Altsheler, Joseph - [Novel 05]

by A Herald Of The West (lit)

  " What on earth is wrong with you, Felix? " I asked.

  " Nothing is wrong with me," he replied exuber antly. " It is wrong with the other fellows and their English allies."

  " What do you mean ? "

  "We've beaten all the Northwestern tribes. The news came this morning. It was at Tippecanoe; there had been palavers about peace, and they treacherously rushed our men in the dusk before the dawn, but they were beaten and the great medicine man, the Prophet, was killed on the field. Their Northwestern confeder acy has gone to pieces and the border is safe."

  This, in truth, was great and good news, and the whole city was soon rejoicing with a joy that it had a good right to feel, for the Northwestern Indians were a most formidable foe, who afterward proved themselves more than once to be better than their allies, the British regulars.

  CHAPTER XIX.

  THE APOSTLE OF PEACE.

  THE war feeling grew, the new Congress came in, and Mr. Clay, as was predicted, became Speaker of the House, to be recognised at once as the leader of the war party. But things still lagged, though everybody could see that the war clouds hovered lower, and still, though war seemed inevitable, the Government was su pine. Mercer railed at me bitterly about what he was pleased to call my Government, because I was one of its clerks. The winter was passing, a winter which had been pleasant to me, despite the national anxieties, for Washington was gay socially, and I saw Marian often, when Mr. Gallatin said to me as he was leaving the office one afternoon:

  " Philip, as you have shown yourself to be a trust worthy messenger, I want you to take up that duty again. Have your horse ready and start in the morning for Monticello. I will give you a letter to Mr. Jeffer son which will show that you came from us. Talk to him about this war, see what he thinks, and report to us. But say nothing of it to anybody else. Be discreet, you understand."

  I understood very well, for it was charged publicly, especially by the Federalists, that Mr. Madison was the creature of Mr. Jefferson, who had made him his suc cessor and controlled the administration at the hundred- mile-range of Monticello, which was a falsehood, though it was eminently proper that the President and his Cabi-

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  net should obtain the advice of the greatest living Ameri can on the most important subject of the day. But it must be kept secret, that it might not furnish capital to unscrupulous political opponents.

  I shrank a moment from so delicate a task, and then accepted it, for I was flattered, and, moreover, I had never yet seen Mr. Jefferson, a man who exerted a greater influence than any other upon our nation, with the possible exception of Washington.

  I mounted my horse on a raw, cold morning in late winter and rode to Monticello, carrying in my waistcoat pocket a letter of introduction to Mr. Jefferson which was to do part of my work for me, though I was to rely upon what tact and address I might have for the re mainder. It was a hundred miles from Washington to Monticello, over a red road heavy with mud, and I crossed eight deep rivers, five of them without bridges. Vir ginia was a great State then, perhaps the greatest State in our Union, but I, who had returned so recently from two trips into the North, noticed a sad contrast. I fear that our fine Virginia gentlemen thought more of sound ing political principles in the abstract and the empty tri umphs of oratory than of personal thrift, economy, and neatness, which I think must lie at the foundation of a strong nation.

  I saw on either side of the road fields worn out al ready by careless cropping, deserted and growing up in red sassafras bushes, and several times I met the fine old Virginia gentlemen, still wearing the costume of fif teen or twenty years earlier, powdered hair, three-cor nered hat, long cue, white top breeches, and fine coats of buff or other bright colour. Yet their dress always lacked the final touch of neatness and care, and it seemed to me that their houses, large, fine, and imposing, yet spotted with neglected weather stains, and with the shabby negro cabins huddling in the rear, were a re flex of themselves, their eyes fixed too much upon big

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  things to do the little things which make up the big things.

  With bad weather and worse roads it took me three days to make the journey of a hundred miles, but at last I came within sight of Monticello, Mr. Jefferson's spa cious mansion of antique plan, with its rolling hills and fertile fields around it, and the blue haze of the Blue Eidge behind it, a fit abode for a man who had seen nearly all and had had nearly all that this world offers one who had lived at the French court in its wildest lux* ury and recklessness, who had passed through our own Revolution and that other of France far bloodier and more terrible, who had been for eight years the Presi dent of our nation, and for many more years than that the most powerful man in it, and yet through all had been a dreamer imagining a state of perfect peace, peopled only by farmers, when all the world was at war, with blows random or intended falling incessantly upon us; a great and good man who worked for the future, and yet made some terrible mistakes in the present.

  I knew that Mr. Jefferson, the greatest of democrats, was an austere man, fond only of the society of men cultivated like himself, but I kne w also that he consist ently cared nothing for the forms of ceremony and that I would have no trouble in approaching him at Monti- cello. His farm, or rather estate, was much neater than the others, for a love and skilful practice of agriculture came within the scope of his wide activities; yet I saw many slouchy negroes about, and they paid so little at tention to me that I hitched my horse at a post un noticed, walked upon the porch, and thumped at the door with the butt of my riding whip.

  A tall man, far gone in years and with scanty, longish red hair, opened the door. He wore home-made jeans trousers and a richly embroidered loose velvet dressing jacket, coat and trousers, forming a strange contrast. It

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  was Mr. Jefferson himself, and I knew him at once, though I had never seen him before.

