16 Before the President Again
A vague plan had taken me in such a hurry to Fraunce’s Tavern, and on my way I tried to think out its details, though I could not make them fit into each other quite to my satisfaction. I suppose that some people were surprised at the appearance of a large young man striding so rapidly through the streets, and I brushed roughly against two or three, but I had time to spare only for a hasty apology and no explanations. When I asked at the tavern if Cyrus Pendleton and his daughter, Miss Pendleton, were still there I was informed that they were, and, to my joy, that Miss Pendleton at that moment was in the house.
I sent to Marian a request that I might see her, and she came down at once to the tavern parlour, tall and beautiful, ruddy with strength and health.
“Why, Philip!” she exclaimed. “Have the Puritans driven you out of Boston so soon?”
Then she noticed the excitement in my face and added:
“What has happened? What have you seen?”
I told her as quickly and as succinctly as I could of the scene that I had witnessed in the harbour, passing lightly over the attack upon myself and describing the anger and excitement it was creating in the city. Her face became pale.
“It seems to me to be just cause for war,” I said, “and if we don’t fight for this we’ll have to fight for something worse later on. I wish to go to Washington at once and carry the first news of it to the President and his Cabinet; all I want is a good excuse for going.”
“And tell them everything, Philip,” she cried, her eyes flashing and a flush replacing the pallor of her face. “Tell them if we do not fight we are cowards and worse, and do not deserve to be a nation! Tell them if we don’t fight we won’t be one much longer! Tell them if the men won’t fight, the women will!”
She had risen up and stood before me, the red of excitement and indignation dyeing her cheeks and even her brow, her eyes flashing with a spirit which the women of our country will never lose. I had never seen her look more glorious, so full was she of fire and passion, but I was hardly qualified for the role which in her excitement she called upon me to play.
“I don’t think I’ll say those things, however true they may be, to President Madison and his Cabinet, at least not in that way, Marian,” I said. “I guess I’d better be polite to the President.”
She laughed and coloured a little, and protested that she did not mean exactly that, and asked me to tell it all over again, which I did without diminishing in any way the sinister brutality of the details, and while we were yet talking Cyrus Pendleton came in raging, his Indian-like face making me think of what a great chief’s ought to be in the fury of a desperate battle. In his wrath he had forgotten his dislike of seeing me with Marian.
“Have you heard of this, Phil?” he asked in a loud angry voice, never saying what the “this” was.
“Yes, I brought the news of it,” I replied, knowing well what he meant, his excitement soothing and calming my own.
“Phil, we can’t stand this!”
“No, we can’t stand it!”
“The Government must fight.”
“I want to carry the news, while it’s hot, to Washington.”
He looked at me with approval.
“Then you are the right man come at the right time,” he said. “Lieutenant-Governor Clinton is here. He and the mayor are talking about this outrage, and they are agreed that the national Government should be informed at once. Come with me, and you shall be their messenger.”
Bidding Marian a hasty adieu, I hurried with him to the City Hall, and on the way noticed that the public uproar and excitement were increasing. The populace, always ready to resent a national affront, would not stand this latest outrage, and was crying for retaliation. British officers on shore had fled to their ships for safety, and it is only just to say that some of them were ashamed of their country’s overbearing insolence and reckless guilt, qualities which Great Britain seemed then to have concentrated against us.
I was introduced to the mayor and Mr. Clinton by Mr. Pendleton, whose word carried weight, and as I could show, moreover, that I had been employed in Mr. Gallatin’s office it was no trouble for me to secure the transmission of the despatches. In truth, I seemed, as Mr. Pendleton said, to be the right man come at the right time. The letters were made ready at once, intrusted to me in a sealed package directed to the President, and I departed, with their injunction to hasten to Washington and beware of mischances.
In the streets again I found that the excitement had not been allayed; on the contrary, the tumult was increasing, and a crowd of men shaking sticks were singing patriotic songs and shouting, “Down with Britain!” If the men in the street had possessed the power the Guerriere would have been blown into splinters within the next five minutes. Some of the merchants were closing their stores, and the people in carriages were hastening away as if they would escape from a mob.
At Fraunce’s Tavern I found Mercer and Courtenay, and I told them of my mission, which both envied me.
