City of Glory
Page 1
SIMON & SCHUSTER
Rockefeller Center
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2007 by MichaelA, Ltd.
All rights reserved,
including the right of reproduction
in whole or in part in any form.
SIMON & SCHUSTER and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Designed by Jaime Putorti
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Swerling, Beverly.
City of glory : a novel of war and desire in Old Manhattan / Beverly Swerling.
p. cm.
Sequel to: City of dreams.
1. New York (N.Y.)—History—1775—1865—Fiction. 2. Manhattan (New York, N.Y.)—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3619.W47C59 2007
813’.6—dc22
ISBN-13: 978-0-7432-9872-8
ISBN-10: 0-7432-9872-1
Visit us on the World Wide Web:
http://www.SimonSays.com
Table of Contents
Cover
Colophon
Also by Beverly Swerling
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Author’s Note
A Time Line
Characters
Prologue
September–November 1813
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Thursday, August 18, 1814
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Friday, August 19, 1814
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Saturday, August 20, 1814
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Sunday, August 21, 1814
Chapter Thirteen
Monday, August 22, 1814
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Tuesday, August 23, 1814
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Wednesday, August 24, 1814
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Thursday, August 25, 1814
Chapter Twenty-one
Friday, August 26, 1814
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Saturday, August 27, 1814
Chapter Twenty-six
A Few Words More
Acknowledgments
For Bill, as always, and for Michael, who would, I think,
have loved all the swash and buckle.
Author’s Note
THE GEOGRAPHY OF New York City is as accurate for the time as research has allowed. In some cases changed street names will confuse those who know the modern city. There were many incarnations of George Street. The one where this story opens is now Rose Street at the southern edge of Tribeca. Little Dock Street became Water Street. Chatham Street is now Park Row. Mill Street is Stone Street. French Church Street is Pine Street. North Street, the city limits at the period of the story, is present-day Houston Street. In the neighborhood known as Five Points (today occupied by the city’s courts and a large swath of Chinatown), Anthony is now Worth Street, Cross is now Mosco Street, and Orange Street is now Baxter. Amos Street, location of the infamous Newgate Prison in what was then known as the Village of Greenwich, is now West Tenth Street. And one further point: in the matter of the Battle of Bladensburg, what is now called the Anacostia River was known at the time as the Eastern Branch of the Potomac.
And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof thro’ the night that our flag was still there.
—FRANCIS SCOTT EKY AT THE BATTLE OF FORT MCHENRY, BALTIMORE, SEPTEMBER 14, 1814
A Time Line
HERE IS A BRIEF HISTORY of the run-up to the events in this book, and a few details about life in the infant United States before the opening of the tale. It is intended for those who find context important. There are no penalties for skipping straight to the story.
Most of the action here takes place in New York City during ten days in the early period of the great experiment that is the United States. Because it aspires to be a good book, it is about love and hate and greed and passion, and sometimes selfless heroism, in this case told against the backdrop of the War of 1812. That last confrontation with Great Britain is often called the final act of the American Revolution, but it is the nation’s most obscure conflict.
1792 to 1796: George Washington’s second term. Two strong political parties emerge in his cabinet, the Democratic-Republicans led by Thomas Jefferson, and the Federalists led by Alexander Hamilton, who is nothing if not a man of New York City.
At that moment Hamilton’s town has some 90,000 residents and is poised to overtake Philadelphia as the nation’s most populous center, as well as the undisputed queen of commerce. No longer the capital city (the federal government moved to Philadelphia in 1790, awaiting the completion of a ten-mile-square Federal District on the Potomac River) New York has become the city of capital, the nation’s economic center. Hamilton and the Federalists believe America’s future lies with great industrial cities that will be merchant barons to the world. A strong central government is vital to that vision, and an enlightened autocracy the only way they see to manage it. Jefferson’s ideas are demonstrated in the rural idyll he has labored to create at Monticello in Virginia. His America must remain what ninety percent of it is at the time, a nation of great landholders and yeoman farmers. He believes passionately in states’ rights, and only slightly less passionately in the rights of the common man. (Despite being a slaveholder himself, he is honestly conflicted over slavery, and wrote an antislavery clause into his original draft of the Declaration of Independence, only to see it struck out by others among the signers.)
In Europe, France and Britain have been at war since shortly after the 1789 French Revolution. America has struggled to remain officially neutral, but on the street—particularly in New York—everyone takes sides. The city’s artisans and craftsmen, a class known collectively as mechanics, along with the unskilled laborers, declare themselves republicans and are hugely pro-French. At home, despite relying on the city for their living, the working people support the rural dreams of Jefferson and the Democratic-Republicans, and hunger for the equality promised by both the American and French revolutions. The merchants and professionals, on the other hand, are appalled at the heads rolling off the French guillotine. They become more and more pro-British, and more than ever convinced that giving the masses control of the government is madness. Federalism, with its promise of strong central control, is firmly established as the philosophy of the ruling class of New York and New England.
