Part 13 (1/2)

Morris tried to keep up the credit of the North American Land Company by announcing a dividend early in January 1797, but he had no money. He called for Nicholson to pay it, a vain hope. Nicholson's creditors also pursued Morris, who had endorsed his partner's notes. Morris wrote: ”I consider you as the sole Author of all the perplexities about Laws t.i.tles & you must extricate them.” He admitted on February 1 that the company could not survive: ”The money for dividends is run out & I have no more, so that I suppose its credit will be dissolved.” Three weeks later a broker told Nicholson that he could dispose of Morris's and Nicholson's notes at 10 on the dollar.

Morris and Nicholson still owed Henry Lee $21,500 for property in and around the illusory city of Matildaville. Unable to pay, they tried in March to sell their holdings to James Greenleaf, who declined to buy. Morris then offered to sell the land back to Lee. Lee needed to raise money to pay George Was.h.i.+ngton; he wished to sell, not buy. The partners forfeited their interest and wrote off their investment as a loss. By April 13, Greenleaf was in the custody of the sheriff at the debtors' prison. He wrote to a consortium of creditors: ”take my Books, my papers, my Property & do with them what you please.... I am distroyed solely by having suffered myself to be led on by too ardent a desire of saving others from destruction.” I am distroyed solely by having suffered myself to be led on by too ardent a desire of saving others from destruction.”

To placate George Was.h.i.+ngton, Henry Lee gave him in the early months of 1797 a doc.u.ment from the firm Reed & Forde obliging them to transfer to Was.h.i.+ngton seventy shares of stock in the Bank of Columbia. Was.h.i.+ngton reluctantly accepted, only to find that the shares, nominally worth $40 each, were selling on the open market for $33. Lee's remittance not only fell short by $500 but came late. Reed & Forde lacked the cash needed to buy bank stock for Was.h.i.+ngton, partly because Robert Morris had not repaid $5,000 he had borrowed. Morris wrote to them: ”My mind is continually on the rack and I am daily employed in Search of ways and means.”

Of course, the bill of exchange Morris drew on James Marshall to repay Lee's large loan came back protested. Morris said in July that he hoped to be able to pay soon. Two months later he admitted that he could not send Lee anything. Lee kept writing for four years, to no avail.

In Williamsburg, at Christmastime, 1796, and in the first weeks of the new year, St. George Tucker wrote a play about Robert Morris. He called it The Wheel of Fortune: A Comedy The Wheel of Fortune: A Comedy. The character resembling Morris is ”Buckeye, a Land Jobber.” He cheats foreign investors and sells vast tracts of land, as well as lots in the Federal City. Tucker's hero, Freeman, explains the play's t.i.tle: ”Some favorite plan of Speculation presents itself-money is wanted and must be had, at any price. One purchase is made upon a Credit of sixty days, to enable the purchaser to pay another sum of money in thirty; the Wheel is kept continually turning till it either ruins, or makes, the party engaged in the Operation.” Of course, the traditional wheel of fortune would bring low those who once rode high. One character, a defrauded land buyer, reveals Buckeye's methods: he sold 20,000 acres, ”which he described as an earthly paradise, uniting every advantage soil, climate, Waters, Rivers, and intercourse with a populous Country. Here is a map in which it is described. Would not one suppose it was the Garden of Eden! This is the description of that miserable spot.” Amid the drama's conventional schemes, plot complications, and recognition scenes, Tucker's denunciation of speculators is the recurrent leitmotif. In the ba.n.a.l and predictable ending, lovers are united and speculators are ruined.

In hopes of getting his play produced in Philadelphia during the spring of 1797, Tucker submitted it to Thomas Wignell, manager of the Chestnut Street Theatre, the best house with the best actors in the United States. The ornate building, modeled on Covent Garden Theatre and the Theatre Royal in Bath, with 1,165 seats, had been constructed with financial aid from Robert Morris. Wignell's season lasted until May 6. He was running a deficit. He declined to produce The Wheel of Fortune The Wheel of Fortune, saying that Morris and Greenleaf were ”suffering so severely for their Speculations” that they ought not to be ”exhibited to Ridicule on the Stage” in Tucker's characters Buckeye and O'Blunder. He added that the play was too long and needed revision.