“You have sealed despatches telling all about it, have you not?” asked Mercer.
“Yes.”
“Give your own account too; make it strong, it’s not illegal.”
Clearly it was not “illegal” for me to tell a few words if I were asked, and I promised Mercer if I had the chance to do my best. I was just leaving them when I ran into Bidwell, laced, powdered, and perfumed in the extremest New York style, as if he were that little exotic Van Steenkerk himself.
“Why such a hurry, Ten Broeck?” he asked. “What is the matter?”
“Don’t you hear them out there in the street, Bidwell, crying for war? I’m going to Washington as fast as I can to declare it for them. Good-bye.”
I left him staring at me.
I had plenty of money and I hired one of the best horses I could find, riding him to Philadelphia, where I changed him for another as good, and thus changing horses at suitable intervals I continued my swift journey southward. I was in the full glory of spring now, not in its beginning. It was all around me, it breathed in the balmy breezes from the south. The old world, bursting into bloom, was turning into a mass of pink and green—pink on the buds, green on the leaves and grass—and the sunshine was full of basking warmth. Spring and summer pay little heed to war or peace, thought I, as I galloped on.
After a ride of three days and a half, or on the morning of the fourth day, I reached Washington. I saw afar the white walls of the Capitol, the sunlight blazing upon them, and the lazy little town snuggling in the green of the wilderness. The silver ribbon of the Potomac gleamed as of old, and there again was a line of wild ducks flying northward, painted against the blue sky like a long black arrow. A negro, sitting sideways on his mule, was riding slowly to his plowing, a boatman floated sleepily with the current of the river, and the town, like the plowman and the boatman, seemed asleep and dreaming.
I rode to my old boarding house, ate a hasty luncheon, not explaining to my astonished landlady why I had returned so much sooner than she expected me, and then walked over to the Treasury building. I entered as one who knew the way and had the right, and beheld the back of Mr. Gallatin’s head shining at me like a sun. He was bending over his desk, and the heaps of papers surged around him. My tread, as I approached, did not arouse him, and I was forced to put my hand upon his shoulder and say:
“Mr. Gallatin!”
He looked up with the customary start of one who is aroused from absorption.
“Mr. Ten Broeck,” he said, “I thought I had sent you to the North!”
“So you did, Mr. Gallatin. And I went; I did the work you sent me to do, and I return in haste with news.”
He looked at me with curiosity and some apprehension too, as my manner undoubtedly showed excitement. It is a fact that in the years just before 1812 no American statesman expected any news but bad news.
“I have this package, addressed to the President,” I said, producing it, “and it is from the mayor of the city of New York. I give it to you for him.”
“But you know very well what it contains,” he said, taking the package, but still looking at me closely. “Your face shows that. Tell me what it is, if it is not wrong to do so.”
There was certainly nothing wrong in my telling, and I told, setting forth the incidents with all the descriptive power at my command. He sighed, and the look of trouble on his face grew, digging great seams about his mouth and eyes and doubling the wrinkles.
“I suppose they’ll come into the inner harbour of New York next and bombard the town because we don’t like them,” he said. “They did worse at Copenhagen. I suppose we’ll have to fight after all. This thing of founding a nation is a difficult task, Philip, my son. But you have done well to come with your budget. I shall show this to the President at his house to-night, and it may be that we will want you there, as you were an eyewitness of the facts. If so, I will send word to you at your room in the afternoon.”
Then he questioned me long and carefully about the direct object of my visit to the Northern and Eastern cities, and when I left his office I felt that glow which comes to one who has received the approval of his elders and betters.
I hastened back to my room, and lying down on the bed slept soundly until a messenger arrived with a summons for me to come to the White House. It was evident that both Mr. Gallatin and the President were impressed, as the former had not waited until night to deliver the despatches, and the latter, with equal promptitude, had called a Cabinet meeting in the afternoon. I found myself in the presence of the entire Cabinet for the second time in my life, and was asked to tell my story again, which I did, arraying my facts in what I thought to be the most impressive sequence. They asked me over and over about certain details, but I had fixed them in my mind, and was ready always with the answer. Then they let me go, thanking me and telling me that I would be notified if they wished to obtain from me further information on those points.