us, despite our knowledge that invitations to visit given far away from home are not always to be accepted in too literal a spirit. But we were not mistaken in him, for, though surrounded in his warehouse by boxes and bales to such an extent that we could see only his perspiring face projecting above them, he reached each of us his hand in turn across the barrier of merchandise, and shook ours with strength and heartiness.

“But remember one thing, lads,” he said after first greetings, “I am a man of peace and this is a town of peace.”

“Peace and trade, peace and profit,” said Courtenay.

“Put it that way if you choose,” said the merchant, “but remember, none of your fiery Western talk here. We feel very friendly toward England, nor do we want any quarrel with France either.”

He spoke in much seriousness, and I, for one, having seen the value of silence resolved to be chary and careful in my speech.

He asked us where we were putting up, and when Mercer told him at the Sun Tavern he seemed to be pleased, and his eye twinkled as if the reply had put him in mind of something.

“Have you brought your best clothes with you?” he asked.

“We never travel without them,” said Courtenay.

“You show wisdom,” he replied, “and it will be convenient for you now. You are three fire eaters from the West and South, mad for war with Britain, and you wish to know something about the temper of the people of New England; there is to be a banquet at your tavern to-night, and I am to attend it. I can take you with me, and as you will hear things there that will interest and instruct you, I shall be pleased to do so if you will promise to conduct yourselves as if you had been born and bred in Boston itself.”

We promised with eagerness, despite the proviso in his invitation, and my general instruction to seek other than public men, and we besought him to tell us something more about the affair, but he would not, contenting himself with saying that our time would be well spent, his eye meantime lighted up by the same twinkle which I had observed when he asked us to be of his company at the feast.

“Be sure that you put on your choicest clothes and your best dignity, for some fine people will be there,” he said as we left him.

There was nothing to fear upon that point, since we three were determined to make our best appearance in this city, in which people looked at us in the critical and chilly way, and with that intention well to the fore we hastened back to the Sun Tavern, where we devoted the remainder of the afternoon to our preparations.

Soon after supper, elderly men of fine presence and careful and costly apparel, whom we took to be people of consequence, though their names were unknown to us, began to gather at the Sun Tavern. We heard them addressed as judge and doctor, but we remained in ignorance until our friend, Mr. Starbuck, came. He was pleased with our appearance.

“You will do me credit,” he said; “you certainly will—that is, if you will hold your tongues.”

He was in fine attire himself, and we followed him to the great parlour of the tavern, where a long table was spread richly for the banquet and a company of at least twenty men were gathered, to many of whom we were introduced. It was not the fighting sailor of the Bon Homme Richard who introduced us, but the portly merchant of Boston, and as the names were called we saw that we were right when we supposed these people to be of distinction, though the distinction was not altogether of the kind that we admired or liked. We were surrounded by that body of men known as the Essex Junto, afterward the leaders in the infamous and treasonable Hartford Convention; a group learned and of extreme respectability in private life, but as untrue to their country, to public interest, and to public duty as anybody could well be, so I believed then and so I believe now, and so all the historians say. How true it is that men of learning, position, and luxury think so much of those things that they lose sight of the right when it may bring hardship with it!

“Mr. Pickering, my young friends, Mr. Ten Broeck, of Kentucky; Mr. Mercer, of Tennessee; and Mr. Courtenay, of South Carolina. They wish to know the real East, and I have brought them here that they might see it.”

We were bowing to Timothy Pickering, the great Federalist of Massachusetts, a man who considered all people of the West barbarians, and who seemed to be surprised that we wore clothes of the cut and quality of his own and comported ourselves with becoming dignity. He was nearer seventy than sixty then, with a fine face and a head clad only on the back with hair. He said, a trifle dryly, not seeking to conceal the satire in it, that he hoped we would return properly enlightened concerning the Eastern state of mind, and we could only reply to a man so much older and more distinguished than ourselves that we were sure we would be, passing on then with our patron to be presented to others. We found ourselves bowing, a moment later, to Theophilus Parsons, the Chief Justice of Massachusetts, and after him Harrison Gray Otis, the President of the State Senate; George Cabot, the financier; Theodore Sedgwick; John Lowell, both senior and junior; one of the Griswolds of Connecticut; and others whose names were known and hated by us of the West—as rank a group of Federalists as could be gathered between the four seas that rim America. I kicked Courtenay’s toe.

