Part 27 (1/2)

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.”