Washington and Caesar

The boy was their most reliable contact with the world. Invisible in his poverty and his lameness, he could enter the settlements and buy goods, or tell them where to steal. That they were not the only band of runaway slaves in the swamp was for certain, as every community on the edge seemed to have a militia ready to turn out against them, but Caesar’s careful scouting and the boy’s tireless spying kept them safe.

They had covered dozens of miles in their original flight, and more since, slogging through the water or forcing a path through the deep tangles of the high ground. The column had to move at the speed of the slowest, which was not Old Ben or Long Tom, but a beaten-looking man called Fetch who seldom spoke or even looked at others. Caesar didn’t know why he had followed them, but he had, and he moved more slowly every day. Twice, Caesar looked at his body, but it had no unusual marks or wounds, nothing more than the casual cruelty and hard work of a life of servitude.

“He gon’ die,” Old Ben said, watching Caesar run his hand down the man’s leg.

“Why? He ain’t snakebit, and I can’t find anything else. He got a fevuh? Fever?”

“No. He jus’ don’ wan’ live. Simple as that.”

So Caesar, to cheat death, let them build a camp on a hummock in the northwest of the swamp. Virgil showed them how to lay up wigwams of reeds and poles, the way an Englishman had shown him. They built four. And Caesar went off every day to scout the area around them, and when he found the settlement to the north a day’s walk, he sent one of the men to find the boy.

“That boy need a name.” Old Ben seldom prefaced his remarks.

“Why?”

“He gon’ die young. Shouldn’ die called ‘boy’.”

“You name him, then.”

“I ain’t the big man.” Old Ben never seemed to miss a chance to remind him of his responsibility.

“You got a name, boy?” Caesar sat on a pile of brush bound up with roots. It made a passable seat.

“Not as I remember, suh.”

“Well, then.” He thought over all the names he knew. Others of his little band gathered around, or lay on pallets.

“Do you all know who James Somerset is?” he asked. He saw the flash of recognition from Virgil and Old Ben, but none of the rest seemed to stir.

“He was a man, a black man in England. He went to court to prove himself free. He won. He’s free, and there ain’t no slaves in England because he won.”

“What kind of court would let a black man speak?”

“Courts in England, I guess. He had a white man lawyer called Sharp, way I heard it.”

“Where’d you hear this?”

“I heard it from a free black sailor named King who been to England himself.”

They nodded, satisfied.

“So that’s what we call you now, boy. James Somerset, or James. Mostly Jim, I suspect. But you remember where that name is from, a brave man who made other men free.”

The boy—Jim—smiled so widely it looked as if his teeth might burst out of his mouth.

And Caesar sent him on his first mission to spy out the little town.

“Who they fightin’? War with who?” The men clustered around the boy, eager for the corn meal he had but more eager for news.

“British soldiers fought some men in ‘Choosets. They marched down a road and the militia killed ’em all dead. They killed some militia, and now it be war against the British.”

Caesar had heard talk of war with England for months, back before he was sent away from Mount Vernon. It was a persistent rumor, but this seemed to say there had been an actual battle. He had never felt much pity for the Virginians, when they talked of it, but perhaps that was just because they were the masters and he the slave. Perhaps they were themselves mistreated by the English, although he never saw any sign and the Englishmen who came to Mount Vernon had seemed little different from any other white men.

When the excitement of the news had died down, Jim told him the bad news in private, which was smart of him. Other overseers had reported the bloody escape and militia were seeking them in the swamp. Jim hadn’t heard much, just a hint from a little black girl that there was a hunt in the swamp and a garbled version of the killing, which had clearly magnified in the telling.

“You only killed they three men, I know. I saw them. I counted. Stories say you killed ten or mo’.”

“Didn’t bother you none, Jim?”

“Oh no, suh.”

“Get something to eat, Jim.” Caesar looked at the comfortable camp, with two brush huts and a covered fire pit. They’d been there for several days and his hands were less numb. None of the men would want to leave.

But they were hunted, and it was time to move.

Schuykill Tavern, Pennsylvania, June 17, 1775

Peyton Randolph, acting as speaker for the Continental Congress, was seated in the center of the head table. He rose carefully to his feet and demanded silence of the hubbub around him. The tavern’s common room was filled with members of the Continental Congress and wellwishers, some of whom had already adopted military dress, so that the dinner had something of the appearance of a council of war.

“Any man who studies the classics will tell you that the ancients knew that most good generals were good farmers,” he began, and Washington winced. Most of the great generals had never farmed in their lives; Caesar and Alexander leapt to mind.

“If that be true, then we have among us a man uniquely fit to command, a veteran of our wars with the French and a farmer whose success is a byword in Virginia. If the cause of liberty must resort to arms, therefore, I think we can ask no better than that those arms be borne and led by my friend,” and here he indicated Washington with a gesture.

“I give you the Commander in Chief of the American armies.”

Every man in the room rose to his feet. Men who had never worn swords in their lives but to funerals were wearing them now, even in the cramped quarters; and among the coats of hunting plush and dark velvet, Washington saw more than a few worn laced coats from the last war with France. Every glass rose as if in salute, and he stood, utterly at a loss for words, though the appointment had been his for a day and the dinner was in his honor. He had not expected to be so moved, and he looked at them—solemn and armed—with his heart full of fear.

“Gentlemen…I am not…I am most sensible…that is…” He stopped, and tried to raise his eyes from the table in front of him, abashed for the first time in many years, and wished that he could have a tenth of his neighbor Mr. Henry’s eloquence. But his courage stood by him; he was not nervous, only moved that they should stand so.

“Gentlemen. I am honored beyond words that you…that you have chosen me to lead this enterprise. I fear the result more than I wish, and I hope…I hope that no man present enters lightly into the notion of war. I fear my merits will fall short of the magnitude of the task. I should thank the gentlemen of the United Colonies…I should thank…them, for so much confidence in my abilities; but I dread to fail, and ruin my country and my reputation in such a task.”

He looked up then, aware that he had spoken mostly to the table, mortified that his speech must sound so craven, but every eye was on him, and no one seemed to censure it. Their glasses were still raised.

“I will bring to this contest a firm belief in the justice of our cause, close attention to the prosecution of it, and the strictest integrity. If these are sufficient to the task…If it must be war, so be it. I will lead as best I may, and may God be with us.”

Someone at the first table said “amen” very loudly, and there was a rustle as men drank off the toast, but those sounds served only to accentuate the silence of the crowd, and they stayed standing for some time, thinking of the war to come.

Billy hadn’t stood at his elbow in the tavern as he might ordinarily have done; northerners seldom thought to provide space for a gentleman’s slave as would have happened in Virginia. So Billy had to wait until Washington returned to his lodgings to hear of the evening, and Washington was in a far more solemn mood than Billy had expected.

Billy had his boots off without complaint, and had laid out his waistcoat for a brushing before Washington spoke, his shirt open and his stock hanging from his hand.

“I don’t think they know what war is,” he said suddenly.

Billy took the stock and nodded. It wasn’t really his role to speak.

“They think making me their general shows that they are in earnest, and perhaps it does. But none of them has seen a real war. Indeed, I think that veterans of Frederick would laugh at my pretensions to knowing war. Do they expect me to keep them safe?”

Billy took the silver buckle off the sweat-stained stock and threw the stock on a pile of laundry.