1796 to 1800: John Adams, a Federalist, is the nation’s second president and Thomas Jefferson (elected separately in the manner of the time) is his vice president. Adams is the first president to live in the District of Columbia in what is termed the President’s Palace or the Executive Mansion, though it is from the first painted white.
1800: Adams runs for a second term. Jefferson opposes him. On the ballot are two vice presidential candidates, Aaron Burr of New York and Thomas Pinckney of South Carolina. By December of 1800 everyone in the bitterly divided country knows that the Democratic-Republicans Jefferson and Burr have been elected,
but to what? Each has the same number of Electoral College votes, and since by law the electors do not say which man they are choosing for which office, the election for president is declared to be a tie. Following the procedure laid down in the Constitution adopted fourteen years earlier, responsibility for the decision is given not to the senators, who are appointed by the legislatures of the fifteen states (Vermont and Kentucky have joined the original thirteen), but to the House of Representatives, whose members are voted into office by the people. In February of 1801, after six days of balloting, Jefferson is declared the nation’s third president and Burr his vice president.
Jefferson slashes the federal budget, lowers taxes, reduces the national debt, and in 1803 buys Louisiana from the French. This vast territory of 828,000 square miles (today’s state of Louisiana is 48,523 square miles) stretches from the Mississippi River to the Rockies and from the Canadian border to the Gulf of Mexico. The Louisiana Purchase almost doubles the size of the country, but much of it is unexplored.
1804: In May, Jefferson dispatches Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to explore the new territory and report back to Americans exactly what their country now looks like. The expedition will take two years. Meanwhile, in July of that year, Burr kills Hamilton in an illegal duel. Warrants are issued for Burr’s arrest and he flees to Philadelphia, where he plots to make himself emperor of a new country to be formed from Mexico and the American West. In the autumn Jefferson is elected to a second term.
At this point Canada is a nation of 500,000, while the American population is about to top 6 million—not including nearly 2 million black slaves—but the Canadians are feared and demonized because it’s believed they encourage their fierce Indian allies to threaten U.S. settlements on the frontier.
1806: In Europe Napoleon Bonaparte has helped subdue France’s Reign of Terror and led her army to a series of triumphs, but he cannot defeat the British navy and instead declares war on commerce. No ship that has called at a British port may afterward enter any continental European port. As a counter move, Great Britain declares it illegal for the ships of a neutral nation to visit a port from which the British are excluded, unless those ships first call at a British port and take on British goods. Direct trade between the United States and Europe is thus made an act of war. At the same time, Britain continues to claim the right to board any American vessel and look for those she says are deserters. Many naturalized Americans, particularly those who still have British accents (pronunciation has been diverging on both sides of the ocean for nearly two centuries) are impressed into the Royal Navy, a fearsome organization ruled by the lash and offering only the dubious satisfactions of rum and buggery.
1811: James Madison is America’s fourth president, a Democratic-Republican handpicked by Jefferson as his successor. (Madison’s wife, Dolley Payne Todd Madison, is the first first lady to capture the popular imagination, and the first to preside over an inaugural ball.) The Twelfth Congress is in session. It includes a number of young and exuberant members from what is then the West—Kentucky, Ohio, and Tennessee—who are anxious to again take on Great Britain. They say they wish to fight for free trade and sailors’ rights. Their real purpose is to annex Canada, Florida, and Texas. They are called the War Hawks and they are to have their day.
1812: On Thursday, June 18, the United States under President James Madison declares war on Great Britain. In the first year three attempts to take Canada fail, but the tiny American navy distinguishes itself, in part because much of the huge British fleet is occupied elsewhere. Madison is reelected. Nonetheless, the country seethes with debate led by Federalists such as Josiah Quincy of Massachusetts, whom the Democratic-Republicans accuse of “secretly advocating, and insidiously trying to effect, a disunion of the United States.”
1813: The focus moves to actions on the Great Lakes of Ontario and Erie, and there are a series of military thrusts at Canada. York (present-day Toronto) is twice invaded and burned, but never held. On the southern Tennessee frontier there are battles with the Creek Indians, who are urged on by the Spanish in Florida. Pensacola on the Gulf Coast is eventually occupied and will prove to be the only territory America permanently acquires in this war. At sea, however, the British begin to exploit their superiority of numbers and their patrols make coastal trading perilous. Americans are forced to use their terrible roads to conduct vital interstate business. As a result, there are shortages everywhere, along with price gouging and wild speculation, while overseas trade has come to a virtual standstill.
