The Shores of Tripoli

by James L. Haley

  To families such as the Putnams, who believed sincerely but practiced pragmatically, rancorous debates on the nature of the Trinity or who enjoyed the guaranty of salvation seemed wholly unconnected to the practicality of living honorable lives, helping their neighbors, and practicing hospitality and charity. Yet these were arguments that ended friendships and provoked condemnation to eternal flames. In the Putnam household, on Sundays when there was not time to attend church, Benjamin read passages from the Bible before supper, and almost always ended with Micah the prophet: What does the Lord require of thee? To act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God. For the nature of the Trinity he could spare neither time nor attention.

  Such an attitude was as foreign to the Marshes and their class as the muezzins of Arabia, and Bliven was aware that he was entering dangerous waters; if Clarity was a siren, she was surrounded by the family shoal of needing to speak and act, and profess, correctly. The first Sunday in May was a signal day for Litchfield’s Congregational church, for the learned Dr. Beecher had crossed the Sound from Long Island for one of his visits. It dawned brilliantly, and Bliven’s uniform was spotless as he walked his father’s saddle horse up to the Marshes’ front door. It was a large house, two full stories, of white clapboard with shutters, in a style that was coming to be called Federal, although when it was built two generations before no one had yet thought to give it a name.

  A maid, a young black girl, answered the door and led him to Clarity’s father, who greeted him in the hall. He was a tall man with a full head of gray hair, a wealthy man of property, a man of authority, descended from leaders and himself a leader of the community. He showed Bliven into the parlor, where he bowed to Mrs. Marsh. In her, Bliven was sure he could see Clarity a generation hence, and was encouraged at the prospect, for she was a handsome woman. When Clarity descended the stairs they exchanged bow and curtsy; she did not take his hand until her parents were through the door. “I am glad you have come,” she whispered.

  The Marshes rode in their carriage, with Bliven walking his horse alongside. He thought their arriving in such process extravagant, for the church lay a bare two hundred yards from their house, but then he supposed that such a family must maintain its state.

  After Bliven secured their horses, Clarity took his arm as escort, and they could see the visiting reverend greeting his flock as they entered the church. She waited until she saw Beecher was free and Clarity drew Bliven up to him. “Reverend?”

  “Miss Marsh.” He bowed and took her hand.

  “May I present my friend, Lieutenant Bliven Putnam?”

  They bowed. “Lieutenant Putnam, the hero of the Enterprise?” His smile showed teeth remarkably fine and even; he shot out his hand and Bliven took it. “Well, I am pleased to meet you, sir.”

  “Hardly a hero, sir, but I thank you.” So, he thought, this is what it’s like. Being a hero paves a road ahead of you.

  Beecher’s youth startled him; he must be only in his latter twenties, hardly time enough to have gained such a reputation as a doctrinal divine, as the conservative wing of the denomination was hailing him. His hair was dark, slightly wavy, and combed back; his dark-brown eyes slanted down away from his prominent nose, one more than the other, as though they were tired, and Bliven was certain that he caught in them the same glint, the same hint of possession, that elsewhere he had seen only in the Carolinian, Calhoun, he had encountered at Miss Pierce’s social. Beecher had a prominent lower lip beneath a wide mouth, which when closed made it look like he had bitten into something bitter. “Are you a friend of the Marshes?” he asked.

  “A new one,” answered Mr. Marsh, coming up behind the group and shaking hands with Beecher. “Lieutenant Putnam’s father is the proprietor of the drayage and livery stable, and has an admirable little farm on the South Road.”

  Despite himself, the “little farm” lingered in Bliven’s ears.

  “Yes, I have seen the livery stable,” said Beecher. “Mrs. Marsh, good morning. Are your parents with you, Mr. Putnam?”

  “No, sir, I came with the Marshes.”

  “Of what faith are your parents?” Beecher asked him this with stunning directness and with no hint of motive, whether it was out of friendly curiosity or guarded suspicion.

  Bliven was taken aback. “Well, we are Congregationalist, albeit my mother tends to the Unitarian persuasion.”

  “Oh, I am sorry to hear it.” Bliven had had no warning that Beecher was an avowed enemy, a passionate enemy, of Unitarianism. Harvard had gone over, and most of the churches in Boston, to this grievous doctrinal error. He looked upon his churches on Long Island and in Connecticut as bulwarks against this spreading heresy.

  How quickly he raises a wall, thought Bliven, how quickly the welcome becomes more guarded, how certainly he expects you to be like him.

  “And your father? Does he not attend services?”

  Bliven blushed and looked around for help, but there was none. “Well, sir, he believes that he pleases God by not letting his family go hungry.”

  “He works on Sundays?”

  “Often he does, yes, sir.”

  Beecher frowned, accentuating the bear-trap aspect of his mouth. “God’s holy word tells us that the Sabbath is a day of rest, set aside unto Himself.”

  Bliven stiffened, but then smiled. “And yet I understand that you do some of your best work on the Sabbath, do you not, Reverend?”

  Beecher’s eyes registered an icy flicker before he boomed out in laughter. “Well, arguably that is different, but yes, so I do! Come, it is time to go inside.”

