The Reckoning.
By ROBERT W. CHAMBERS.
The author’s intention is to treat, in a series of four or five romances,
that part of the war for independence which particularly affected the
great landed families of northern New York, the Johnsons, represented
by Sir William, Sir John, Guy Johnson, and Colonel Claus; the notorious
Butlers, father and son, the Schuylers, Van Rensselaers, and others.
The first romance of the series, Cardigan, was followed by the second,
The Maid-at-Arms. The third, in order, is not completed. The fourth is
the present volume.
As Cardigan pretended to portray life on the baronial estate of Sir
William Johnson, the first uneasiness concerning the coming trouble,
the first discordant note struck in the harmonious councils of the
Long House, so, in The Maid-at-Arms, which followed in order, the
author attempted to paint a patroon family disturbed by the approaching
rumble of battle. That romance dealt with the first serious split in
the Iroquois Confederacy; it showed the Long House shattered though
not fallen; the demoralization and final flight of the great landed
families who remained loyal to the British Crown; and it struck the
key-note to the future attitude of the Iroquois toward the patriots of
the frontier—revenge for their losses at the battle of Oriskany—and ended
with the march of the militia and continental troops on Saratoga.
The third romance, as yet incomplete and unpublished, deals with the
war-path and those who followed it led by the landed gentry of Tryon
County; and ends with the first solid blow delivered at the Long House,
and the terrible punishment of the Great Confederacy.
The present romance, the fourth in chronological order, picks up the
thread at that point.
The author is not conscious of having taken any liberties with history in
preparing a framework of facts for a mantle of romance.