The Peaceful Ending of It All.
In the general paralysis of suffering and despair which rested now upon
the Valley, the terrible double tragedy of the gulf passed almost unnoted.
Women everywhere were mourning for the husbands, sons, lovers who would
never return. Fathers strove in vain to look dry-eyed at familiar places
which should know the brave lads--true boys of theirs--no more. The play
and prattle of children were hushed in a hundred homes where some honest
farmer's life, struck fiercely at by a savage or Tory, still hung in the
dread balance. Each day from some house issued forth the procession of
death, until all our little churchyards along the winding river had more
new graves than old--not to speak of that grim, unconsecrated God's-acre
in the forest pass, more cruel still to think upon. And with all this to
bear, there was no assurance that the morrow might not bring the torch and
tomahawk of invasion to our very doors.
So our own strange tragedy had, as I have said, scant attention. People
listened to the recital, and made answer: "Both dead at the foot of the
cliff, eh? Have you heard how William Seeber is to-day?" or "Is it true
that Herkimer's leg must be cut off?"
In those first few days there was little enough heart to measure or boast
of the grandeur of the fight our simple Valley farmers had waged, there in
the ambushed ravine of Oriskany. Still less was there at hand information
by the light of which the results of that battle could be estimated.
Nothing was known, at the time of which I write, save that there had been
hideous slaughter, and that the invaders had forborne to immediately
follow our shattered forces down the Valley. It was not until much
later--until definite news came not only of St. Leger's flight back to
Canada, but of the capture of the whole British army at Saratoga--that the
men of the Mohawk began to comprehend what they had really done.
To my way of thinking, they have ever since been unduly modest about this
truly historic achievement. As I wrote long ago, we of New York have
chosen to make money, and to allow our neighbors to make histories. Thus
it happens that the great decisive struggle of the whole long war for
Independence--the conflict which, in fact, made America free--is suffered
to pass into the records as a mere frontier skirmish. Yet, if one will but
think, it is as clear as daylight that Oriskany was the turning-point of
the war. The Palatines, who had been originally colonized on the upper
Mohawk by the English to serve as a shield against savagery for their own
Atlantic settlements, reared a barrier of their own flesh and bones, there
at Oriskany, over which St. Leger and Johnson strove in vain to pass. That
failure settled everything. The essential feature of Burgoyne's plan had
been that this force, which we so roughly stopped and turned back in the
forest defile, should victoriously sweep down our Valley, raising the Tory
gentry as they progressed, and join him at Albany. If that had been done,
he would have held the whole Hudson, separating the rest of the colonies
from New England, and having it in his power to punish and subdue, first
the Yankees, then the others at his leisure.
Oriskany prevented this! Coming as it did, at the darkest hour of
Washington's trials and the Colonies' despondency, it altered the face of
things as gloriously as does the southern sun rising swiftly upon the
heels of night. Burgoyne's expected allies never reached him; he was
compelled, in consequence, to surrender--and from that day there was no
doubt who would in the long-run triumph.
Therefore, I say, all honor and glory to the rude, unlettered, great
souled yeomen of the Mohawk Valley, who braved death in the wildwood gulch
at Oriskany that Congress and the free Colonies might live.
But in these first few days, be it repeated, nobody talked or thought much
of glory. There were too many dead left behind--too many maimed and
wounded brought home--to leave much room for patriotic meditations around
the saddened hearth-stones. And personal grief was everywhere too deep and
general to make it possible that men should care much about the strange
occurrence by which Philip and Tulp lost their lives together in the gulf.
I went on the following day to my mother, and she and my sister Margaret
returned with me to Cairncross, to relieve from smaller cares, as much as
might be, our poor dear girl. All was done to shield both her and the
stricken old gentleman, our common second father, from contact with
material reminders of the shock that had fallen upon us, and as soon as
possible afterward they were both taken to Albany, out of reach of the
scene's sad suggestions.