  Clarity separated from him as she and her mother went to the women’s side of the church, but not before he saw the color drain from her face like wine from a glass, and he knew he had stepped amiss. Her father betrayed no feeling, but led him into a forward pew, to the far end, where Bliven found himself squeezed between him and the wall.

  That morning Bliven Putnam came to understand why Lyman Beecher had become a standard-bearer for the Trinitarians. He preached a persuasive sermon, an angry and convicted sermon, on the sure damnation of those who fall into doctrinal error, but those who at the last hour, if they made the most abject confession, might yet achieve blessed salvation. Bliven felt every bone in his body taking offense. Had he been sitting next to Clarity, he did not know how he would contain himself.

  “I am very pleased to have met you, Lieutenant,” said Beecher as the congregation filed out. “Perhaps you might settle here, do you think?”

  “And perhaps you might join the navy,” he answered. “We have need of good chaplains on our ships.” He would have loved to know that on some dark night Beecher had been hooded and buggered in the heads. That would take some of the starch out of him.

  “A kind thought,” said Beecher, “a very kind thought.”

  At the Marshes’ house it was Clarity’s father, descending from the carriage, who took hold of Bliven’s horse’s bridle. “Please, come in, take some tea with us before you go home.”

  Bliven had been nursing his insult and dreading what consequence he would face with Clarity. “Yes, thank you very much, I will.”

  Their black maid knew to have tea and cakes ready by the time they returned, which they took not in the parlor but in the library on the opposite side of the hall. Bliven could not stop himself from exploring the shelves before he sat. “Such a fine collection of books,” he said quietly as Clarity handed him his cup—which he instantly set down. “Oh, look, you have Rollins’s Geography!” He removed the first volume, then took up his tea and joined Clarity on the sofa. He remembered the page. “Look here, the Straits of Gibraltar, you know, when you sail through there you can see both shores. See where it says the Pillars of Hercules? Well, they aren’t really. The Jeb el Musa—here—is just a little hill compared to the Rock of Gibraltar.”

  “Malta.” Clarity pointed. “You were there.”
/>   “Yes.”

  “And where did you fight the pirates?”

  Gently he moved her finger a quarter-inch to the left. “Just here, about ten miles west.”

  Clarity’s parents had sat quietly through this exchange, until Bliven looked up again. “Such a fine collection of books.”

  Her father nodded. “I am pleased that you appreciate them. You must make a point to come visit us and gratify your curiosity further.”

  “May I?” Surely the man knew there were not just books in the balance.

  “Certainly. Come, Martha, let us leave the young people to themselves for a moment before he returns home.” Bliven thought that exceptionally well done, conceding them some privacy even as he signaled that it was time for him to conclude the visit.

  Suddenly they were alone in the library. “I could have throttled you when you talked back to Reverend Beecher,” hissed Clarity.

  “When did I?”

  “When you said he worked on Sunday.”

  “Oh, he took it in good part.” Bliven shrugged. “Did you not see? Besides, it will serve him to learn that he cannot run over everyone as easily as he imagines.”

  She seemed unmoved. “It could only be seen as a lack of respect.”

  “Lack of his respect, not mine. Please understand, sixteen for a sailor”—well, near sixteen, but he was anxious to be older—“is not the same sixteen as for your law students. I cannot live as a man for a year, with a man’s duties and expectations, and the sea is a hard life, and return to a state of pupilage when I come home. I no longer see the world as a child, and I will admit it, I can become resentful when I am treated as one.”

  Clarity grew thoughtful. “I’m sure you understand, his sermon was already prepared. He did not deliver it for the purpose of insulting your parents.”

  Bliven nodded. “I know. But all the same, I am glad they were not here.”

  “My parents like you. This is well begun.”

  It was a discreet time to withdraw. “As is the new shed on the side of my parents’ barn, which I must go work on. May I call on you again?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  7.

  LITCHFIELD

  1802

  Summer for Bliven passed congenially after this. He finished adding the shed onto the barn to store up the additional hay he would harvest from Mrs. Baker’s field, and he enlarged the corncrib, dug and roofed a second root cellar, and watched a bountiful crop of apples slowly grow plump. He took to attending church with the Marshes, which even his mother approved of, for she understood that he was thinking of his future.

  Clarity came to accept that his embrace of faith was that of a strong young man; it was not as meek or humble as she would have thought proper, but it was on her father’s counsel that she determined not to make an issue of it. She could find prospects at Mr. Reeve’s law school who were wealthier and more gifted in sophistry, and if she selected a husband there, he would honor her choice. He also made it clear, however, that if she yielded her affections to her lieutenant, he would think that her choice of young Putnam’s honesty and hard work was not an inferior one. This surprised her, for her father seldom crossed the lines of class.

  It was hard for her to guess what turned him to favor him. At the first frost he invited Bliven to shoot geese with him on land he owned in some marsh country, but Bliven declined, on the grounds that he was not a very good shot, and he would likely maim more than he killed. Mr. Marsh declared he had heard it said that Bliven was quite a famous gunner. Bliven, nonplussed, replied that if Mr. Marsh wished him to bring his own guns from the Enterprise, they had best be uncommonly large geese, which caused her father to seize up with laughter whenever he tried to repeat the story.