Wignell was actually letting Tucker down gently, sparing him the truth. The play was old-fas.h.i.+oned, differing little from Samuel Foote's The Bankrupt The Bankrupt of twenty-five years past or from satirical plays about the South Sea Bubble seventy years past. The modern public preferred a different kind of drama, not moralizing about political economy and civic virtue. At Drury Lane Theatre in 1797, Matthew Lewis began a successful run of his new play of twenty-five years past or from satirical plays about the South Sea Bubble seventy years past. The modern public preferred a different kind of drama, not moralizing about political economy and civic virtue. At Drury Lane Theatre in 1797, Matthew Lewis began a successful run of his new play The Castle Spectre: A Dramatic Romance The Castle Spectre: A Dramatic Romance. Robert Merry, husband of Thomas Wignell's lead actress, Ann Brunton Merry, had written The Abbey of St. Augustine The Abbey of St. Augustine for the 1797 season. He again tried to capture the new fas.h.i.+on in a play he submitted to Wignell a few months after Tucker's. It was for the 1797 season. He again tried to capture the new fas.h.i.+on in a play he submitted to Wignell a few months after Tucker's. It was The Tuscan Tournament: A Tragedy in Five Acts The Tuscan Tournament: A Tragedy in Five Acts. The last act was almost all pantomime. The public enjoyed excitement and sentiment and mystery. In The Tuscan Tournament The Tuscan Tournament, the curtain rises to reveal ”Scene-The Appenines-A Ruin'd Castle-A Storm-Thunder & Lightning. Enter Ximenes disguised as a Friar.” Wignell moved to New York for the summer and fall to repair his company's fortunes. In the Greenwich Street Theatre he presented Isabella; or, the Fatal Marriage Isabella; or, the Fatal Marriage, with the t.i.tle role played by Elizabeth Whitlock, Sarah Siddons's sister.

Robert Morris no longer left his house in the autumn of 1797. He avoided the sheriff by remaining indoors, except when he took the air by going out on his roof. But he was only buying time. He said: ”property will not command money and the world have shut me out of their confidence.”

After his release from prison in Philadelphia, Justice James Wilson spent some time in jail in Burlington, New Jersey, in September until he raised $300 to pay a judgment. He took refuge in Edenton, North Carolina. There he was jailed in April 1798 at the suit of the holder of a note he had endorsed. Once released, he stayed in Edenton, refusing to declare himself insolvent and give up all his property so that he could return to Philadelphia. From Kentucky, David Meade sent word that unless Wilson soon paid the arrears of his purchase of two quarter-shares in the Dismal Swamp Company and of nearby land, Meade would foreclose his mortgage and resume possession. Meade had no sympathy with Pennsylvania speculators. His son-in-law, Charles Willing Byrd, had gone unpaid by Robert Morris throughout 1797. Wilson did not care what Meade did. Dressed in shabby clothes, he sat listlessly in his tavern room, looking out the window at the waves of Albemarle Sound, facing away from the Dismal Swamp.

George Was.h.i.+ngton had grown exasperated with Henry Lee. None of Lee's extemporized devices yielded cash. Lee gave Was.h.i.+ngton what he called ”a negotiable note” for $1,000, drawn on Jesse Simms, in the summer of 1797. Was.h.i.+ngton sent it to his banker, who told him in January 1798 that Simms refused to pay. Was.h.i.+ngton wrote to Lee: ”Let me entreat you to believe, that at the time I entered into the contract with you for the property I held in the Dismal Swamp, I had no conception of such disappointments, and that it is a mode of dealing to which I am not accustomed.” Was.h.i.+ngton grew angrier upon hearing that Simms spread rumors that Was.h.i.+ngton was speculating in Simms's notes. Every step Lee took seemed to make matters worse.

Leaving Was.h.i.+ngton unpaid, Lee acquired Champe and Maria Carter's portion and Richard and Rebecca Parke Corbin's portion of the Saura Town property in the Land of Eden. Champe and Maria Carter had sold their one-eighth interest for $2 per acre; Lee paid more than twice as much. He offered this one-fourth of the Land of Eden to Patrick Henry. Henry still held the note James Wilson had drawn on Lee as Lee lent Wilson $8,000 to buy Henry's worthless Green Sea tract. Lee had no cash with which to pay Henry and redeem the note. James Wilson, sitting in Edenton, could not repay Lee. So Lee urged Patrick Henry to take, instead of cash, one-fourth of the Land of Eden, a.s.suring him that it was worth $4 to $6 per acre.

