by Ron Carter
For a time he lay still in the blackness of his bedroom to let consciousness sort dream from reality, and then he closed his eyes to listen to the deep, slow breathing of his wife, Kathleen, next to him. She was asleep; he had not wakened her. He pondered the time—how close to five o’clock and how long before dawn. At seven o’clock Adam would be at the front door, and at eight o’clock the two of them were to be on the quarterdeck of a tough, heavy-keeled, thick-hulled, three-masted, six-hundred-ton merchantman named Adonis, owned by the Dunson & Weems Shipping Company, tied to the Lewis docks, loaded and low in the water, undulating heavily on the roll of the outgoing Atlantic tides.
The Adonis was scheduled to sail south from a rain-drenched Boston harbor to the mouth of the Delaware, then west up the river to the deep-water port of Philadelphia to deliver eleven hundred barrels of dried Maine cod to the warehouse of Terrell & Company. From Philadelphia, she was to continue south to the Chesapeake, thence west to the York River where she was to dock at the small, battle-scarred tobacco trading hamlet of Yorktown to take on three hundred tons of prime, cured Virginia tobacco for delivery to the Dutch brokerage firm of Van Der Mein in New York, and then return to her home port of Boston for her next cargo. Adam Dunson, Matthew’s youngest brother, was to be her navigator, but Matthew would not be with the Adonis when she tied up to the old, battered dock at Yorktown. He was to leave the ship at Philadelphia, where he would remain for at least fifteen days, mingling with and interviewing delegates commissioned by each state in the Union, who would be gathering in the Statehouse on May 14, in one last, desperate effort to save the United States from self-destruction.
Matthew flinched at the distant, muffled sound of the rattle- watchman on his nightly one-hour rounds in the Boston streets. “Three o’clock. Rain. All’s well.” For several moments he listened for a change in Kathleen’s breathing, and there was none; only the blackness, and the quiet sound of the rain. He turned onto his back and silently laid his forearm across his closed eyes while his thoughts reached back twelve years, and came in bits and pieces.
April nineteenth, 1775—Lexington—Concord—the British—the shooting—the near total destruction of the American Continental Army at Long Island. Trenton—Princeton—the battle on Lake Champlain—Saratoga—the French joining the Americans—the Nassau raid—the British invasion of the southern states—the sea battle of Chesapeake Bay—the siege of the British at Yorktown—the surrender of General Cornwallis and his army—the end of the shooting war—the 1783 Treaty of Paris with the British.
And then the shock of discovering that the government of the United States, established by the Articles of Confederation, was fatally flawed. There was no power provided to levy taxes—no way to raise revenue or control interstate disputes. Bankruptcies ran rampant—land foreclosures by the thousands—good men thrown into debtor’s prison— border wars between states—the rise of Daniel Shays and his small army in rebellion, closing courthouses to stop court proceedings—Americans killing Americans at three pitched battles on January 25, February 4, and February 27, 1787—a civil war.
Frantic leaders saw the collapse of the Union looming. Washington, Madison, Adams, Jefferson, Jay, Hamilton, arranged conferences for belligerent states to meet and settle their differences short of shooting. Those conferences failed.
The bright, hot memory wrenched Matthew’s heart, and he could not lie still. He turned in his bed, listening to the murmur of the rain, waiting for the next call of the rattle-watch, unable to stem the dark memories. He remembered the driving compulsion to do something—anything—to stop the fragmenting of the country, and recalled the bleak realization of his own limitations. He had served six years as an officer in the United States Navy, which had prevented him holding public office. He was limited—needing more than he had. He resolved he would find Thomas Jefferson; he would know what to do.
He recalled as if it were yesterday their meeting in April of 1784, beneath a dull, slate-gray overcast at Annapolis, Maryland, at Jefferson’s boardinghouse quarters near the Statehouse, in a room jammed with books and writings. Matthew had sat in awe, saying little and listening much as Jefferson led him into his world of lofty thought and concept. Their time together awakened in Matthew the vision. History and circumstance had brought together as never before, a limitless land, rich beyond imagination, and an idea, and a gathering of men with the wisdom and the vision and the daring to change the world forever.
Scarcely breathing, he had inquired, “What can I do?”
Jefferson’s eyes narrowed, and he spoke with quiet intensity. “In each state there is a committee. A Committee of Correspondence, or a Committee of Merchants. Their purpose is to tell the world what’s happening here and lift it to action. Find the committee in Boston. If there is none, create one. Write letters. Publish articles. Stir your people. Raise them. Will you do it?”
It was not a question. It was a commission.
Matthew returned to Boston and plunged in. Billy and Caleb and the others ran the Dunson & Weems shipping company while Matthew sat at his desk, early and late, writing letters and articles to newspapers and leaders in all thirteen states. Responses came flooding, many from men of consequence—Washington, Madison, Hamilton, Rutledge, Pinckney, Gerry, Mason, Jefferson, Adams, Jay. But by 1786 the common thread in all of it was stark dread that the United States was on the brink of disunion, and no one man among them could conceive of a workable plan to save it.
