Charleston (13 page)

A month later Edward dined with Christopher Gadsden and his wife at Thomas Pike's. Ann Gadsden had followed her husband to Philadelphia when the British shipped him there from St. Augustine. Mrs. Gadsden and the lieutenant governor looked careworn. Edward asked Gadsden what he knew of Tom Bell's death.

“Very little. At Castillo de San Marcos they wanted us to give our paroles. Most did, but I did not. They clapped me into a
cárcel,
a dungeon with a dirt floor and no windows. There I stayed with my candles and my books. I saw no one but guards and was never allowed outside. Only on the ship to Philadelphia did I learn Tom's fate. He also would not give his parole, and was similarly imprisoned. He died in the dungeon, having refused food as a form of protest.”

“I doubt they offered him food. I think a certain British officer conspired with the authorities to keep it from him.”

“Yes, I heard that said. And now we're bowing and exchanging compliments with 'em as though they hadn't treated us like vermin.” His wife took his hand to calm him. “No, Ann. The war's over for some, but not for me.”

 

That kind of hatred growled beneath the surface of Charleston life in the spring of 1782. At Jacksonboro, Pocotaligo, and Georgetown, sales of confiscated estates netted a million pounds sterling. When summer came, terms for evacuation were still in limbo. General Leslie had no arrangement for the British to trade with farmers in the countryside, but it was necessary because of the
large numbers of loyalists flooding in from all over the state. They came to the port wanting to leave the country on the first available ship.

Leslie dispatched men into the Low Country to forage for food; buy it if they could, steal it if they couldn't. In August, encountering one of these raiding parties at Tar Bluff on the Combahee, Henry Laurens's highly esteemed son, Col. John Laurens, died in what Nathaniel Greene called “a sad and paltry little skirmish.”

That same month Leslie received orders to evacuate Charleston as soon as practicable. Greene's army advanced to the west bank of the Ashley while a new governor, John Mathews, negotiated terms of withdrawal. Leslie agreed to leave the city in good order, restore seized property—St. Michael's bells were conveniently overlooked—and return all slaves who hadn't run away to join the British. Mathews in turn pledged no additional confiscatory legislation, and no interference with collection of lawful debts. English merchants would be allowed to remain in Charleston for six months to recoup what was owed them.

“Goddamned lawyers,” Gadsden raged to Edward. “Ought to hang them all.” Two attorneys, Edward Rutledge and Benjamin Guerard, had assisted Mathews's negotiations. Both men were nominally patriots. “The terms are humbug. They favor the very men who did the least for our cause: planters who only care about exporting fall crops through the merchants and factors we so kindly allow to remain here. There will be bad blood for years.”

 

In September a British evacuation fleet sailed into the harbor. In the cool of an early October morning Marburg said to Edward, “We have orders. My regiment leaves on the twenty-seventh. All troops will be gone by December.” The captain's round face turned toward the sunlit waves rolling in from the Atlantic. He seemed to gather his nerve before he spoke again. “I wish to stay.”

Edward understood why Marburg had asked him to
walk along the harbor near the house. This was a matter of utmost privacy, not to say illegality. He said, “You mean desert.”

“I am aware of the nature of the deed, Mr. Edward. Also the price if I'm discovered.”

“You really want to make Carolina your home?”

“I want to make Charleston my home. I have worshiped at Beth Elohim. The rabbi and the congregation made me welcome.”

“In Germany you were a forester, then a soldier. What would you do here?”

“I would like to open a small bookshop, if I can raise the capital. A shop somewhat more American than that of Mr. Wells, who favored the Crown.”

Edward lobbed a stick into a bleached oyster bed. He knew what Marburg wanted but waited for him to say it.

“Will you help me? I have no right to endanger you, but I trust no one else.”

Edward felt somewhat put upon, but he liked Marburg, who had behaved decently while sharing the house. “Well,” he said, thinking aloud, “we'd have to smuggle you out of the city in mufti. Hide you under a blanket in a cart. One of Esau's men can drive you to what's left of Malvern. You'll have to conceal yourself there until all the ships leave. When they come to question me, as they surely will, I can plead ignorance. You simply walked out of the house one night and never came back. I don't think they'll press hard. Their position's untenable.”

