From Sea to Shining Sea

by JAMES ALEXANDER Thom

  “Any man who’s had blood kin murdered by Hair-Buyer’s savages, step up,” George announced loudly enough for everyone in the fort to hear. But so many candidates came forward that it was necessary to draw lots. While that was being done, George kept scanning the palisade for a glimpse of Hamilton. So far, he was not there.

  The defenders now were getting their first clear look at the legendary Long Knife, and their attention was divided between him and the ominous preparations. Whatever they had imagined of him, he was no disappointment. His queued red hair gleamed in the winter sunlight. His brow was broad and craggy, cheeks smeared with gunpowder. His eyes were so deep and terrible that their intensity could be seen from the fort, and his hard jaw was shadowed with red whiskers. He prowled like a lion around the site, the tattered, stained skirt of his long leather coat flapping around his thighs. When he turned his broad back to the fort, a circular Indian design of quills and beads could be faintly discerned on the stained and muddy leather.

  Hamilton and Helm had just climbed a ramp to the parapet now and were looking down at the scene, and Hamilton seemed to prefer studying his adversary to watching the awful business of the savages. He said, maybe to Helm, maybe to himself, “Is he Scottish, do you suppose?”

  “He’s American, Gov’nor.”

  Now George turned, and his eyes fell on Hamilton and Helm. He stared at Hamilton for a half a minute, head tilted thoughtfully, then, still looking at him, said something Hamilton could not quite hear. At once, a frontiersman stepped aside from each Indian and held his rope tether while another man stepped up close with a tomahawk in his hand. The chieftain of the captive band straightened his spine, threw back his head, and began chanting his strange, quavering death song. The others joined with their voices. Hamilton’s face went pale and the tic started by his eye.

  The Kentuckian standing over the chieftain raised his tomahawk, and the chieftain was looking straight at him when he struck. The song stopped. The Kentuckian stepped back. While the watchers murmured, the Kentuckian delivered two more whiplike blows at the mangled forehead and the chieftain slumped to his side and lay twitching. Then the Kentuckian bent and scalped him. While the other doomed ones continued their songs, two frontiersmen dragged the chieftain, by the rope at his neck, around the fort and down to the river, and threw his body into the yellow flood.

  George looked up and he saw that Hamilton was still watching, and noticed that he had involuntarily put a hand to his throat. He had bought many scalps, but likely this was the first scalping he had ever witnessed.

  And now the Indians on the palisade were all looking at Hamilton and crying at him in scolding voices, for he had always said he was their white father who would protect them against the Long Knives, and he was standing here doing nothing.

  The next Indian’s song broke off and he tumbled forward with a cloven skull. Then the third. Each was scalped as soon as he fell; each was dragged down and thrown into the river, and the Long Knives were yipping with the bloodthirsty thrill of it. While the next tomahawk was being poised to strike, George looked up once more at the face of Governor Hamilton and then turned and strolled away from the executioners’ circle, as if bored, and stood with his back to the scene, gazing over the bright yellow winter grass and into the clean blue hazy woods beyond the river, because he was not bored but too stirred and sickened to watch anymore. His blood surged with the joyous wrath of justice each time a tomahawk made its ghastly chewk! But at the same time his bowels would grip with the shame of murder, and nausea was backing up behind his throat.

  This is the vengeance we all wanted, he thought in revulsion. There seemed to be a red mist whirling around him, and through it came the sound of the executions, faint, like the voices of children playing outside a house.

  And thus the world was reeling and he was trying to see, through that red mist, the cool blue distant woods where, it seemed, the only preservation of the soul could lie, and he thought of Teresa, two hundred miles beyond those woods, thought he heard a handful of gitarra notes.

  GEORGE SAT ALONE IN THE CHURCH LATER, HIS HEAD ROARING like a windstorm, a wooden letter-box on his knees, looking at a ray of afternoon sunlight slanting in through a chink in the log walls. He knew that he and his opponent of the chessboard both had been changed inside by the executions. Hamilton seemed to have little of his spine left, and his last message had been simply a plea, not a demand, for honorable terms of surrender.

  Brave man, George thought. He’s wrong and he’s a murderer, but he’s brave. He just wants a scrap of honor, as a brave man would.

