Red clay running waters, p.38
Red Clay, Running Waters, page 38
“The paper is our voice above the lies,” Ridge said. “It must continue.”
Elias’s flash of fury faded along with the last light of day.
John faced away from his father and cousin. “You may seek your paradise in the hereafter, Elias,” he said, “but I suffer from a healthier portion of self-interest and wish to have it now. I believe your God is just, is he not?” Elias nodded.
Looking up at the slate-gray sky, the rain cascading down on the despondent figures mounting the Council House stairs, it appeared to John the sun had been lost to them forever.
Storm winds moaned through swaying branches, a fitting accompaniment to the palpable sadness inside the print shop after the Council. In a dark corner, wedged between boxes, Elias slumped in his chair against the wall, bitterness making a mockery of his placid features. Witnessing his cousin in such a humor was an extraordinary sight, but then John knew theirs was an extraordinary situation. Extraordinary, and yet unsurprising.
Elias abruptly came to his feet, lifting his mug in mock salute.
“This is the bitter cup prepared for us by a republican and religious government,” he said. “We shall drink it to the very dregs!” He threw the contents down his throat.
John grasped his own mug between clinched hands but did not drink.
An uncharacteristic sneer played on his cousin’s features. “Let them remember of all nations on the earth,” Elias continued, “that they are under the greatest obligation to obey their own laws - never mind the dictates of equality, liberty, and natural rights!”
Despite John’s own misgivings, it was still painful to witness Elias’s faith shaken. Until now his cousin’s views were a beacon that prevented John from sliding into hopelessness, but after hearing from the returning delegates, confidence in their rights being upheld seeped away.
John had watched Samuel Worcester lead the assembly in prayer, the missionary’s fingers shaking as he lifted the ribbon marking his place in Ephesians. John had closed his eyes to the inner struggles contorting the faces around him and focused on Samuel’s words for the opening prayer.
“Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
Wherefore take unto you the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness; And your feet shod with the preparation of the Gospel of peace; Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.”
John may not shield himself with the same faith, but he was more than ready to wrestle against spiritual wickedness with the truth. When the prayer concluded, he shot a look in Elias’s direction. This was as close as the missionary had ever come to publicly revealing his position on their plight.
Few of those who huddled in the Council House could have been shocked when Ross’s delegation had nothing to show for their efforts in Washington. Hundreds of memorials, petitions, and editorials meant little where the Indians were concerned. With the stroke of few pens and two votes in Congress, the Removal Act’s passing put a halt to Cherokee aspirations. He could barely contain the outburst of emotions ricocheting across the room, every man present vowing they would resist, that this would not be the last Council of the Cherokee in the nation. All agreed the hubris of Georgia was only exceeded by the hubris of the United States, in trampling underfoot the most solemn obligations of their ratified treaties. They would fight against this to their dying breaths.
Seeking solace from each other in the dimly lit printshop, John put a hand on his cousin’s arm, forcing him back to his seat.
“You heard Ross say William Wirt, the former attorney general, has agreed to represent us before the Supreme Court,” he said. “Let Georgia arrest a Cherokee gold digger, digging on his own land in our nation, and we can bring an action for false imprisonment before Georgia courts. When they turn down the action, as they assuredly will, we can bring our appeal to the Supreme Court and seek an injunction stopping Georgia’s laws from taking effect. It could be a long process, and will cost us dearly, but the justice we seek will never come from any state with an interest in our lands. Justice must come from a higher authority whose verdicts are driven by laws, not passions. Our rights are plain. We will challenge them in their own high court, and God willing, we’ll see these vile laws and abuses struck down.”
Elias looked away toward his house. His voice cracked when he spoke. “What have we done to bring such calumny onto ourselves?” he asked.
“Nothing, save to defend our people, and our honor as men,” John replied. There were things he would keep to himself, things that would only serve to dispirit Elias if he voiced them.
He scanned the small, dim room, the beating heart of their cry for justice, the stacks of papers, the diminutive press, the trays of blackened type, piles of rags, barrels of ink, and the thin sagging shoulders of Elias. The two of them could spend every waking hour pouring words onto paper in the hopes of igniting a flame to protect them, but in his heart, John clearly recognized that a single spark was likely to consume them all.
He lifted his mug and took a deep swallow. “Come,” he said. “Help me write this memorial to Congress Ross requested of me. I must present it at our next Council. Perhaps between the two of us, we will choose the right words this time.”
It was the swaying lantern light in the branches that caught Sarah’s eye as she lay awake in bed. Hearing the crunch of Henry’s foot, and the rumble of horse hooves, she rushed from her bed. Striking a flame to the lantern wick, she shrugged on her robe and descended the stairs just as John’s horse drew up to the house.
The moon threw white light on the landscape outside, punctuated by the swaying amber rays of Henry’s lantern upon the approaching figure. Sarah held the door open.
“Thank you, Henry,” she said.