“We are in the enemy’s camp,” I whispered. “Be careful.”

“We need to be,” he replied.

Our presence attracted much attention and curiosity, as was natural, we being so much younger than the others and coming from a portion of the country which was then distinctly hostile to New England. They seemed to be glad that we were there, as it gave them an opportunity to instruct us, and, moreover, they could badger us a bit, neither of which they neglected to do, though they were very nice and delicate in their bestowal of such attentions, compelling us to admire the fineness and polish of their manners. Courtenay had acquired something of this personal finish in his own Charleston, where there was a cultivated and literary society, though small; but we were unused to it in the West, where the manners that we valued highly were of the large, open kind, accompanied by long sentences delivered in a loud voice, and men’s faces were always ruddy or seamed with much living in the open, a characteristic that they preserve to this day. But these were men of books and the study room, and their faces were thin and white, and their bodies looked lean and weak in comparison with the great, rugged beings to whom I was accustomed in the West. I don’t think they learned from their books the policy that so nearly brought our country to ruin, but must have evolved it from their own desires and objection to anything that might disturb their personal comfort.

They were not at all averse to talking before us; in truth, seemed rather glad of it, wishing their opinions in all their virulence to be known afar, and thinking we would prove faithful reporters of what we heard. So we listened to much abuse of Mr. Jefferson’s Republican party, which everybody in his heart knows was the National party, representing the thoughts and the just aspirations of the United States, and I was forced to reply several times as best I could to the taunting question how Mr. Madison proposed to carry on his war when he succeeded in declaring it.

“We will whip old England first, and then New England,” I said at last, in some exasperation to Mr. Justice Parsons.

He laughed, as if the first were much easier than the second, and continued to badger us. We also made the original discovery among those learned men that New England alone had fought and won the Revolution, and she had permitted the Middle and Southern States to share with her in its benefits. They seemed to have forgotten the thousands of Virginians and other Southerners who marched hundreds of miles at the first cry for aid from Massachusetts and helped to drive the British out of Boston, and the shiploads of corn that came free even from far North Carolina to feed the starving Bostonians. They had forgotten all these things, and hundreds of others like them, and remembered only that New England had fought everything and done everything, and would continue to think and to do everything; other people were superfluous; in which New England has been vastly fooled.

“It’s time to be seated at table,” said Mr. Pickering. “The chief guest of the evening, as you know, is detained at an earlier and somewhat similar entertainment, but we are not to wait for him.”

So we sat down. I had a very fair place, near the foot of the table, hidden somewhat though by a curve of a wall, with Mr. Starbuck on one side of me and a Connecticut Griswold on the other. I had pricked up my ears at the announcement of a chief guest to come later, and, supposing it to be the Governor of the State at least, looked forward with interest to his coming.

But those men knew how to choose a dinner if not an honest political policy, and eating their good food my heart warmed toward them a little. Yet I fear that a nation is in decay when it begins to make a god of its stomach. But the Connecticut man beside me did not permit any excessive growth of sympathy on my part, since he took occasion to ask many questions about us Western people in a supercilious way, as if we were really not worth it, but he must talk about us as a matter of courtesy to me. He seemed to take the greatest offence at the manners of the West, and our lack of that polish and knowledge of small social detail which in his opinion added so much distinction to the courts of Europe and which New England hoped to imitate, humbly and afar, it is true, but still to imitate; as if men like ours of Kentucky, who had been forced to spend half their lives axe in hand cutting down the forest, and the other half rifle in hand fighting wild beasts and wilder Indians, could become dandies and beaux or ought to become such. I replied with as much eloquence and logic as I could, and we were deep in attack and defence, thinking not much of other things, when there was a bustle near the head of the table, and Mr. Pickering, who seemed to be master of ceremonies, called out in a loud voice:

“Major Gilbert Northcote, our guest, gentlemen!”

There stood my kinsman, in his finest apparel, easy, triumphant, bowing with infinite grace to the guests who had risen to receive him. I rose with the others, half mechanically, though I supposed there was nothing else to do, and looked at him, surprised at his appearance as guest of honour in a company of Americans.

