Part 27 (1/2)
Chapter XXVIII.
An Old Acquaintance Turns Up In Manacles.
A truly miserable fourteen months' period of thankless labor, and of unending yet aimless anxiety, follows here in my story. It was my business to remain in the Valley, watch its suspected figures, invigorate and encourage its militia, and combat the secret slander and open cowardice which there menaced the cause of liberty. Fortunately I had, from time to time, a.s.surance that my work was of actual advantage to General Schuyler, and occasionally I had leisure hours to spend at the Cedars. If these pleasurable things had been denied me, there would have been in the whole Continental service no more unenviable post than mine.
I have never pretended, least of all to myself, to be much enamoured of fighting; nor have I ever been regardless of personal comfort, and of the satisfaction of having warm clothes, sufficient food, and a good bed in which to sleep. Yet I would gladly have exchanged my state for that of the most wretched private soldier, barefooted and famished, on the frozen Delaware or at Morristown. War is a hateful and repellent enough thing; but it is at least better to be in the thick of it, to smell burning powder and see and feel the enemy, even if he be at your heels, than to be posted far away from the theatre of conflict, spying upon an outwardly peaceful community for signs of treason and disaffection.
I should not like to put down in black and white, here in my old age, all the harsh and malignant things which I thought of my Mohawk Valley neighbors, or some of them, during those fourteen months. I am able to see now that they were not altogether without excuse.
The affairs of the revolted Colonies were, in truth, going very badly. No sooner had Congress summoned the resolution to decree Continental independence than the fates seemed to conspire to show that the declaration was a mistake. Our successes in the field came to a sudden halt; then disasters followed in their place. Public confidence, which had been too lightly raised, first wavered, then collapsed. Against the magnificent army of English and Hessian regulars which Howe mustered in New York, General Was.h.i.+ngton could not hold his own, and Congress lost the nerve to stand at his back. Our militia threw up the service, disheartened. Our commissariat faded out of existence. The patriot force became the mere skeleton of an army, ragged, ill-fed, discouraged, and almost hopeless. In battle after battle the British won--by overwhelming numbers or superior fortune, it mattered not which; the result was equally lamentable.
There had been, indeed, a notable week at Christmas-time, when the swift strong blows struck at Trenton and Princeton lifted for a moment the cloud which hung over us. But it settled down again, black and threatening, before spring came.
The Colonies quarrelled with one another; their generals plotted and intrigued, or sullenly held aloof. Cool men, measuring on the one side this lax and inharmonious alliance of jealous States, without money, without public-spirited populations, and, above all, without confidence in their own success, and on the other the imposing power of rich and resolute England, with its splendid armies and fleets in the St. Lawrence and in New York Harbor, and with its limitless supply of hired German auxiliaries--cool men, I say, weighing dispa.s.sionately these two opposing forces, came pretty generally to believe that in the end General Was.h.i.+ngton would find himself laid by the heels in the Tower at London.
I cannot honestly say now whether I ever shared this despondent view or not. But I do know that I chafed bitterly under the orders which kept me in the Valley, and not only prevented my seeing what fighting there was, but put me to no better task than watching in a ten-acre field for rattlesnakes. I can in no apter way describe my employment from May of 1776 to July of the following year. There was unending work, but no visible fruit, either for the cause or for myself. The menace of impending danger hung over us constantly--and nothing came of it, month after month.
I grew truly sick of it all. Besides, my wounds did not heal well, and my bad health from time to time induced both melancholy and an irritable mind.
The situation in the Valley was extremely simple. There was a small outspoken Tory party, who made no secret of their sympathies, and kept up communications with the refugees in Canada. These talked openly of the time soon to arrive when the King's troops would purge the Valley of disloyalty, and loyalists should come by more than their own. There was a somewhat larger Whig party, which by word and deed supported Congress.
Between these two, or rather, because of their large number, surrounding them, was the great neutral party, who were chiefly concerned to so trim their sails that they should s.h.i.+p no water whichever way the wind blew.
Up to the time of the Declaration of Independence these peaceful people had leaned rather toward the Whigs. But when General Was.h.i.+ngton evacuated Long Island, and the Continental prospects seemed to dwindle, it was wonderful to note how these same trimmers began again, first furtively, then with less concealment, to drink the King's health.
Roughly speaking, the majority of the avowed Tories were in the lower district of Tryon County, that called the Mohawk district, embracing all east of Anthony's Nose, including Johnstown, Tribes Hill, and Caughnawaga.
