Proceed, Sergeant Lamb Page 5

  However, in the woods about us there were chestnut, walnut, cedar, beech, oak, pine, and the graceful tulip-tree with its curious leaves and tulip-shaped green flowers which it bore for a fortnight together; the sassafras, the flowers of which were employed by the Americans as an agreeable substitute for that bane of their country, tea, and also as a fast yellow dye for woollens; and the red-tasselled sumach, the leaves of which the Indians smoked, and likewise used as a vulnerary, as I have related in my former volume.

  The nights were very noisy in this camp on account of a colony of frogs in a marsh near by, which made a noise like a crowd at an Irish cattle fair, with numerous different tones and voices intermixed. There were also whooping owls and a night-hawk named ‘whip-poor-will’, from this phrase which his repeated cry suggested; he was also called The Pope from the word ‘pope’ which he ejaculated when he alighted upon a bough or fence-rail.

  Summer passed languidly, and still we remained shut in the pen. Our officers were allowed to lodge in the farmhouses of the neighbourhood and come in amongst us for the purpose of roll-call and other matters of regularity. But they complained of frequent ill-treatment from the inhabitants, and Mr. Bowen, who was now appointed the regular surgeon to The Ninth (so that I was returned to my ordinary duty) was one day set upon with a whip by a Select-man who accused him of trespassing on his estate. When he resented the insult with a blow, Mr. Bowen and two officers who accompanied him, but had taken no part in the scuffle, were haled away to the common guard-room of the camp. Here they were kept for some days and obliged at night to sleep upon the floor, where the guards squirted tobacco-juice upon them for amusement and jested profanely at their expense. It seemed that Mr. Bowen would be a long while away from us, being later confined by the civil power to the town jail of Worcester. I was therefore again appointed temporary surgeon and allowed a pass, as at Prospect Hill: much to my pleasure (though I sighed on Mr. Bowen’s account), since the confinement of the pen was heavily oppressing my spirit. However, Mr. Bowen and his companions succeeded after a few weeks in enlarging themselves. They briefed a lawyer of Worcester who undertook (for a considerable fee) to prove a flaw in the charge against them. He did, in effect, convince the Assize Court that the charge was unproved: for it specified a crime against the United States, when it was evident that the breach of peace (which he did not deny on his clients’ behalf) could only affect the single state of Massachusetts!

  In August I was given the full rank of sergeant, to supply the vacancy caused by Buchanan’s desertion. Hitherto I had done the duties of a sergeant and borne the title without drawing the pay of the rank or enjoying its privileges. It was rare for a man without interest to be advanced to sergeant’s rank in so little as eight years’ soldiering, and I was not a little proud of myself.

  In September we heard that Sir Henry Clinton had once again applied to Congress in behalf of our army. In a letter addressed to the President of Congress, and dated New York, September 19th 1778, he had acquainted Congress that His Majesty had given him positive injunctions to repeat his demand, namely that the stipulations of the Convention of Saratoga be fulfilled, and to require permission for our embarkation at the port of Boston in transports which would be sent thither.

  Congress sent the following answer, which the Earl of Carlisle (one of the Commissioners for Peace then at New York) described very justly as ‘uncouth and profligate’:

  SIR,

  Your letter of the 19th was laid before Congress and I am directed to inform you that the Congress make no answer to insolent letters.

  Signed, CHARLES THOMPSON, Sec.

  This news caused a despair among our people, and many who had seemed most loyal made no secret of their intention to desert, now that there was no honour or advantage to be gained by remaining steadfast. Even Mad Johnny Maguire took the decision to abscond. He came and shook me by the hand and, said he, ‘Gerry boy, I’m off now. Now don’t you look vexed at me. For while I am here kept prisoner by the Americans I am no longer in the King’s Service—now, isn’t that so? And if you tell me that it is any sort of desertion to leave a service that I am no longer in, then by the Holy, you’re a liar! Since I may not serve my King with arms in my hand, then I scorn to eat idle bread at his expense, however poorly. So, my darling Gerry, I’m off. I shall labour on my brother Corny’s farm, as he has asked me, until times change. For I’m losing my robustness and my love of living, and that’s a great sorrow to me.’