Robert Morris knew on Thursday, February 8, 1798, that he must enter debtors' prison the following week. He wrote: ”The Punishment of my imprudence in the use of my Name and loss of credit is perhaps what I I deserve, but it is nevertheless severe on my Family and on deserve, but it is nevertheless severe on my Family and on their their account I feel it most tormentingly.” In the past two years he had watched his wife, Mary White Morris, change from ”a remarkable well looking woman...blooming as a rose in June” to her present state, ”pale, wan, dejected & spiritless.” He entered the Prune Street prison on Friday, February 16. He lived in a furnished room, an ”ugly whitewashed vault,” in which he received visitors, and he dressed as usual in neat, old-fas.h.i.+oned suits. Every morning from six until eight he walked in the garden, counting his turns by dropping a pebble at the end of each lap. He knew that he must surrender all his property to gain release. He wrote: ”I confess I do not like the idea of dieing here.” The North American Land Company had no offices. If it had managers, no one knew who they were. In the subsequent liquidation of Morris's a.s.sets, the company's shares sold for 7 each. account I feel it most tormentingly.” In the past two years he had watched his wife, Mary White Morris, change from ”a remarkable well looking woman...blooming as a rose in June” to her present state, ”pale, wan, dejected & spiritless.” He entered the Prune Street prison on Friday, February 16. He lived in a furnished room, an ”ugly whitewashed vault,” in which he received visitors, and he dressed as usual in neat, old-fas.h.i.+oned suits. Every morning from six until eight he walked in the garden, counting his turns by dropping a pebble at the end of each lap. He knew that he must surrender all his property to gain release. He wrote: ”I confess I do not like the idea of dieing here.” The North American Land Company had no offices. If it had managers, no one knew who they were. In the subsequent liquidation of Morris's a.s.sets, the company's shares sold for 7 each.

James Wilson went into his final decline in July and August. He contracted malaria. In the Edenton tavern overlooking Albemarle Sound he lay in bed, talking about returning to his circuit duties as a justice of the Supreme Court. After suffering a stroke in August he spoke deliriously of debts, bankruptcies, and jails. On Tuesday, August 21, he died.

”I shall be able to close my contract,” Henry Lee promised Was.h.i.+ngton that week; ”this is an object I have much at heart, & which if Judge Wilson had not treated me very illy would have long ago been compleated.” Lee's latest idea for remittances was to s.h.i.+p corn up the Potomac from Stratford to Mount Vernon and to offer Was.h.i.+ngton houses and lots in the Federal City. Lee added: ”the time is fast approaching when property like mine must be in great demand.”

”You know perfectly well what my inducements were to part with the property you purchased of me,” Was.h.i.+ngton wrote. But Lee refused to understand that he was supposed to furnish cash or property of unquestioned t.i.tle convertible to cash. Was.h.i.+ngton already had a supplier of corn. He held no illusions about the value of lots in the Federal City: ”it is a question of very equivocal solution.” He grew tired of Lee's improvisations, a.s.surances, and excuses. He entrusted the matter to his nephew, Bushrod Was.h.i.+ngton, who would give a deed to the Dismal Swamp Company quarter-shares or not give it, as he thought best after dealing with Lee.

The death of James Wilson left Patrick Henry holding Wilson's note for purchase of the Green Sea land, payable by Lee. Lee had little prospect of recovering from Wilson's estate the $8,000 Wilson had borrowed. Patrick Henry had little hope of getting money from Lee. Even so, Henry did not wish the Green Sea tract returned to him by default. The two men agreed to an exchange. Patrick Henry deeded his acres of reeds in the Green Sea to Lee, and Henry Lee deeded about 6,300 acres of the Land of Eden to Henry.

