The Proud and the Free (12 page)

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Abner Williams and I led the column, and directly behind us marched Angus MacGrath and the Citizen-soldier Guard, which now numbered about one hundred men, and which was finally stabilized at exactly one hundred, in ten platoons of ten each with a platoon leader who bore the title of citizen-protector. Many of these names might appear pompous today, for it is a different time and a different era I write this in, but they were neither strange nor pompous to us; and we were filled with a mythology and a folklore of freedom, in which such names loomed like giant symbols. Each member of the Citizen-soldier Guard had a white rag of some kind knotted around his left arm; and later these became white arm bands, six inches wide, sewn into the sleeve above the elbow – and to this day I have the band, sewn onto my old, ragged coat, yellowed with age, but not the least, I think, of the few honors I retain from that ancient Revolution. Also, the members of the guard carried primed muskets, held at advance position with bayonets fixed.

Behind them, Chester Rosenbank led the musicians of the Line, the fifers and drummers and trumpeters, and now two Scotsmen from the 5th Regiment, who had unearthed from somewhere kilts and pipes and who marched along, one on each side of the drummers, making the night awful with their wild Highland music – nor would they desist or keep time with us, for all of Rosenbank's pleading.

It is a night for the pipes, they said, and if you want harmony, tell yer damned drummers and fifers to hauld off!

Behind them, came the regiments, flanked by the guns and interspersed with at least two hundred carts and wagons, and at the very end, a dozen of the citizen-soldiers to whip the stragglers into position.

I do not know of any other occasion during the entire war when a camp was broken like this, during the middle of the night, with no prior preparation; yet for all of that, we marched well and the discipline was good. We had cast out all of our officers, but the sergeants knew their jobs; and the long and short of it was that we were, almost without exception, tough and hardened soldiers who did not have to think twice about doing a thing.

When we came to the first fork in the road, the only incident of the march happened. There was a clearing in the woods with the moonlight flooding through, and on the branch of the road that led to the coast and toward the British, Wayne and a handful of the officers had stationed themselves, mounted, their haggard white faces set in desolate determination. We had planned to take the other fork anyway, but when I saw them, I halted the column, and Abner Williams went forward to speak with them. In the course of this, they asked him his name and rank, and that was how it came to be that in so many reports of the rising, Williams was mentioned as the leader. But in all truth, the whole Committee led the rebellion, and if credit should be given, Bowzar and Maloney and the Jew Levy deserve more than either Williams or myself.

My rank is sergeant, answered Williams, and we are in no mood to stand here in the night chatting with you.

Can ye stop that cursed skirling? Colonel Butler demanded.

We have little to warm ourselves with, other than the music, said Williams, and if you would talk, talk over it.

We have come to hold this road! shouted Wayne. Here we are, and you will have to shoot us down before you march here!

Why should we march there?

To join the British!

A roar of anger went up from the men who were listening. Now the drummers and the fifers stopped, leaving only the skirling pipes; and MacGrath, all in a rage, advanced toward Wayne, crying:

A plague on yer foul dreams! Ye would bespatter all with yer own dung!

Grasping his arm, I pulled him away, telling him, Easy, easy, Angus – we have no truck with them and we have no words with them, and they will go their way and we will go ours.

And I waved my hand for the march; the musicians picked it up, and the column went down the road toward Vealtown – and we marched without another halt until we came to the old Virginia encampment. There we made a quick, rough camp, letting the women and children sleep on in the carts, building a few fires for warmth – for the cold broke that night, and it was almost balmy outside – and raising tents only for the sick and wounded. I divided the Citizen-soldier Guard in half, and placed them on two-and-two sentry duty, and then, like most of the Line, I scraped the snow from a bit of ground, wrapped a cloak about me, and fell asleep so quickly that I have no clear memory of the process.

I have a better memory, though, of being awakened in the sad, wet fog of the early dawn, with the feeling that I had only slept a moment, and with the feeling too of a day lost somewhere; for here it was but the morning of the second day of January in the New Year, yet in twenty-four hours I had lived lifetimes; and the old Jamie Stuart, the lad from the Western hill country, the cobbler's apprentice, the gawking, freckled lad who had dared to love the Parson Bracken's daughter – all of them were gone, and I was something else who was awakened by Billy Bowzar and told, as he shook me:

Now come awake, Jamie – come now, Jamie! Would you be sleeping the whole blessed day away?

Just an hour of it, I pleaded.

You have had five good hours, Jamie. Come, lad, there is much to be done. We have a tiger by the tail, and it will be dancing and prancing all over us – and maybe a little bit of clawing too, and we on the Committee have become such theoreticians and such great ones for planning and scheming that it will do my heart good to know there's a soldier standing by to do a soldier's work, if it need be done.

So spoke Billy Bowzar, who was a better soldier than I ever could be, and a better man too, as he showed in the end. But that was his way, and he could make you love him as I loved him that morning, standing up with every muscle in my body aching and throbbing. Yet the cold had broken, and the morning breeze was soft and mild, and from far off across the meadows came the screech of roosters and the doleful
caw, caw, caw
of the crows. The mist lay low in the valley where we had bivouacked; its smoky tendrils shifted over the men where they slept, and on every side, as far as one could see in that gray morning, the men of the Line lay haphazardly, a clump here, a single man there. The few tents raised the night before floated like strange boats on the sea of mist, and the cattle wandered among the men, nosing in the snow for grass. Far off, the sentries moved like ghosts, and somewhere a baby whimpered with that plaintive insistent sound that seems to have more of the crux of life in it than any other.

Now come along, Jamie, said Billy Bowzar again; and I followed him, picking our way among the sleeping men to a large brigade tent which had been staked directly in the center of the encampment. The Stars and Stripes had been raised over it, for it seemed more fitting to the Committee that we should use this new banner, which had only come to us during the November of the past year, than any of the old ones, marked as they were with memories of whippings and hangings and the shame of our eternal retreats from the enemy; the two striped flags we had were never flown before, and, unless my memory fails me, this was the first occasion that Pennsylvania troops ever flew the flag of the United States.

As we entered the tent, we were saluted by two members of the Citizen-soldier Guard, who were stationed on either side the doorway. I had a moment of shame, for while I slept much had been done; yet I realized that there was still enough for the doing. In the tent, three camp tables had been set up in a row, and a crow's nest of candles ringed the tent pole. Around the table sat Jim Holt, Abner Williams, Leon Levy, Danny Connell and Jack Maloney. This time, it was Williams who was writing a long document, and as I entered, he laid down his quill and smiled wanly.

Greetings, Jamie, he said, in his mild and cultured voice.

He was a slim, soft-voiced man, college-educated, the son of a Protestant minister, strangely out of place among us, yet strangely liked and respected by the men. About thirty years old, he was a thoughtful person, holding matters inside himself, not easy to know, but coming out occasionally with strange statements indeed. He was a nonbeliever, not passively as so many were in those times, but militantly, as if God were a personal antagonist of his. At a later time we had a long talk, which I will put down in its place. Now he went on to say:

Here are the orders of the day, Jamie, which we have decided upon. It will be up to you and the Guard to see that they are carried out.

Read it aloud, said Jack Maloney.

Billy Bowzar dropped into a chair to listen, and Jim Holt stuffed a corncob pipe with a mixture of grass and dried sheep dung, with a little tobacco to flavor it. Levy seemed to be dozing, and Danny Connell sat with his eyes closed, his legs sprawled, rubbing and scratching at his beard. I remained standing as Abner Williams read:

The first General Orders of the Pennsylvania Line, issued by the Committee of Sergeants on this date of January 2nd, in the year 1781, in their names and also in the names of the citizen-soldiers of the Line …

So it began, and when it was all finished, as you will see, Abner gave me a copy which I have preserved. Not the paper I took then, which fell apart from usage, but a copy which Abner gave to Billy Bowzar, who held it until we were together in York village and which I left with my sweet Molly Bracken and which I have before me today. Thus I am able to copy the words exactly rather than from memory, yet they are the same as Abner read in the tent that morning. There were twelve Orders, as follows:

1. The expulsion of Officers shall be maintained, and all authority is vested in the Committee of Sergeants, until a representative Congress of the regiments shall decide otherwise. However, any regiment shall have the right to recall its representative sergeant and appoint another in his place. No member of the Line is to hold any converse with an Officer, and such converse shall be regarded as grounds for expulsion from the Line.

