Chains (31 page)

Five steps,
I counted silently.
Six. Seven.

Curzon had little strength in his legs. He faltered and almost fell again. I wrapped my other arm around him and clutched his shirt.
Eight. Nine. Ten.

The dog lifted his head. He stared right at me and barked.

One of the soldiers, startled, shouted, “Look at that!” and pointed to the sky.

The heavens exploded into the red glare of rockets and white fountains of light. Curzon and I stood as if planted, amazed at the sight of the fireworks being shot off in honor of Queen Charlotte.

The dog barked furiously in our direction, but the soldiers were all staring at the illuminations above. The noise rolled up, booms that sounded like thunder and cannons. The men all smiled and laughed at the spectacle.

I dragged Curzon across the street and down the last two blocks to the wharf.

It was dark, no watch posted, as I had hoped. “Thank you, Momma,” I muttered as we crawled into a rowboat.

Curzon groaned. “What you say?”

I untied us from the wharf. “Never mind.”

But he was already insensible again. I picked up the oars.

I rowed that river.

I rowed that river like it was a horse delivering me from the Devil.

My hands blistered, the blisters popped, they re-formed and popped again. I rowed with my hands slick with blood. My back, my shoulders, my arms, they pulled with the strength of a thousand armloads of firewood split and carried, of water buckets toted for miles, of the burdens of every New York day and New York night boiled into two miles of water that I was going to cross.

Set after set of the Queen's fireworks exploded over the roofs of the city, over Canvastown, over the mansions that held the King's subjects in their ball gowns and fancy dress
uniforms. Her fireworks blasted off and everybody gazed into the sky and I rowed and rowed and rowed past their homes, aside their warehouses, underneath their cannons, and out into the open harbor betwixt New York Island and Jersey.

My wits wandered some, 'bout the time my hands started bleeding.

Tongues of fog oozed across the water and curled around the bits of ice that floated past. I saw in the fog the forms of people. They never came close enough that I could see their faces. Once, I reached out, feeling a warm presence, but I near tipped the boat over and had to grab for the oar before it slid away. My hands plunged into the icy water. And I rowed and rowed, but it didn't hurt after that because my hands had froze.

I rowed and the tide pulled and the ghosts—who could indeed travel over water—tugged my boat with all their strength. My eyes closed and the moon drew me west, away from the island of my melancholy.

When my eyes opened, I knew I had died and passed onto glory.

Heaven was crystal lit with white angel fire, colored peach at the edges. Heaven smelled of wood smoke.

I blinked.

The Bible did not mention that Heaven smelled of wood smoke.

I blinked again. When I opened my eyes, they watered because of the bright morning light. The rowboat had come ashore in a tangle of bushes that overhung a small bank at the side of the river. The branches overhead were all coated
in ice. I was coated in ice, too, that fractured and crackled as I moved.

I looked to the water, then to the rising sun, then to the water again. I looked around me—no houses, no ships, no wharves. The river was narrow and flowing out to sea, south. The sun rose beyond the water, at the other side of the river. I was on the west bank. I was in Jersey.

I had set myself free.

I wiped at the water that flowed down my cheeks and kicked at the stinking bundle at the bottom of the boat.

“You alive?” I asked.

The bundle groaned and pushed aside the shredded blanket. Curzon lifted his head enough to look at me sitting there with a fool grin on my face.

“Where are we?” he asked in a thin voice.

“I think we just crossed the river Jordan.” I stood up, steadied myself as the boat rocked a bit, and offered him my hand. “Can you walk?”

Was Isabel based on a real person? What about the other characters in the book?

Chains
is a work of historical fiction. Most of the characters: Isabel, Ruth, Curzon, the Locktons, Lady Seymour, Bellingham, and various British and Patriot officers, are fictional. The real letters, diaries, newspaper articles, runaway ads, cookbooks, and military reports that I found in my research helped me develop the characters.

There are three “real” people in the book. The mayor of New York, David Matthews, actually did participate in the conspiracy to assassinate Washington. Thomas Hickey was a member of Washington's Life Guards, and was hung for his part in the assassination plot. And Dr. Abraham van Buskirk, the Loyalist sympathizer who sheltered Mr. Lockwood, truly was a doctor in New Jersey.

While the character of Isabel is fictional, her situation is realistic. Child slaves were sold at very young ages and had to work extremely hard. During the war there was an increase in the number of slaves who freed themselves by running away. Most of them ran in search of family members, so they could start their new lives together.

The tension between Patriot and Loyalist New Yorkers, the Tea Water Pump, the taking of lead from houses, the pulling down of King George's statue, the chaos surrounding the British invasion of the city, the fire, prisoners of war, the Queen's Birthday Ball: all of these are historical facts. I wove the fictional characters of Isabel and Curzon into the history to give readers a sense of what life might have been like in those days.

What about the battles? Were they real too?

Yes. There were a number of big battles around New York City in 1776.

In August the British army, with more than 30,000 men, landed at Gravesend in Brooklyn and the Americans prepared to meet them. The two armies clashed on August 27, near the village of Flatbush. The Americans, with only 10,000 troops, were beaten and withdrew to Brooklyn Heights, then across the East River to Manhattan.

This part of the war is sometimes called the Battle of Brooklyn or the Battle of Long Island. It was the first major battle of the Revolution with more than 40,000 men fighting for six hours. The British crushed the Americans, capturing, wounding or killing thousands of men.

A few weeks later the British attacked the Patriots at the northern end of Manhattan, in the battle of Harlem Heights, and later, in the battle of Fort Washington, where thousands of Americans became British prisoners of war. Washington was lucky to escape with the remnants of his army. They marched into New Jersey and headed south to Princeton and Trenton.

Was the Revolution the most important thing that ever happened in America?