Two and a half years after Henry Lee's first payment to George Was.h.i.+ngton ought to have been made and six months before his last payment was due, he had made no more headway in finding $20,000 for four quarter-shares in the Dismal Swamp Company. He wrote: ”all my endeavors are vain. I shall never recede from my exertions till I do accomplish the end, for no event of my life has given me more anguish.” He found that conversations with Was.h.i.+ngton intensified his feelings of regret. He offered to return the quarter-shares and forfeit payments he had made. ”The loss of money I am used to,” he said; ”the loss of mental quietude I cannot bear & pained as I am, I wish to regain tranquility.” Lee resolved not to see Was.h.i.+ngton again until he could pay everything. He said he was sure he could do so in the next few months.

Aiskew Birkett, William Anderson's partner, did some work for his former employer, Samuel Gist, in 1795. To help John Wickham pursue Gist's suits in United States Circuit Court in Richmond, Birkett gave depositions and affidavits in London. As Gist's former clerk, he swore under oath to the validity of accounts showing the debts Wickham sued to collect. Gist meant to miss no opportunity. As sons of the late Governor Thomas Nelson, Jr., strove to settle his indebted estate, Gist filed a claim. Nelson owed money to William Anderson & Company, but that did not mean he owed Gist. Robert Andrews, agent for Nelson's creditors, wrote in his list of claimants: ”Gist no Evid of any sort furnished.” By the summer of 1795, William Anderson & Company had disbanded for the second and last time. Aiskew Birkett sent his s.h.i.+p Ceres Ceres to the James River in search of a cargo of tobacco. He now belonged to the firm Birkett, Sh.o.r.e & Reeves. to the James River in search of a cargo of tobacco. He now belonged to the firm Birkett, Sh.o.r.e & Reeves.

Early that year in Richmond, Nathaniel Anderson complained that his brother William's letters from London were ”Crusty & harsh.” William Anderson's health was failing. He had reason to feel bitter. Events had not gone his way. At the age of fifty-four, he was sick, while his father-in-law remained vigorous and sharp at seventy. Anderson had lived comfortably in London with his wife and niece and nephew, but he had never obtained an independent fortune from Samuel Gist. Nor had he succeeded as a merchant.

Anderson's condition worsened during the summer. He and his wife and her sister went to Chesterfield in the hills of northern Derbys.h.i.+re. There he lay ”in a low state of Health” until New Year's Day, 1796, when he died. With him died the last threat to Samuel Gist's control of the property he had left behind in Virginia thirty years earlier-plantations, slaves, and three quarter-shares in the Dismal Swamp Company. Edward Jacquelin Smith, son of Gist's late stepson, Joseph Smith, had died in 1794. Except for nagging from Thomas R. Rootes, son by an earlier marriage of Joseph Smith's widow, Gist faced no challenger.

Three weeks after Anderson's death, Gist proved his son-in-law's will in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury. He made himself ”the chief, if not sole acting” executor of the estate. Its main a.s.sets were outstanding debts Virginians owed to the Old and New Concerns known as William Anderson & Company. The executors commissioned a partner in the defunct company, Henry S. Sh.o.r.e, and George Syme in Virginia to collect from debtors and remit to Gist. Within six years they sent almost 1,500 sterling. On Gist's behalf, John Wickham won more suits in federal court. John Lyons, Gist's attorney in Hanover County, went to court to seize forty-nine slaves, collateral for an unpaid bond. They were to be sold to satisfy Gist's demand for more than $3,000.

Despite a financial crisis in 1797, Gist's investments in government funds and in stocks yielded a large income in his retirement. If he read Adam Smith, he could chuckle over one sentence: ”though many people have made a little money by insurance, very few have made a great fortune.” Gist had bought some land in England after the American War. He now stepped up his purchases. Other moneyed men in the City transformed themselves into landed gentry; he could do so as well. His favorite holdings lay in northern Gloucesters.h.i.+re, in the upper division of Tewkesbury Hundred and the lower division of Kiftsgate Hundred, midway between Gloucester and Stratford-upon-Avon. Gist bought the crumbling manor house at Wormington and with it the lords.h.i.+p of the manor and the patronage of the parish church. The parish held about ninety people. The occupants of one farm and of six cottages in the village became his tenants. A little more than a mile from the church Gist began a new house, Wormington Grange, a two-story masonry building with bay windows. In the small fourteenth-century church, against the chancel's north wall, near a later Tudor arch, Gist added a plain monument: Sacred to the Memory ofWILLIAM A ANDERSON, ESQR.WHO DEPARTED THIS LIFE, THE 1ST DAY OF J JANUARY 1796, 1796,.