  I gave him my name and showed him my letter of in troduction, and he became at once the hospitable South ern host. Shambling in front, he led the way into a room in which a wood fire crackled on a wide hearth. He gave me a chair himself and then punched the fire with an iron poker. There was no servant about.

  " I have some twenty or thirty lazy negroes to wait on me/' he said, " but I do not recall when I was able to find one of them at the time I wanted him."

  Their absence did not appear to annoy him, and he bustled about, talking of many things with all the ease and charm of a man who had known the great world and had been equal to it.

  The room was like its master, a mass of contradic tions, Old World elegance and New World rudeness; on the floor some rich European rugs and a piece of rough home-made Virginia carpet, some chairs of wood that had been carved and twisted in France or Italy, and two more of rude handwork, probably by his own negroes. But everywhere on the tables, the chairs, the shelves, and the floor were books, and a hasty glance was sufficient to show that they were 'the books of the masters.

  He discovered very soon why I came, and I had not expected otherwise. There was no desire to fence with Mr. Jefferson, and if it had been so I would not have been sent on such an erfand; it was intended from the first that he should know without preliminaries. The mention of war threw him into a distemper. He had fought so long against it, he had thought it the greatest of all evils, an evil that could be banished from the world, and now the party of which he was the founder and still the head was hurrying it on; the President whom he had helped most to make would choose it, too, and yet he could not say no to them, as he could find no argument against them but the single ignoble one of risk.

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  " I will have nothing to do with it! Nothing! Nothing! " he said, a certain despair showing in his tone at the crash of his most beloved theory. " Tell them I am only a private citizen of the United States, no more than the million others, and I have no part in govern ments or policies."

  T
hen he added in a milder tone:

  " Tell them I am to found a university here and am trying to discover a method of restoring the exhausted lands of Virginia. The two things will keep me busy for the remainder of my life."

  When I left he followed me to the hitching post and gave me a hearty handshake at good-bye. Then he threw the remains of an old Continental overcoat over his shoulders, called to a couple of hounds, and walked n way to manage the work of some negroes on a new to bacco barn.

  CHAPTER XX.

  THE GUNS OF THE CONSTITUTION.

  THE winter passed, the spring came again, and the world bloomed afresh; spring yielded to summer, and on one of its early days I took Marian Pendleton walking in the grounds of the Capitol. I did not go far from the building itself and she seemed to wonder why.

  " Why do you stick so close to those walls, Philip ? " she asked. " There is nothing in there but a tiresome old Congress that talked the winter away, then talked the spring to death, and is now dooming summer to the same fate."

  But I remained near the walls and steps, neverthe less, and presently we heard a shout and the excited clamour of many voices. People rushed out of the build ing, and their faces bore great news. Among them was Courtenay, unable to restrain himself.

  "It has been done at last, Philip!" he cried to me.

  "What has been done? What is it?" asked Ma rian.

  " War! War! " said Courtenay. " We have declared war at last against Great Britain! We have taken our grievances to the last court, all others failing! "

  He spoke the truth, or what was as good as the truth, for the House had voted for war, and the Senate, two weeks later, passed the measure, with the President's proc lamation quickly following. After years of patient and impatient endurance we had chosen the sword at last, but without an army, without generals, without military 224

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  stores, and with ships that a man could almost count on the fingers of his two hands against the thousand of our antagonist. Until the end the Administration had persisted in its policy of no preparations, and when war was voted none could fail to notice the ominous fact that New England was almost solidly against it, and the Mid dle States divided.

  When that which I had long sought came, I felt weak and afraid, and for the moment was sorry that I had my wish, knowing so well our unready state and the slender resources that we had for preparations, even at this late hour. Men around me were shouting for the victories that they knew would come to-morrow, but I began to understand what an easy thing it is to cry for war when it is far off, and how different it looks when it stands before your face.

  The war opened, and what the cautious had expected befell us. Hull, a senile imbecile, surrendered without firing a shot; the brave Kentucky militia, half armed, half equipped, and led by generals who were only talk ing lawyers, marched hundreds of miles through the wil derness and arrived at the Canadian border half dead with fatigue and scanty food, only to be beaten by in ferior numbers on ground that they did not know. Thus, I say, the war, after being put off with disgrace, opened with disgrace and continued so for a while, until there came a glorious burst of sunlight from a quarter expected by few of us.

  I was walking up Pennsylvania Avenue one day, de spondent over the disasters and not allowed by Mr. Gal- latin, my patron, whose right to my services could not be denied, to go to Kentucky, where I wished to join our forces, when I met Charlton, the young naval officer of my early acquaintance. I had supposed him off at sea somewhere dodging the English ships, and was astonished to see him there in Washington.

  "You here!" I said.

  226 A HERALD OF THE WEST.

  " Yes, I'm here, Ten Broeck," he replied, " and I bring great news, glorious news."

  I looked at him in doubt; one expected news those days, but not glorious news.

  " I came from Boston," he said, " and I've brought the flag of the Guerriere as a present to the President; it's full of holes, but it will do, for we put them there."