  But now I’m a murderer too, he thought. I can say I was an executioner, but the difference is only in the words.

  So now I’m a murderer too. That must change how I judge murderers.

  Or does it?

  The light and shadow in the chapel were swimming, whirling. He sat with his pen and paper and thought hard to steady the world.

  He had the blood of prisoners on his own hands now, and so he was able to see Hamilton for what he was: a brave, proud, dutiful, wrong man being crushed by circumstances out of his control, an evil man perhaps but now simply doing the good thing of trying to save his soldiers’ lives and hold out for a scrap of dignity.

  I’d try to save my boys. Lord God but I would! His throat tightened and he blinked, remembering coming out of the ice water yesterday. Was that only yesterday?

  I can’t have them dying just to deny Hamilton that scrap of dignity, he thought. Even though they’d be glad to.

  In front of him was the crude wooden altar where Frère Gibault, the one priest of the region, did services, trying to save souls, far from the seat of his religion. Frère Gibault’s face swam in the gloom, then Vigo’s, de Leyba’s, then Teresa’s; all those benign and beloved faces moved and blended and faded. And then he was seeing his mother’s and father’s faces, those proud and steel-souled people who, though neither had ever taken a life, were as resolute as soldiers in their own ways.

  All these faces and the voices that belonged to them milled and murmured around him, until he opened his eyes and shook himself and found himself sitting in a tiny, cold church with something needing to be written.

  He had come all this way and had done the impossible but though he should have been exulting in triumph he was sunk instead in a profound bittersweet sentiment and had scarcely enough strength and concentration left to lift the quill to the inkpot and think of a word to start with.

  Finally, with a sigh, he leaned over the paper and began.

  1st -Lt. Gov. Hamilton engages to deliver up to Col. Clark Fort Sackville as it is at present with all the stores, ammunition, provisions, &c.

  2nd -The Garrison will deliver themselves up Prisrs of War to march out with their arms, accoutrements, Knapsacks &c.

  3rd -The Garrison to be delivered up tomorrow morning at 10 o’clock.

  It was, more or less, the same set of terms Hamilton had wanted, except that he was not going to let Hamilton and his men march away.

  He gave the paper to a messenger and watched him go up toward the silent fort, the white flag flapping over his shoulder. Then George went back into the church and stood alone, his back braced against the wall, eyes shut, feeling the greatest pain and weariness he had ever felt. Pinpoints of light sparkled and swam among billowing gray and yellow clouds behind his eyelids. He saw a tomahawk embedded between an Indian’s eyes. He saw Hamilton’s sharp eyes and pouty mouth. He saw oceans of muddy water and then he saw Hamilton’s face again.

  What will he do when it comes right down to signing it? George wondered. Will he change his mind and decide to fight to the end?

  Now George desperately wanted Hamilton to sign it. If it proved necessary to resume the fight, he wondered if he could really win. Half the Americans were slumped in their coverts out there so sound asleep now that even gunfire probably wouldn’t wake them. What if Hamilton sees how they are? What if he begins to suspect there’s only a hundred of us instead of a th
ousand?

  As it is, George thought, if he does give up, we’ll have more prisoners to guard than men to guard them with.

  That was why he had set the surrender ceremony off till the next morning: so he wouldn’t have to try to guard them tonight.

  What have we done here? he thought. He was alone in a room thinking, as he had been two years ago at the beginning of this outlandish venture, and now that he had done it, it seemed more impossible than it had when he had planned it.

  What we’ve done is we’ve taken the whole Northwest Territory, if Hamilton signs that, and if we have, we’ll have to hold it.

  God help us, he thought.

  He heard a voice calling outside.

  It was Helm. Helm, with a carefully contained smile, handing him back the same piece of paper he had sent up to Hamilton.

  George unfolded it. Under the terms in his own hand was a paragraph in Hamilton’s hand:

  Agreed to for the following reasons, remoteness from succours, the state and quantity of provisions &c. the unanimity of officers and men on its expediency, the Honble terms allowd and lastly the confidence in a generous Enemy.

  H. HAMILTON

  Gov. & Superintendt

  Thank God, George thought. I don’t think I could’ve performed another minute.