  I could not find it in my heart to be vexed with Mad Johnny Maguire. I pressed his hand, avowing the sincere hope that we should meet again when the war was over. But in saying this, I was well aware that the war might yet be prolonged for months and perhaps years, now that the fainting American cause had been revived by French aid. I feared too that the Spanish and Dutch would also lend a hand, when they perceived how hard set upon we were; and these fears were not long afterwards proved to be well founded.

  In October I was provided with a pass to visit the town of Brookfield, a long day’s march to the southward. It was a melancholy duty with which I was charged by my officers, namely to visit Sergeant Buchanan and Private Brooks in their last hours, they being both deservedly sentenced by the Assize judge to death by hanging for the crime of murder. The first news that we received of this sentence was contained in a letter to Lieutenant-Colonel Hill from Sergeant Buchanan, which ran in terms something like these:

  To Lieutenant-Colonel John Hill, Cmdg The Ninth Regiment in the Convention Army at Rutland

  HONOURED SIR,

  It is with great grief and true contrition that I lay before you my present case. You will be aware that in the month of May last I was commissioned by my company officer to provide boots for the company, and that I was supplied with the sum of one hundred and fifty dollars in Continental paper to purchase leather, thread, lapstone, awls &c for the making of them. This money was stole from me at an inn and getting no satisfaction for the loss, but being ashamed to return without, I repaired to the town of Taunton, where I worked at my trade in order to make good my account. Having saved so much, I bent my way back to Rutland in July, hoping for forgiveness from your Honour; when I fell in with Private Thompson, who had run off from the Grenadier Company and who informed me that I had been posted as a deserter and Sergeant Roger Lamb appointed in my place. I thereupon resolved to escape to Montreal, where I had left behind me my wife and infant child, in the hope of obtaining pardon by means of General Sir Guy Carleton, to whom I would report for duty.

  On my route to Canada, I passed through this town of Brookfield where I was noticed by a Mrs. Spooner, daughter to the well-known General Ruggles, who was remarkable for her attachment to the Royal Cause and offered to assist me with every means in her power to run safe through to Canada. Unfortunately for her, Mr. Spooner her husband was very hot in the Rebel cause, and this occasioned domestic disagreement and a murderous odium in her heart against him. The common bond of attachment to His Majesty’s cause drew Mrs. Spooner and myself together, so that I became greatly enamoured of her, though unaware that the reciprocal warmth which she professed for me was only a sham. For her object (I am now aware), was to make me her Cat’s Paw, and to be rid of her husband in order to marry her hired man. On Mr. Spooner’s going for a journey to Boston, she disclosed to me a plot she had arranged for removing him by poison as he dined at a wayside inn; overcoming my scruples by observing that he was an officer in the Rebel Army and therefore to slay him in time of war was ‘killing no murder’.

  This plot miscarrying, on account (she said) of his drinking so heartily at the inn that he vomited up the poison, he returned unexpectedly to his residence and discovered me sitting in the parlour, at which he expressed much displeasure and, using many profanities, which I will not Detail here, ordered me to begone. Mrs. Spooner found me another lodging, and secretly communicated with me there, by means of the hired man, her paramour. She assured me that if I assisted her to rid the world of this Monster, she would confer consid
erable property upon me in goods and land and accompany me in the quality of my wife wherever I wished. I replied that I shrank from perpetrating any deed of violence and that I owed a duty to my wife and infant child; to which she replied that I was a soldier and would be failing in my duty if I hesitated to do away with so violent an enemy of my Sovereign. If I consented, she would safeguard me as far as the Canadian border (where her husband possessed property which would be hers at his death), describing me as her man-servant if I would not consent to be called husband; and there let me run across to freedom.