Holding her own lantern high, she lit John’s way up the front stairs, her hand outstretched. His grasp was harder than she expected, asking for the strength to ascend. Behind the closed door, she placed the lantern on the floor, examining him for the first time in weeks.
The torpor of exhaustion mixed with the frenzy of excitement in his eyes. “You look as though you have ridden all the way without stopping.” She reached to remove his scarf, unbuttoning his coat, pealing him out of it.
“I stopped a night at David Vann’s,” he said. Sixty miles in two days he had traveled. “I was too close to home to stop, and the moon favored me.”
They stood in the pool of the lantern light, the house still around them. She placed a hand to calm his still heaving chest, the heat of his body fresh from travel. The coolness of her hand made him start, then he pulled her close. It was more than her body he needed.
“You’re leaving again, aren’t you?” she said to eyes smudged with longing for denial.
For a moment he held her gaze, then looked down. A string, taught with force, released; he bent his head, grasping her. Another winter without him.
His voice was ragged in her ear. “Let us speak of it in the morning . . . if you will. Please?” She would need to have him carried if he was not in bed soon.
Pushing him from her, she retrieved the lantern, and led the way upstairs.
The next morning, they lay facing each other, he propped on his elbow, she, looking up at him. The servants hushed the children ushering them to breakfast, knowing of Mr. Ridge’s late arrival.
“I have been elected president of the National Committee,” John confessed from his place on the pillows.
She gasped. “Replacing Lewis? This would make you second to Ross himself!” The sudden ascension was stunning, the impact seeping under her hazy thoughts. Lewis would surely not be pleased, but then outright objection would only serve to put light on Lewis’s malicious nature. She recalled Ross praising John’s abilities over dinner, of the possibility of putting him forward for the role. Susanna would be greatly flattered to think her husband mentored two leaders.
“With the confidence of my peers in the Committee, I can do so much more,” he told her. Like his young face in love, his eyes swam, deep brown, looking for an anchor. She held still, waiting.
“I am also to be part of the delegation to Washington.” Now she understood. “Wirt instructed Ross to send our best men. Three of us go, me, Richard Taylor, and Will Coodey.”
“And you were chosen, when our case goes before the Supreme Court, and the Removal Act is up for final debate?” she asked. This was confidence indeed, more than an expression of trust. Her heart spiraled, first with pride, then it sank to her feet; it would be spring before she would be with him again. The children would barely know their father.
Unbridled after his contemplative ride, John’s rushed words filled her ears. Four years jail awaited Cherokee officials deliberating in New Echota, so the meager facilities at Red Clay, over the border in Tennessee, held their Councils for the time being. The chiefs refused to accept the government’s promised annuity in protest. Private funds would be used in the support of their people. Local lawyers would be engaged to fight their case in Georgia, while Wirt prepared the one before Chief Justice Marshall’s court.
“The situation in Washington has become even more complicated,” he told her. “McKenney has been dismissed by Jackson,” he said. “Regardless of my own opinion on the man’s character, I do feel some compassion for him. To receive your dismissal in the post is such a cowardly way to repay McKenney’s services. How ironic he should lose his role for not being in harmony with the views of the president, when he spent the last two years contorting his views to mold to them. Now Jackson’s press tars McKenney an embezzler, just as they implied of David and me. I suppose to that end Ross is right . . . that the perpetrator of a wrong never forgives his victim.”
He rolled onto his back, looking outside. The tops of the trees in the blaze of autumn stretched across their view, the morning sun warming the floor. Voices murmured below, another day beginning. For some minutes they lay, letting what was happening sink in.
“All this . . . ” he began. What was it she heard in his voice?
All this. Fear sparked, turning her fingers cold; she reached for his hand. All this. Her small world, suddenly vulnerable in ways beyond intruders or slanders. Sarah knew firsthand the tyranny of her own people’s prejudices, but never did she conceive it could be carried so far. All this on his shoulders.
“They mean to take it by force, and Jackson will not oppose them.” Despair. That was what she heard in his voice - faith gone. Rolling her body on top of his, she held him tightly, aware once they rose a different life awaited. How long? Suddenly everything real seemed ephemeral. If he were to lose hope, what would become of them all?
He pushed her gently away. “We are not prepared to run away from the trials that beset us,” he said. “Senators may call our treaties mere expedients, but we, and those who stand with us, have a different view.”
“I think, perhaps, I shall begin to pray,” she said. He pulled back in surprise. “There will be many long nights, with no other to share my thoughts with. If it is our community that is under threat, prayers will fortify us . . . and me.”
She lowered her gaze, her next thought almost too wrenching to voice. “What of the missionaries, the teachers, the schools?” she finally asked. “They are in jeopardy as well. Will they stand with us?”
“The Mission Board called upon the government to fulfill its treaty obligations,” he replied. “But the memorial to Congress the Board wrote was half-hearted in nature and places the strength of their position exactly nowhere. If I were to guess, they will think more on their future reputations, and will claim themselves neutral in politics.” He threw back the covers in frustration.