Then, through James Madison, one last appeal went out to all thirteen states: commission and send delegates to one final convention to be held the second Monday in May of 1787 at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, to amend the Articles of Confederation sufficient to save the United States. Should this convention fail, the six years of bitter, tortuous war, at a cost of tens of thousands of lives on both sides, followed by six tragic years of watching the thirteen infant states sink toward oblivion, would have been for nothing.
The rattle-watch call came again, nearer, louder. “Five o’clock. Raining. All’s well.”
Matthew opened his eyes and waited while the dreamworld faded, then he listened to the breathing of Kathleen; it was too shallow, too measured. He turned his head and whispered.
“Awake?”
“Yes.”
Matthew kept a lamp on the night table beside the bed with the wick trimmed to a tiny pinpoint of light, enough to let him find it should their son, John, awaken in the night, but not enough to bring any sense of light to the room. Kathleen was an indistinct blur in the darkness, but he saw her in his mind—tall, striking, long dark hair tumbled on her pillow and around her face, and he felt the rise in his heart.
“Five o’clock,” he said.
“I heard the rattle-watch,” she said.
From down the long hall came the muffled sound of five timed strikes of the mantel clock, distant, yet loud in the still blackness. Matthew took a deep breath and shifted his feet.
“I have to get moving. Today’s the day.”
Her hand reached to touch his arm and she said quietly, “Hold me for a minute.” There was a sense of need in her low voice. In silence they reached for each other, and for a little time they lay entwined in the warmth and security of their bed, the world forgotten as their souls gave and received that which would sustain them for the time of their coming separation.
Matthew kissed her and released her. “I have to go. Adam will be here soon.”
“You go,” she said. “I’ll get breakfast. Try to not wake John.”
He pushed back the comforter and swung his bare feet to the braided oval rug on the floor, stood, picked up the lamp, and twisted the wheel to adjust the wick. The room became a mix of yellow light and misshapen shadows as he took the three steps to the door into the hallway, and silently walked shivering down the cold, polished hardwood floor to the parlor. In his long nightshirt, he set the lamp on the mantel and knelt beside the banked coals in the great fireplace, took the leather bellows, and gently worked the
handles until the coals glowed. He dropped pine shavings onto them, then pumped the bellows until tiny flames came licking. They caught, and he added kindling. Then he lit the large lamp on the mantel beside the beautifully carved clock and, scooping the small brass shovel full of burning coals and walked into the shadowy kitchen, to the black cast-iron stove. With his toes curled against the cold of the floor, he opened the two fireboxes and dumped the glowing coals inside, followed by pine shavings and kindling from the woodbox beside the stove. He adjusted the damper in the stovepipe for draw, watched the kindling catch, closed the doors, and set two kettles of water on the stove to heat for shaving and washing. He was turning when Kathleen walked through the archway with her robe tied about her waist, and her woollen slippers moving silently on the floor. She had brushed her long hair back and caught it behind her head with a bit of ribbon, and for a moment Matthew studied her in the pale lamplight, stirred in his soul as always.
“Need anything from the root cellar? Potatoes? Sausage?” he asked.
She was tying her apron as she shook her head. “No. Got them last night. And eggs.”
He nodded. “I’ll go start packing.”
She watched his back as he walked through the archway into the parlor, lifted the bedroom lantern from the mantel, and padded down the hall to their bedroom. For a moment she listened to the faint sounds of him working with his seaman’s bag in the bedroom. She was seeing him—tall, dark-haired, eyes dark and serious, features tending toward delicate but also manly, with the three-inch scar on his left cheek, received in the sea battle near Valcour Island on Lake Champlain.
The sound of water coming to a full rolling boil in the kitchen brought Kathleen back from her reveries to the gentle sound of rain on the roof in the blackness outside, and the reality of a household to run, and a husband leaving at seven o’clock for three weeks in Philadelphia. Beyond the dread of watching Matthew walk out into the rain to be gone for nearly a month, this was Tuesday in Boston, and she had a week’s ironing waiting her. On Monday in Boston town, the backyard clotheslines of every virtuous Puritan citizen was a patchwork of white laundry stirring in the breeze, and on Tuesday the worthy righteous women sweated in the kitchen with at least four flatirons, which they rotated on the stove while they labored through ironing Monday’s wash. Failure to observe the entrenched Monday–Tuesday washing-ironing ritual would raise indignant neighborhood noses, while fingers pointed and quiet whispers were exchanged over white picket fences.
Kathleen reached a small bowl of last fall’s shriveled potatoes from the cupboard, quickly plucked the sprouts from the eyes, peeled the potatoes, and sliced them sizzling into butter melted in a large black skillet on the stove. She salted them, peppered them, turned for a sausage that she laid in the butter beside the potatoes, then wiped her hands on her apron as she walked silently down the dark hall to the dull light in the bedroom. Matthew, in his nightshirt and a pair of trousers, was setting his packed bag on the floor beside their bed. She spoke softly.
“Water’s hot.”