From the gulf's bottom, where Death had dealt his double stroke, the
soldier's remains were borne one way, to his mansion; the slave's the
other, to his old home at the Cedars. Between their graves the turbulent
stream still dashes, the deep ravine still yawns. For years I could not
visit the spot without hearing, in and above the ceaseless shouting of the
waters, poor mad Tulp's awful death-scream.
During the month immediately following the event, my time was closely
engaged in public work. It was my melancholy duty to go up to the Falls to
represent General Schuyler and Congress at the funeral of brave old
Brigadier Nicholas Herkimer, who succumbed to the effects of an unskilful
amputation ten days after the battle. A few days later I went with Arnold
and his relieving force up the Valley, saw the siege raised and the flood
of invasion rolled back, and had the delight of grasping Peter Gansevoort,
the stout commander of the long-beleaguered garrison, once more by the
hand. On my return I had barely time to lease the Cedars to a good tenant,
and put in train the finally successful efforts to save Cairncross from
confiscation, when I was summoned to Albany to attend upon my chief. It
was none too soon, for my old wounds had broken out again, under the
exposure and travail of the trying battle week, and I was more fit for a
hospital than for the saddle.
I found the kindliest of nursing and care in my old quarters in the
Schuyler mansion. It was there, one morning in January of the new year
1778, that a quiet wedding breakfast was celebrated for Daisy and me; and
neither words nor wishes could have been more tender had we been truly the
children of the great man, Philip Schuyler, and his good dame. The exact
date of this ceremony does not matter; let it be kept sacred within the
knowledge of us two old people, who look back still to it as to the
sunrise of a new long day, peaceful, serene, and almost cloudless, and not
less happy even now because the ashen shadows of twilight begin gently to
gather over it.
Though the war had still the greater half of its course to run, my part
thereafter in it was far removed from camp and field. No opportunity came
to me to see fighting again, or to rise beyond my major's estate. Yet I
was of as much service, perhaps, as though I had been out in the thick of
the conflict; certainly Daisy was happier to have it so.
Twice during the year 1780 did we suffer grievous material loss at the
hands of the raiding parties which malignant Sir John Johnson piloted into
the Valley of his birth. In one of these the Cairncross mansion was rifled
and burned, and the tenants despoiled and driven into the woods. This
meant a considerable monetary damage to us; yet our memories of the place
were all so sad that its demolition seemed almost a relief, particularly
as Enoch, to whom we had presented a freehold of the wilder part of the
grant, that nearest the Sacondaga, miraculously escaped molestation.
But it was a genuine affliction when, later in the year, Sir John
personally superintended the burning down of the dear old Cedars, the home
of our youth. If I were able to forgive him all other harm he has wrought,
alike to me and to his neighbors, this would still remain obstinately to
steel my heart against him, for he knew that we had been good to his wife,
and that we loved the place better than any other on earth. We were very
melancholy over this for a long time, and, to the end of his placid days
of second childhood passed with us, we never allowed Mr. Stewart to learn
of it. But even here there was the recompense that the ruffians, though
they crossed the river and frightened the women into running for safety to
the woods, did not pursue them, and thus my mother and sisters, along with
Mrs. Romeyn and others, escaped. Alas! that the Tory brutes could not also
have forborne to slay on his own doorstep my godfather, honest old
Douw Fonda!
There was still another raid upon the Valley the ensuing year, but it
touched us only in that it brought news of the violent death of Walter
Butler, slain on the bank of the East Canada Creek by the Oneida chief
Skenandoah. Both Daisy and I had known him from childhood, and had in the
old times been fond of him. Yet there had been so much innocent blood
upon those delicate hands of his, before they clutched the gravel on the
lonely forest stream's edge in their death-grasp, that we could scarcely
wish him alive again.
Our first boy was born about this time--a dark-skinned, brawny man-child
whom it seemed the most natural thing in the world to christen Douw. He
bears the name still, and on the whole, though he has forgotten all the
Dutch I taught him, bears it creditably.
