Ben Franklin himself would not have disagreed. Indeed, thanks to his indefatigable lobbying, the prudent British government had even given him a valuable stake in the great enterprise. For his son William Franklin, with a law degree, but no administrative experience, was now made governor of the colony of New Jersey.
As for the rest of her far-flung empire and her rivalry with France, Britain now controlled the fabulous riches of India and the rich sugar island of Jamaica. Her navy dominated every ocean. Britannia ruled the waves.
Such was the enlightened, happy empire of Britain’s well-meaning young king.
But not everyone was happy.
The way Charlie White saw it, things were going from bad to worse, and no mistake. As he walked up Broadway, a sharp north wind was coming down the Hudson River, slicing through the January dusk like a knife. There was a thin, frozen crust of snow on the streets. And Charlie’s mood was black.
It was Twelfth Night. He’d been planning to give his wife a present, but he had nothing.
Well, almost nothing. A pair of mittens he’d found going cheap in the market. He’d been lucky there. But that was all.
“I wanted to buy you a new dress,” he’d told her sadly, “but it’s all I can do to put food on the table.”
“It’s all right, Charlie,” she said. “It’s the thought that counts.”
It was the same for most of their neighbors. It had been like this ever since the damned British Army had gone.
The war was over. That was the trouble. Gone were the redcoats who needed provisions; gone were the officers who wanted houses, and furniture, and servants. Naval ships came in but only briefly, and were gone. The whole place was in recession. Money was tight. Merchants in London were shipping their excess stocks across the ocean, selling them off at bargain prices in New York, so that honest craftsmen couldn’t make a living. Yet farmers in the market, having fewer customers to sell to, were marking their prices up, to compensate.
“England uses this place to fight the French,” he told his family, “but once that’s done, they leave us in the lurch.”
The only people who weren’t suffering were the rich. They lived in another world. The theater was full. Pleasure gardens with London names like Ranelagh were being opened. “London in New York,” people called it. Everything was fine for men like John Master.
Charlie had steered clear of Master since the merchant’s return from London. He knew all about young James being sent to Oxford, for he still, bitterly, followed the family’s every move. But if his contemptuous former friend had come to his house now, Charlie would have spat in his face.
Things had got so bad in the White household that Charlie’s wife had started going to church. Not the Anglican church, of course. You could leave that, Charlie thought, to the Trinity crowd. She preferred the Dissenters. Sometimes, to keep her happy, he’d even go with her to a service or a preaching. But he hadn’t any faith himself.
“Your mother’s took to religion, son,” he had told Sam. “I reckon it’s poverty that’s drove her to it.”
But where the devil was young Sam? That was why he was walking up Broadway in the freezing dusk. Looking for his favorite son. He’d been out since noon. What the devil was he up to?
Charlie had a pretty good idea, of course. Sam was seventeen, and Charlie had noticed, not without a touch of pride, that his son was starting to make headway with the girls. There was a pretty young serving girl he’d spotted him with last week. The young scamp was probably off somewhere with her.
But it was Twelfth Night, and the family was celebrating together. Sam should have more consideration. Charlie was going to give his son a piece of his mind when he found him.
An hour passed. Charlie visited all the taverns on the West Side, but no one had seen his son. Irritated, he went back to the house. The rest of the family was there, waiting to eat. So they ate without Sam. And his wife said she didn’t mind, so long as Sam was all right, which was a damn lie.
So after it was all over, Charlie went out again. His wife said there was no point and he knew it. But he couldn’t just sit there. It was a dark night now, and the wind had a vicious bite to it. The clouds in the sky were ragged, and through their tatters, you could see the faint, cold glimmer of a star or two. The streets were almost empty.
He walked down Broadway, called in at a few taverns, but had no luck. He passed Trinity Church and continued southward. He was entering the area he hated now.
The Court area, they called it these days. The old fort had become Fort George. In front of it, the small park of Bowling Green had been neatly railed off into a fashionable enclave, with street lamps at each corner to deter any vagrants from loitering. The governor’s house was here. Even the taverns had royal names.
Rich mansions loomed in the darkness all around. It mattered not to their owners—families like Livingston, Bayard, van Cortlandt, De Lancey, Morris—whether the city was going through boom or bust. They were impregnable, in their inherited security. Charlie turned east, into Beaver Street. At the end of it, he came to some railings, and a pair of handsome iron gates, surmounted by lamps. These protected a wide cobbled path and steps leading up to a large classical house. The shutters had not been closed; the warm light from the tall windows streamed out into the yard.
John Master’s house. He’d built it soon after his return from London.
Charlie continued across the southern end of Manhattan until he came to the East River. The long waterfront of docks and warehouses was quiet now, the ships so many shadows in the water. He walked along the wharfs a little way, then turned up Queen Street. There were lighted windows here, taverns still open.
He’d gone fifty yards when he came upon the shape on the ground. It was a black man, huddled in a blanket, against a warehouse wall. He glanced up at Charlie and, without much hope, held out his hand.
“Boss?”