His attire, in cut and quality, was much like mine—I wore the new clothes that had been made for me in New York—but brighter in colour, and he also carried a richly chased and enamelled sword at his side, after a custom passing away. He was a large, fine man, whose manners were impressive, and he showed plainly that he felt the warmth of his reception. I remembered then Mr. Pickering’s early allusion to the guest of the evening, but I had not dreamed that it could be Major Northcote, who, if one is to speak bluntly, was a caught spy upon us, driven out of Washington, and deserving the suspicion and dislike of all honest Americans, but bearing himself now with dignity and satisfaction, as if he were the best among many patriots. I looked at Mr. Starbuck, but I felt sure that this was the result of no plan of his; very likely he would remember now the face of the British officer who had been with us on our travels, but he had not heard his name nor did he know that he was a kinsman of mine.

“Friends,” said one, “a cheer for Major Gilbert Northcote, the gallant Englishman who has been made a martyr by those barbarians down there at Washington because he is a gentleman and a true lover of his great and glorious country.”

Then they applauded him, though some of them may have thought that this was putting it rather strong, and he looked around the room, his glance falling upon me. He showed no surprise, but he seemed to threaten me for the first time. I felt sure that something unpleasant was coming. Courtenay and Mercer looked at me in amazement.

The word martyr seemed to have caught the fancy of the guests for they repeated it, and after the major had settled in his chair and some dishes and the wine had been passed, Otis asked him to tell us about it. There was no slackness on the part of my kinsman, and rising, that he might be seen and heard the better, he gave me again that swift glance of menace and began his narration, which was so far from the facts that I was astonished at his invention and his boldness in using it, and yet it was told in the most convincing manner. More than once I admired this man’s power over himself, though I now saw it used for an evil purpose.

He told of his residence at Washington as a British official, the sudden and mortal prejudice the Government had taken against him because he was not its admirer, the way in which it then proceeded to spy upon him and to hound him, and at last how it had opened his private mail; made some absurd charges against him, and demanded his departure from Washington, a place that it had given him the greatest pleasure of his life to leave.

They received this faithful narration with applause and laughter—applause for him, laughter for the President and his Cabinet and the men who were true to their duty. My cousin put one hand upon the hilt of his sword, the other upon the table, and looked around as if he would mark the different degree of applause he received from each. So looking, his eyes met mine for the third time, and he started as if it had been the first. Then he gazed at me in a cold and arrogant fashion, showing plainly that he meditated some stroke, and waving his hand for silence said:

“Friends, I told you that I was maligned and persecuted because I happened to love my own country better than the one in which I was a stranger. I have told you also of their plot to defame me, but I have not told you that the chief instrument in the plot was a young man who was more than a spy—a traitor, in fact—for he was my own blood relative.”

A murmur of condemnation arose, and some said aloud, “Shame!” “What a wretch!” I waited with interest, and also, I think, with some degree of coolness to hear what further he had to say, and I saw that his plan of action was the one likely to be most effective with the men present there. He was not looking at me, but swept the table with his eye, as if he would hold them all in the utmost attention, and I was sure that not one looked away from him.

“You say ‘shame’ rightfully,” he continued, “and you call him a wretch truly, for I can not shield him, even if he be my own cousin; but, most amazing of all, such are the swagger and insolence of this young man, he is present here to-night among you, at this table, your guest, the spy of the Washington Government upon you, your words, your actions.”

They cried out to know what he meant, who was the man? He levelled his straight, accusing finger at me, as if I were some great criminal, and his red face blazed.

“There he is,” he said, pointing at me in a manner that was indignant and looked most real; “Philip Ten Broeck, my cousin, who has sought to ruin me, who has exposed me to countless humiliations and mortifications, the employee of that Swiss-American, Gallatin—a spy sent here to take back a false and malicious report of you.”

Everybody looked at me, and many said things which burned in my ears, bringing me to a feeling of discomfort, but I was not going to let myself be overpowered, although his sudden change of manner, which formerly had been so conciliatory, was disconcerting. I was preparing to speak, not sure, however, what tone I should adopt, when they began to accuse Mr. Starbuck, inasmuch as he had brought me there, and demanded of him the meaning of an action which seemed so strange. His face, too, had flushed and there was a flash in his eye which betokened rising anger. He sprang to his feet, and I saw that the portly Boston merchant had become the wild sailor of the Bon Homme Richard again. Just then I liked the change.