In the mid-autumn of the next year--it was in fact the very day on which
the glorious news of Yorktown reached Albany--a second little boy was
born. He was a fair-haired, slender creature, differing from the other as
sunshine differs from thunder-clouds. He had nothing like the other's
breadth of shoulders or strength of lung and limb, and we petted him
accordingly, as is the wont of parents.
When the question of his name came up, I sat, I remember, by his mother's
bedside, holding her hand in mine, and we both looked down upon the tiny,
fair babe nestled upon her arm.
"Ought we not to call him for the dear old father--give him the two names,
'Thomas' and 'Stewart'?" I asked.
Daisy stroked the child's hair gently, and looked with tender melancholy
into my eyes.
"I have been thinking," she murmured, "thinking often of late--it is all
so far behind us now, and time has passed so sweetly and softened so much
our memories of past trouble and of the--the dead--I nave been thinking,
dear, that it would be a comfort to have the lad called Philip."
I sat for a long time thus by her side, and we talked more freely than we
had ever done before of him who lay buried by the ruined walls of
Cairncross. Time had indeed softened much. We spoke of him now with gentle
sorrow--as of a friend whose life had left somewhat to be desired, yet
whose death had given room for naught but pity. He had been handsome and
fearless and wilful--and unfortunate; our minds were closed against any
harsher word. And it came about that when it was time for me to leave the
room, and I bent over to kiss lightly the sleeping infant, I was glad in
my heart that he was to be called Philip. Thus he was called, and though
the General was his godfather at the old Dutch church, we did not conceal
from him that the Philip for whom the name was given was another. It was
easily within Schuyler's kindly nature to comprehend the feelings which
prompted us, and I often fancied he was even the fonder of the child
because of the link formed by his name with his parents' time of grief and
tragic romance.
In truth, we all made much of this light-haired, beautiful, imperious
little boy, who from the beginning quite cast into the shade his elder and
slower brother, the dusky-skinned and patient Douw. Old Mr. Stewart, in
particular, became dotingly attached to the younger lad, and scarce could
bear to have him out of sight the whole day long. It was a pretty
spectacle indeed--one which makes my old heart yearn in memory, even
now--to see the simple, soft-mannered, childish patriarch gravely
obeying the whims and freaks of the boy, and finding the chief delight of
his waning life in being thus commanded. Sometimes, to be sure, my heart
smote me with the fear that poor quiet Master Douw felt keenly underneath
his calm exterior this preference, and often, too, I grew nervous lest our
fondness was spoiling the younger child. But it was not in us to
resist him.
The little Philip died suddenly, in his sixth year, and within the month
Mr. Stewart followed him. Great and overpowering as was our grief, it
seemed almost perfunctory beside the heart-breaking anguish of the old
man. He literally staggered and died under the blow.
* * * * *
There is no story in the rest of my life. The years have flowed on as
peacefully, as free from tempest or excitement, as the sluggish waters of
a Delft canal. No calamity has since come upon us; no great trial or large
advancement has stirred the current of our pleasant existence. Having
always a sufficient hold upon the present, with means to live in comfort,
and tastes not leading into venturesome ways for satisfaction, it has come
to be to us, in our old age, a deep delight to look backward together. We
seem now to have walked from the outset hand in hand. The joys of our
childhood and youth spent under one roof--the dear smoky, raftered roof,
where hung old Dame Kronk's onions and corn and perfumed herbs--are very
near to us. There comes between this scene of sunlight and the not less
peaceful radiance of our later life, it is true, the shadow for a time of
a dark curtain. Yet, so good and generous a thing is memory, even this
interruption appears now to have been but of a momentary kind, and has for
us no harrowing side. As I wrote out the story, page by page, it seemed to
both of us that all these trials, these tears, these bitter feuds and
fights, must have happened to others, not to us--so swallowed up in
happiness are the griefs of those young years, and so free are our hearts
from scars.