Dreams of Glory Page 24

  “There’s no question those fanatics are a disgrace to the province,” agreed lanky James Wilson in his Scots burr. Dismissed from Congress by Pennsylvania’s radicals, Wilson was getting rich as a lawyer. His chief client was America’s ally, France, for whom he often acted as unofficial spokesman. He proceeded to do some impromptu pleading on the spot. “There’s surely no crime in making an honest profit from a well-conducted business,” Wilson said. “But there are some among us who would endanger our alliance with France, the one thing that keeps us politically alive, to make a few rotten dollars.”

  “Why, damn you, Wilson,” Chase roared. “Are you referring to the gentlemen of Maryland?”

  “If the shoe fits so that you recognize it at the first pinch-”

  They began a violent argument about several thousand pounds of flour that had been bought before prices began to rise at a gallop and stored in Maryland by the French ambassador to supply the French navy when it operated on the American coast. Chase and some fellow Marylanders had seized the flour a few months ago and resold it to the American army at a huge profit. “How can we hope to persuade a French fleet or a French army to come to our assistance,” Wilson raged, “when we can’t honor a simple contract?”

  “Oh, pshaw, Wilson,” Chase said. “‘Twas just good business. Your client can buy again at the new prices. His Most Catholic Majesty can afford it.”

  For a moment Hugh Stapleton thought of the starving army in Morristown and the tall, diffident Virginian who was trying to hold it together. He looked at the complacent faces around the table and wondered why they could not see where the United States of America was going. Down, down, down into ruin and defeat. Something stirred in Stapleton, a confused but nonetheless real regret for what was happening. He almost became angry at these politicians, so busy looking out for themselves. The impulse was stifled by the realization that he was no different. During the past year he had spent far more hours fretting over his privateers and his profits than he had spent thinking about Congress.

  But for Hugh Stapleton the time for conscience-stricken reproaches was almost over. For the past two weeks, as he toiled over inventories and accounts receivable, his imagination was in New Jersey, recalling sounds, sights, touches from his most recent visit to Flora Kuyper. He had stayed with her for two nights and found her as amorous, as eager to please him, as adept at agreeable conversation as she had been on his first visit. He had used the press of business as an excuse to return to Philadelphia and see if time and distance altered his feelings for her. The delay only confirmed the intensity, the insistence of his desire. Within a month, when spring sunshine melted the ice on the Delaware, he would say good-bye to this floundering rebellion - and his sullen New Jersey wife - forever.

  At the dinner table, the talk had turned to the British invasion of the Southern states. Several congressmen condemned the Southerners, particularly the South Carolinians. They had failed to support Georgia the previous year, when the British overran it. Now Charleston was under siege and the response of most of the Carolinians seemed equally apathetic. “Not one in twenty of their militiamen have turned out,” Robert Livingston said. “I heard confidentially from the President of Congress that Governor Rutledge wrote demanding to know what aid South Carolina can expect from her sister states. Unless he got an immediate answer, he said, he was prepared to negotiate a separate peace.”

  “Can you blame him?” bellowed Chase. “Has South Carolina seen any evidence that the rest of the country gives a damn for her? I sympathize with Rutledge. In fact, if a member of the British ministry entered this room at this moment, I wouldn’t hesitate to treat with him on Maryland’s behalf, let Congress fulminate how they please over it.”

  Some congressmen at the table were shocked by Chase’s boast. Since 1776, when the British almost forced New Jersey to drop out of the war, the idea of any of the supposedly united states signing a separate peace had been anathema. But Livingston, whose family had been one of the rulers of New York before the revolution, was unruffled. “I’d negotiate for New York, Chase, and out bribe you ten to one.”

  The waiter came and went with fresh bottles of claret and Madeira. The congressmen were all a bit drunk by the time dinner was served. A goose, a turkey, a ham, and several succulent meat pies were among the main dishes. French Burgundy went down in literally staggering quantities. “Tell us what you found at Morristown, Mr. Stapleton,” Robert Livingston said.

  “The total opposite of this plenty,” Stapleton said, gesturing to their feast. “General Greene told me the commissary had only enough flour to bake a single day’s supply of bread. There wasn’t a piece of fresh meat in the entire camp-”

  “Good God, you sound like Schuyler,” Samuel Chase said. “A little hardship has never done soldiers any harm. It toughens ‘em for battle.” He began needling Robert Livingston for his frequent meetings with Peggy Shippen Arnold, wife of Major General Benedict Arnold.

