Nearly a month elapsed before John Master returned, looking distraught. Only to find, upon entering the bedroom, that his wife was propped up in bed, pale but clearly no longer in danger, and listening with a smile as Abigail read to her. Even so, for weeks after that, Mercy had been pale and listless, and Hudson was sorry to see the strained and worried look on the face of John Master too.
But if Hudson was concerned about the Master family, he also had worries of his own. He wasn’t sure exactly when it had started, but it was that spring when he began to notice a change in Solomon. Why was his son suddenly becoming defiant toward him? He questioned his wife. “Solomon gives me no trouble,” Ruth told him. “But I dare say a young man of his age will often rile his father.” That might be so, but he had also taken to disappearing. At first Hudson supposed the boy was out chasing girls, but one evening he heard Solomon boasting to his sister Hannah of some escapade in the town with Sam White and a group of other young Liberty Boys.
Hudson could guess where his son had met them. Master would sometimes send Solomon to work at the warehouse by the wharfs, and there were all kinds of men working down on the waterfront.
“You stay away from those Liberty Boys,” he commanded his son. “What’ll Mr. Master say if he hears about that?”
“Maybe Mr. Master’ll be run out of town one day,” Solomon answered cheekily. “Then it won’t signify what he thinks.”
“Don’ ever speak like that again,” his father told him. “And don’ you go talking about Mr. Master’s business either.”
He hadn’t wanted to tell Master about the incident, but he wondered if there was some way of getting Solomon away from such dangerous friends. Early in April he suggested to Master that perhaps Solomon might go up to Dutchess County and work for his daughter Susan for a while. Master said he’d consider it, but that he couldn’t spare Solomon at present.
So there wasn’t much more that Hudson could do.
One of the first things that John Master had done when he returned was to write a letter to James. He informed him about his mother’s sickness. As she lay in her room, Mercy would wonder aloud to her husband, almost every day, when she would see her son again. John told James plainly that, at the least, it was time he made a visit. There was nothing else he could do. It would be many weeks before he could expect a reply from London.
Meanwhile, nothing stood still in the colony. Ironically, it was Ben Franklin who caused the next crisis. Still more ironically, he did so by trying to calm things down.
A few years ago, a royal official named Hutchinson had written to a friend from Massachusetts. Incensed by the difficulties he was encountering, he told his friend it would be better to curb English liberties in the colonies, to make sure that America was kept firmly under Britain’s thumb. By chance, Franklin saw the letters in London. And because he still believed in Britain’s grand imperial destiny, he sent them privately to friends in America—not to cause trouble, but to warn them of the sort of reaction their intransigence was stirring up. It was a horrible miscalculation. His friends in Massachusetts published the Hutchinson letters that summer.
The colonies were in an uproar. Here was proof positive that the English wanted to destroy American liberties. And almost as if on cue, the British government was able to supply a measure on which their rage could focus.
The problem was simple enough. It concerned another part of the empire. The mighty East India Company had got itself into a mess.
“They have huge overstocks of tea,” Albion wrote to Master, “and they can’t shift them.” As usual, when huge trading enterprises mismanage their affairs, the company turned to the government to bail them out. The solution suggested was to dump the tea on the large American market. “Until the overstocks are cleared, this will be bad for merchants like yourself, who’ll be cut out,” Albion wrote. “But there’s no doubt that the American market can absorb the tea.”
The problem was that the tea still carried the duty that was so disliked.
“It is sure to be seen,” Master sighed to Mercy, “as a government conspiracy.”
There was one intelligent solution, Albion explained, and it was suggested by Ben Franklin. Dump the tea, he was telling his friends in London, but take off the duty. The overstocks would be cleared, the colonists would get cheap tea. Merchants like Master would suffer, but only for a short while, and everyone else would be happy.
“Will they do it, John?” Mercy asked him.
“I shouldn’t think so. They’d see it as giving in.” Master had shaken his head. “I’m afraid there’s nothing to do but take the tea, and hope for wiser statesmen in the future.”
“You think there’ll be trouble?”
“Probably.”
There was trouble. When news of the new Tea Act arrived that summer, Sears and the Liberty Boys were out on the streets in no time. Anyone accepting the tea would be a traitor, they said, and Master was disappointed that many of the merchants agreed with them.
“This is going to be just like the Stamp Act again,” he said sadly. He could only hope the shipments of tea would be delayed as long as possible.
At the end of the summer, a letter came from James. He sent tender words to his mother. He and Vanessa were discussing when they could make a journey across to New York, he told his father, and he would make arrangements as soon as he could. The letter was full of affection, but Master found it unsatisfactory. He hoped that James’s next communication would contain more definite plans.
Through the autumn the city’s mood grew uglier. By November, some of the Liberty Boys were saying that when the tea ships arrived, they’d destroy the cargo and kill the governor too. The East India Company agents in the town were so scared they started resigning. New York waited tensely.
But it was from Massachusetts that word finally came. In December, a man came riding down the old Boston road. He was a silversmith who enjoyed the excitement of being a courier. His name was Paul Revere. The news he brought was startling. The first tea ships had arrived in Boston, and a party of men, some of them quite respectable citizens, had boarded the ships dressed as Indians, and dumped the tea into Boston harbor. The Sons of Liberty were delighted.