Marburg's china-blue eyes welled with tears that he dashed away with embarrassment. “Mr. Edward, you are a true friend.”

Edward smiled, deprecating the remark. “Get your kit together. We'll pull this off in the next day or so, before either of us changes his mind.”

 

Marburg's desertion was accomplished without difficulty. Two officers, one English, one Hessian, came to the house. Their interrogation was short and perfunctory. Leaving, the Hessian said, “I never liked the little Jew. I
hope a crocodile eats him while he cowers in the swamp. One day we'll rid Germany of all the dirty shit-eating killers of Christ.”

 

Charleston hummed with preparations for the first evacuation. Embarkation would take place at Gadsden's Wharf; Mr. Gadsden savored the irony of that. The redcoats busily ransacked houses and packed up such plunder as they could steal. A few householders met the raiding squads with weapons, but for the most part owners stood aside in weary acquiescence.

Two days before the first departure, with a hard rain blowing off the ocean, Edward passed Adrian's house on Legare Street. Boards covered the windows. Black men carried trunks from the house to a canvas-topped Conestoga wagon. Lydia stood in the doorway, rain-spattered, bedraggled, and shrill. “Keep that trunk upright, my fine crystal's in there.” She boxed the ears of the offending Negro. Edward saw a flash of hatred in his eyes.

He climbed the steps. “I didn't know you were leaving.”

“Did you think we'd stay and let your vicious friends trample on us? Or worse?”

“What do you mean?”

“You don't know about Nigel Bezzard, the Liverpool merchant?” Edward said no. A figure loomed in the dark hall—Adrian, minus his wig. His head was a shaven ball of stubble. He carried a decanter of red wine and a goblet. Edward hadn't seen his brother in months. His sunken eyes and stooped posture saddened Edward. Adrian had the look of a whipped dog.

“Nigel Bezzard did business with the wrong people,” Adrian said. “Someone put a dirk in his back. They found him in Beddon's Alley at daybreak yesterday.”

“The war goes on. I wish it didn't,” Edward said. “Where will you go?”

Adrian poured wine for himself. “East Florida. From there”—he shrugged—“it's immaterial, so long as I never see this accursed town again.”

“You can petition the legislature to transfer Prosperity
Hall to the amerced list. Pay the tax, now or in a year, and the plantation will be yours again.”

Adrian sneered. “Pray tell me how I pay the tax without income from land? Even assuming the legislature would permit it? It's a game I can't win. You and your kind have beggared me.”

Lydia cried, “We won't have our child born into such circumstances.”

“Your child—?”

“We'll make a new start, prosper somewhere else, you'll see.” Her voice was high, strident. Adrian touched her arm.

“Go inside, Lydia. Dry yourself.” She flung off his hand and disappeared. Adrian noticed the four black men huddling by the wagon. “Stop staring. Do your work, you nigger trash.”

The black men filed into the house, heads averted. Rain trickled down Edward's cheeks. “I am very sorry for all this, Adrian.”

“The hell you are. You revel in it. Well, know this. In the Bible where family names are written, I've struck out yours. I no longer have a brother.”

He drank his wine, threw the glass so it broke at Edward's feet. In the boarded-up house Lydia screamed like a termagant. Adrian stumbled and almost fell as he went in to join her.

 

On Sunday, October 27, Edward and Joanna stood among hundreds watching a greater number of loyalists, with their slaves and possessions, queuing up to board schooners and frigates moored at Gadsden's Wharf. Forty ships were scheduled to carry off more than three quarters of the occupying army, and more than three thousand refugees who were scattering to Halifax, Florida, Jamaica, St. Lucia, and the Bahamas. Edward and Joanna spied Lydia and Adrian in the crowd, bundled in cloaks too heavy for their destination in the tropics. Edward felt no sense of victory, only dismay.

On Saturday, December 14, the final units left the city, having stripped it of five thousand slaves, huge stocks of
dried indigo, and goods from looted homes. The Americans came marching up King Street shortly after 11:00
A.M.
, led by a young general named Anthony Wayne.

