THE NEXT MORNING Kemble and I and my friend Billy Talbot rode to Amboy in the wake of the departed British army. Billy and I were the same age. We shared neutralist fathers and loyalist mothers, and a confirmed hero worship of Kemble Stapleton. But what we saw that morning was so appalling and disheartening, it shook our commitment to the Revolution. House after house was a charred ruin with wives, husbands, children picking dolefully through the blackened, still smoldering boards in the hope of finding a few surviving bits and pieces of value - a plate or a cup, perhaps, a pot or two, andirons. There was little to look for because the British and Germans stripped the houses before burning them.

“My God,” I said, looking at the desolation, “is it worth it, Kemble? Maybe my father is right. Maybe we should have paid those stupid taxes.”

“It is worth it,” Kemble said, looking steadily at a half-dozen burned houses on the outskirts of Piscataway town. “Forget about the taxes. They were never more than an excuse to run those rotten Englishmen out of our country. It’s our country, Jemmy. We’ll build it again without their help, without their corrupt arrogant influence. We’re going to build a country different from anything in history. Where every man has a chance to make something of his life if he’s willing to work hard. A country where the government exists for the people - ”

We listened, mesmerized. When Kemble talked this way, his face became transformed. The shadow of shyness, of intense intellectuality that normally made it difficult for him to speak freely with other men, vanished. He was like a medieval saint preaching a holy crusade, and we became his converts again.

But that day his spell was broken by a bizarre figure. George Bellows’ wife Mary wandered out of the woods, her clothes torn and mud-streaked, her hair streaming in fantastic disarray around her face. She and her husband had moved to her family’s home on the outskirts of Piscataway. After the birth of her child, her behavior became more and more disturbed. She was often found wandering along the road, weeping. One day she rose at her Quaker meeting and denounced God for taking away her husband’s hand.

“Oh, sir,” she said, “are you servants of the King? Why didn’t you mind our house?”

“We are not servants of the King,” Kemble said.

“The soldiers burned our house. We showed them our protection. They laughed and threw it in the fire. Why did they do that, sirs?”

“Because – ”

Kemble saw the futility of explaining anything to her.

“From now on I think I will sing Yankee Doodle,” Mary Bellows said. “So will my husband. He’d play it on his flute, if he could. He played a flute, you know, until they took his hand away. Why did they do that, sirs?”

“Take her home,” Kemble said abruptly to me and Billy Talbot. He wheeled his horse and rode back to Liberty Tavern.

There he found Daniel Slocum and his clan, surrounded by numerous followers. Slocum was buying drinks - on credit - for the house and roaring a liberty song. You would have thought the war was over and American independence impregnably established. Tiring of his own music, Slocum began contemplating the future with gloating satisfaction. He went down a list of loyalist estates like a Catholic reciting a litany. Kemble Manor was, not too surprisingly, at the head of the list.

“The old Squire’s gone, can you believe it?” he said. “Things change faster than anyone expects in a war. Three years ago, Skinner’s word was as good as law in this district.”

“I hope from now on we will have no more squires,” Kemble said. “And no man’s word will be law. The people will make the laws from now on, Colonel Slocum.”

If Slocum was not too drunk to- get the point, he was shrewd enough to ignore it.

“Mrs. Skinner is still living at the manor,” Jonathan Gifford said. “She refused to go to New York with her husband. She’s on our side, and always has been. I would hope this means the estate is not open to confiscation.”

“What the devil?” said Slocum. “What does. a woman count? She owns no land in the eyes. of the law.”

“She owned half that manor before she married Mr. Skinner,” Jonathan Gifford said.

“Be that as it may, she lost it the second she signed her marriage contract.”

“The manor’s the least of our worries,” Kemble said. “We’ve got two or three hundred houses to rebuild.”

“And about three thousand miles of fences,” said Samson Tucker. “I don’t think there’s a fence rail left in all south Jersey. First the damn Philadelphians took’m and then the lobsters.”

“We’ll tend to those things soon enough,” Slocum said. “But first we’ve got some scores to settle.”

He took out another list, five times as long as the list of loyalists who had fled to New York with the British army. He began, discussing who would be charged with treason, who would be heavily fined, and who would simply be taken out behind their barns and beaten up.

“If I were you, Colonel Slocum, I’d try to bring these people over to our side by being generous,” Jonathan Gifford said.

“You don’t understand a Tory, Gifford,” said Slocum. “He don’t know the meaning of generosity.”