  “Aren’t you worried about the danger of retaliation?” Chase asked. “I hear Arnold is a dead shot. But I suppose she’s worth the risk.”

  “You’re an incorrigible rumormonger, Chase,” Livingston replied. “The lady has consulted me on matters purely political.”

  “Ho,” roared the Marylander. “And what are you consulting her on? I’ll wager it’s a mattress.”

  Before her recent marriage to General Arnold, the blond, moody Miss Shippen had flirted with Congressman Stapleton at several dinner parties. Now, comparing her in his mind to Flora Kuyper, he infinitely preferred Flora’s dark beauty to Peggy’s pale good looks. Peggy was too familiar, too American. In the play of somber light between Flora’s black hair and her green eyes, in her European sophistication, there was the promise of more than pleasure. She was a woman who could enrich a man’s soul. She was a world that a man could explore and enjoy for a lifetime.

  After dinner Hugh Stapleton excused himself from the inevitable round of toasts and hired a small sleigh and driver from the City Tavern’s stable. He directed the driver to a house in narrow Strawberry Alley and advised him to seek shelter in a nearby tavern until he called him. A knock on the door produced a wary request for his identity. As soon as he said, “Hugh Stapleton,” the door was opened by a husky, middle-aged man with a bad limp. “How be you, Congressman?” said Captain William McPherson with a broad smile.

  “I’m fine, Mac. How’s the leg?”

  “Not so good as new. But it’ll hold me on the quarterdeck,” McPherson said.

  On his last voyage aboard Hugh Stapleton’s privateer Common Sense, McPherson’s right leg had been shattered in a running fight with a British cruiser. Ignoring his wound, he had beaten off the enemy and out sailed him to safety. There were few tougher, shrewder ship captains in America than this Belfast-born Scotsman. The congressman had paid his doctor’s bills and living expenses during his convalescence. Although he had made a hundred thousand dollars on privateering during the past year, McPherson was broke. As fast as he made money, he threw it away on faro and girls.

  “Hey, Sal,” the captain shouted, “fetch me the port and two glasses.” He winked at the congressman. “Wait’ll you see this one.”

  A high-bosomed redhead swept into the room with the port and glasses. She wore a fashionable French gown without stays or petticoats, and it revealed her figure to a startling degree. She patted her hair and smiled as McPherson introduced the congressman. “She can’t cook worth a damn,” McPherson said. “We eat all our meals at the Pewter Platter. But she does everything else well enough, right, Sal?”

  “Sure, I don’t know what you mean, Captain.”

  She flounced out of the room. “Scotch-Irish from Reading, out in the back country. Father kicked her out of the house and she turned up in Philadelphia, naturally. Reminds me of Polly, the redhead I had in New York in ‘74. You remember that one?”

  “Yes, of course,” Hugh Stapleton said. For a few seconds he was uneasy. Was he about to wander the world like McPherson, pi
cking up his women wherever wind or weather beached him? No, Flora Kuyper was not a casual flirtation.

  “What’s on your mind, Congressman?” McPherson asked, pouring the port.

  “I want you to hire a crew for Common Sense. Not too many Americans. French, preferably. Hire them now, and have the ship ready to sail the moment the ice breaks.”

  “Why the hurry, Congressman?”

  “I’m planning to resign my seat and go to Amsterdam on private business. You know what some people in this town are liable to say about that. They wouldn’t be above giving the British word of our sailing, and we’d find a squadron waiting for us at the capes of the Delaware.”

  “What do we do when we sound Amsterdam?”

  “I’ll get you a commission from the French government or from Benjamin Franklin, our ambassador in Paris. You can make a million on British shipping in the North Sea.”

  “Sounds good to me, Congressman. Will Mrs. Stapleton and the boys be sailing with you?”

  “No.”

  The mention of his sons flustered Hugh Stapleton. He had tried to convince himself that he was not abandoning them, that he would bring them to Holland as soon as the war ended. But his plans for them were vague at best.

  “There may be other passengers. What do you care?” he growled.