Charlie looked down at him. Another sign of the times. All over the city, the smaller masters, short of cash, had been freeing their household slaves. It was cheaper than feeding them. They were everywhere: free blacks, with nothing to do but beg. Or starve. Charlie gave him a penny. Just after Schemmerhorn’s Wharf, he came to a large tavern, and went in.
There was quite a crowd in there, mariners mostly. Over at a table, he caught sight of a carter he knew. Big fellow, red hair. Never liked him much. If he could remember his name, he supposed he might speak to him, though he didn’t really want to. But the carter had got up and was coming toward him. Well, no need to be rude. Charlie gave him a nod.
But the next thing he knew, the fellow was taking his arm. Bill. That was his name.
“I’m sorry about your boy, Charlie,” he said.
“My boy? You mean Sam?” Charlie felt himself going pale. “What’s wrong with him?”
“You don’t know?” Bill looked concerned. “He ain’t dead, Charlie,” he explained hurriedly. “Nothing like that. But the press gang took him and a dozen others late this afternoon.”
“Press gang?”
“They were here and gone so quick you wouldn’t believe it. The ship’s already sailed. Your Sam’s in the Royal Navy now, serving His Majesty.”
Charlie felt a strong arm round him before he even realized he was falling. “Sit down here, Charlie. Give him rum!” He felt the rough hot liquid searing his throat and warming his stomach. He sat helplessly, while the big red-headed fellow sat beside him.
And then Charlie White cursed. He cursed the British Navy which had stolen his son, the British government which had ruined his city; he cursed the governor, and the congregation of Trinity, and John Master and his big house, and his son at Oxford. He cursed them all to hell.
It was some weeks later, on a damp spring day, that Hudson looked in upon his employer in the small library of his house, and found John Master trying to finish some paperwork, but somewhat hampered by the five-year-old girl who was sitting on his knee. His wife was out.
“Can we go
now, Papa?” the little girl asked.
“Soon, Abby,” answered Master.
So Hudson stepped forward and quietly took the child from her father’s knee.
“I’ll mind her until you’re ready,” he said softly, and Master smiled at him gratefully. With the child clinging to his neck, Hudson retreated toward the kitchen. “We’ll find you a cookie, Miss Abby,” he promised.
Abigail didn’t object. She and Hudson had been friends since her birth. In fact, he’d almost had to deliver her.
In the quarter-century since John Master had rescued him, Hudson had always worked for the Master family. He had done so of his own free will. After that first evening, Master had never questioned Hudson’s claim that he was not a slave. He’d employed him at a reasonable wage, and Hudson had always been free to go. Five times, when the urge had come upon him, Hudson had gone to sea in one of the Masters’ ships; but with the passing of the years, his desire for roaming had grown less. In the house, John had employed him first as a handyman, then in other capacities. Nowadays, he ran the entire household. When the family had gone to London, Master had not hesitated to leave the place in his care.
Fifteen years ago, he had married. His wife was a slave in the Masters’ house. Her name was Cleopatra. At least, it had been when she arrived, until Mercy, thinking the name inappropriate, had made her change it to Ruth. Hudson and she had a daughter, then a son. When Hudson called his son Solomon, and Mercy asked him why he chose this biblical name, he told her it was because King Solomon was wise. But to his wife afterward he’d added quietly: “And old King Solomon was a rich man too.” Since his wife was a slave, his children were slaves too. But Master had made a straightforward arrangement.
“You can buy them out for a fair price now, Hudson, or they can be mine until they’re twenty-five. After that, I’ll set them and their mother free.” Since the children were fed and clothed, and Master saw to it that Solomon was taught to read, write and figure, this wasn’t a bad deal.
“For it ain’t so good to be free and black in New York,” Hudson reminded Ruth. “Not these days, anyhow.”
There were still black freedmen in the city. But the last half-century had certainly been bad for Negroes. The old days of the Dutch, when white farmers and their black slaves might work in the fields side by side, was not even a memory. As England’s mighty sugar trade had grown larger than ever, so the numbers of slaves being sold in the markets had risen. Since the days when Hudson’s grandfather was a boy, the West Indies had sucked in almost a million slaves, and the whole African slave trade was now in British hands. With such vast numbers in the market, the unit price of a human being dropped. Most city tradesmen and craftsmen could afford to go down Wall Street to the slave market by the river, to buy a household slave or two. Farmers came across the Brooklyn ferry from Kings County to buy workers for their fields. There were more slaves as a percentage of population in the New York region than anywhere north of Virginia.
And if all these black people were chattels, why then—most people nowadays agreed—it must be that God had created them inferior. And if they were inferior, then it stood to reason that they shouldn’t be free. Besides, people hadn’t forgotten the slave disturbances, like the burnings of 1741. Blacks were dangerous.
So if most people assumed that he was John Master’s slave, Hudson didn’t much care. “At least that way,” he pointed out, “people don’t give me no trouble.” All he could do was count himself lucky and hope, one day, for better times.
He’d run the house smoothly for old Dirk Master while John and Mercy had been in England. Hudson and John’s father had always got along well, and Dirk had sent a letter full of praise for him to London. Had Hudson sent a report on Dirk Master, however, it wouldn’t have been so glowing. The trouble was young Miss Susan.
