Chesapeake (70 page)

So the
Whisper
moved cautiously north, well out to sea where the
Chesapeake squadron would not detect her, and when the latitude of Lewes on the Delaware coast was reached, she turned abruptly west and sped toward shore. There, at the mouth of a small stream, she dropped anchor, boats were lowered and unloading began. Before the first cargo was got ashore men from the Delaware Counties appeared and parties were organized to portage these crucial military supplies across the peninsula to the eastern shores of the Chesapeake, from which they would be ferried to Baltimore.

‘You will be paid,’ Steed promised the Delaware men.

‘Pay or no, we’ll get to Baltimore.’ They were men who had been fighting the English for three long years; victory seemed farther away than ever but surrender was a word they did not use.

When the schooner was emptied, Steed told his captain, ‘Go back to St. Eustatius. Make as many voyages as possible.’ And thus the golden ferry between the Dutch entrepôt and the colonies began. In the years that followed, whenever a cargo slipped through the English blockade, Simon Steed took control. He recorded each item, awarded it the highest value possible, turned it over to the fledgling government, and allocated to himself a handler’s fee of thirty percent above the inflated cost of the goods. If the war dragged on, and if Captain Turlock continued his daring escapades, the Steeds would be millionaires, and not in dollars, in pounds sterling.

But in late 1777 events took a bad turn; daring English sea captains converted the Chesapeake into an English lake. They sailed boldly to the head of the bay, landed an enormous army there and marched on Philadelphia, hoping to cut the colonies in half, knock out those in the north, then the remainder in the south.

Word reached the Choptank that a massive battle had been fought along the banks of a stream called Brandywine, and that Philadelphia had fallen, and that General Washington had escaped annihilation only by retreating to the environs of an iron mill called Valley Forge. That he could recover sufficiently to oppose the English was doubtful; the collapse of the revolution was at hand.

A squadron of English ships sailed boldly into the Choptank, anchored off Patamoke and bombarded the town. When no opposition appeared, landing parties came ashore and a lieutenant trim in gold and blue announced, ‘We have come to burn that infamous nest of sedition, the Paxmore Boatyard,’ and with flaming torches his men set fire to the wooden sheds and retired.

There was on the ways at this time the nearly completed
Victory;
her spars were not yet in place and there was some minor caulking to be done, but she was almost a schooner and was desperately needed. So when the flames were hottest, and it seemed that this precious vessel must go to ashes, Levin Paxmore, his dark hair outlined by the fire,
rushed into his doomed boatyard and began chopping away the struts that held the
Victory
on the ways, trusting that once it was set free, it would slide down the railway and launch itself into the harbor, where any flames attacking it could be quenched.

When it became apparent what Paxmore intended, men of the town gathered to cheer him on, unmindful of the final salvos fired by the retreating English ships, but none volunteered actually to move in among the flames to help chop away the struts, for the heat was too fierce.

Ellen Paxmore, infuriated by the bombardment and alerted by the fires brightening her sky, had come to the boatyard and had quickly understood what her husband was attempting. She, too, was appalled at the thought of this fine schooner’s being burned, and when no one else would help Levin, she grabbed an ax and disappeared into the flames, but she had chosen a spot which no one could have conquered; the fire was raging and she had to withdraw.

A slave named Pompey—a name awarded in ridicule by some plantation scholar trained in the classics—watched Mrs. Paxmore’s valiant attempt, and now quenched with his bare hands the sparks that threatened her gray dress. After he had done this he grabbed her ax and dashed into the flames, where he chopped away two of the struts.

‘It’s moving!’ the crowd roared, and slowly the
Victory
crept down the ways, gathered speed and splashed into the harbor.

Now men were more than willing to leap into small boats and crowd the prematurely launched vessel, splashing water upon the flickering flames and securing the hull to shore. Levin Paxmore, assured that his new schooner was safe, even though his boatyard was in ashes, walked painfully home, expecting to have his burns immediately cared for. Instead he was confronted by the most profound discussion of his life, for his wife awaited him, her own burns unattended:

ELLEN:
Did thee notice, Levin? The only man brave enough to help was the slave Pompey?

LEVIN:
I didn’t see.

ELLEN
: Thee never sees. Pompey sprang into the fire. Pompey helped me fight the flames eating at my dress. Pompey chopped away the struts. Does this mean nothing?

LEVIN
: It means we saved the
Victory.

ELLEN
: It means he is a man, a good man. Can thee not see the terrible wrong in holding such a man to slavery?

LEVIN
: My hands ache.

ELLEN
: My heart aches. Levin, I cannot abide another day in this condition. These colonies are fighting for freedom. Men like Simon Steed perform miracles in the name of freedom, but they ignore the gravest problem of all. Right on their home doorsteps.

LEVIN
: Pompey’s a good slave. When he’s rented to me I treat him justly.

ELLEN:
By what right has thee been ordained to treat justly or unjustly? Is thee a God because thee is white?

LEVIN
: What does thee want me to do?