They had, indeed, out-numbered the Whigs by five to one before the flights to Canada began; and even now enough remained to give a strong British color to the feeling of the district. In the western districts of the county, where the population was more purely Dutch and Palatine, the Whig sentiment was very much stronger. But here, too, there were Tories, confessed and defiant; and everywhere, as time pa.s.sed, the dry-rot of doubt spread among those who were of neither party. It came at last that nearly every week brought news of some young man's disappearance from home--which meant another recruit for the hostile Canadian force; and scarcely a day went by without the gloomy tidings that this man or the other, heretofore lukewarm, now spoke in favor of submission to the King.
It was my function to watch this s.h.i.+fting public opinion, to sway it where I could, but to watch it always. No more painful task could have been conceived. I lived in an atmosphere of treachery and suspicion. Wherever I turned I saw humanity at its worst. Men doubted their brothers, their sons, even their wives. The very ground underneath us was honeycombed with intrigues and conspiracies. Intelligence from Canada, with its burden of promises to speedily glut the pa.s.sions of war, circulated stealthily all about us. How it came, how it was pa.s.sed from hearth to hearth, defied our penetration. We could only feel that it was in the air around us, and strive to locate it--mainly in vain--and shudder at its sinister omens.
For all felt a blow to be impending, and only marvelled at its being so long withheld. It was two years now since Colonel Guy Johnson, with the Butlers and Philip Cross, had gone westward to raise the Indians. It was more than a year since Sir John and his retainers had joined them. Some of these had been to England in the interim, and we vaguely heard of others flitting, now in Quebec, now at Niagara or Detroit; yet none doubted that the dearest purpose of all of them was to return with troops and savages to reconquer the Valley. This was the sword which hung daily, nightly, over our heads.
And as the waiting time lengthened out it grew terrible to weak and selfish minds. More and more men sought to learn how they might soften and turn its wrath aside, not how they might meet and repel its stroke.
Congress would not believe in our danger--perhaps could not have helped us if it would. And then our own friends at this lost heart. The flights to Canada multiplied; our volunteer militiamen fell away from the drills and patrols. Stories and rumors grew thicker of British preparations, of Indian approaches, of invasion's red track being cleared up to the very gates of the Valley. And no man saw how the ruin was to be averted.
It was in the second week of July, at almost the darkest hour in that gloomy first part of 1777, that a singular link in the chain of my story was forged.
Affairs were at their worst, abroad and at home. General Was.h.i.+ngton's call for more troops had fallen on deaf ears, and it seemed impossible that his poor force could withstand the grand army and fleet mustering at New York.
The news of St. Clair's wretched evacuation of Ticonderoga had come in, and we scarcely dared look one another in the face when it was told.
Apparently matters were nearing a climax, so far at least as we in New York State were involved. For Burgoyne was moving down through the Champlain country upon Albany, with none to stay his progress, and an auxiliary force was somewhere upon the great northern water frontier of our State, intending to sweep through the Mohawk Valley to join him. Once this junction was formed, the Hudson lay open--and after that? We dared not think!
I cannot hope to make young people realize what all this meant to us. To comprehend this, one must have had not only a neck menaced by the halter, but mother, sisters, dear ones, threatened by the tomahawk and knife.
Thinking back upon it now, I marvel that men did not go mad under this horrible stress of apprehension. Apparently there was no hope. The old New England spite and prejudice against General Schuyler had stirred up now a fierce chorus of calumny and attack. He was blamed for St. Clair's pusillanimous retreat, for Congressional languor, for the failure of the militia to come forward--for everything, in fact. His hands were tied by suspicion, by treason, by popular lethargy, by lack of money, men, and means. Against these odds he strove like a giant, but I think not even he, with all his great, calm confidence, saw clearly through the black cloud just then.
I had gone to bed late one hot July night, and had hardly fallen asleep, for gloomy musing upon these things, when I was awakened by a loud pounding on the door beneath. I was at my mother's house, fortunately, and the messenger had thus found me out promptly.
Tulp had also been aroused, and saddled my horse while I dressed, in response to the summons. I was wanted at Johnstown by Sheriff Frey, on some matter which would not wait for the morrow. This much I gathered from the messenger, as we rode together in the starlight, but he could tell me little more, save that an emissary from the Tories in Canada had been captured near the Sacondaga, and it was needful that I should see him. I wondered somewhat at this as a reason for routing me out of my sleep, but cantered silently along, too drowsy to be querulous.