1814: In January the British offer to negotiate and a peace commission is established, but progress is slow. Federalists continue to protest the war, particularly the Canadian strategy, and continue to be called disloyal by the Democratic-Republicans. Meanwhile, except for those gone privateering—given government permission to prey on enemy shipping—the oceangoing merchant vessels of the great shipping companies lie rotting in harbor, escaped slaves help British troops harass and plunder the Chesapeake area, and the British make plans to invade what is now Maine.
In the face of all this the American government is virtually bankrupt. A failed earlier financial experiment means there is no national bank to bail them out, and in a time of no reliable paper currency, curtailment of trade has led to there not being enough coin money in circulation.
One other vital development has taken place before the story opens, though few realize how crucial it is to be to the future of the new nation. The moneymen—traders in various types of risks and commodities—long accustomed to holding wild and rowdy auctions under a buttonwood tree (a sycamore) on Wall Street, realized they were responsible for rampant speculation and the resultant bubble bursting and financial panic, all bad for business. In 1792 the twenty-four most powerful such traders drew up what they called the Buttonwood Agreement, which laid the foundation for a structured market in securities (known as scrip). Early in 1793 these pioneers of what would be the New York Stock Exchange built the elegant new Tontine* Coffee House on the corner of Wall and Water streets, and moved their trading activities into an upstairs room. They continued to meet and do business there during the anxious days of the war.
The stage is now well and truly set for pirates and lovers, thieves and heroes, men—and indeed women—with ambitions big enough for young America’s city of dreams.
*A tontine is a financial arrangement whereby a fixed group takes shares in an investment—in this case the coffeehouse—paying out pro rata as each dies or drops out; the last one standing gets the whole shebang.
Characters
The Doctors
Joyful Patrick Turner: Son of Morgan Turner, one-time privateer and later hero of the Revolution. Joyful was raised in the Chinese trading colony of Canton until age sixteen, when he was sent home to New York to become a physician. One of the early graduates of the Medical Department at Columbia College (known as King’s College before the Revolution), he is thirty when the story opens and has been a ship’s doctor for six years.
Andrew Turner: A hero of the Revolution, a doctor and a surgeon. At seventy-five he is a member of the Common (city) Council, and a respected voice in New York’s affairs. Andrew is Joyful’s cousin, and was his patron when he first came to New York from China.
The Canton Traders
Gornt Blakeman: A man in his prime at forty-some, and owner of the most important stagecoach company in the nation. A trader with a countinghouse on Hanover Street, Blakeman is a man who would be king.
Lansing “Bastard” Devrey: Cousin to Joyful and Andrew, and the illegitimate son of the deceased Sam Devrey, who was a doctor and hero of the Revolution as well as a lifelong bachelor. Lansing, called Bastard by one and all, was not acknowledged until he was twenty-eight and Sam was on his deathbed. When the story opens, Bastard is thirty-seven and head of Devrey Shipping. Once enormously wealthy and still owner of the elaborate house on Wall Street built by Will Devrey in 1706, Bastard has squandered much of his fortune and put the rest in thrall to the specula
tors of Wall Street. Nonetheless, he believes himself a prince among men.
John Jacob Astor: Known by all as Jacob Astor. German by birth, Astor arrived in New York via London in early 1783 when he was just twenty, and soon began trading in furs. In a short time he had a warehouse in Montreal, capital of the fur trade, as well as a countinghouse on Little Dock Street in New York City. Dabbling in the China trade quickly led to a fleet of ships and subsequently a worldwide mercantile empire. Early on he became a speculator in Manhattan property. At the time of the story he is the young nation’s first tycoon, the richest man in America, and has recently built himself a palace in the rural reaches of Broadway between Vesey and Barclay streets. Could he not then become an emperor?
The Women
Manon Vionne: Daughter of one of the many Protestant Huguenot families who came to America to escape persecution in Catholic France, Manon is lovely, but she is also smarter than most men and unable to hide it. Some think that’s why she is unmarried and un-promised at twenty-two.
Eugenie LaMont Fischer: A twenty-four-year-old widow. Beautiful as well as clever, she has been forced by circumstances to live by her wits. Eugenie is struggling to maintain a fine household on Chatham Street, while she searches for a husband who can take over her debts and support her in style.
Delight Higgins: A stunning woman of mixed race; in the accepted term of the time, a mulatto. This subjects her to the laws governing blacks, but Delight claims to have been born free in Nova Scotia. (She admits to twenty-nine, though she may be older.) Delight runs a gambling club and discreet parlor house—i.e., a bordello—known as the Dancing Knave on semirural Rivington Street. It is an area that speculators hope to make fashionable after the war.