“What's on your mind, Congressman?” McPherson asked, pouring the port.
“I want you to hire a crew for
Common Sense
. Not too many Americans. French, preferably. Hire them now, and have the ship ready to sail the moment the ice breaks.”
“Why the hurry, Congressman?”
“I'm planning to resign my seat and go to Amsterdam on private business. You know what some people in this town are liable to say about that. They wouldn't be above giving the British word of our sailing, and we'd find a squadron waiting for us at the capes of the Delaware.”
“What do we do when we sound Amsterdam?”
“I'll get you a commission from the French government or from Benjamin Franklin, our ambassador in Paris. You can make a million on British shipping in the North Sea.”
“Sounds good to me, Congressman. Will Mrs. Stapleton and the boys be sailing with you?”
“No!”
The mention of his sons flustered Hugh Stapleton. He had tried to convince himself that he was not abandoning them, that he would bring them to Holland as soon as the war ended. But his plans for them were vague at best.
“There may be other passengers. What do you care?” he growled.
“I don't,” McPherson said. “It's your shipâand your money, Congressman.”
“If all goes well, you'll be able to buy her from me, Mac.”
“Is that a promise, Congressman? You'll give me first crack and a good price? Sometimes I think it's what I've always neededâa ship of my own. It might make me think twice about throwing cash on a faro table. No true sailor would bet a ship like
Common Sense
. For the chance to own her, I'd run the British channel fleet in line of battle formation.”
“I'm depending on you to do that if necessary, Mac.”
“Planning to stay in Amsterdam awhile?”
“It's hard to say. A lot depends on the war.”
“Amsterdam will be a healthy place for a Continental Congressman to be when the rebels go smash.” The captain gave him a knowing grin. “Don't worry, the secret's safe with me. I've never lost money on a voyage with you yet. And money's the name of the game, ain't it?”
“Money isâimportant,” Hugh Stapleton conceded.
McPherson held out his hand. “I'll let you know how the recruitin' goes.”
Hugh Stapleton found his driver and rode back to the City Tavern through the frigid, deserted streets of Philadelphia. It was ridiculous, but those last casual words of Captain McPherson rankled him.
Money's the name of the game.
Everyone, particularly his wife and his brother, Paul, assumed that Hugh Stapleton cared about nothing but “improving some moneys.” He was about to prove that he, too, had visions, that he was ready to take risks in his private pursuit of happiness and beauty. Mercenary Hugh Stapleton would
show them all what he could do with his money. He would even show his mother, with her endless preachments on prudence, and his father, who had seldom concealed his opinion that most businessmen lacked courage. Amazing how many wars a man fights in his own mind with ghosts of the dead, phantoms of the living.
Back in his room at the City Tavern, the congressman wrote Flora a letter.
My dearest:
I was not in this city three hours when I set about the business of preparing my privateer Common Sense for our voyage. The winter weather makes our plan only a future promise. But it is as sealed by your kisses as the most solemn oath. My only worry is whether I shall be able to make you as happy as I know you will make me. I almost tremble at your discovering the full power of your enchantment and wonder whether I am quitting a war with one tyrant to put myself under the power of another one. But your tyranny will be tempered by a natural goodness of heart. Send me by return post an explicit agreement to my plan. Without it I will find the petty politics of this place unendurable.
Your devoted
Hugh S.
A knock on the door. One of the City Tavern's porters with a note. General Schuyler was hoping he could see Mr. Stapleton for a few minutes. The congressman ordered a bottle of Madeira and said he would be happy to see the general. The wine and Schuyler's bulky figure arrived simultaneously. The general was wearing a blue coat and buff breeches, a distinct echo of a Continental Army uniform. It was an impolitic costume to wear in a Congress that was extremely touchy about its independence of the military.
“I need your help,” Schuyler said as Stapleton poured the
Madeira. “I can make no impression on Congress. They dismiss me as a special pleader, a soldier. The Yankees ridicule and revile me behind my back.”
