The Proud and the Free

by Howard Fast

  Then why, I had to ask myself, had we revolted once? What had happened then, and what was lost now?

  Kneel down! said Captain Purdy.

  Like a man made of stone, Angus stood there, motionless.

  Kneel down! cried Purdy.

  Still Angus stood like stone, and like stone stood the ranks of the regiments.

  Drawing his pistol, Purdy cocked it and presented at Angus, but I saw that his hand trembled and the big pistol wavered back and forth in front of the motionless man.

  I gave you a command, he said, pitching up his voice. Either obey it or take the consequences!

  And then Billy Bowzar spoke up, relaxing the awful tension of myself and of others. Billy Bowzar spoke up in that dry and even way of his, his voice cutting the situation into all of its separate parts, and …

  May I speak a word, Captain Purdy, sir? he said.

  I think Purdy welcomed the interruption and welcomed the opportunity of a way out. He had gotten himself into a bad position, and I do not think he would have had the courage to shoot Angus. It is a bitter thing to kill a man in cold blood, as well I know, even if you hate the man, as Purdy hated Angus.

  So he said, This is no part of your affair, Bowzar.

  Yes, sir, agreed Billy Bowzar quietly. But may I say a word, sir?

  Well, speak up then, snapped Purdy, still covering MacGrath.

  I only want to say, sir, that it cannot possibly help either yourselves or us to go on with this matter. We stand in our ranks, and we stand under discipline now. We are good soldiers, sir – and we are ready to march off to a campaign. We are going to fight and die, together, sir, and that is what is important. I saw the incident between Maloney and Captain Gresham. It was a mutual misunderstanding, sir, and it would be better if no blame was to be attached.

  I’ll thank you, Bowzar, not to instruct me in matters of discipline, said Purdy. You are being damned insolent!

  I am trying not to be insolent, Captain Purdy, and I have no desire to instruct you in matters of discipline. That was not my intention at all, sir. I only felt that things will go hard if we continue in this. MacGrath lost his temper, but that is understandable.

  You will not instruct me in what is understandable, said Purdy. That is God-damned insolent! MacGrath was ordered to kneel down and accept punishment. When he does, this matter will be over.

  I will not kneel! said Angus suddenly. I will dee and damn you!

  I could see Purdy working his courage, building his courage, jacking up his courage, and then Jack Maloney stepped forward and took his place beside Angus, presenting his musket, so that if Purdy fired, he would be in a position to fire back.

  Then I’ll go down with him! cried Jack Maloney. Damn the lot of you, you have no hearts and no souls, and a man is a dog to the lot of you! Now who will stand with me? he threw at us over his shoulder. Who will stand with me? Is there a man left in the brigades?

  The officers closed in, but the Jew Levy and Danny Connell and Lawrence Scottsboro and Stanislaus Prukish and the black man Kabanka took their places alongside the two, some quickly, some with the damned resignation of men who realize that they have come to the end of something. An officer broke away – Lieutenant Collins, it was – and ran like the very devil was after him across the fields toward the camp of the recruits. Purdy fell back, the rest of them with him, so that now a group of seven faced a group of ten, and still the regiments stood in ranks unmoving. It was not enough; whenever I recall that morning moment, I realize how precariously the scales were balanced, and it would have needed only Bowzar and myself to tip them over – so that if we had moved forward, the ranks would have moved behind us. All of it was in my mind and through my mind, and already I could see where the lieutenant who ran off was approaching the militia; and faintly, I could hear his shouting, and now I knew why Wayne had kept the artillery so carefully apart. And all of it lived and acted in my mind, and in my mind I saw the ranks surge forward behind Billy Bowzar and myself, and in my mind I saw the ten officers go down before our bayonets and our clubbed muskets; and in my mind I saw our foreigns, better than whom were no soldiers in all the world, greeting the militia with spaced volleys until the green grass was like a slaughter pen; and in my mind I saw the artillery coming, the outriders whipping the horses, the guns bouncing over hill and hummock, and in my mind I saw us retreating into the woods with the stain of blood and death all over us – we who had slain our brothers and ignited the spark that made this war a fratricide – all of this I saw in my own mind’s eye in those few minutes when the two groups stood at bay. And seeing it, I knew the hopelessness of it, the uselessness of it, the deep and woeful and pathetic uselessness of it; for it was only another road into nowhere, into a hope and a dream that had no existence, and we had traveled that road once and we knew it well. And if men died now – as I knew already they must die – they would be forgotten, and the foreigns would lick their wounds and we would march off to the Southern campaign, and we would finish what we had started together with the officer gentry. And it must be finished – this I knew.