ELLEN
(lowering her voice and taking her husband by his burned hands): Come First Day, I want thee to rise and propose that henceforth no Quaker who owns a slave can remain a member of our meeting.

LEVIN
: Thee has tried that gambit a dozen times.

ELLEN:
But thee has not, and thy word will carry substantial weight.

LEVIN
: I am busy building schooners. Steed has said, extravagantly I suppose, that they are helping to ensure freedom.

ELLEN
: A greater war than that on the Chesapeake is being fought.

LEVIN
: What does that mean?

ELLEN
: Surely these colonies will have their freedom, one way or another. England or a confederation, what does it signify, really? But the freedom of men …

LEVIN
: That, too, will follow … in due course.

ELLEN
: It will not! (Here her voice rose again.) More than a hundred years ago in this town Ruth Brinton Paxmore begged the Quakers to set their slaves free. Nothing happened. Fifty years ago thy grandmother made the same plea, with the same results. Fifty years from now my granddaughter will throw the same words into the wilderness unless we take—

LEVIN
: Slavery will die out of its own weight, thee knows that.

ELLEN
: I know it will persist forever unless good people fight it. Levin, on First Day thee must testify.

LEVIN
: I cannot inject myself into an argument which does not concern—

ELLEN
: Levin! This day a black man saved me, leaped among the flames like a salamander. Would thee leave him there in the fire?

LEVIN
: I cannot follow when thee engages in hyperbole.

ELLEN
: And I can no longer rest in this house so long as even one member abides slavery. Levin, I must make my bed elsewhere.

LEVIN
(dropping his head onto the bare table): I have lost my yard, my tools. And my hands are burning with fire. I need help, Ellen.

ELLEN
: And thee will lose thy immortal soul if thee turns thy back on Pompey. He, too, needs help.

LEVIN
(leaping to his feet): What does thee demand?

ELLEN
: Thy testimony … in public … come First Day. (Silence, then in a gentle voice.) Levin, thee has been preparing for this day. I’ve seen thee watching the black people of this town. The time has come. I think the fire served as a signal … to the future.

LEVIN
: Can thee put some bear grease on my hands? They burn. Terribly they burn.

ELLEN
(applying the grease): This means that thee will speak?

LEVIN
: I have not wanted to. In these affairs God moves slowly. But
Pompey is a decent man. Thee says it was he who chopped away the restraining poles?

ELLEN:
He did. But he does not warrant thy support because of his acts. He warrants it because of his existence.

LEVIN
: I suppose it’s time. I’ll testify for thee.

ELLEN
: Not for me and not for Pompey because he helped. For the great future of this nation—the future that Ruth Brinton saw.

So on a First Day in late 1777 Patamoke Meeting was startled to find itself in the midst of a debate that would tear the church apart. The members had come to the ancient meeting house expecting that words of consolation might be offered to Levin Paxmore over the loss of his boatyard or prayers celebrating the town’s deliverance from the English. Instead, after nine brief minutes of silence, Levin Paxmore rose, his hands bandaged, his hair singed:

The meeting broke up in consternation. Levin Paxmore was its most prosperous member, and also one of its sagest. Those opposed to change had always counted on him to support them: ‘Let us move slowly. Let us study this for the next Yearly Meeting.’ And now he had broken the covenant and called bluntly for immediate manumission on pain of expulsion.

At the Quarterly Meeting in December 1777 the Quakers of the Choptank became the first important religious group in the south to outlaw slavery among its members. In spite of Levin Paxmore’s unflinching leadership, the issue was bitterly fought and it required two days for the clerk to ascertain the sense of the membership; even then seven obdurate men stormed from the hall vowing to surrender Quakerism rather than their slaves.

It had required more than a hundred years for this most liberal of the southern Christian sects to decide that human slavery was inconsistent with Christian principles; the more conservative sects would require an additional century.

When the decision was announced, Levin Paxmore touched his scarred hands and told his wife, ‘The burning has stopped,’ and she knew why.

For those Americans who lived within the benediction of the Chesapeake, the culminating crisis of the revolution occurred in 1781. Indeed, the future of America and perhaps of the world then stood in peril, for it seemed that the attempt at self-rule must be crushed, and with it the hopes of millions in Europe for a better pattern of life.

In that year the English army, consolidated at last under a succession of daring generals, began to chew the south apart. Victory upon victory crushed General Washington’s lieutenants in Georgia and South Carolina, and it became clear that a few colonial farmers, no matter how brave, were no match for hundreds of well-trained English regulars supported by large guns.

And when General Cornwallis began ravaging Virginia, and Admiral Rodney assembled a fleet of battleships in the Caribbean, ready to invade the Chesapeake, it seemed obvious that the rebellion was doomed. New York lay in English hands; Philadelphia was neutralized; Boston and Newport were powerless to send support, and no major port along the Atlantic was open to American vessels, even if any had succeeded in penetrating the blockade.

Men had begun to talk openly of defeat and started calculating among themselves what kind of terms they might be able to wheedle from the victorious English. Even General Washington had faltered in his dogged optimism, sending Steed of Devon a letter which summarized the times: