Washington and Caesar

“No.”

“Why don’t you run, sister? Are you all cowardly BaKongo, too stupid to escape?”

She glared at him from the darkness of her hut.

“You’ll learn, African boy. Shut your mouth now, and listen to me. It is my job to teach you the talk, and I will. I’ll teach you more than that, if you let me. There are dogs, there’s militia, there’s the hunt, all out for any Negro that thinks to run. There is ways to run, hear me? But you don’ know them and you better learn. Now get in here this instant. I want to teach you to speak and to stay alive.”

He ducked his head and entered, his thoughts still outside. Most of the slaves he could see were Ebo and Luo, ignorant southern BaKongo from the interior who were prey to superstition, carried inferior weapons—pliant. Luo women were notoriously loose. This one spoke to him as no woman should speak to a man, although he had grown used to it in Jamaica. She didn’t have the look of the Luo, though, and she knew more than a few words of the Benin language, which made her something. And the old sailor, King, had said to learn the language.

She was probably Ebo, it struck him. He had the urge to laugh at the irony: at home his father had kept Ebo slaves, and here, the Ebo always seemed to be above him. Of course, at home, slavery was never so permanent.

The urge to laugh never lasted. The urge to violence was always there. As he did dozens of times a day, he resisted the urge to lash out. When all his training told him to fight, or resist a blow or an insult, he would think one phrase to himself.

Today, I am a slave.

He sat on a stool, murmuring “Yes, ma’am.”

Blain’s Store, Virginia, November 1773

“And Ben Carter has taken a schoolmaster from Princeton!” Henry Lee, well dressed to the point of foppery, was holding forth.

“I don’t think that will cause the collapse of civilization, gentlemen.” Washington was busy with accounts and tired of Lee’s youth.

Dr. Thompson reached across the table to take a small basket of English gunflints.

“Colonel, I think Mr. Lee means to suggest that Mr. Carter is avoiding the import of English lessons as well as English goods.”

“Well put, sir. My meaning exactly.”

Colonel Washington idly turned the rowel of a neat silver spur on his boot, his attention more under the table than above it. “I dare say Princeton produces some very educated men.”

This was as close to a witticism as Washington ever came, as Henry Lee had just graduated from that very academy.

“I knew him there. A bit of a prig, to be sure, but he seems to know his lessons well enough. Can’t dance, though.” Henry Lee was suddenly contemptuous.

“Neither does Grigg, and we still pay him to carry our tobacco to England,” commented Dr. Thompson, a slight man in quiet clothes.

“I can’t see that it signifies much whether a man can dance a minuet, whether he’s captain of a ship or a schoolteacher, Mr. Lee,” Washington said quietly.

“I’d like my children to grow up to be as good as their peers in London or Jamaica. Can you imagine going out in London and not dancing?” Lee seemed unaware of the internal hypocrisy of his argument. Washington decided it was too much to correct him, and let his attention wander back under the table. Alone of the seated men, he had missed education in the home country, and the slight smile that touched his mouth suggested that it was not a matter that interested him overmuch. “Are you gentlemen supporting the embargo on English goods?”

Dr. Thompson seemed rather caught out, as he had five carefully selected gunflints in one hand and a good hard English shilling in the other.

“In the main,” he said, shifting in his seat.

“Tea for certain,” said Lee. “Otherwise it depends on circumstances. What are we to do for cloth?”

“I’ve seen decent wool cloth from this country.” Washington looked at them. “I’m raising a company of select militia, gentlemen, and I’ll see them all uniformed in good American cloth.”

“Select militia?” asked Lee with a young man’s interest. He leaned forward attentively, then paused, aware that he was revealing too much enthusiasm for an aristocratic Lee.

“To train a cadre of officers and NCOs. The kind of men we lacked so badly in the last war.”

“Ahh, I see,” said Lee, feigning disinterest. “And while we Lees wonder about boycotting English wool, will the Washingtons still be purchasing a piano?”

Washington nodded to acknowledge the hit. “And velvet caps for my hunt boys. I suppose that the doctor’s ‘in the main’ will have to do duty for every one of us.”

Young Henry Lee had a way of pointing out men’s flaws that made him difficult company at the best of times. Washington had ordered the offending pianoforte for his stepdaughter, Patsy, well before the embargo. Now she had died untimely, but he had no intention of turning it away. Nor would he turn away the parcel of velvet hunting caps, the livery jackets, or the new silver spoons. Nor discard the hallmarked English spurs on his boots.

“Mr. Blain?” Washington held out a handful of gunflints to the owner of the store.

“Colonel Washington, sir. How may I be of service?’

“Mr. Blain, Mr. Lee has just been kind enough to point out that no man of us has been perfect in our attention to the embargo on English goods, but I wonder, sir, if what I’ve heard of New York gunflints is true, that they are as good as English?”

“Why, truth to tell, Colonel, I’d never given it any thought. I don’t think I’ve ever seen them offered for sale.”

Washington was examining the English flints as if they carried disease. “I saw them in Albany, last war.”

Lee laughed. “I’ve lived in New Jersey. I have a difficult time imagining anything good coming out of New York.”

“I’ll look into it, Colonel.”

“If you manage it, Mr. Blain, I’ll see my militia buy all their flints here, and other goods besides.”

“Is it to be a corps of cadets, Colonel Washington?” Mr. Blain was openly curious, and thus more civil than young Lee had seemed.

“Something like, Mr. Blain.”

“You don’t suppose that this trouble with England will end in a struggle, sir?”

Washington rose at the sound of his wife emerging from the back of the house. He motioned to his slave, waiting against the wall, to fetch the chaise.

“I know of no one who desires a struggle, sir.”

“Can you honestly imagine us fighting the mother country, sir?” Henry Lee swaggered.

Washington whirled on the young man. “Seeking to provoke a quarrel by forcing the contrary opinion on every matter is uncivil, sir. First you seek to lesson me on boycotting English goods, and now you question whether we would fight England. Which way will you have it?”

“I meant no offense.” But Lee was sullen.

Dr. Thompson started, worried at the sudden change in tone. He was a civil, gentlemanly man, and took his social duties as seriously as his medical. “I gather that congratulations are in order, Colonel Washington?”

The coldness around Washington’s eyes suggested no such thing. He looked at the men, especially the men of quality, as if measuring them for uniforms, and was deaf to Thompson’s approach. He stared at Lee and said, emphatically, “If the Government insists on making slaves of us, they will leave us little choice, sir.”

With dogged social sense, Dr. Thompson pressed on.

“Your son is to be married, I gather, Colonel? Allow me to present best wishes for their happiness.”