“I agree with Colonel Slocum,” Kemble said.

So Slocum and Kemble returned to Tory hunting, guaranteeing the continued antagonism of the loyalists and neutrals. But they did not get much cooperation from our militia. In that humid summer of 1777, few could shake off a daze of disgust and despair when they looked at the ruins the contending armies had left behind them. While Washington prepared to defend Philadelphia, we struggled halfheartedly to rebuild burnt homes and barns, to re-fence pastures and reclaim cattle wandering half starved through the woods, to plant fresh seed in ravaged fields in the dim hope that weather would permit a late harvest.

Jonathan Gifford guided a Jersey wagon down to Kemble Manor, thinking he was on his way to help an isolated woman cope with an even more difficult problem of survival. He brought with him enough furniture to make two or three rooms in the big house habitable. He also brought two pistols and a musket, which he spent several hours teaching Mrs. Skinner to load and fire. He was pleased by the matter-of-fact way she handled these weapons. It made him feel a little better about her safety. With Little Egg Harbor becoming an ever busier privateering port, south Jersey was attracting the flotsam of war, runaway slaves and indentured servants, deserters, merchant sailors who had jumped ship.

Putting away the guns, Captain Gifford spread $500 on the kitchen table to buy a horse and cow and some chickens, and hire a farm band. “One man should be able to raise enough food and chop enough wood to keep you comfortable,” he said.

“Sukey and I can chop our own wood and milk our own cow, Captain Gifford,” Caroline said. “Why not loan me five thousand dollars so I can hire enough men and horses to harvest the crop that is in the ground? I will pay you six percent interest.”

“Mrs. Skinner, that would involve a gang of men. You would need a foreman - ”

“I will be the foreman.”

Jonathan Gifford took a deep breath. This small dark determined woman upset all his preconceptions about the opposite sex. But the admiration that her courage aroused in him made the upset surprisingly tolerable.

“You can have the money interest-free.”

“No. I am not asking you to support me, Captain Gifford. I expect to make a good profit on the crop. I can pay interest and I will pay it.”

With so many farmers in desperate need of money to repair their own wrecked farms, Caroline had no trouble hiring hands. True to her announced intention, she was her own foreman, riding out each day with the men in an old calico dress and a wide-brimmed sun hat. She got a full day’s work for her wages, from the grumbles Jonathan Gifford heard at Liberty Tavern as more than one of her weary toilers stopped for some refreshment on his way home.

Caroline wisely concentrated her efforts on Kemble Manor. She hired Samson Tucker to run the mill and one of Jasper Clark’s sons to run the Colt’s Neck farm. Both showed a modest profit but compared to them, Kemble Manor was a bonanza. With the help of almost perfect weather, Caroline harvested forty bushels of wheat and ninety bushels of corn an acre. She sold most of the crop - some thirty thousand bushels - to the Continental army. At the end of October, she triumphantly repaid Jonathan Gifford his $5,000 loan at 6 percent interest, and had about $2,000 left to invest in next year’s planting.

“Did my husband ever make as much with his slave labor?” Caroline asked Jonathan Gifford.

“I don’t know. You have had the advantage of high prices,” Jonathan Gifford said. “But I’m sure he is - will be - proud of you.”

“I am proud of myself, Mr. Gifford. That is more important. A woman has so little chance to do things that give her real pride.”

“To be honest, I have never given it much thought. I have been inclined to take things as they are. But Kate has made me think about women. The way you have awakened her mind - ”

“What shall she do with it, now that it is awakened? We must make sure this country gives her a chance to use it. How is the war going?”

Jonathan Gifford looked doleful. He had posted a half-dozen proclamations and exhortations on the door of Liberty Tavern, urging the militia to join Washington for the defense of Philadelphia. Kemble rode through the countryside, making speeches that thrilled us sixteen-year-olds. But no one else listened, and everyone stayed home. Kemble almost despaired. Captain Gifford was inclined to be philosophic. He had little faith in the militia anyway.

“I wouldn’t turn out if I was a militiaman,” he told Caroline. “Not after what the British did to the regiment on the retreat to Amboy. Maybe the men have more sense than the Congress. They’re the ones who have left Washington no alternative but militia. I can’t believe he really wants them, if he could get regulars.”

Caroline Skinner shook her head. “Over-optimism is the great American weakness,” he said.

It was very comforting for Jonathan Gifford to find agreement with his opinions at Kemble Manor. When he expressed his doubts about the militia to Kemble, he was usually treated to a tirade about his lack of faith in the people, supposedly rooted in his weakness for aristocracy. Before the argument ended, both then lost their tempers and Kemble went another week without speaking to him.

As our fog of apathy engulfed both enlistments and the Slocum-Stapleton Tory hunts, the loyalists resumed their clandestine trade with the British in New York, and practically rattled the hard money in our faces to prove it. Colonel Slocum decided to change his tactics from brute force to financial chicanery. He suddenly announced a ferocious enforcement of the law about collecting fines from militiamen who failed to turn out when called. He and his officers rode through the countryside, presenting people with bills for immediate payment.

Slocum swore that there was no other way to raise men. Under militia law, the fines became the property of the regiment and were to be divided among the men who did turn out. “There’s plenty of money in the district,” Slocum said. “People have been selling crops for hard money to the British all winter. They can pay, damn them, and we’ll use the surplus to give a bounty to men who’ll come to Philadelphia with me.”

Kemble agreed with Slocum for the usual reason. It was necessary. But he was a little shocked to discover that Slocum was presenting people with bills for past as well as present failures to turn out. Loyalists in particular got orders for twenty, thirty, fifty dollars depending on how many men of militia age they had in the family. Other loyalists with sons in the royal army got $100 fines. These were large sums to farmers who were always cash-short. For families who had just had houses burned or looted, it was an impossible tax.

For substantial farmers like Richard Talbot and members of prominent families like my father, who had chosen to remain neutral, Slocum had a special treatment. He arranged to have them elected militia officers. Fines were much heavier for an officer who failed to serve. My father got a bill for $250.

Toward the middle of July, about two weeks after Slocum had started his fine-collection campaign, Kate came to Jonathan Gifford in a very indignant mood. She and Caroline had been busy helping some of the most distressed families in the district, ones who had lost everything. Jonathan Gifford had contributed $1,000 to a fund they had set up to buy food and replace farm tools. Among the most obvious charity cases were the Tharps. Their house, barn, outbuildings, granary. had been burned. Their son John had been killed harassing the British retreat. Tharp had four other sons who heeded the Quaker injunction against bearing arms. They had been toiling twelve hours a day all summer to rebuild their farmhouse.

“Just as they finish it,” Kate told her father, “Colonel Slocum arrives and presents them with fines of a hundred dollars each for failing to do their militia duty. When it’s against their conscience! That’s unjust, Father.”

“I agree. Let us see what our favorite foe of tyrants has to say about it.”

Kemble said he knew nothing about Slocum fining Quakers. He agreed it was wrong. He rode over to Slocum’s farm to ask him about it. The Colonel exploded. “It’s none of your damn business,” he said. “I fine who I please.”

“It doesn’t make sense,” Kemble said. “You’ll never get Quakers to turn out.”

It made a great deal of sense to Colonel Slocum, because he was pocketing the fines. This had not yet dawned on Kemble. He still saw the whole thing as a fundraising operation for the expeditionary force to assist Washington before Philadelphia.

“Goddamn you,” said Slocum. “You keep turning into a milk and water man. And now a Quaker. Damn spiritual weeds that ought to be rooted out, or I’m not a good Presbyterian. Can’t you see that the more money we raise, the more men we’ll turn out? Let me run this regiment, and we may win this war somehow.”

Kemble went back to Liberty Tavern and told his father he reluctantly supported Slocum’s Quaker policy. “Well, I don’t,” Jonathan Gifford said, “and I’m writing a letter to Governor Livingston about it today.”

Jonathan Gifford knew William Livingston fairly well. He was a New York aristocrat who had moved to New Jersey in 1772. A gifted lawyer, he had handled the probate of Sarah’s will, which had involved considerable property owned jointly with the north Jersey branch of the Stapleton family. Livingston was a man of integrity, who had no use for Slocum and his kind. But he had very little authority to intervene in local matters. A dread of executive power had dominated the writers of our state’s constitution. They had made the legislature supreme, and Slocum’s ability to elect a half-dozen yes men every year guaranteed his immunity there. But the governor, was the commander in chief of the militia. Within two weeks a furious Colonel Slocum appeared in the tavern waving a letter from Livingston.

“Look at this. The governor says I am persecuting these damn Quakers. Says they are exempt from militia duty. The same, governor that is hauling you off to fight for those damn Philadelphians. I will show him what it means to push Slocum around.”