He nodded and followed her silently past the bedroom where John slept, out to the kitchen. He used a heavy cloth to lift the black kettle from the stove and carry it through the door into the washroom. He poured steaming water into the deep porcelain basin on the washstand, mixed it with cold water from the wooden bucket next to it, and pulled his long nightshirt over his head to hang it on a wall peg. With cloth and soap he washed himself, opened the door into the blackness of the backyard, threw the water into the rain, and returned the basin to the washstand to fill it once more with a mix of hot and cold water. He used the cloth to rinse himself, then took his razor from the wall cabinet, opened it, seized the end of a long strop made from the hide of a pig and fastened to the wall, and pulled it taut. Carefully he stroked the razor back and forth, first on the rough side of the strap, then the smooth, to hone the delicate edge. Satisfied, he soaped his face and carefully shaved. After rinsing the remaining lather from his face and wiping it dry, he dried the razor and folded it closed before throwing the water from the basin out the door. With his nightshirt draped over his shoulder and with his razor in one hand and the kettle of hot water in the other, he walked back into the kitchen, set the kettle back on the stove, and went on to the bedroom to pack his razor, tie the drawstrings on his bag, and dress in traveling clothes.
When he silently walked back into the dining room in his stockinged feet, carrying his square-toed shoes with the polished brass buckles, a heavy china plate was smoking at his place at the breakfast table, piled with fried potato slices, sausage, two fried eggs, and a thick piece of homemade bread. There was only a cup at Kathleen’s place; she preferred to eat with John when he awakened later in the morning. Matthew set his shoes beside his chair and waited while Kathleen poured steaming chocolate into the cup next to his plate. She poured for herself before both knelt beside their chairs, and with bowed heads sought the blessings of the Almighty on their food, their family, their home, and the day. Then they rose and sat at the table, Matthew at the head, Kathleen to his right. With pleasure known only to a wife and mother, Kathleen watched him begin with his knife and fork, savoring the breakfast she had prepared for him. She picked up her cup of steaming chocolate and held it between her hands, blowing gently before she sipped. She let him eat in silence for a time before she spoke.
“This business in Philadelphia. You’re concerned?”
He nodded and continued eating.
She sipped. “You didn’t sleep well. Worried those men won’t come?”
He put down his knife and fork and reached for his cup. “Yes.”
“George Washington? Is he coming?”
Matthew sipped, then nodded. “He wasn’t at first. Said he had a prior commitment to the Society of the Cincinnati. Madison and Hamilton wrote him and he relented. He’ll be there.”
“Who else? Have you seen the lists?”
Matthew reflected for a moment. “Some. Not all.”
“Who from Massachusetts?”
“Nathaniel Gorham. Caleb Strong. Elbridge Gerry. Rufus King.”
Kathleen studied the cup between her hands. “I’ve heard of Elbridge Gerry and Rufus King. Not the other two. Will Thomas Jefferson be there?”
“Can’t. He’s in Paris, serving as American Minister.”
“John Adams?”
“In London as American Minister.”
Kathleen’s eyes narrowed. “Who’s coming from the south? Slavery is bound to come up.”
Matthew set his cup down and for a moment stared at his plate, then spoke slowly, softly. “Slavery could split the convention and the United States with it.”
Kathleen repeated her question. “Who’s coming from the south?”
Matthew held his cup between his hands for a moment, then spoke in measured words. “The south will be led by three men from South Carolina. Charles Pinckney, John Rutledge, and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney. The two Pinckneys are cousins. All three are powerful men. All united in their stand on slavery. If slavery is abolished, I think they’ll walk out, and if they do, the Union is finished.”
“That serious?”
“That serious.”
For a time Kathleen worked on her hot chocolate while Matthew finished his plate, then picked up his own cup.
She spoke. “Any other serious problems?”
Matthew drew and released a great breath. “I think one more. Big states are starting to say they should have more power than small states. New York has ten times the population of Rhode Island, and some think that entitles them to ten times more power. The small states won’t stand for it. If the small states find themselves doormats for the big ones, they’ll likely leave.”
Kathleen straightened and for a moment stared at Matthew in the silence before she put her cup down. “The rain has stopped.”
Matthew nodded. “I hope it clears before we sail.” He gestured toward the door leading to the backyard. “There’s enough wood cut and stacked for f
our weeks. I left six twenty-dollar gold pieces on the dresser. Is that enough house money?”
“Yes. Too much.”
“If anything should happen and you need more money, go ask Billy.”
She nodded. “I know.”
“If you need anything done here at the house, find Caleb.”
Again she nodded, but remained silent.
He paused for a moment. “The root cellar is well stocked. I can’t think of anything else you might need.”
“We’ll be fine.”
“I’ll write when I can.”
He raised his cup, finished it, and set it down. “I’d better get my bag. Adam will be here soon.” He started to rise when Kathleen laid her hand on his arm, and he settled.
“Did I forget something?” he asked.
“No. I wasn’t going to tell you until you returned, but I think I’d better.” He saw the look on her face and waited.
“It’s possible we are going to have another child.”
For a moment he sat still, wide-eyed. For six years they had waited, hoping, wanting their family to grow. “Are you sure?”
“Not certain. I’ll see Doctor Soderquist while you’re gone. I’ll write when I know.”
He rounded his mouth and blew air softly for a moment in thought. “I’d better stay here. I’ll cancel this Philadelphia trip.”