  “I don’t,” McPherson said. “It’s your ship and your money, Congressman.”

  “If all goes well, you’ll be able to buy her from me, Mac.”

  “Is that a promise, Congressman? You’ll give me first crack and a good price? Sometimes I think it’s what I’ve always needed, a ship of my own. It might make me think twice about throwing cash on a faro table. No true sailor would bet a ship like Common Sense. For the chance to own her, I’d run the British channel fleet in line of battle formation.”

  “I’m depending on you to do that if necessary, Mac.”

  “Planning to stay in Amsterdam awhile?”

  “It’s hard to say. A lot depends on the war.”

  “Amsterdam will be a healthy place for a Continental Congressman to be when the rebels go smash.” The captain gave him a knowing grin. “Don’t worry, the secret’s safe with me. I’ve never lost money on a voyage with you yet. And money’s the name of the game, ain’t it?”

  “Money is important,” Hugh Stapleton conceded.

  McPherson held out his hand. “I’ll let you know how the recruitin’ goes.”

  Hugh Stapleton found his driver and rode back to the City Tavern through the frigid, deserted streets of Philadelphia. It was ridiculous, but those last casual words of Captain McPherson rankled him. Money’s the name of the game.

  Everyone, particularly his wife and his brother, Paul, assumed that Hugh Stapleton cared about nothing but “improving some moneys.” He was about to prove that he, too, had visions, that he was ready to take risks in his private pursuit of happiness and beauty. Mercenary Hugh Stapleton would show them all what he could do with his money. He would even show his mother, with her endless preachments on prudence, and his father, who had seldom concealed his opinion that most businessmen lacked courage. Amazing how many wars a man fights in his own mind with ghosts of the dead, phantoms of the living.

  Back in his room at the City Tavern, the congressman wrote Flora a letter.

  My dearest:

  I was not in this city three hours when I set about the business of preparing my privateer Common Sense for our voyage. The winter weather makes our plan only a future promise. But it is as sealed by your kisses as the most solemn oath. My only worry is whether I shall be able to make you as happy as I know you will make me. I almost tremble at your discovering the full power of your enchantment and wonder whether I am quitting a war with one tyrant to put myself under the power of another one. But your tyranny will be tempered by a natural goodness of heart. Send me by return post an explicit agreement to my plan. Without it I will find the petty politics of this place unendurable.

  Your devoted

  Hugh S.

  A knock on the door. One of the City Tavern’s porters with a note. General Schuyler was hoping he could see Mr. Stapleton for a few minutes. The congressman ordered a bottle of Madeira and said he would be happy to see the general. The wine and Schuyler’s bulky figure arrived simultaneously. The general was wearing a blue coat and buff breeches, a distinct echo of a Continental Army uniform. It was an impolitic costume to wear in a Congress that was extremely touchy about its independence of the military.

  “I need your help,” Schuyler said as Stapleton poured the Madeira. “I can make no impression on Congress. They dismiss me as a special pleader, a soldier. The Yankees ridicule and revile me behind my back.”

  “I don’t see what I can do when someone of your reputation can’t gain a hearing.” Hugh Stapleton said.

  “You’ve been to Morristown and, unlike me, you have no connection with the army,” Schuyler said. “I gather that you’ve said little in Congress.”

  “I’m not an orator - or a politician, for that matter,” Hugh Stapleton said.

  “All the more reason why they may listen to you. If I bring up the question, will you speak tomorrow on the state of the army?”

  “I . . . I’ve made no notes. One visit to Morristown hardly makes me an expert-”

  “I’ll give you all the information you need. Colonel Hamilton, who I begin to think may soon be my son-in-law, tells me you have a reputation as a man of business. Put it to them as a business proposition. Tell them that the army is going bankrupt, literally and spiritually.”

  Somewhat to his own amazement, Hugh Stapleton heard himself saying, “If you think Congress can endure my ineptitude as a speaker, I’m at your service, General.”

  Why not? he thought as Schuyler thanked him. George Washington deserved respect, even pity, for the stoic steadiness with which he was confronting almost certain defeat. A soldier’s son - Hugh Stapleton could not deny that part of his heritage - owed the weary Virginian at least a farewell gesture of support, of personal appreciation, no matter how futile it was certain to be.

