New York_ The Novel - Edward Rutherfurd [143]
“Necessity, Father.”
“Well, I’m not sure it will work. I don’t believe the colonies will hold together. The differences, especially between North and South, are too great. They haven’t managed to agree in Philadelphia yet. Georgia didn’t even send proper delegates.”
“You may be right. I can’t deny it.”
His father nodded sadly, then poured more wine into James’s glass. And for some time longer, the two men discussed these desperate issues, without a cross word passing between them. And knowing how much pain her father must be suffering, Abigail could only admire his restraint.
Yet James too, she thought, must have made a sacrifice. For he could surely have remained in England and argued the colonists’ cause, without any risk to himself.
On the twenty-ninth day of June, the British fleet began to arrive. Abigail and her father watched from the fort. A hundred ships, carrying nine thousand redcoats, sailed up through the Narrows and anchored off Staten Island. It was an impressive sight. The British disembarked, but took no immediate action. Evidently they were waiting for more reinforcements. The city trembled. Two days later, James grimly confessed: “The Staten Island militia has gone over to the British. There are boatloads of Loyalists crossing from Long Island too.”
His father said nothing. But that evening, when they thought she had retired to her room, she heard her father quietly say: “It’s not too late for you to go to Staten Island too, James. I’d come to vouch for you.”
“I can’t, Father,” James replied.
On the eighth of July, James came in looking excited.
“The Philadelphia Congress has agreed to a Declaration of Independence.”
“All the colonies agreed?” his father asked.
“Almost all, though only at the last minute. New York abstained, but they’ll ratify.”
The next day, to her father’s disgust, a large number then swept down Broadway to Bowling Green, knocked down the bronze statue of King George, tore off his head, and carted the torso away. “We’ll melt it for bullets to shoot at the redcoats,” they declared. That evening, James brought a printed copy of the Declaration to show his father.
“Jefferson of Virginia wrote most of it, though Ben Franklin made corrections. You must confess, it’s rather fine.”
His father read it skeptically.
“‘Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.’ Novel idea, that last. Sounds like one of Tom Paine’s effusions to me.”
“Actually,” James corrected, “it’s adapted from the philosopher Locke. Except he said ‘property’ instead of ‘happiness.’”
“Well,” said his father, “property sounds a better investment to me.”
Declaration or not, the Patriot cause hardly looked promising. Although, in the South, the Patriots were still holding on to redcoats, up in Canada, they were getting nowhere. And in New York, on July 12, the British at Staten Island finally made a move. Abigail, her father and James went down to the waterfront to watch.
Two British ships were making their way across the harbor. The Patriots had a battery ready at the fort on Governor’s Island, a short distance out in the harbor, as well as the usual battery at the old fort, and another at Whitehall Dock, to guard the entrance to the Hudson River. As the British ships moved easily toward the Hudson, all the batteries began to blaze at them.
“They’re still out of range,” James remarked irritably. “What are those fools doing?” Gradually the ships drew closer. The shore batteries should have been able to pound the ships now, but their aim was hopelessly misdirected. The British ships, which could have annihilated them, didn’t even trouble to return fire. Then there was a loud explosion from one of the shore batteries. “It seems,” said John Master drily, “they’ve managed to blow themselves up.” James said nothing, as the British ships sailed into the Hudson and continued northward.
It was in the quiet of the evening, as the glow of sunset spread across the harbor, that Abigail and James, who had gone down to the