  At this juncture, Private Brooks of my Company happened to pass through Brookfield while ‘whipping the cat’, which is a cant term in use hereabouts for obtaining casual employment at farmhouses during a vagabond life. In a foolish hour I took Brooks into a partnership of the intended violent transaction, promising him half the hard money that Mrs. Spooner had undertaken to give me. Mr. Spooner having ridden some distance from home in the day, we determined to dispatch him on his return at night. Brooks was chosen to be the executioner, for I shrank from embruing my hands in the blood of an unarmed man; and of Brooks’ former desperate character your Honour will not be ignorant.

  That evening Brooks, armed with a heavy log of walnut wood, waited in a convenient corner near the door of the Spooner mansion and fractured the skull of this ill-fated gentleman as he made his entrance. We threw the body down a deep draw-well and Mrs. Spooner then provided us with a quantity of money and advised us to keep out of the way until Mr. Spooner’s disappearance should be accounted for by her in some credible manner. She could not, however, prevail upon the hired man to remain with her. He went off in our company, saying that a woman who could exult as she did over the battered body of her husband was no wife for him. His defection caused Mrs. Spooner much distress and she was rash enough to inform her neighbours that a party of British deserters had robbed her house and, after murdering her husband, had carried off his body. The hue and cry was therefore raised and we were apprehended at the town of Linn, where I was working in a shoe manufactory. Thus our common guilt was discovered, and the body drawn out from the well.

  It was not until the hand of the Law was laid upon my shoulder that I became fully aware of the horrid nature of the crime to which I had been accessory; and when sentenced to death by the Assize Judge I became in a manner resigned to my fate. For I was advised by the Congregational minister who visited me in prison that, were I to be truly penitent and make complete confession of my scarlet wickedness, he would inform me how to enter into eternity with a calm mind, trusting in the extraordinary mercy of God vouchsafed to sinners. My heart was touched and immediately I knelt down to pray with him. After wrestling in prayer for some hours, I saw the light and knew in my heart that I was pardoned by God! My comrade in wickedness, Private Brooks, has also undergone a total change of heart since we were confined, and awaits with impatience the stroke of death which will set his soul free from its erring body and admit it into everlasting mansions.

  May it please your Honour to forgive both of us in your heart for the disgrace that we have brought upon the Regiment, and of your well-known generosity of mind to send one of our former comrades to us here to be present at the hour of our execution, so that we may not die wholly encompassed by strangers upon this alien soil. We would esteem it a great favour were Sergeant R. Lamb to be selected for this service, as being a suitable repository for our last wishes and farewells, and a person whose forgiveness for past offences we both hope to hear from his own lips.

  I am, Sir,

  your greatly obliged and truly penitent Servant, the Sinner

  J. BUCHANAN

  (formerly Sergeant)

  BROOKFIELD TOWN JAIL

  Oct. 15th 1778

  During my expedition to Brookfield, which I accomplished in a single day, I refreshed myself at a wayside inn and was there given by the landlord, a judicious person, an account of the recent progress of the war, which disproved or clarified many wild rumours that had been current in our camp. He informed me that peace proposals had been made to Congress by the British Parliament, and Commissioners sent to implement these, soon after the news of the French alliance had been published. These proposals included an abnegation of the right to tax America, as of every other sovereign claim which might stand in the way of the free development of the American people, and an amnesty for all rebels—if only the link which joined the two countries, a common fealty to the Crown, might not be dissolved. But so much hatred against Great Britain had now been stirred up, and the people of America hoped for so great an extension of their trade by the French alliance, that Congress shortly rebuffed the Commissioners. This decision grieved a great many Americans who still considered themselves English; but they were powerless against the clamorous voices of the Patriots, who considered England a nation doomed to well-merited destruction.