  The next morning, Congressman Stapleton breakfasted on buckwheat cakes and coffee in the Long Room of the City Tavern and trudged through the snow to the Pennsylvania State House, three blocks away. He had spent much of the night going over facts and figures on the army that Schuyler had given him. In the ground-floor chamber of the familiar red-brick building, the delegates were gathering for the day’s session. The twin fireplaces along the east wall combated the relentless cold. Stapleton sat down beside the other two members of his state’s delegation, tall, long-nosed John Witherspoon, the president of the College of New Jersey, and stumpy Abraham Clark, the self-styled “people’s lawyer.” Stapleton had never seen a smile on either face.

  “Ah, Stapleton,” Clark said, “I trust you communicated to the Great Man our disapproval of his looting and brawling soldiery.”

  Washington’s enemies frequently referred to him as the Great Man. The epithet made it difficult for Hugh Stapleton to conceal his dislike of Clark. “I had dinner with the general. We discussed the matter at length. I made him aware of our concern.”

  “Concerrn,” Witherspoon said in his thick Scots burr. “Oootrage would have been a better worrrd. I still think we should have put our sentiments in a formal resolution of condemnation rather than send a mere emissarry.”

  Clark and Witherspoon regularly joined the New Englanders in their attempts to embarrass and humiliate Washington. The Southern congressmen, with the aid of New York and Pennsylvania, managed to block most of these petty moves. Hugh Stapleton always voted with the Southerners, but Witherspoon and Clark invariably put New Jersey in the Yankee column. How delightful it will be, Hugh Stapleton thought, to wake up in Amsterdam with Flora Kuyper beside me and mentally thumb my nose at these two sour Presbyterians.

  The president of Congress, lean tight-lipped Samuel Huntington, a Connecticut Yankee best known for his parsimony, sat down behind the small table that served as his desk,
his back to the twin fireplaces. With a rap of his gavel, Huntington called the Congress to order. Members who had been hobnobbing with friends hurried to their seats. Philip Schuyler asked for the floor and was recognized by the president. Schuyler said he had received another letter from his “good friend,” General Washington, about the state of the army. It had alarmed him a great deal and he had planned to give a speech to the honorable members about it. But another honorable member had recently visited the army’s winter camp at the request of Congress and had now returned. He therefore yielded the floor to Congressman Stapleton of New Jersey.

  Hugh Stapleton rose and looked around the room. Gray winter light from the long windows on two sides of the chamber gave almost every face a melancholy cast. Most of his fellow congressmen were obviously as tired of this endless war as he was. There were numerous yawns, even though it was only 10 a.m. Many of the members had been at work since 7 a.m. on committees that met before Congress went into session. At least a dozen delegates sniffled and coughed, fighting colds. One man had a gouty foot wrapped in wool.

  Stapleton began by reminding them that he had been sent to Morristown to investigate the charge that the army was abusing and robbing civilians near the camp. He acquitted Washington’s men of deliberate wholesale looting. Describing the army’s desperation after the four-day blizzard, he somberly declared that the situation was only a little less desperate now. Carefully, methodically, he translated the pay of each rank in the army from its paper value to its real value. By his calculation, a captain was getting paid seven and a half real dollars a month; an enlisted man received less than a dollar. Stapleton described the bankrupt commissary department, without a cent to buy food from nearby New Jersey farms. Next, he described the army’s “spiritual bankruptcy.” He enumerated the desertion rate, the brawls between soldiers from different states.

  “A private was stabbed to death with a bayonet, not a hundred yards from General Washington’s headquarters, the night I visited him,” he said. “Can you blame the men? Unable to vent their rage on the enemy, they’re wounding and murdering each other. Can anyone doubt that the contagion of discontent will soon unleash a like violence on the officers, yes, even on General Washington himself? And the next target, gentlemen, will be the members of this body, whom the army sees as the authors of so many of its woes. Nothing poisons a man’s mind more than resentment; nothing will demolish the principles on which we have tried to build a government more quickly, more totally, than neglect of the men who are commissioned by the civil officers to defend it. You have a commander in chief who has demonstrated the patience of Job. But the rest of the army are not such extraordinary mortals. Something must be done, and done immediately, to show the army we are still with them in this cause, heart and soul.”