That is an interesting question. The American Revolution (also called the War for Independence) was fought for many reasons, but mostly because Americans wanted to be in charge of their own government and have more control over how their taxes were spent.

Most people who lived in the Thirteen Colonies considered themselves British, or at the very least, British colonists. Historians estimate that 40 percent of colonists were firmly dedicated to breaking free from Great Britain, 20 percent wanted to remain a colony, and 40 percent stayed neutral or supported the side that was winning at the
moment. After the war, it took a while for Americans to develop their own sense of national identity and pride.

Equally important to the war itself was the establishment of the United States Constitution, which called for a representative government, regular elections, and the checks and balances of the Congress, the President, and the Supreme Court. The Constitution is an amazing document: one that has grown with the evolving perspectives and needs of the country.

The American experiment in democracy, which we are still working on, changed the world forever.

How many slaves lived in America at the time of the Revolution?

When the American Revolution broke out, about 2.5 million people of European and African descent were living in the Thirteen Colonies.

The war came after decades of increased immigration across the Atlantic Ocean. About 150,000 Europeans journeyed to America between 1700 and 1775. About 100,000 more came as indentured servants. In the same time period, nearly 300,000 Africans were kidnapped and shipped to the colonies to work as slaves.

On the eve of the Revolution, one in five colonists—20 percent of the population—was a slave: approximately 500,000 people. Most of them were held in bondage in the southern colonies, but slaves were owned by everyone from farmers in Albany, New York, to shipbuilders in Newport, Rhode Island, to bakers in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to merchants in Boston, Massachusetts.

Which side did African Americans fight for during the Revolution?

African Americans fought for both the Patriots and the British, just like members of all other ethnic groups in the country.

Historians estimate that five thousand African American men enlisted on the American side of the war. Free and enslaved black Patriots fought and died at the Boston Massacre, at Lexington and Concord, Bunker Hill, Saratoga, and every other significant battle. Some were Patriots because they believed in the cause of American liberty. Others fought alongside or in place of owners who forced them to take up arms. A few slaves were granted freedom for being soldiers, but not many.

On November 7, 1775, the Royal Governor of Virginia, the Earl of Dunmore, declared that all male slaves and indentured servants owned by Patriots would be freed if they volunteered to work for the British Army. On June 7, 1779, British Commandant David Jones added: “All Negroes that fly from the Enemy's Country are Free—No person whatever can claim a Right to them—.”

Tens of thousands of slaves ran away from their owners and fled to the British lines, including slaves owned by George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Most were used as military laborers digging ditches, building barricades and roads, and driving carts, though some fought as soldiers with Dunmore's Ethiopian Regiment. While the Patriots talked about freedom, the British actually gave it to some slaves.

I'm confused. I thought the British were the bad guys. But if they gave freedom to the slaves, wouldn't that make them the good guys? And does that make the Patriots the bad guys?

It's complicated, and yes, confusing. The situation was too muddy to think about in a “good guy vs. bad guy” way.

Most Americans supported the idea of slavery, though opinions were beginning to change in the late 1700s. Many of the Founding Fathers owned slaves and much of the wealth of America's upper class came from slave labor. Some leaders, like George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, changed the way they felt about slavery as
they grew older. Both men freed their slaves in their wills, though all but one of Franklin's slaves died before he did.

Some young American leaders, like John Laurens of South Carolina, saw the immorality of slavery and tried to design plans that would free slaves, including those owned by his father. His plans never gained approval. He died at the end of the war.

To us today, it seems completely hypocritical to fight a war for “liberty and freedom” when 20 percent of your population is in chains. People back then saw the hypocrisy too. It made some of them uncomfortable, but not uncomfortable enough to change the law, not right away. Vermont abolished slavery on July 8, 1777, when it adopted its state constitution. After the Revolution, the other states in the North gradually required slave owners to free their slaves.

Americans had to fight another bloody war, the Civil War, before all of our people were free.

So the Americans were good guys about liberty and bad guys about slavery. Does that mean the British were bad guys about liberty and good guys about slavery?

Again, you can't look at this through good guy/bad guy glasses.

The British were not interested in freeing slaves because it was the morally right thing to do. Dunmore's Proclamation was issued to ruin the Patriot economy, particularly in Virginia, the home of many slave-owning Patriot leaders. British General Sir Henry Clinton promised “to use slaves as weapons against their masters.”

Their offer of freedom was not made to everyone in bondage. If a slave owned by a Loyalist escaped to the British, he was returned to his owners and punished. Loyalists were given runaway slaves as rewards for helping the king's army. The British also sold escaped or captured Patriot slaves to their Loyalist sympathizers. Ex-slaves who came down with smallpox or typhus were abandoned by the British to die or be recaptured.

The abolition movement did grow faster in England than in America. In 1772 an English judge ruled that slavery could not exist in England itself. In 1807 Parliament banned British involvement in the Atlantic slave trade. (From 1690 to 1807 British ships carried nearly three million kidnapped Africans across the Atlantic Ocean.) Slavery was completely banned throughout the British Empire in 1833.

How was life different for slaves on big plantations, on small farms, and in the cities?

In the northern colonies, European Americans tended to own one or two slaves who worked on the family farm or were hired out. Rhode Island and Connecticut had a few large farms, where twenty or thirty slaves would live and work. Plantation-based slavery was more common in the South, where hundreds of slaves could be owned by the same person and forced to work in tobacco, indigo, or rice fields.

In most cities, slaveholdings were small, usually one or two slaves who slept in the attic or cellar of the slave owner's home. Abigail Smith Adams, a Congregational minister's daughter, grew up outside Boston in a household that owned two slaves, Tom and Pheby. As an adult, she denounced slavery, as did her husband, John Adams, the second President of the United States.