  Our main army under General Clinton had at the end of June quitted the city of Philadelphia (where General Benedict Arnold was now appointed military governor), and, falling back across New Jersey, had checked General Washington’s Army in the stubborn rear-guard action of Monmouth, and come safe back to New York. General Washington had moved to Hudson’s River, which he crossed; he then encamped at White Plains, on the Highlands, threatening New York and making his principal stronghold on the river the fortress of West Point, about half-way upstream to Albany. Our forces at New York had then carried out one or two very energetic and successful forays on either side of Hudson’s River, and against towns and islands of the New England coast. Great booty was taken and much shipping of a privateering sort destroyed.

  As for the French, they had hitherto disappointed the American hopes, though a fleet of theirs greatly outnumbering our own squadron had arrived in American waters and attempted, in conjunction with General Sullivan and a large force of New England militia, to cut off and capture the British garrison of Newport, Rhode Island. A common disgust soon arising between these precarious allies, the French had taken offence and sailed away. Moreover, a party of amorous French sailors in Boston so offended against the morals of this saintly place that a French officer was killed in the streets by the citizens. The alliance would have been ended there and then, had not the Massachusetts Council, fearful of the consequences of this act of popular folly, hastily voted a monument to the murdered Frenchman. The, crime was politically charged against captured British sailors and ourselves, the wretched Convention Army! Many of General Sullivan’s men had meanwhile deserted to our forces and, his siege of Newport becoming dangerous, it was raised. In fine, the war was not going so disadvantageously for our cause, after all; though against our successes must be set the capture by American privateers of near a thousand British merchantmen of a gross value of £2,000,000.

  The same landlord also gave me news of a very bloody raid by American Loyalists and Indians of the Six Nations on a frontier district of Pennsylvania: one whole valley, that of the Wyoming river, was completely devastated, and many prisoners burned at the stake. I said, I sincerely hoped that this account of Indian savagery was no less exaggerated than previous ones.

  He showed no animosity to me as a soldier in the British service, but only a sort of pity, which I resented as strongly. He told me that he had visited Dublin some years previously, and asked in a very sincere way, how I could reconcile my duty with my good sense? Though I evidently did not regard myself as a slave, and had a pride in my loyal subordination, did I not consider the free soil of America as in every way preferable to that of Ireland? He said that, for his part, he had seen so many unpleasant sights amidst the grandeur and pageantry of the rich in Dublin City that the total impression was one of pain and horror. Such hosts of street beggars, such troops of poverty-stricken children, such a mass of degraded poor people! How the labourers of Ireland, and of England herself, he said, contrived to live with such low wages and such high prices for the staple commodities, was above his comprehension. Yet with all this poverty and woe, taxation was
laid upon the public with merciless severity, to fatten the minions of royalty and provide pensions and sinecures for the idle gentry. He showed me a newspaper where the present miserable condition of Ireland was set forth, and where it was reported (without much exaggeration, as my readers will be aware) that my country was then nearly ruined. The rupture with the colonies had closed the chief market of the linen trade, the provision trade was annihilated by a Royal proclamation, the price of black cattle and wool had sunk, thousands of manufacturers were forced to lock up their works. In Dublin bread had risen to famine prices and hungry crowds paraded the Liberties, carrying a black fleece in token of their distress; while in the country ‘the wretches that remained had scarcely the appearance of human creatures’.

  I felt it difficult to restrain my tears, as I perused this journal, for thinking of the want to which my own parents and sisters would necessarily be reduced and of my present impotence in affording them any help; yet the landlord’s questions did not have the effect upon me that he intended. I informed him that, though he might consider it a depravity in me, I would in all events remain loyal to the King to whom I had sworn allegiance; and that the present distresses of Ireland and England were largely caused by the Americans’ repudiation of this same allegiance, which had caused enormous suffering and expense in all three countries.

  He remarked: ‘You are an unusual sort of Irishman, I guess. Is it not true, pray, that the native character and political propensities of your people have ever been toward rebellion—that the Irish have ever been uniformly intolerant of the rule of the English Kings?’