“I don't see what I can do when someone of your reputation can't gain a hearing.” Hugh Stapleton said.
“You've been to Morristownâand, unlike me, you have no connection with the army,” Schuyler said. “I gather that you've said little in Congress.”
“I'm not an oratorâor a politician, for that matter,” Hugh Stapleton said.
“All the more reason why they may listen to you. If I bring up the question, will you speak tomorrow on the state of the army?”
“IâI've made no notes. One visit to Morristown hardly makes me an expertâ”
“I'll give you all the information you need. Colonel Hamiltonâwho I begin to think may soon be my son-in-lawâtells me you have a reputation as a man of business. Put it to them as a business proposition. Tell them that the army is going bankrupt, literally and spiritually.”
Somewhat to his own amazement, Hugh Stapleton heard himself saying, “If you think Congress can endure my ineptitude as a speaker, I'm at your service, General.
Why not? he thought as Schuyler thanked him. George Washington deserved respect, even pity, for the stoic steadiness with which he was confronting almost certain defeat. A soldier's sonâHugh Stapleton could not deny that part of his heritageâowed the weary Virginian at least a farewell gesture of support, of personal appreciation, no matter how futile it was certain to be.
The next morning, Congressman Stapleton breakfasted on buckwheat cakes and coffee in the Long Room of the City Tavern and trudged through the snow to the Pennsylvania State House, three blocks away. He had spent much of the night going over facts and figures on the army that Schuyler had given him. In the ground-floor chamber of the familiar
red-brick building, the delegates were gathering for the day's session. The twin fireplaces along the east wall combated the relentless cold. Stapleton sat down beside the other two members of his state's delegation, tall, long-nosed John Witherspoon, the president of the College of New Jersey, and stumpy Abraham Clark, the self-styled “people's lawyer.” Stapleton had never seen a smile on either face.
“Ah, Stapleton,” Clark said, “I trust you communicated to the Great Man our disapproval of his looting and brawling soldiery.”
Washington's enemies frequently referred to him as the Great Man. The epithet made it difficult for Hugh Stapleton to conceal his dislike of Clark. “I had dinner with the general. We discussed the matter at length. I made him aware of our concern.”
“Concerrn,” Witherspoon said in his thick Scots burr. “Oootrage would have been a better worrrd. I still think we should have put our sentiments in a formal resolution of condemnation rather than send a mere emissarry.”
Clark and Witherspoon regularly joined the New Englanders in their attempts to embarrass and humiliate Washington. The Southern congressmen, with the aid of New York and Pennsylvania, managed to block most of these petty moves. Hugh Stapleton always voted with the Southerners but Witherspoon and Clark invariably put New Jersey in the Yankee column. How delightful it will be, Hugh Stapleton thought, to wake up in Amsterdam with Flora Kuyper beside me and mentally thumb my nose at these two sour Presbyterians.
The president of Congress, lean tight-lipped Samuel Huntington, a Connecticut Yankee best known for his parsimony, sat down behind the small table that served as his desk, his back to the twin fireplaces. With a rap of his gavel, Huntington called the Congress to order. Members who had been hobnobbing with friends hurried to their seats. Philip Schuyler asked for the floor and was recognized by the president. Schuyler said he had received another letter from his “good
friend,” General Washington, about the state of the army. It had alarmed him a great deal and he had planned to give a speech to the honorable members about it. But another honorable member had recently visited the army's winter camp at the request of Congress and had now returned. He therefore yielded the floor to Congressman Stapleton of New Jersey.
Hugh Stapleton rose and looked around the room. Gray winter light from the long windows on two sides of the chamber gave almost every face a melancholy cast. Most of his fellow congressmen were obviously as tired of this endless war as he was. There were numerous yawns, even though it was only 10 A.M. Many of the members had been at work since 7 A.M. on committees that met before Congress went into session. At least a dozen delegates sniffled and coughed, fighting colds. One man had a gouty foot wrapped in wool.