  So when Jack Maloney – Jack Maloney who was like a brother to me – called out, And are there no others? And will you not come, Jamie Stuart?

  I answered him, No, I will not, Jack Maloney – I will not because there is no hope here, and once I did it!

  Then be a man and do it twice! cried Danny Connell.

  No – I cannot and I will not!

  And then the time was past, for two men on horseback were spurring down on us, whipping their mounts, Wayne in the lead and Butler close behind him; and after them, at a headlong run, came the regiments of the militia and the new recruits. The officers reined up their horses, and the militia, panting and sobbing for breath, made a ragged line at right angles to our regimental parade, covering with their muskets Jack Maloney and Angus MacGrath and the five others. Purdy and Gresham were speaking to Wayne at the same time, and as he listened to them, his face became murderous with anger. And through all this, the sun rose and bathed the morning in its golden light.

  Stand back! cried Wayne, and he reined his horse back, followed by Butler and the officers, until there was a clear space between the militia and the seven of our men. Then Wayne swung out of the saddle, strode over to the militia, and cried, Take aim at those men!

  There was a sigh, like a woman in pain, out of the ranks as the muskets converged on the little group of soldiers. They drew closer; they pressed against one another – and frozen, paralyzed, I and the others in the ranks remained without thought or movement, only looking at these seven men who were our comrades, Jack Maloney, and big Angus MacGrath, and the Nayger Kabanka and the Polish man, Prukish and the Jew Levy, so small that he and old Lawrence Scottsboro looked like children, if you did not see their faces, and Danny Connell who had once sang sweet songs in another land – and they pressed shoulder to shoulder as Wayne cried:

  Fire!

  Forty muskets roared out, and a terrible groan went up from the ranks, a groan of awful and unforgettable anguish. Six of the seven men sank down in a horrible mass of broken flesh; one, Jack Maloney, his left arm shattered and almost torn from his body, remained standing – and facing him, the militia stood behind their smoking muskets and wept, even as we in the ranks wept.

  But Wayne did not weep. I do not blame Wayne; I do not condemn him; he is dead and gone these many years, and I have no hatred for him. What he had to do, he did, and someday what we have to do, we will do.

  But he did not weep; cold as ice, he was; and hard as stone, and with no more than a glance at the awful carnage of those six dead and the one living and standing, the one who was Jack Maloney who was like a brother to me —with no more than a glance there, he approached us and walked across our ranks, looking from face to face until at last his eyes fixed on me, and he said so softly and bitterly that almost only I heard:

  Stuart.

  Weeping, I stood there, and the smoke drifted away across the morning meadows and littl
e moans of pain came from Jack Maloney, and we who had known every conceivable kind of horror were unable to look at this particular horror any longer.

  Stuart, he said, fix bayonet!

  Like a man in a dream, I obeyed and fixed my bayonet; and this dream went on, for he said:

  I have a long, long memory, Stuart. Advance!

  I moved forward toward that pile of horror and toward Jack Maloney, and Wayne moved with me. He drew his pistol and cocked it and held it a few inches from my head, and the hundreds of men around us stared in silent disbelief, and Jack Maloney was watching me now.