General Leslie had ordered the citizens to stay indoors, conduct no partisan demonstrations, but as the last of the redcoats marched down Boundary Street to Gadsden's Wharf, small flags and bits of bunting appeared at windows on King Street. People of all ages spilled onto the footpaths.

At first they were quiet. Then they began to clap and stamp in rhythm with the fifes and drums serenading Charleston with “Yankee Doodle.” Where Edward stood with his arm around Joanna, an old lady in a mobcap leaned from an upper window and waved a handkerchief at the soldiers. “God bless you, gentlemen. Welcome home, gentlemen.” It grew to a chant, a roar that drowned the music.
“God bless you, gentlemen. Welcome home, gentlemen.”

Joanna pressed her cheek against Edward's shoulder. “Oh, I do think it's over at last.”

“I believe so, yes.” He spoke reflectively, without enthusiasm, because he wasn't sure. In the last month two more British merchants had been mysteriously murdered. He thought of his estranged brother, and the Larks, and all the grime and guilt left on him by the war. With time he hoped his dark feelings would pass, but he wasn't sanguine. He hugged Joanna. “Marburg can come back to town, anyway.”

The chanting roared over them, waves of joyful noise. It was a day of triumph, but incomplete. St. Michael's steeple, painted white again, rang no bells in celebration.

“There he is, Edgar, the President. Do you see him? The tall man in the custom house barge? It's the biggest boat, with the American flag.”

Edward was vastly more excited than the small boy riding on his shoulder in the midst of the crowd on East Bay. Edgar was six. He'd inherited his father's lanky build, his mother's round face and russet curls. Instead of being duly appreciative of the pomp and ceremony of this first Monday in May, he wriggled until he attracted the attention of the handsome ten-year-old who'd come with them to the foot of Queen Street. Poorly and Sally's son, Hamnet, had light brown skin and a ready smile; only his black hair and full lips spoke of black parentage.

Edgar pulled out the corners of his mouth, a hideous face. Hamnet laughed and said, “Hush, you, I want to see General Washington.”

“And sit still,” Edward said with a firm hand on his son's leg. Edward was thirty-three now, beginning to thicken at the waist. Joanna kept a good kitchen.

Band music reached them from the nautical procession crossing the Cooper. Washington was in the midst of a ceremonial tour of the South. His retinue included a second boatload of musicians. Sailboats and rowboats, fifty or more, trailed the President's party. Spectators hung from windows, sat on roof peaks, filled the decks of vessels anchored in the river and tied up at piers. A few daring men and boys had climbed masts to watch from spars and rigging.

As the barge drew into Prioleau's Wharf, Edward read
the words blazoned on it above the state seal.
LONG LIVE THE PRESIDENT
. Twelve navy captains in sky-blue jackets worked the oars, a thirteenth calling the stroke. Washington remained standing in the bow, a commanding man of fifty-nine years. He raised his cocked hat to acknowledge the crowd's ovation.

The wharf itself was closed off by an honor guard from the German Fusilier Company. City and state dignitaries waited at the landing stage. Edward recognized Governor Pinckney, South Carolina's two senators, and the intendant, Vanderhorst.

After the ceremonial welcome the fusiliers fired fifteen rounds in salute. Over the rooftops came the sweet familiar sound of St. Michael's bells. They'd been sold in London to the successor to the original foundry, where two broken bells had been recast. Then the entire peal was bought by a member of Parliament. That enterprising gentleman shipped the bells to Charleston in the autumn of 1783, expecting to receive a fine price from St. Michael's vestry. A subscription was undertaken but after eight years had raised little money. Paid for or not, the bells hung in their rightful place and serenaded the visiting President.

“I want to go home,” Edgar announced.

“What, you don't want to follow the parade?”

The boy shook his head. Edward lowered him from an aching shoulder and clasped his hand. “Well, I do, so keep your peace.”

Edgar pouted, but he knew better than to argue; his father was a disciplinarian. Hamnet put his arm around the boy's shoulder, said something that brought a giggle and immediate improvement of Edgar's spirits.

The sheriff, carrying the great mace of the city, led the parade to the Exchange at the eastern end of Broad Street. Local and state officials followed, including representatives of the city's thirteen wards. Hired scavengers had removed litter from the line of march, as well as dead dogs, cats, and rats, which typically lay rotting in the public ways. The air didn't smell too badly; cattle- and hogpens near East Bay had been emptied for the occasion.