AGED 54 54 YEARS YEARS.

Later, Gist bought the lords.h.i.+p of the manor of Dixton, a few miles southwest of Wormington. His purchases in Gloucesters.h.i.+re amounted to 2,180 acres.

Aiskew Birkett died in September 1798. His sister, Elizabeth Birkett, was his executrix and heir. His estate had a right to one-fourth of the money owed to William Anderson & Company, collected under the direction of Samuel Gist. Remittances kept coming from Virginia, eventually nearing a total of 4,000. Gist once paid Elizabeth Birkett 150. Three other times he gave her small sums totaling 50. Through a broker, formerly Aiskew Birkett's clerk, she repeatedly pressed Gist to make further payments. He refused, saying that she had not yet settled with her late brother's creditors. Gist would ”retain the Money in his Hands until some Arrangements had been made.”

In the same year that Aiskew Birkett died, William Anderson's brothers and sisters brought suit against Gist in the High Court of Chancery in Richmond. They accused him of violating Anderson's will by neither paying the estate for the plantations Anderson had bought at Gist's instructions nor returning these plantations to the estate. Instead, he still cultivated them for his own profit. John Wickham filed Gist's answer with the court in 1799. He said that one of the plantations belonged to Mary Anderson, not William Anderson, and that the estate of William Anderson owed money to Gist.

The treaty between Britain and the United States ratified in 1795 provided for establishment of a joint commission on debts owed by Americans to Britons. The commission met only once and resolved nothing. But in 1798 and 1799 it compiled a register of claims. These included a memorial and claim from Samuel Gist, with a list of 545 debts for which he sought recompense.

A young Virginian, Littleton Dennis Teackle, traveled in England in 1799. His father, John Teackle, had done business with William Anderson & Company. The son carried letters of introduction, one from George Syme to Gist. Gist invited Teackle to dine at Number 37, Gower Street on Sunday, May 26. There he met Mary Anderson and young Maria Anderson with two other women. Teackle enjoyed their sprightly conversation around the silver-laden dinner table. He had heard that his host's yearly income was 10,000. Gist, he noted, liked to let people see that he was rich. Teackle had been told that he was ”parsimonious,” but the old man did not stint himself. Soon after dinner the ladies withdrew, and Teackle and Gist chatted for several hours. That night Teackle wrote in his diary: ”upon the whole I form'd no very favorable oppinion of him. I thought I perceiv'd more of design design in his countenance, than any person I had been in company with in England.” in his countenance, than any person I had been in company with in England.”

In subsequent months Gist bought from the d.u.c.h.ess of Dorset the manor of Hardwick in Oxfords.h.i.+re, as well as several farms in Neithrop Parish. He acquired more than 1,000 acres in the county. As leases on these fields of wheat, barley, turnips, and beans expired, he raised rents.

Managers of the Dismal Swamp Company summoned their partners to gather in Suffolk for a ”full meeting” on October 15, 1796. A meeting took place on Friday, November 18, but only the managers attended: William Nelson, Jr., Alexander Macaulay, and John Jameson. They approved the company's contract with Thomas Shepherd and purchase of sawmills as an aid to the company's drive to profit from timber. They authorized Macaulay to hire an overseer for Dismal Plantation and to buy six young male slaves. They resolved to invest $10,000 in United States government bonds bearing 6 percent interest. And they declared that no single partner-meaning, Alexander Macaulay-would be allowed to draw money from the company's a.s.sets. Macaulay signed the minutes. Three weeks later, he made his largest withdrawal, more than $8,000.

John Driver died in the last week of April 1797. To succeed him as the company's resident agent in Suffolk, the managers chose his son-in-law, Thomas Swepson, a resident of Nansemond County and surveyor of customs for the Port of Suffolk. Thomas Shepherd still supervised hired slaves felling trees and cutting s.h.i.+ngles.