  More likely, she concluded that they shared a mild view of alcohol, of which Reverend Beecher disapproved without reserve. Marsh drank sweet cider when it was in season, but as apples ripened only once a year, he was willing to enjoy hard cider at other times of year and think no ill of it.

  When he turned sixteen Bliven was judged old enough to visit Captain William Bull’s tavern on the east road toward Farmington. Captain Bull himself was dead these past three years, but the family maintained the business and it was the most congenial stopping place in the town. There he could lift a tankard of ale and be sure that he would meet one or another of his family’s friends and new acquaintances who wanted to hear of his exploits on the Enterprise. Bull’s tavern was also the first place where the newspaper from Hartford could be found lying freely about. From the travelers and from the newspapers, Bliven was able to keep reasonably abreast of the conflict in the Mediterranean.

  The year began well enough, for although Congress did not declare war on the Barbary states as President Jefferson had strongly suggested they should, they did—for whatever the subtle difference was worth to them—recognize the state of war. The point was, the navy was authorized to take prizes, and that would be a sure motivation to the crews. They also raised the pay, to ten dollars per month for an able seaman and proportionately less for ordinary seamen and boys. Much of the good done by these steps, however, was undone by doubling the term of enlistment to two years.

  America had never fought a war so far abroad, and law providing for one-year enlistments had been enacted with the view of service close to home shores. Two years was a necessary change, but of men who were so down on their luck as to consider serving in the navy for a year near home, very few indeed even of the most unfortunate could be induced to sign on for two years. Nor did it help that it became better known generally that American officers, especially junior officers, had little to learn from the British in wantonness and cruelty in governing their crews. More than one captain, unable to make up his ship’s company in Boston, was given leave to sail for New York and troll the docks and alleys there for derelicts—the class of sailor on whom the worst disciplines were inflicted, which thus deepened the cycle.

  Bliven heard as much news from New York as he did from Boston, and while he felt certain that the navy never employed the press gangs for which the English were infamous, some of the stories he heard in Captain Bull’s tavern trod so close to the line that one could be forgiven for losing the distinction. And all this was before the fighting even began.

  Such fighting as there was, for the commodore who replaced Dale, Richard Morris, seemed to have little taste for it. News of fighting was mightily scarce, but the public was well informed of the fact that his wife, his young son, and a maid accompanied him on his flagship, and there were accounts of their sparkling presence in society, in Gibraltar, in Port Mahon, in Leghorn, and Naples, and Palermo, and Malta, where Mrs. Commodore Morris gave birth to their second child. News of fighting, however, was precious scarce.

  After the harvest was in, Bliven heard one day in the livery stable that a letter was waiting for him with the postmaster. A short walk, and payment of a quarter dollar in postage, saw him holding a folded letter, with a postmark from Abbeville, South Carolina. Sam Bandy’s hand he knew well enough.

  “Bliven Putnam, Lieut., USN,” it began.

  My dear sir,

  With matters well in hand on our plantation, I have in mind to come to Connecticut and visit you. Would this be well? The navy here is very dull, who can say when I will be recalled? Indeed, if you have gone back to sea, I expect your father will be kind enough to reply to this and advise me of it. But if you are in residence, I should be glad to gratify my curiosity for I have never seen New England, and it would be pleasant to talk over Barbary times with you. Be pleased to address a reply to me at Rosemount Plantation, Abbeville District, South Carolina.

  Very Resp’y,

  Yr. Obt. Servt.,

  Samuel Bandy, Lieut., USN

  Bliven wrote out his reply that night after ascertaining that his parents were as keen to meet Sam Bandy as he was to see him again. “My dear Sir,” he wrote by candl
e in his upstairs bedroom:

  I fear I have no similarly grand address from which to answer your kind correspondence, but my family will welcome your visit. Come when you can, and do not neglect to inform the navy in Charleston of your location. From what I can learn, it would not surprise me to hear that we had been called to duty. If I may advise you, you will find it faster to sail from Charleston to Boston and take the stage from there to Providence. There engage Mr. Strait’s coach, and you need tell him only, ‘Putnam Farm, South Road, Litchfield,’ and you will arrive on our very doorstep. He knows us well. Any day is as good as another for your arrival, but you might tell us an approximate day, that we may be expecting you.

  Very resp’y., &c.,

  Bliven Putnam, Lieut., USN

  Bandy arrived the second week in November, in a cold rain that had turned into snow. He descended from the coach with a large trunk as well as his sea bag, finely dressed but not in his uniform. “Sam!” cried Bliven as he opened the door. “Sam, come in, let me help you with those. I judge you have not seen snow in a while; we ordered it especially for you.”

  Benjamin greeted him, pipe in hand. “Well, young Mr. Bandy, you are welcome. Now, here is how it is. You see there the parlor, with the polite furniture, the bric-a-brac, and a fireplace that could not heat a dollhouse. Through there leads out to the kitchen, which has a blazing fire, and has food and tea, and the comfortable furniture. I leave it to you, sir, would you be company or family?”