  I’m just plumb out of everything.

  LOOKING IN A MIRROR THE NEXT MORNING IN MAJOR BUSSERON’S house, George stropped an ebony-handled razor and began shaving away his lather-soaked red whiskers. It was the first time he had looked in a mirror since Kaskaskia, and he was astonished at the hollowness of his cheeks and eyesockets.

  Likely I’ve lost a stone’s-weight of flesh this month, he thought. Most all of us look like cadavers too busy to lie still.

  But he felt better than he had felt for weeks; he had slept a sleep that had felt a thousand fathoms deep, on a cot in warm, dry blankets in the old church, waking only once in the night, to hear his officers and bodyguards snoring in their bedding around him. Then he had put himself back into his deep slumber with a prayer of thanks for their safety. This morning he had coughed up an awful amount of phlegm and corruption and it had been several minutes before he could walk without wincing and limping. Now he had had a breakfast of porridge and hot pork and had washed the gunpowder off his face and shaved off his itchy whiskers and would be going up to the fort within the hour to accept Hamilton’s surrender. In his duffel he had found his last clean linen shirt and stock and a pair of clean blue garters with silver buckles with which to fasten up his mud-stained, fringed leather gaiters. With these little touches of cleanliness and color he was trying to make himself look genteel enough to accept on behalf of Virginia and Congress the sword of His Britannic Majesty’s defeated general.

  Bowman winked at him as he whacked mud-clots out of the fringe of his buckskins and draped his sword-belt over his shoulder.

  “Some dandy, George, y’ air, y’ air. Did y’ notice Hamilton didn’t raise his flag this mornin’?”

  “Mhm. To save himself the humiliation of having to haul it back down, I’d guess. I didn’t hear ’im shoot his morning gun today either, did you?”

  “Nup. Prob’ly scared we’d start shootin’ back again. Heh, heh!”

  George put on his old black hat, with its right brim pinned up with a turkey-bone toothpick and the writing-quill plume sticking out of the band. “Ready for this great day?”

  “Wait.” Bowman reached toward him and tilted the hat at a jauntier angle. “Now. Y’ look like you’re goin’ to a victory ’stead of a church meetin’.”

  They stepped out into the cold morning sunlight, where the troops stood in company ranks in the street grinning like elves. Their faces all had been washed, and … He smiled at them and announced:

  “I was proud to say we won this battle without shedding a drop of American blood. Then I had to spoil it all by orderin’ you to shave.” They laughed and howled, and his heart swelled with love for them. He pulled his watch out of his pocket and flipped open its gold cover, then shut it and asked, “What time is it? My watch is full o’ water.” They laughed again, and somebody told him it was ten minutes till ten.

  “Let’s march up a-lookin’ smart, boys, and get what’s ours. Master Lovell,” he said to the drummer boy, “give us something to step to.”

  The drumbeats gave him gooseflesh. Tut-tuttle-tut-tut pamp, tut-tuttle-tut-tut pamp, tut-tuttle-tut, tut-tuttle-tut, tut-tuttle-tut, pamp pamp! The tracked mud of the road had frozen hard and there were feathers of frost in yesterday’s footprints. The shadows of walls and tree trunks were shallow blue, dusted with frost. The column passed the barricade and went up the road toward the gate of the fort. Beside the road on the ground were the ruddy bloodstains where the Indians had been executed. Joe Bowman’s company flanked right and halted to stand in ranks on that side of the road. McCarty’s flanked left and took up the stand on the other side. Then the companies of Williams and Worthington marched up to halt behind George, and when the officers commanded, “Parade Rest!” the drum stopped with a loud pamp-pamp! Behind George stood a red-nosed soldier with the Stars and Stripes folded over his right arm and Virginia’s red-and-green colors over his left. All across the meadow the people of Vincennes came, those of all ages, running, skipping, tottering, tradesmen in smocks and merchants in velvet coats, pregnant women heaving along, crones in wimples, coureurs de bois in buckskin and scarlet wool, slack-lipped children. They crowded into the sunny space along the front wall of the fort, flanking the gates, where the reflected sunlight was warm and where they could examine the bullet-pocked palisades or stare at Long Knife and his shabby, barefooted soldiers. “Où sont tous les autres?” George heard several voices query. Mostly the citizens kept their eyes on him, watched him standing there with his monumental stillness, his deep blue eyes fixed on the carved initials G.R.—George Rex—above the gate, jaw muscles working. He glanced up once at the bare flagstaff. Sun-tinged little clouds crawled across the cold blue sky above the fort and drifted eastward. Beyond the fort the muddy flood of the Wabash gurgled, carrying trees and forest debris and ice chunks. Somewhere in the ranks someone sneezed and someone else hacked up a wet cough.