Susan Master had not only grown up into a beautiful young woman; she was even-tempered, practical, and knew her own mind. As her grandfather remarked to Hudson, “At least I don’t have to worry about her.”
But Hudson wasn’t so sure about that. When young Mr. Meadows had begun to court her, it was clear that Susan liked his advances very well. He was a handsome young fellow, with a strong face, a splendid horse, and heir to one of the best farms in Dutchess County. In short, although she was still very young, he was just what she wanted.
Just so long as things didn’t go too far before they were married. And they might. There had been times when the two young people had been left alone in the house for far too long. “You have to tell her,” Hudson urged his wife, “to take care.” And he himself had summoned the courage, to remark gently to old Dirk that the young people were spending a lot of time unsupervised together. “If she gets into trouble, and maybe young Mr. Meadows changes his mind …” he’d lamented to Ruth.
“I reckon the Masters would make him marry her,” Ruth assured him.
“Maybe,” he’d answered, “but it won’t look right.” And again he’d tried to warn her grandfather.
But old Dirk Master had refused to be worried. He was enjoying his time in New York. The burden of the business was light. It seemed that he was unwilling to allow anything to disturb his peace of mind. And indeed, Susan’s cheerful face and sensible character seemed to give the lie to Hudson’s worries. But when his son Solomon came running into the house, one summer morning, to tell him that the Masters had returned and that he was wanted at the waterfront right away, he’d experienced a huge sense of relief.
To be followed, instantly, by panic. For when he got the cart to the waterfront, he’d found Mercy almost giving birth to a child. He and Master had helped her into the cart, Solomon had been sent running to the doctor, the midwife had been summoned, and Hudson and Master had carried her into the house and up to her bedroom, both wondering if the child would be born before they even got her upstairs.
What a day that had been. But what joy it had brought. For not two hours later, little Abigail had been born.
Hudson loved Abigail. Everybody did. She had rich brown curls and hazel eyes. She was a little plump. As a baby, she seldom cried, and as a little girl, she seemed to love everyone around her. “That’s the most sweet-natured child I ever saw,” he’d say to Ruth. His own face wreathed in smiles, he’d play with her whenever he could, as if she were his own.
The presence of Abigail had also compensated Mercy for the departure of her other children. Later that year, Susan had been married. The following summer, James had been allowed to return to England, to prepare himself for Oxford. “But Abigail’s here,” Master would say to Hudson with a smile, “to keep us all young.”
For nearly half an hour, now, Hudson happily kept her occupied in the kitchen, until her father was ready.
John Master looked at the two letters before him and sighed. He knew he’d been right to let James return to England, but he missed him, and he wished that he were back.
The first was from Captain Rivers. They had kept in touch since their meeting in London. As promised, Rivers had visited New York, where they’d spent a pleasant week. Then he’d gone down to Carolina and married his rich widow. They already had two children. By all accounts, the captain had done well with his plantations, and Master knew that he had an excellent account with Albion. Many of his neighbors, however, Rivers told him, complained of their English creditors. They’d lived easy for years, buying all manner of goods on credit—which the London merchants were happy to grant them. “Now times are harder,” he wrote, “they can’t pay.” Rivers had the sense to live within his means.
He also described a visit to Virginia. His host had been George Washington, the former British officer, who had large landholdings there. Washington, too, had complaints against the mother country, but of a different kind. “He dislikes the government’s restraints on trade, especially the iron trade from which his wife’s large fortune comes,” Rivers wrote. But a deeper complaint concerned the western frontier. After serving in the army, Washington had been granted bounty lan
ds in Indian territory. Yet now the ministry in London, wanting to maintain peace with the Indians, had told him he couldn’t claim his lands and kick the Indians out. “I met many Virginians in the same position,” Rivers wrote. “They were hoping to make fortunes out of those land grants, and now they’re furious—though Washington tells them to be patient.”
On the whole, Master considered the British view was right. There was still plenty of available land in the east. Every year thousands of families from the mother country were arriving—English, Scots and Irish—in search of cheap land. And they were finding it. Washington and his friends would have to be patient.
But the other letter worried him. It was from Albion.
It started cheerfully enough. James was happy at Oxford. He was tall and handsome, and quite a hero to young Grey Albion. In London, a fellow called Wilkes had written articles against the government, and been thrown in jail for it. But the whole city had risen in protest, and now Wilkes was a national hero. It reminded Master of the Zenger trial of his youth; and he was glad, though not surprised, that good Englishmen were defending free speech.
But then Albion came to the main point of his letter.
Britain’s finances were in a mess. The years of war had left her with a great empire, but huge debts. Credit was tight. The government was struggling to raise taxes where it could, but the English were now taxed higher than any nation in Europe. A recent attempt to impose a cider tax down in the West Country had caused riots. Worse, having been promised some lowering of the high wartime land taxes, the Parliament men were clamoring to pay less taxes, not more.
Britain’s greatest cost was America. Pontiac’s revolt had shown that the colonies still required expensive garrisons to defend them, but who was going to pay?
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