  He is dying from that wound, Wayne said softly, and in bitter pain. Drive your bayonet through his chest.

  For a time I stood as motionless as Jack Maloney, as Wayne, as the men in the ranks.…

  You have one minute, and then I will blow your damned brains out, Wayne said.

  Then kill me now! I suddenly shouted. Do it now, and God’s curse on you!

  One minute, said Wayne.

  And then Jack Maloney said, Do it, Jamie, do it, Jamie! Do it for my sake! Do it and put an end to my terrible pain, Jamie Stuart. Do it because you were right and I was wrong – for the love of God, do it, Jamie! Do it!

  His voice rose to a wild, vibrant note of command, and I lunged and drove the bayonet through his chest. And then I was down beside him, his head in my arms, weeping and weeping, and trying to tell Jack Maloney what I knew but what there were no words for. And then there were Billy Bowzar and Andrew MacPherson, and they lifted me up and took me away and talked to me.…

  We broke camp the next day and set out on our march southward to Yorktown, where we fought the last great battle; and with my musket slung from my shoulder and my knapsack on my back, with bullets in my belt and a pound of powder and a pound of corn meal to keep me, I marched alongside of Billy Bowzar. Thus we marched, and in the course of it, he would say:

  How is it, Jamie Stuart?

  I’ll never sleep again, and waking, I’ll never forget.

  You’ll forget enough, he said, and too much you don’t want to forget, Jamie Stuart. Because there will be a time for remembering.

  And when will that time come?

  Not too soon, God willing, Jamie Stuart. Not before the time is ripe, and then, God willing, we will know the road we take. We are like a seed that ripened too soon, too quick, for we were planted within the gentry’s own revolt, and we grew a crop they fear mightily and neither they nor we knew how to harvest it. That will take knowing, Jamie Stuart, that will take learning. Be patient. The voices are quiet this moment, but they will rise again. Be patient.

  PART TWELVE

  Wherein a little is told of the last days of the Pennsylvania Line, and of those whose acquaintance you have made.

  IF THIS TALE I have told here were something spun out of my own imagination, then this would be as good a place to leave it as any; but it would seem to me to be incomplete without a few words concerning the fate of the handful of us who remained from the old Pennsylvania Line. For me at least, in the course of this long narration, they have come to live again a little as they lived in those old, old times, and it is hard to part with them sooner than the point of firm parting, when the Line was dissolved forever.

  From York village in Pennsylvania, we marched south to join in a general movement of troops toward Yorktown in Virginia, and toward the battle which to all effects and purposes ended the Revolution. Yet for us there was some special destination.

  We found it on the 6th of July, on the James River, where, fronted by a morass, the core of Cornwallis’s army lay waiting, better than four thousand men, well armed and well placed. It is said that Wayne’s information was bad that day, that he had reliable word that less than a thousand British troops confronted us; it could also be said that he was looking for death, as he had searched for it before. In any case, he led the less than eight hundred men who composed the Line into a frontal bayonet attack upon the British – and the attack was led by the two regiments left of the old foreign brigades.

  So there we perished and there was the end of the Pennsylvania Line. Only one hundred and twenty of us survived that attack, which was the wildest, maddest and most terrible bayonet charge of the entire war – and which incidently gave the British the blow which sent them reeling back to Yorktown. Of that fight on the James River, however, I have no heart to tell in detail. We cut our way into a British army more than five times our size, and then we cut our way out again, but of all the men in the 11th Regiment only I was left, and of the Line, only a handful of torn and bleeding men. Somewhere in that swamp Billy Bowzar lay, and MacPherson, and the Gary brothers, Arnold and Simpkins; there too died the German schoolteacher, Chester Rosenbank, and the drummer lads Searles and O’Conner – and how many more I have no heart to detail. Why I survived, I do not know, but it may be that I wanted to particularly and would not die even when all law and rule and precedent said that I should. For with two musket balls in my belly, I lay for five feverish weeks in a makeshift and horrible hospital outside of Yorktown. Yet somehow I lived and survived, and eventually I was able to walk.