Washington appeared briefly on the steps of the Ex
change. Then, with his hosts and retinue, he set off on foot for his lodgings in the mansion of Judge Thomas Heyward on Church Street. So began Charleston's week of presidential jubilee. Edward's life came to a halt, as did the life of almost every prominent citizen.

Much had changed in Charleston since the war. The new nation had a new government and constitution. Four South Carolinians, men of property dedicated to the concept of a republic guided by aristocrats, had led and won the fight at the constitutional convention for extension of the slave trade until 1808.

By act of the state legislature South Carolina had a new capital, an upstart town on the Congaree in the scrubby hills of the midlands. A contest of names, Washington versus Columbia, had been won by the latter. Some state offices were still duplicated in Charleston, whose prideful citizens pretended that the other capital didn't exist.

The city had incorporated in 1783, officially doing away with older spellings of the name, as if to show that nothing tied it to the mother country except history. Charleston's chief executive, the intendant, governed with his thirteen wardens, white men who paid a substantial amount of tax for the privilege.

The city had grown. Population now stood somewhere above sixteen thousand, more than half black. Attractive homes lined the streets of the lower peninsula, but odious rookeries crowded too many sections, pouring their garbage and night soil into the open, until the earth itself reeked. Above Boundary Street, where the air was fresher, developers were confidently laying out new residential lots.

Fine new buildings abounded. A new State House at Broad and Meeting replaced the earlier one destroyed in a fire. A handsome four-story brick structure housed orphans and abandoned bastards, of which the city had a large supply.

A small and struggling college was educating a few students. There was a Catholic chapel, the city's first. A climate of tolerance still prevailed, except in matters of slave discipline.

In this atmosphere of growth and prosperity Edward conducted a part-time law practice in two rooms on Broad Street. On the wall behind his desk hung a large faux-bronze copy of the new city seal. His membership in the local Chamber of Commerce prompted this demonstration of civic pride. Adam Fleet, a free mulatto carpenter of Hard Work Alley, had carved and painted the seal. Fleet was the artisan to whom young Hamnet was apprenticed.

Moses Marburg had married a black-haired beauty named Sarah Levi. Sarah was the daughter of the local agent of the Amsterdam indigo merchants Edward had dealt with. Marburg had successfully made the transition from soldier to retailer. In 1786, with a loan from Edward, already repaid, he'd opened his small shop on King Street. Over the front door he hung a wooden sign saying simply
MARBURG BOOKSELLER
. A decoration in somber colors depicted a bearded scholar in a black skullcap seated with his lamp and book. Marburg was not one to hide his faith.

The port of Charleston still shipped tons of rice and indigo to the world, but cotton was a crop of rising importance. Edward had terminated the indigo leases at Malvern and put the land into long-staple sea island cotton. Upland farmers grew the short-staple variety, less hardy and more difficult and expensive to process and loom. It yielded a cloth less luxurious than the other. The upland cotton was produced and shipped, to be sure, but it was a stepchild in the trade.

Not necessarily forever, Edward's new wharf manager said. Simon Buckles, a devout Scots Presbyterian, twice had journeyed down to Georgia to inspect machinery designed by a man named Eli Whitney. If Whitney could perfect a gin to efficiently remove seeds from short-staple cotton, Buckles believed that segment of the market would explode. As it was, Charleston's cotton shipments were huge; over a million and a half pounds this year. A lot of it passed through Bell's Bridge.

The only commodity that did not was the one Edward had banned in 1782. By state law Charleston wharves no longer trafficked in imported slaves. A narrow margin of up-country votes controlled the legislature, and that sec
tion of the state opposed slavery. A 1787 law closed down the trade for three years. Friends of Edward's in the business community said the ban might be lifted if matters of profit and loss forced a change. Edward looked at the state's booming cotton crop and suspected that it might come to pass.

