Letters

His chief concern, however (so he claim’d), was not the inevitable misunderstandings & conflicts of interest betwixt governors & govern’d 3,000 miles apart; it was the invasion of white settlers across the Appalachians into Indian lands, in despite of George III’s proclamation. He could not believe that the confederated state governments being proposed by the Committees of Correspondence & the Continental Congress would be inclined to check that invasion. Exempt from patriotism, he saw the self-interest & bad faith on both sides of the Atlantic, and a dozen routes to peaceful compromise, none of which bade especially well for the Indians. If, on the other hand, war were actually to break out betwixt the British & the colonials, each would scramble to use the Indians against the other — in particular the Six Nations of the Iroquois, whose situation once again would be, for better or worse, strategic.

In April of ’75, when the shooting commenced at Lexington & Concord, Father was in nearby Cambridge, poring thro the library of Harvard’s old Indian College for references to the Bloodsworth Island Conspiracy, and deciding that he had had enough of Yale’s Congregationalist orthodoxy, perhaps of the academical life. His friend Arnold rusht up from New Haven to add his company of militia to George Washington’s army, assembling on the Common. His friend Burr hurried over from law school in Litchfield to join that army. Father introduced them. They could not persuade him to enlist, nor he dissuade them.

“We must have Canada!” they declared. Father understood, with a chill, that “we” already meant The United States of America. If Canada were not among those states, they argued, the British could crush the unborn republic betwixt its armies to the north & west and its navies to the east & south. The key to Canada was old New France, never easy under British rule: Arnold’s strategy, in which General Washington & the Massachusetts Committee of Safety concurr’d, was a three-prong’d attack: one force (General Montgomery’s, say) should move down the St. Lawrence from Maine to take Quebec; a 2nd (Arnold’s own, he hoped) up thro Lake Champlain to take Crown Point, Ticonderoga, and Montreal; a 3rd thro the Mohawk Valley to Niagara. “We” would then control the St. Lawrence &: the Lakes; Canada would be “ours.” The French would surely help, in hopes of regaining New France for themselves; the habitants could be relied upon at least not to aid the British. The great uncertainty was the allegiance of the Six Nations: Could my father not be prevail’d upon to accept a commission & persuade the Mohawks to remain neutral, the Senecas to lay siege to Forts Erie & Niagara?

He could not, tho he affirm’d the soundness of the strategy. He urged young Burr to enlist with Arnold instead of Washington if he wanted action, and caution’d Arnold to beware the jealousy betwixt the Massachusetts & Co

Burr & Arnold had not heard of this Cambridge, nor were they much inclined to hear. Was it in the neighborhood of A

Enough, cry Burr & Arnold: ’tis the beat of savage drums! To which my father replies: ’Tis the voice of the one true Continental, his vanisht forebears, in whose ranks he was off come morning to enlist.

All this my mother told me — your grandmother Nancy, who is about to enter the story. Andrew III’s investigation of his latefound father had led him from A

From one of these latter — an aged, notorious former whore named Mag Mungummory, he learnt three valuable things. 1st, that Ebenezer & A

The establishment was the same in which my father was lodging, and where this conversation was taking place: Russecks Tavern, near Church Creek, below Cambridge. The young woman — herself chaste, tho uncommonly worldly for her age — was the same he had been unable to take his eyes off thro this interview as she bustled about the place. More, she was the Nancy Russecks McEvoy aforemention’d, whose family had been lost at sea in the ship Duldoon out of Piraeus for Cadiz in 1771. Then only fifteen, she had made her way from Paris to Philadelphia & thence to Maryland to seek her one known relative, her great-uncle Harvey Russecks. In his place she found his daughter (still call’d by her old working name, “Mag the Magnificent,” but by Nancy rechristen’d “Magnanimous Maggie”), who had welcomed her as a grandchild, seen as best she could to her education, protected her from the establishment’s rougher patrons — and gratified, insofar as she was able, the girl’s tireless curiosity about her ancestry. Perhaps Mr. Burlingame could be of assistance in this last? Hither a moment, pretty Nancy…

And so my mother & father meet — he nearly 30, she nearly 20—and their matchmaker withdraws for the present, tho she has one crucial thing more to do for us. And they very soon fall in love, Henry & Nancy, whilst the country goes to war. Colonel Arnold’s plan to move against Ticonderoga has been approved by Massachusetts; but to mollify Co