The company needed to exclude trespa.s.sers who were stealing trees. It must repair its mills and cut ca.n.a.ls to float logs to them. In Richmond, Alexander Macaulay met a newly arrived young English architect and engineer, Benjamin Henry Latrobe, who knew about ”the old dismal Swamp Company,” as he called it. On a visit to Mount Vernon in the past summer, Latrobe had heard George Was.h.i.+ngton give ”a detailed account” of it, saying that he ”gave up all further hopes of any thing effectual being done for their interests, and sold out his shares in the Proprietary at a price very inadequate to their real value.” In the first week of June 1797, Latrobe accepted Macaulay's invitation to work for the company. On Tuesday, June 6, the large Macaulay and the slender, curly-haired Latrobe entered a stagecoach and headed down the James River, toward the Dismal Swamp. Their traveling companions were two Frenchmen who spoke no English, an actress, Margaretta West, and a Virginian who started drinking mint juleps at six-thirty in the morning.

Macaulay commissioned Latrobe to resurvey the company's tract and to cut a lane around the edge of its 40,000 acres, clearly marking a boundary. He was also to select the courses of ca.n.a.ls leading to the sawmills. At dawn on Friday, June 9, Macaulay, Latrobe, and Thomas Swepson left Suffolk. After breakfast at Dismal Plantation, they went into the swamp, accompanied by two black men. The group walked along the narrow ca.n.a.l or ditch leading to Lake Drummond until the water in it became deep enough for canoes. ”Millions of Muskitoes surrounded us,” Latrobe said. Trees, both ”immensely large” and ”younger and smaller” enveloped them-gums, maples, elms, bald cypress, and white cedar-and, as they advanced, stands of bamboo grew taller and thicker. Latrobe was impressed by Lake Drummond, its silent immobility ringed by ”the most gigantic trees in the world.” He said of the lake: ”It absorbs or expells every other idea, and creates a quiet solemn pleasure, that I never felt from any similar circ.u.mstance.” On their way back to Dismal Plantation, the five men were drenched by a thunderstorm.

Over the weekend and in the following week Latrobe and Macaulay visited the mills. Latrobe met Thomas Shepherd and identified repairs the mills needed. He stayed in Suffolk for two weeks, then went to Norfolk to order tools and supplies. Joining him, Macaulay brought a letter from Governor James Wood. Latrobe had submitted designs for a new state penitentiary. Governor Wood wrote that these had been accepted; Latrobe must return to Richmond at once. Macaulay released him from his engagement with the Dismal Swamp Company. Latrobe later returned $200 he had received from the company, and he refunded the cost of his expenses in Norfolk and in traveling to Richmond, another $100. As the summer's work on the penitentiary advanced, he encountered criticism from the superintendent of construction and received little cash from the state. He lived in a ”Doghole,” paying high rent. Looking back on his lost opportunity to work for the Dismal Swamp Company, he said: ”I had a choice of difficulties, & I fear I chose wrongly.”

Two months after Latrobe left the swamp for Norfolk, Thomas Shepherd sent Alexander Macaulay an estimate of the cost of rebuilding his sawmill. Macaulay had other things on his mind. He owed a great deal of money, almost $13,400 of it to the Dismal Swamp Company, and his creditors' suits moved through the courts. Knowing that his a.s.sets would not suffice, he tried to protect some of his creditors by executing a deed of trust on November 15, 1797. Those named in the deed were to have first rights to the proceeds of his land, his shares in the Dismal Swamp Ca.n.a.l Company, his two quarter-shares in the Dismal Swamp Company, his livestock, vessels, household goods, and slaves, all held by trustees. Among the preferred creditors were his brother-in-law, Francis Jerdone, and John Jameson, who understood, without anything in writing, that 5,000 Virginia currency owed to him included Macaulay's debt to the Dismal Swamp Company.