  The Guerriere! The ship which I and all Americans had so much cause to hate!

  "The Guerriere!" I cried. "What of her! What do you mean by saying that you bring her flag as a pres ent to the President ? "

  " It's all that was left to bring," he said joyously. " The rest of her is floating somewhere between the top and bottom of the Atlantic, sent there by the guns of the Constitution. I saw it done, for I was there to help. I'm not in such a hurry that I can't tell you all about it. Come with me."

  I went with him, and he told me the famous old story; how the slanders they had been pouring on us for years were hurled back at them from the mouths of the guns of the Constitution; how Dacres said the Con stitution was coming down too boldly for a Yankee, and his surprise, from which he never recovered, when his ship was shot to pieces under him. Every American knows the tale now.

  We had a great celebration of the Constitution's vic tory, and then came the blood-stained flag of another British frigate, the Macedonian, taken off the coast of Africa by the United States, the combat, as before, being one-sided from beginning to end and never in doubt for a moment. The victories crowded on us, and the little ships as well as the big ones took a hand. Most glorious of all was the news of the Wasp, and how she fought the Frolic in a roaring sea with the waves tumbling over each other, the ships rising and falling on their sides, their guns going under water sometimes and then touch-

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  ing each other. Their ship was bigger than ours and had more and heavier guns, but it ended just the same, for our guns were manned by better men, and when the two ships locked and it came to boarding, at which the English claim to excel, it was our men who boarded and not theirs, and their ship was ours.

  And now a most wonderful change came over the British Admiralty. Before the war any ship of theirs could whip any of ours double her size; they knew our ships, had visited them, dined aboard them, and ridi culed them; but lo! the British Admiralty issued a strict order to their captains that no thirty-eight-gun frigate of theirs should fight a forty-four of ours, and their Pique set the example by running away from the Con stitution in the night in the West Indies. In six or eight months our little navy of twenty against their thou sand had captured or sunk more ships of t heirs than all the navies of France, Holland, Denmark, and Spain com bined had been able to take from them in twenty years of incessant fighting. Can you wonder, can any one won der that we rejoiced? We who had been called cowards, liars, cheats, and everything that is bad by them, rejoiced and still rejoice, and I know we had ample cause. Let me add, too, that the quality of our foe was another reason why we were so glad when we beat him. We have never cared much for any of our victories except those that we have won over the English.

  CHAPTER XXI.

  THE COMING OF THE FOE.

  THE winter came again, and on the frontier we still wallowed deep in the mire of disgrace, for we had only talking generals, strident lawyers, who talked the army into mortal sickness on the march, talked in the face of the foe, and, captured, talked on. Then we thrilled with horror at the news of the Eaisin, where our brave Kentuckians were captured and massacred by the In dians. Two of those who fell there under the Indian tomahawk had been my playmates, and it was not a thing to soothe one's hate of the foe.

  Our spirits were dashed again by the taking of our Chesapeake by their Shannon, for the American seamen had fallen into the British fault and grown too confident, but it was only for a little while. Our career of triumph upon the sea was renewed, and always the American ship was the victor. Then came the capture of their entire fleet on Erie by ours, and even on land the war began to turn in our favour, for a thousand mounted Kentuckians galloped over their entire army at, the Thames and slew Tecumseh, the greatest and most dangerous of the Indian chiefs. But still New England sulked, and our ports were blockaded by their overwhelming fleets, and the lawyers talked on and led our armies, sometimes to vic tory, sometimes to defeat, but
never to victory through any merit of theirs.

  Cyrus Pendleton went to Kentucky once on business, and even at his age would have joined the army on 228

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  the Canadian frontier had his commercial interests per mitted him, but he came back to Washington and re mained there, alternately raging and rejoicing as came the news of defeat or victory. Marian did not accompany him to Kentucky, but was in Washington through all this period, and I often saw her. Bidwell, who had be come a thorough dandy now, though not quite so ex treme as Van Steenkerk, was there too, and he watched me with a jealous eye.

  I noticed a change in Marian. She had been an ad vocate of war, and nobody's indignation had been greater than hers when the report of some new act of oppression came, but she became silent upon this subject, save to express a hope now and then that it would end soon. The captured flags of the Guerriere and the Macedonian, brought to Washington with the dried blood upon them, had shocked her. She could only see now that war meant suffering, wounds, and death. The brave girl whom I had known so long became tender and sad when she spoke of the wounded soldiers on the battlefields in the dim Northern forests. Among all the women in Washington this spirit ruled, and I think it should ever be the pride of the American race, men and women alike, that in battle, and before and after, our humanity has not been stained by ill treatment of the vanquished a boast that no European nation can rightly make.

  Time went on, and the war with it. In Europe the Continent was in flames; Napoleon had made his retreat from Moscow and was fighting allied Europe with a courage and skill that have not been equalled since lone Hannibal made his stand against Rome. We watched events there with scarcely less interest than those in our own country, and when another winter passed and the news came that Napoleon had been beaten to the ground at last, it seemed as if disasters were closing in upon our young country, for all the armies of Britain were re leased from European warfare and were sent against us.