“What does Samuel say?”
“For now, the missionaries hold their tongues, waiting to see,” he said. “Like us, their fate too lies at the feet of the courts.”
“And what do the people say?” she asked.
His lips were a firm line. That will, pulled from his depths when he needed it most, his posture taut, his eyes clear.
“Some of the people say they will go if the Court rules against us. Otherwise, they will remain. The government will have to use force to remove us.”
Leaving the bed, she stumbled on the book she left on the floor. Picking it up, she turned it over in her hand.
“The ladies provided substantive support at the last Congress with their petitions,” she walking toward him. “Harriet has a cousin.” He looked at her with a sad, quizzical look. “She is a well-respected author, another Unitarian, holding great sympathies for the Indians. She is also no lover of Cornwall’s pious pretensions.” She thrust the book into his hands. Hope Leslie was embossed on the cover, along with the name Catherine Maria Sedgwick. “Harriet will gladly write her cousin to enlist her support.” His head tilted in question. “I must do something,” she pleaded, tearful.
“Do something!” he said. “Is what you have sacrificed not enough?” His fingers smoothed her wayward hair, his tone gentle. “Our friend Mr. Paine has said it best. ‘It is not a field of a few acres of ground, but a cause that we are defending, and whether we defeat the enemy in one battle, or by degrees, the consequences will be the same.’” He brushed her cheek. “You are a jewel, precious, valuable and rare. How blessed I am in the choice of a wife.” He kissed the top of her head. “In this, we are united.”
In the afternoon’s waning light, John studied the words he and Elias had crafted.
We are not willing to remove; and if we could be brought to this extremity, it would only be because we cannot endure to be deprived of our national and individual rights and subjected to a process of intolerable oppression.
The words stood out on the white paper, crisp and bright. Had he captured the sentiments of his people? Would Congress respond to such a plea, or were their politicians immune to such feelings as empathy and compassion?
These White men were so sure there was an order to the world, that God meant their race to hold supremacy, that a race’s level of degradation was based on degrees of Whiteness. Would the muted copper tones of his children need to be washed away before they could see equality?
Staring into the flame of his candle, he surfaced from his thoughts. The words glistened, sharply etched on the paper, his outstretched digits, black from the workings of his pen. If I were black. The thought, so long held at the margins, shocked, then illuminated him.
Clear as the sky, he recognized the entirety of their situation. To give Native people autonomy and power released them from dependency and subservience. If Whites acknowledged Indian rights, rights would need to be considered for the Negroes, and with that the supreme question, the one of slavery must then be faced. Acknowledging Indian’s rights could tip the scales in favor of emancipation, supported by the burgeoning abolitionist movement in the North. The South would be destroyed, its economy collapsed, its representation in Congress, gained from the souls of the voiceless slaves, would diminish.
And the Kingdom of Heaven shall come.
CHAPTER 47
Between Savannah and Baltimore, the seas were so rough John could not write, and reading became impossible. Even Richard Taylor, with many trips behind him, spent most of the voyage below in his cabin. Coodey was too sick to move.
The surge sweeping him from clerk to president of the Committee, to delegate had reached a bend beyond which he could not see, but one he had no desire to shun.
This time, I will reap the harvest of my ambitions.
John was well acquainted with his companions, though Taylor, a stout older man of bland countenance and deeply pensive manner was the least known to him. Taylor’s presence, announced by the aroma of his silver pipe, was one of sound judgment and experience. He was acquainted with President Jackson, men in Congress, the press, and, in particular, those in the newly formed Whig Party, opposing Jackson’s Democrats.
An awkwardness John could not explain still existed with the younger William Coodey. Perhaps Ross’s wiry nephew held guilt for sharing confidences with him about Wirt’s recommendations to Ross. Give up this heartbreaking contest, Wirt had strenuously advised. Knowing this, John kept the knowledge that Ross made no mention of Wirt’s comment to the Council, limited to those John trusted.
Coodey treated John with respect, but rarely would take his opinion without referencing those of his uncle, the chief. Perhaps Coodey saw himself as protector of Ross’s leadership, as well as serving as clerk. John took no offense.
By the time their ship approached Baltimore Harbor, the virtues and sins of all the elected men they would meet had been passed on by Taylor, enough for an informed conversation when in certain politician’s presence.
On the morning they arrived, Coodey’s angular frame leaned on the rail of their ship approaching the dock.
John stood beside him. “Is it as you remember it?” Coodey asked.
The shock of Baltimore’s transformation must have shown on John’s face. Jeweled city of his memory no longer, smokestacks of industry choked Baltimore’s clogged harbor. Gone was the view of prosperous buildings, replaced by the warehouses, and factories for cotton and human cargo. Houses crowded what once were verdant hills.
“I hardly recognize it,” he replied. “I can only imagine what has become of Washington.”