Buckles was a bluff, red-bearded man whose wife, Fiona, had given him nine children, all but the last born in Scotland. Simon was an enthusiast and an optimist, his only bad trait being a tendency to lard his speech with so many unfamiliar words from his native land that Edward often lost his temper, demanded a translation and even a special dictionary. It was Buckles and his fellow Scots of the South Carolina Golf Club who had introduced Edward to the curious and frustrating sport at Harleston's Green. Edward played when he could, but he didn't play well. He tended to swish by the feather-stuffed leather ball with the great wooden club head, cursing violently afterward.

Edward and Joanna moved comfortably in respected social circles. They attended balls in the winter social season, and sat through evenings of Mozart and Haydn organized by the St. Cecilia Society. Edward squirmed the whole time, but he did enjoy the traveling theatrical companies that played the new Harmony Hall on upper King Street. He had his own gentlemen's smoking and discussion club, the Fortnightly.

In 1787, with Bell's Bridge thriving, he'd rebuilt Malvern. It offered memories of his youth and a retreat from the epidemics, storms, and soggy heat of the summer. Joanna and Edgar loved the place.

It had taken a long time for Edward and Joanna to conceive a child. Edgar's birth had been hard. No other children blessed their house, so they lavished all their love on one. Joanna's father had gone to his rest in 1783, too soon to see his grandson.

In 1788 a letter from St. Lucia in the West Indies informed Edward that Adrian had died of Barbados fever.

Lydia's outburst testified to an unsteady mind. Edward wrote her saying he'd arranged for Prosperity Hall to be transferred to the list of amerced lands.

Not hers, obviously.

He received no answer.

 

The week was a whirl of civic and social activities. On Tuesday, Edward joined a delegation from the Chamber of Commerce to present compliments to the President at Heyward's mansion. That evening he attended a citizens' dinner in the Exchange while Joanna frantically sewed a gown for a ball the next night.

Wednesday, Washington toured the remains of the wartime fortifications, received a delegation from the Sons of Cincinnati and another from the Masonic order to which he belonged. For the ball the Exchange blazed with lanterns and a great transparency of the initials
G.W.
over the entrance. Edward wore his best suit of indigo-blue velvet. Joanna, whom he thought lovely in her peach-colored dress, had paid to have her hair done up and powdered. A spangled medallion bearing the words
Long Live the President
was pinned to the high pile.

“Isn't he a handsome man?” she whispered as the President moved gracefully among the guests, a striking figure
in black velvet, white stockings, silver knee buckles, sword, and yellow gloves. Standing well over six feet, he never escaped notice in a crowd.

“I can't see anyone but you,” Edward said. She laughed and teased his chin with her souvenir fan, on which a painted Goddess of Fame crowned Washington with a laurel wreath. The motto read
Magnus in Pace, Magnus in Bello
.

On it went—inspection of the harbor forts; a concert at the Exchange sponsored by the St. Cecilia Society (Edward writhed through more Haydn). Friday brought the capstone, another ball, with a much restricted guest list, at Governor Pinckney's mansion on lower Meeting Street.

The house was a fantasy of colored lanterns, music, sparkling wine, fashionable women, important men. The walled garden had been turned into an outdoor promenade, perfect for the mild spring evening. Here Edward encountered Adrian's friend Lescock, a vision of bright shoe buckles, gold frogging, and a tall peruke showering powder on his shoulders.

Lescock waved a lace handkerchief to catch Edward's eye. “Dear man, how is that Arabian horse you bought?”

Emboldened by wine, Edward said, “Faster than your mare, Archie.” The new horse was pastured at Malvern with Brown Eyes, who was enjoying a peaceful old age.

“Is that so? We shall have to put that assertion to the test when the Jockey Club resumes its meetings.”

“So long as there's a substantial wager on the outcome, I'm for it. I'll ride Prince Mahmoud myself.”

“Brave boy,” Lescock purred with a roll of his eyes. Like many in Charleston he still venerated the king and aped the court. Edward excused himself. Lescock fluttered his handkerchief. “I shall call you to account about that wager.”

On Saturday, Washington visited the new Orphan House, then climbed to the belfry of St. Michael's for a view of the city and harbor islands from 186 feet in the air. The evening brought a final banquet, sponsored by town merchants. The President attended Sunday services at both St. Philip's and St. Michael's. The pews overflowed; Edward felt as though he was imprisoned in a clothespress.