“We’ll do the same when the tea ships get to New York,” they declared.
But no tea ships appeared. The new year began. Mercy caught a cold, and was confined to her bed for a while. John Master fretted that he had not heard from James, and wrote to him again. Then word came from Philadelphia that the tea ships had arrived there, but had been turned away without violence. By March John told Mercy, “I don’t think the tea ships are coming here, thank God.”
It was in April that Hudson was sent up to Dutchess County. He had a wagonload of goods that John Master wanted to send his elder daughter, together with some fine old family chairs and a quantity of china that Mercy thought Susan might like to have.
He had a pleasant journey. The weather was fine. The rutted roads might make for slow going, but it was pleasant to make one’s way northward from the great coastal sweep of New York and the long ridges of Westchester up into the more intimate scenery of hills and dales where Susan and her husband had their farm.
The house was handsome. Its outside was of rough limestone masonry; it had a gambrel roof, and blue-and-white tiles round the fireplaces. But to these homely Dutch features were added a handsome facade with a double row of five Georgian windows, a center hall, high ceilings and panelled rooms, which proclaimed a certain English sense of propriety and importance. Hudson spent two nights there with Susan and her family, who treated him in a most friendly manner, and he considered once again that this would be a fine place where his son could keep out of trouble.
He learned about the tea ships as he crossed onto Manhattan.
“Two came. The first turned back. But the captain of the second said he’d unload his tea and the Liberty Boys be damned. They nearly hanged him.”
“And then?”
“They had t
hemselves a tea party. It’s been quite a day.”
It was dark when he got back to the house. Going to the kitchen door, he found Ruth alone. She embraced him warmly and whispered, “Thank the Lord you came back.” But when he asked, “Where’s Solomon?” she put her finger to her lips.
“The Boss was asking for him too. I told him Solomon’s sick, an’ sleeping. But the truth is he went out in the morning and I ain’t seen him since. Oh Hudson, I don’ know where he went.”
With a curse, Hudson went back into the yard. He could guess where Solomon had gone. He went across to the Bowling Green, then started up Broadway. Like as not Solomon would be in one of the taverns by now.
But he’d only visited two of these when he caught sight of a figure, dressed as an Indian, flitting down a side street. A figure that he recognized at once. And moments later the Indian found himself held against a wall, in a grip of iron.
“What you been doin’, son? What kept you so busy all day? Dumpin’ tea, maybe?”
“Maybe.”
The next few moments between Hudson and his son were unpleasant. But even when Hudson had done, his son was not abashed. What would Master say, if he knew, Hudson asked.
“What do you know?” Solomon cried. “Everyone’s with the Liberty Boys now. Even the merchants. I told Sam White that the Boss says we ought to take the tea,” he continued. “And Sam says the Boss is a traitor. The Liberty Boys are going to throw the redcoats and the traitors out of the colony.”
“And where will that leave you and me?” his father demanded. “You think the Liberty Boys are goin’ to do anything for the black man?” It was true that, together with small craftsmen, sailors, laborers and all kinds of poorer folk, the ranks of the Sons of Liberty contained a number of freed-men. But what did that signify? Besides, there was another consideration. “You better remember,” he told his son ominously, “that you’re a slave, Solomon. If the Boss wants to sell you, ain’t nobody goin’ to stop him. So you be careful.”
During that summer of ’74, the conflict seemed to take on a life of its own. When news of the Boston Tea Party had reached London, the reaction had been predictable. “Such insolence and disobedience must be crushed,” the British Parliament declared. General Gage was sent from New York up to Boston to govern the place, firmly. By May, the port of Boston was virtually shut down. The Coercive Acts, Parliament called this tough legislation. “The Intolerable Acts,” the colonies called them.
Again, Paul Revere rode down to New York, this time to seek support. Naturally, Sears and the Sons of Liberty were up in arms for the Boston men. But many of the merchants were now enraged at London’s harsh measures. The Sons of Liberty were getting support from all quarters. One day, Master saw a large parade of women coming down Broadway, calling for a trade embargo. Tempers continued to rise. A British officer caught Sears in the street and put the flat of his sword across his back.
Yet despite all this, Master was glad to see, there were powerful voices in the American colonies who saw the need for moderation. Toward the end of summer the other colonies called for a general congress to meet at Philadelphia, and the New York Assembly agreed to send delegates. The men chosen, thank God, were solid, educated gentlemen: Livingston the Presbyterian, John Jay the lawyer, a rich Irish merchant named Duane, and others. The congress was to meet in September.
In the meantime, Master did what he could to encourage a return to sanity. He made his house a meeting place for men of moderate opinion. Sometimes his guests were members of the old, grandee Tory families—Watts, Bayard, De Lancey, Philipse. But often they were merchants whose sympathies might be wavering, but whom he hoped to keep on the right path—men like Beekman, or Roosevelt the distiller. But despite these modest efforts, he knew it was the men who had powers of argument and oratory who really mattered. He had particular hope in John Jay the lawyer—tall, handsome, persuasive, and related to so many of the great old families of the province.
“It’s Jay and men like him,” he told Mercy, “who’ll make them see sense.”
At the end of August, a cavalcade rode into town. This was the Massachusetts delegates and their party. Riding down the Post Road, they had also picked up the Connecticut delegates along the way. Their second day in town, Master was in Wall Street, talking to one of the Assembly men who’d dined with them the night before, when a small group came down the street.
“See the fellow with the big head, wearing the bright red coat?” the Assembly man murmured. “That’s Sam Adams. And the pink-faced, balding fellow in black just behind him is his cousin John Adams. A lawyer. Clever, they say, and talkative—though he didn’t say much at dinner. Don’t think he likes New York. Probably isn’t used to being interrupted!”
It was a little while later, returning home, that Master caught sight of the elderly man. He was walking stiffly, but with great firmness of purpose. His brown coat was buttoned tight. He looked vaguely familiar. John tried to think where he’d seen him.
And then he realized. It was his cousin Eliot. He was a little shrunken and his face was thinner. But then, John thought, he must be over eighty. He went up to him.
“Mr. Eliot Master? You may not recognize me, sir, but I am your cousin John.”
“I know who you are.” It was said without enthusiasm.
“You have come with the Boston delegates?”
“I intend to watch events in Philadelphia.”
“I remember your daughter Kate.”
“I expect you do. She’s a grandmother now.”
John decided to change the subject.
“This congress is a serious business, sir. Let us hope that moderation will prevail.”
“Oh?” Old Eliot looked at him sharply. “Why?”
Even after forty years, John Master felt himself fumbling for his words under the lawyer’s stern eye.
“I mean … there’s a need for cool heads …” He nodded. “Compromise.”
The Bostonian snorted.
“New York,” he said drily. “Typical.”
“Just a minute,” cried John. Dammit, he thought, I’m not a drunken boy any more, and my Boston cousin isn’t going to put me down. “The quarrel is about tax without representation, is it not?”
“It is.”
“Well, we are not entirely without representation.”
“Is that so? Our Assembly has been stripped of all power.” Old Eliot paused a moment. “Or are you referring to the doctrine of virtual representation?” He spoke the last words with wonderful contempt.
John Master was aware that some in London had argued that, since the British Parliament had the interests of the colonists at heart, then although the colonists had no actual representation in the British legislature, they were virtually represented. He could just imagine the ridicule to which the Boston lawyer would easily subject that notion.
“I am not referring to that foolish doctrine,” he declared. “But at least our voice is heard in London. Wouldn’t it be wiser to seek a better understanding with the king’s ministers, rather than merely provoke them?”
For a moment or two, the Boston man was silent, and John even wondered if he might have gained a point. But no such luck.
“When we met before,” the lawyer finally said, making it clear the memory gave him no pleasure, “it was the time of the Zenger trial.”
“I remember Zenger.”
“That was a question of principle.”
“Indeed.”
“Well, so is this.” Eliot Master began to turn away.
“Will you call upon us before you leave?” John offered. “My wife would be—”
But Eliot was already in motion.
“I don’t think so,” he said.
The Philadelphia congress went speedily to its work. But if John Master had hoped for judicious compromise, he was sadly disappointed.
“They’ve gone mad,” he cried, when he heard what they had decided. “Boston is to take up arms against the mother country? What be
came of moderation and good sense?” And when the men supporting the congress called themselves Patriots, he said: “How can you be a Patriot when you’re disloyal to your king and country?”
It was at this time that he began consciously to refer to himself by another term he’d heard.
“If they are Patriots,” he declared, “then I’m a Loyalist.”
But the tide was against him. Decent men like Beekman and Roosevelt were taking the Patriot side. Even John Jay, a man of good sense, who’d always declared that those who own the country ought to run it, had been convinced. “I don’t like it any more than you,” he told Master on his return, “but I don’t think we can do anything else.”
In the city, the Assembly was getting weaker by the day. The Sons of Liberty were triumphant. The smaller craftsmen had formed their own Mechanics Committee. Master heard that Charlie White was on it. And now they and the Liberty Boys told the Assembly: “We’ll make sure the congress is obeyed in New York. Not you.”
“Do you really want to exchange a Parliament—which I grant you is inept—for an illegal congress and the tyranny of the mob?” Master demanded of John Jay. “You can’t have the city run by men like Charlie White.”
Besides this, there was also another, obvious consideration. If the colonies moved toward rebellion, London would have to react. With force.
John Master was walking up Broadway toward Trinity one day when he saw a clergyman he knew. The clergyman was a scholarly gentleman who taught at King’s College. The previous week this learned divine had published a firm but reasoned statement of the Loyalist case that John had considered admirable, and so he went up to thank him. The clergyman was clearly delighted, but taking John by the arm he also told him: “You must do your part too, you know.”
“In what way?”
“You must lead, Master. You’re a respected man in the city. Jay and his like are going to the dogs. If sound men like you don’t take the lead, then who will?”