  Then drums rattled within the fort. Voices came through the palisade, a wooden bolt rumbled, and the twelve-foot gates swung open slowly to reveal the ranked Redcoats at attention inside, their Brown Bess muskets at shoulder arms. While the drums beat slowly, Governor-General Hamilton appeared in the gateway, followed by two other officers, and marched down the grade toward the American colonel. Hamilton’s coat was brushed, his boots were black and shiny, and his powdered wig was silvery. He carried his hat in his left hand and squinted in the bright sunlight. The voices of sergeants bellowed behind him and the ranks of Redcoats paced forward a few steps, then halted with a stamp, at attention just within the gate.

  Hamilton stopped and clicked his heels a yard in front of Colonel Clark. He grasped the hilt of his sword and unsheathed it and everyone could hear the rasping ring of the fine steel as it came out. Then with a flick of his wrist he tucked the blade under his right arm so that the hilt was within reach of the victor.

  Without taking his eyes from Hamilton’s, George reached out and closed his hand around the hilt, feeling the cold polished silver and the smooth leather of the grip. This was the moment. This was the end toward which he had been pressing since that solitary night of brooding and planning in Harrod’s fort two years ago. He stared at Hamilton’s fatigue-swollen eyes, eyes that looked as if they had been weeping; and seeing the defeat there he knew that beyond his boldest dreams he had turned the Hair-Buyer’s world upside down. He had wrested from King George a wilderness territory nearly the size of the thirteen colonies combined, and had not spent the life of one American to do it.

  He pulled the sword away from Hamilton. “Governor, you and your garrison are my prisoners.”

  “I grant you, sir.”

  Now Hamilton let his eyes wander toward the ragged ranks of American w
oodsmen. They stood, leaning on their rifles, indescribably gaunt and filthy, clothes drab as compost, their sunken cheeks and their chins nicked by razors. Some had put red bandannas around their necks to give themselves a bit of color for the ceremony: panache and bare feet. General Hamilton mentally added them up: the little band, scarcely more than two squads, on the left, an equal number on the right, and the reeky, weatherbeaten scarecrows lined up behind the colonel. Hamilton flicked his gaze over the meadow and toward the town, and finally he said:

  “May I ask, Colonel Clark, where is your army?”

  The Virginian’s sudden smile was dazzling. He reached out and nudged Hamilton’s elbow with a knuckle as if to share a delicious joke.

  “This, sir,” he replied, “is them.”

  Hamilton dropped his head forward and gave a strangled little whimper.

  Man, George thought. I’d hate to be him. Then he turned his back on him and waved the English sword high. “BOYS! POST VINCENNES … IS OURS!”

  With a deafening outburst of war whoops and cheers and yokelish yodels, they broke ranks and stampeded for the gate, snatching their Colonel Clark off the ground and bearing him laughing on their shoulders, jostling past the astonished Redcoats into the fort.

  Hamilton stood by himself on the yellow dirt road among the tittering townspeople with his empty scabbard at his side, and tears ran down his long nose.

  19

  CAROLINE COUNTY, VIRGINIA

  June, 1779

  THE MESSENGER WHO CAME HOWLING UP THE ROAD TO THE Clark house this time was seventeen-year-old Cousin Edmund Rogers. The handsome redhead was so frantic that the family at first thought he surely was bringing news of death or catastrophe. His horse was lathered and wild-eyed, and Edmund was simply babbling till he got his tongue straightened out. “Johnny … George … Cousin … I mean … Cou … Joh … No. They’re at my house! Johnny is—”