  In November, I received my discharge in Philadelphia, two hundred dollars in Confederation money, and a certificate attesting to six years of service in the Pennsylvania Line of the Continental Army.…

  All this was a long time ago. I have had many things out of life and much that I never looked forward to, and I would be telling less than the truth if I did not admit that life was sweet to me, and rich and rewarding. I married Molly Bracken and we saw our children grown and married to others, and we saw their grandchildren. As it is said, there have been generations in this land, and the old times are best forgotten; and who am I, who gained so much from so little, to speak of injustice?

  Yet it is not for the cause of justice or injustice that I have set down this narration. When I mastered the law and took my place at the bar, I gained some understanding of justice; and I do not come with any suit in the cause of the men of the foreign brigades. However it may seem in the course of my tale, I for one do not believe that they perished in vain or that they suffered in vain. They were never causes first, but results first and causes secondarily; and it is the peculiar nature of mankind that with his life so short – and often so miserable – he will nevertheless always find among his numbers those who are willing to spend themselves a little sooner than need be, a little harder, in the cause of human dignity and freedom.

  Nor is it strange that, with all the monuments that have been erected, there have been none to the men whose tale I told. A monument, it seems to me, signifies a finish, a point of rest; and if these men rest, they rest too uneasily to have tributes raised to them. Their story is only half told. Another chapter is being written by those angry souls who call themselves Abolitionists, and I think there will be chapters after that as well. There would be no hope in such a tale as this if it were not unfinished.

  A BIOGRAPHY OF HOWARD FAST

  Howard Fast (1914-2003), one of the most prolific American writers of the twentieth century, was a bestselling author of more than eighty works of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and screenplays. Fast's commitment to championing social justice in his writing was rivaled only by his deftness as a storyteller and his lively cinematic style.

  Born on November 11, 1914, in New York City, Fast was the son of two immigrants. His mother, Ida, came from a Jewish family in Britain, while his father, Barney, emigrated from the Ukraine, changing his last name to Fast on arrival at Ellis Island. Fast's mother passed away when he was only eight, and when his father lost steady work in the garment industry, Fast began to take odd jobs to help support the family. One such job was at the New York Public Library, where Fast, surrounded by books, was able to read widely. Among the books that made a mark on him was Jack London's The Iron Heel, containing prescient warnings against fascism that set his course both as a writer and as an advocate for human rights.

  Fast began his writing career early, leaving
high school to finish his first novel, Two Valleys (1933). His next novels, including Conceived in Liberty (1939) and Citizen Tom Paine (1943), explored the American Revolution and the progressive values that Fast saw as essential to the American experiment. In 1943 Fast joined the American Communist Party, an alliance that came to define—and often encumber—much of his career. His novels during this period advocated freedom against tyranny, bigotry, and oppression by exploring essential moments in American history, as in The American (1946). During this time Fast also started a family of his own. He married Bette Cohen in 1937 and the couple had two children.

  Congressional action against the Communist Party began in 1948, and in 1950, Fast, an outspoken opponent of McCarthyism, was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Because he refused to provide the names of other members of the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee, Fast was issued a three-month prison sentence for contempt of Congress. While in prison, he was inspired to write Spartacus (1951), his iconic retelling of a slave revolt during the Roman Empire, and did much of his research for the book during his incarceration. Fast's appearance before Congress also earned him a blacklisting by all major publishers, so he started his own press, Blue Heron, in order to release Spartacus. Other novels published by Blue Heron, including Silas Timberman (1954), directly addressed the persecution of Communists and others during the ongoing Red Scare. Fast continued to associate with the Communist Party until the horrors of Stalin's purges of dissidents and political enemies came to light in the mid-1950s. He left the Party in 1956.