“This young gentleman, Mr. Ten Broeck, and his comrades came here at my invitation,” he said, “and with the knowledge and consent of most of you. That he is a spy, or his friends are spies, I do not believe. Any charges that you make against him or them, you make against me too.”

He was very angry now, and a glass broke with a crash under his hand. His wrathful little speech put a new phase upon the matter, and some called out to me to say what I had to say for myself, which I was glad to do, waiting only for the opportunity hitherto denied to me.

Anger and conviction of right often spur one who may not be an orator into a sort of rude eloquence, and the words came to me so fast that I had nothing to do but to arrange them in proper order. I admitted that the man sitting at the head of the table beside the president of the feast was my cousin, a fact that I could not help, and about which I was never consulted, and of which I was now ashamed; but he, and not I, was the spy; that he had been driven from Washington because he had been engaged in a hostile business; that I, not he, had been persecuted, and that he, not I, was the persecutor. I went on to tell the whole tale, to which they listened with great attention, though I noticed a sneer or an incredulous smile on the face of more than one. Major Northcote had sat down and did not seek to interrupt me, but looked at me with his old ironical smile, which now said plainly: “You are a boy and you are not a match for me in the game of intrigue.”

“What do you say to this, Major Northcote?” asked Mr. Pickering when I had finished.

“A fabrication,” he replied; “very skilfully and cleverly done, I will admit, but still a fabrication. Ask him if he is not travelling in the East in behalf of the American Government.”

They looked at me, and I am afraid I reddened a little, for I was travelling as he said, though he had insinuated and managed to put an entirely false meaning upon my action.

“Certainly,” I replied, “but not as a spy of the kind you mean. If you do not believe me, and want to get the facts about Major Northcote, send a trustworthy man of your own to Washington and let him investigate.”

But my partial admission seemed to operate as a proof of guilt.

“We must request you and your friends, Mr. Mercer and Mr. Courtenay, to withdraw,” said Mr. Pickering.

“No request is needed,” said Mercer; “we take great pleasure in withdrawing, and hope that we will not be contaminated by the company we have inadvertently kept. We may not possess as much wisdom as you gentlemen, but we do not give aid, comfort, and approval to a known enemy, and we hope never to be the traitors that you are.”

They received this little speech, made in the legal way that Mercer affected sometimes, in dead silence, and we rose, all three of us, burning with anger at the situation in which we had been placed.

“I go with you, gentlemen,” said Jonathan Starbuck, rising with us.

“Mr. Starbuck was mistaken in his young friends,” said one of the Federalists, Tories rather, suavely; “and as we all know it was an honest mistake, we would prefer for him to stay.”

“Mr. Starbuck was not mistaken in his young friends,” said the veteran calmly, “but he was mistaken in his old friends. When I came here I had no idea of the relationship Major Northcote bore to Mr. Ten Broeck, and since I have heard the tales of both I prefer to believe Mr. Ten Broeck’s. I think you have let party feelings go too far, and I will have nothing more to do with such plotting against the Government.”

My heart warmed with a great glow toward him, and we stalked out of the room, Mr. Starbuck at our head, the others saying nothing, though Major Northcote followed me with his ironical look, now showing a gleam of triumph also, but so greatly were we upheld by the companionship and approval of Mr. Starbuck that we did not mind, and a little sense of elation mingled with our other feelings.

We went to our room, and Mr. Starbuck followed us there, showing plainly that he was in great trouble of mind and fearing that we would blame him for having led us into an unpleasant trap. I did not like to see an old man begging the pardon of those who were young enough to be his sons, and we disclaimed any feeling of offence against him with all the vigour and emphasis at our command. Thus talking we pacified him, and feeling in a better humour with ourselves we four took a warm drink together and swore eternal loyalty to the Constitution, the republic, the only true Government on earth, and to the President at Washington, whoever he might be, whether Federalist, Republican, or something that was neither.

On the morning of the second day thereafter we had the pleasure of reading of the disgraceful conduct of three young men from the West—names omitted, in accordance with the custom of the times—at a private banquet given by some of the most distinguished and worthy men of Massachusetts, where they had called their elders and betters foul names, had abused the honest fame of New England, and at last had become so turbulent that it was necessary to put them out of the room with force. But our names were not there, and we did not care.

“Hereafter I shall keep away from banquets,” said Mercer, “since they bring one only trouble and indigestion.”

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