Washington and Caesar. Christian Cameron

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СКАЧАТЬ thought a moment—thought that Virgil might be a plant to lure him—but he couldn’t imagine any punishment worse than where he was. And it was time to change, time to strike out.

      “No, Virgil. Not how I see it. We got to take the man and kill him, get his guns. Then we run.”

      “Whoa, boy. We do that, we dead if they take us. No whipping. My back plenny hahd, you see? But no hahd ‘nough for no musket ball.”

      “You look and see. We have lots o’ time, man. Lots o’ time.”

      

      It was several days before the overseer shot a man, the first time it had happened since Caesar came to the swamp. Caesar never knew why—whether the man tried to run or whether he was shot for poor work, or on a whim. They heard the sharp, high-pitched sound of a pistol. Later, another slave, Old Ben, said he’d seen the body. Caesar worked with Virgil now. He looked at Virgil while Ben told the story, and when the other man was gone, Virgil looked determined.

      “You got it right, Mr. Caesar. Boy gotta die.”

      “How?”

      “I don’ know. We think, then we get him. But he gotta die ‘fo he kill us all.”

      

       Philadelphia, October 1774

      Washington’s parlor was not all he could have asked, and the size and bustle of Philadelphia so greatly outran that of his native Williamsburg or Alexandria that he had had trouble sleeping his first few nights with the constant rumble of carts and the calling of wares. In time, the habits of his military youth won out, and he slept better.

      The business of the Continental Congress crept along, each faction hesitant of the others, each region jealous of its own case and its own traditions, but a few men, like Franklin, kept the business of the continent moving, and with that, Washington had to be content. He did his bit to keep the factions happy, but he could not speak in public. He sometimes felt that it was a mistake for the Virginians to have sent him, the more so as Virginia was now fighting the Indians in the very territory that he had just ridden over. In his absence he had missed the opportunity to command the last major expedition of his time. He regretted the talk of massacres—indeed, the Philadelphia Quakers made it sound as if Governor Dunmore had provoked the war himself to suit his own ends—but the campaign might have suited him.

      It didn’t matter now. But the short campaign had revealed any number of predictable defects in the Virginia militia. Washington had before him on the table a letter from some of the officers of Fairfax County, asking him to procure muskets, drums, and a pair of colors for their companies, which he had every intention of doing for them. He would want the militia of his county to appear to advantage, just as his parish church should, if compared to others.

      The phrase that caught his eye, had made him rise and pace the room, was one of the last.

      “We leave it to you, sir, to determine whether it may be proper or necessary to vary from the usual colors that are carried by the regulars or militia.”

      Colors were the life’s blood of a military unit, the flags around which they rallied, the sacred symbols of their country’s trust. Roman legions had built temples to honor their eagles; the regulars of Great Britain were not so much different, lodging and bringing out their colors with elaborate ceremony. And in Virginia, the better militia did the same, learning from local regulars or veterans like Washington.

      He looked out on the bustle of his continent’s largest city, and pondered on varying the colors of the Virginia militia from those carried by the regulars. It was a most sobering thought—it gave him more hesitation than all the empty talk of the congress, all the moving speeches by Patrick Henry or young Jefferson—the thought of troops, troops he might yet command in Virginia, serving under colors other than the king’s.

      Men in the Congress talked of war with England. It was that open now. Most of the men who talked and talked had never seen a day’s service and had no idea what such a war would entail. Every member was convinced that as native sons, their own valor and honor would stand any affront. Washington thought of the regulars he had seen, of the Fairfax Militia’s lack of coats or muskets, and the desire to know what pattern the flags should be. It was a question vexing much of the continent, and until war struck them, Washington preferred to endure the Congress. He feared the talk of war from men who hadn’t seen one and wouldn’t have to pay the price.

      Charles Lee, who had been a guest of the Lees in Virginia but was no relation, had already offered to raise a battalion for the defense of the Congress. His offers hadn’t been accepted; neither had he been sent away.

      Men asked Washington questions, ignorant questions for the most part, about war. He resented them; he resented how little they knew about the supply of a battalion, or its feeding. He bought several books to help him answer the questions and to drive home his points, that war would be expensive, that the continent lacked some of war’s most basic necessities. Men listened to him, or didn’t, as their inclinations went; and he sat in his window, and tried to imagine a body of Virginia men without a king’s color, and for the first time since the whole sad business began, he hesitated. But around him, the pulse of the city beat faster, and increasingly, it beat a martial air.

       II Taking off Terror

      Negro servants returning hence [from England], with new and enlarged notions, take off that terror, and shew them all the weaknesses of whites…

      

      MORNING CHRONICLE AND LONDON ADVERTISER, MAY 21, 1772

       1

       Great Dismal Swamp, February 1775

      Even as their tools ate at the swamp, the swamp ate away at the men. As the weeks blurred into months, the toll mounted, until Caesar’s hands were numb most of the night. He couldn’t always grip the tools he had to use during the day, and sometimes they would slip. One day, with his hands wet from the blood of cracked calluses, he had swung his sharp mattock into the roots of an old stump. He’d missed, hit the top of the stump a glancing blow, and the tool turned on him like a live thing. The blade had gouged his leg deep, right into the muscle, and he had dropped like a cleared tree on to the wet ground and watched the blood flow. The wound didn’t hurt like a cut, at least at first, but ached like an enormous bruise.

      It bled fitfully for days, and then began to ooze a noxious pus. He couldn’t stop working, although he was certain he had some kind of fever from it. The blood drew flies, and the flies were like one of the plagues of Egypt that the preacher at Mount Vernon had spoken of. He seldom thought of Mount Vernon anymore. It seemed almost like a paradise compared to this hell—a hell of flies and eternal work, of slaves who had recently become too afraid even to break their tools or protest the abuse.

      Other men died. Not every day, by any means, but the fever took some, and the pistol took others. A broken bone was as likely a death warrant as a bullet to the head; neither Gordon nor the other whites seemed particular about nursing the injured. Caesar worked on with the hole in his leg, and limped, and knew that he would never be as fast as he had been, even if he lived, but the wound never got the smell of death to it, though it oozed an oily white pus for weeks, and in СКАЧАТЬ