Benjamin Henry Latrobe, pa.s.sing the winter of early 1798 in his ugly, expensive rooms, worrying about money, tried to cheer himself by writing a play, a comedy. He had drawn designs for a new theater which the impresario Thomas West hoped to build in Richmond. In the old theater, West's company performed Latrobe's comedy on January 20, 1798, as a benefit for one of West's actresses, Mrs. J. J. Green. An Apology An Apology was a satire on Alexander Hamilton and his newspaper ally ”Peter Porcupine”-that is, William Cobbett, represented by the character Skunk. Latrobe's t.i.tle alluded to Hamilton's recent admission that he had had s.e.xual relations with Maria Reynolds, a married woman whose husband tried to blackmail him while he served as secretary of the treasury. Apologizing for adultery, Hamilton denied that he was guilty of malfeasance or speculation. Latrobe intended his comedy for the friends of ”liberty and morality.” His audience showed charity, but the performance was a fiasco. The actors had not learned their lines, and the evening's biggest laugh came when five actors stood on stage, none knowing what to say next, whereupon all walked off. Latrobe said: ”You may guess at my feelings.” Three days later, after a bad performance of Shakespeare's was a satire on Alexander Hamilton and his newspaper ally ”Peter Porcupine”-that is, William Cobbett, represented by the character Skunk. Latrobe's t.i.tle alluded to Hamilton's recent admission that he had had s.e.xual relations with Maria Reynolds, a married woman whose husband tried to blackmail him while he served as secretary of the treasury. Apologizing for adultery, Hamilton denied that he was guilty of malfeasance or speculation. Latrobe intended his comedy for the friends of ”liberty and morality.” His audience showed charity, but the performance was a fiasco. The actors had not learned their lines, and the evening's biggest laugh came when five actors stood on stage, none knowing what to say next, whereupon all walked off. Latrobe said: ”You may guess at my feelings.” Three days later, after a bad performance of Shakespeare's Richard III Richard III, the theater burned down.

Thomas Shepherd felt the lack of Latrobe's services in protecting the Dismal Swamp Company's boundary. Some residents of Nansemond and Norfolk counties grew bolder in stealing timber from the company's tract in 1798. Among them were men who had claimed land in the swamp, then lost it to the company in the new survey for the grant of 1784. They said the t.i.tle was not good, offering as proof the company's failure to stop them from taking trees. They ”bid defiance” to the Dismal Swamp Company and to Shepherd, pa.s.sing ”boldly over the line, a running main bridges to & fro as they think proper” and ”cutting and a Slaying the Timber in a most horrid manner.” Shepherd knew who they were: William and John Bartee, the b.u.t.t brothers, Willis Wilkins, and others. He reported to the company's managers: ”I prepared to drive them off, but my friends advised me to desist, otherwise I would certainly be killd, as they so frequently threaten my life.” There was money in s.h.i.+ngles and lumber. Although wartime seizures of vessels on the high seas interrupted trade with the West Indies, construction of new buildings in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and the Federal City kept up demand. s.h.i.+ngles sold for $10 per thousand. Shepherd wrote: ”Every persons, Owners of the lower Swamps is Opposed to the Dismal Swamp Company I believe they hate me upon the Earth.”

Writing to an English friend in May 1798, Alexander Macaulay said that he long had been ill. He could neither defend himself against his creditors' lawsuits nor pay judgments issued against him. In the summer a writ of execution hung over his property, threatening him with a general auction. His trustees hoped to save his plantation and slaves. Before the sheriff came to carry out the court's order, Macaulay died.

After the estate auction, Elizabeth Jerdone Macaulay felt bitter. She had not received protection and consideration of the kind extended to Joanna Tucker under similar circ.u.mstances thirty years earlier. She wished to keep the plantation, livestock, furniture, and tools, as well as slaves ”for the crop that is now growing.” To raise money to ”get this burthen of Debt Settled,” she hoped to sell some of her late husband's land, including his two quarter-shares in the Dismal Swamp Company and his lots in Hanover-Town, the late Mann Page's city that refused to grow. But that property did not attract bidders, while property she expected to save with a token bid attracted compet.i.tors. ”Negroe buyers” with rolls of cash ”bid on every Negroe.” She bought nineteen and lost four. Neighbors in Gloucester and York counties, ”who had profest the greatest friends.h.i.+p for poor Mr. Macaulay,” bid against her for furniture, livestock, and slaves, ”expecting I should be discouraged & give over.” At a cost of almost 1,300 she kept the plantation intact. The only concession to her was a low price for the house and lots in York Town, ”which was sold rather in a private manner.”