2. The Committee of Sergeants shall have the power of court-martial in all offenses against the security of the Line or the People of the United Colonies.

3. Any foreign regiments of the States of the Confederation shall have the right to join the Pennsylvania Line. Upon such action, they are entitled to representation upon the Committee of Sergeants.

4. All soldiers of the Line are to conduct themselves in manner becoming a citizen-soldier and worthy of the aims of this Line of musketmen, that is, the Freedom and Welfare of the peoples of this Continent. They shall strive sedulously to win the affection of the inhabitants, so that we may look forward to a future where we become one with the people.

5. The following offenses are punishable with expulsion from the Line and with whatever additional measures short of death the Committee of Sergeants shall see fit to impose: Looting; inflicting of damage upon any property other than enemy property; the use of vile language to any comrade citizen-soldier or to a woman or to a child or to a civilian citizen; neglect of weapons; infractions of general disciplines imposed by these orders.

6. The following offenses are punishable with death upon just and considerate court-martial: Dealings or converse with the British or any of their agents; rape; murder; desertion in the face of the enemy.

7. All citizen-soldiers of the Line shall regard their appearance as a part of their solemn duty. All citizen-soldiers are to shave daily and to see that all extremities of their bodies present a clean and wholesome appearance. All arms are to be cherished. All sergeants and corporals will be held solemnly accountable for the enforcement of these regulations.

8. All pay shall be equalized, regardless of rank. But bounties shall be determined by length of enlistment and battle service. All citizen-soldiers who present to the Committee of Sergeants adequate and sworn testimony to the expiration of their enlistments, shall be released from further service ten days from the date of such presentation. All enlistments and re-enlistments shall be voluntary.

9. All food and liquors shall be divided equally among all ranks, but first preference shall be given to women and children, and then to drummer boys and other enlistments under the age of thirteen years.

10. All citizen-soldiers shall have absolute freedom to practice the religions of their consciences. No measures shall be taken to discriminate against Jews, Romans, or Naygers.

11. All foodstuffs and beasts for slaughter shall be turned in to the central commissary. The commissary shall allocate the food and the liquor to the extent of four ounces a day when available.

12. All disputes in the practice of these General Orders shall be referred to the Committee of Sergeants or to a duly authorized Committee to be set up for that purpose. The only authority in any and all instructions and commands shall be the authority of the Committee of Sergeants, through a duly issued and inscribed warrant. This authority shall be binding until such a time as the Committee of Sergeants disbands itself or is disbanded by the regiments of the Pennsylvania Line.

Such were the first General Orders, which Abner Williams read that day in the tent. What discussion had gone into the making of them, I do not know, but they were plain and clear and simple, and they expressed well enough what the men wanted.

But where does it begin? I wanted to know. Look at us here now, dirty, unshaven –

And here it begins, Jamie, answered Billy Bowzar, smiling gently. We are still in the manner of rubbing our necks, but it has come off, hasn't it, Jamie? And for some of us it is like a dream, with an army on our hands …

His voice trailed away, and weariness and wonder passed across his face; so that looking at him and looking at the others, I began to realize the enormity of what we had done; and we were so immersed in our own thousandfold detail that we had never paused to think that the sound of this was rocking across the world, that the great Pennsylvania Line of the Americas, those same soldiers whom Lord North had called “The ragged watchdogs of the gates of Hell,” those same soldiers who were not only the heart of the Revolution but the Revolution itself – those same soldiers had taken the power and the glory into their own hands, and, for what it was worth, the American Revolution now sat in this torn tent, black man and cursed Roman and hated Jew sitting down with the Protestant to go where no one had ever been before.