Stapleton began by reminding them that he had been sent to Morristown to investigate the charge that the army was abusing and robbing civilians near the camp. He acquitted Washington's men of deliberate wholesale looting. Describing the army's desperation after the four-day blizzard, he somberly declared that the situation was only a little less desperate now. Carefully, methodically, he translated the pay of each rank in the army from its paper value to its real value. By his calculation, a captain was getting paid seven and a half real dollars a month; an enlisted man received less than a dollar. Stapleton described the bankrupt commissary department, without a cent to buy food from nearby New Jersey farms. Next he described the army's “spiritual bankruptcy.” He enumerated the desertion rate, the brawls between soldiers from different states.
“A private was stabbed to death with a bayonet, not a hundred yards from General Washington's headquarters, the night I visited him,” he said. “Can you blame the men? Unable to vent their rage on the enemy, they're wounding and murdering each other. Can anyone doubt that the contagion of discontent will soon unleash a like violence on the officersâyes,
even on General Washington himself? And the next target, gentlemen, will be the members of this body, whom the army sees as the authors of so many of its woes. Nothing poisons a man's mind more than resentment; nothing will demolish the principles on which we have tried to build a government more quickly, more totally, than neglect of the men who are commissioned by the civil officers to defend it. You have a commander in chief who has demonstrated the patience of Job. But the rest of the army are not such extraordinary mortals. Something must be done, and done immediately, to show the army we are still with them in this cause, heart and soul.”
It was, members told Stapleton later, the best speech made in Congress in a year. A delighted Philip Schuyler sprang to his feet and said that the chief reason for the breach between the army and Congress was lack of knowledge. There was only one way to remedy it. A committee should immediately be formed to work with General Washington in Morristown on a permanent basis. One of its members should always be in residence, and the others would report back to Congress at regular intervals.
The motion was ferociously opposed by Abraham Clark of New Jersey. It would give the army dangerous delusions of its power and influence if Congress waited upon them like humble servants. If the army wanted anything, let them come to Congress, not vice versa, he shouted. Roger Sherman of Connecticut agreed in his creaky anxious voice. Other New Englanders sounded the same note of alarm at the danger of encouraging the military. Southerners, notably young James Madison of Virginia and Thomas Burke of South Carolina, supported Schuyler's motion. Were the honorable gentlemen from New England afraid they might be put upon the committee? Burke inquired in his rough Irish way. Were they more worried about forsaking the comforts of Philadelphia than about the dangers of military dictatorship? Samuel Chase of Maryland arose to declare he was ready to go to Morristown and live in a tent if necessary, a lie so outrageous that most
New Englanders were temporarily speechless. Samuel Adams of Massachusetts, the leader of the Yankee phalanx (those from rival sections called him Judas Iscariot), rose to put the Bay State behind the idea. The motion to send a committee was put to a vote and carried, seven states to five, with Rhode Island abstaining.
Who would serve on the committee? Philip Schuyler volunteered his services. The New Englanders pushed forward one of their most dependable yes-men, Nathaniel Peabody of New Hampshire. A third member inevitably came from the Southâpugnacious John Mathews of South Carolina. Schuyler rose again to note that the duty in Morristown would be severe and the committee should have at least one more member, lest illness hamper its effectiveness. There was in his opinion only one possible choice for the additional member: Mr. Stapleton of New Jersey.
The motion passed unanimously. Hugh Stapleton sat stunned in his seat. He had too many other things on his mind to get involved with George Washington's problems. He had intended no more than this single gesture to appease his conscience. On the other hand, there was one consolation. Morristown was much closer to Flora Kuyper than Philadelphia. perhaps this goddess of spring would make a winter of politics endurable. Perhaps when he sailed away he could leave behind him an American army that would survive another year or two of war and force the British to quit in disgust. Perhaps he could be both a patriot and a scoundrel.