The calls for help from Washington became more and more frantic. The British army had landed at the head of the Chesapeake and was marching on Philadelphia. New Jersey militiamen were ordered to assemble at Morristown and march in a body from there to join the Continental army. Colonel Slocum was appointed a brigadier general commanding troops from Monmouth, Middlesex, and Somerset counties. An express rider was rushed to Philadelphia at public expense to purchase a suitable uniform for our leader. Kemble hurled himself into a round-the-clock effort to turn out more men. On the eve of his departure, Slocum strode into Liberty Tavern and made a stunning announcement.

“The honorable Provincial Congress has passed a law,” Slocum said, “forbidding the Monmouth regiment from serving outside the county.”

“That’s insane,” Kemble said.

“They did so as a rebuke to the governor,” Slocum said, “after our honorable delegates communicated to them the perilous state of this county, infested as it is by Tories and Quakers, and the governor’s interference in our efforts to handle matters as we see fit. Maybe now the governor will learn that we ain’t kicked out one tyrant to be bullied by another one.”

It was an awesome display of Slocum’s political power. He had, I hardly need add, elected his entire slate of candidates in the mid-August elections unopposed. No one wanted to become an enemy of General Slocum if he could avoid it.

To Kemble’s dismay, Slocum’s coup was very popular among our militiamen. Samson Tucker echoed the prevailing opinion, as usual. “The General’s right,” he said. “Why should we march a hundred miles to get our tails blown off for those damn Phila.delphians? Let’s see how they fight for their own country. They sure as hell didn’t do much fighting for ours.”

This use of the word “country” may strike later Americans as odd. But it was common during the Revolution and for many years after it for a man to call his home state his country.

To further demonstrate his power, General Slocum mustered three hundred men. He gave Kemble command of them and ordered him to patrol the shores against loyalist raiders. Slocum rode off to Morristown, where he politicked his way into the leadership of the eight hundred New Jerseyans (out of a potential sixteen thousand) who responded to Washington’s call for help. Unacquainted with our local politics, Washington never learned that Slocum had deliberately left behind him the men for whom he was personally responsible. If the absence of Monmouth men ever arose, Slocum no doubt blamed the whole thing on the legislature. It was easy enough for a man like Slocum to impose himself on the harassed Washington as one of the first patriots of New Jersey.

This nonsupport from New Jersey and an equally poor turnout of Pennsylvania militia - enthusiasm for the Revolution was never high in the Keystone State - undoubtedly played a part in Washington’s defeat at Brandywine Creek, which opened the gates of Philadelphia to Sir William Howe’s army.

Abel Aikin brought us the news in his usual indirect fashion. “Well,” he said, getting off his horse in front of Liberty Tavern. “I am out of a job again.”

“What’s this, Abel?” said Barney McGovern. “Have they finally found out you’re makin’ more than the postmaster general, with all them packages and private letters you carry on the side?” Abel shook his head, added a few purls to a scarf he was knitting, and said, “The postmaster general has gone to parts unknown. The British are in Philadelphia.”

“Now all we need hear is Burgoyne is in Albany, and this may yet be the year of the gallows,” said Barney.

For the next several days, Liberty Tavern’s taproom echoed with new denunciations of Washington. Again, Jonathan Gifford was his chief defender. “He may have been beaten at Brandywine,” be said, “but he saved his army. He will do something with it before the campaign is over, I promise you. He understands the main thing. As long as we have an army, we are in the game.”

Within two weeks, Daniel Slocum was back in Liberty Tavern telling us about the battle of Germantown. This is listed in the history books as another Washington defeat. But for us, with our desperate need for hope, it. was a marvelous restorative. We listened with exultant delight as Slocum described the secret march of the American army, the hammer blow struck at the British camp in the dawn. We all but tore our hair with vexation at the unexpectedly heavy morning fog that threw the American columns into confusion. Whether the American tactics were good or bad, even whether we won or lost, did not mean as much to us as the simple fact that within three weeks of a supposedly ruinous defeat, Washington had come back to fight the British army with ferocious guile.

“Let the lobsters have Philadelphia,” crowed Samson Tucker. “What did that damn city ever do for us here in Jersey but suck out our money for gewgaws and luxuries?”

Slocum naturally portrayed himself and the Jersey militia he commanded as the heroes of Germantown. He had them scattering British regiments like leaves in a thunderstorm. Nothing stopped them, not the Foot Guards, the Black Watch, the King’s Own. Jonathan Gifford did not believe a word of it. But he let Slocum talk and pretended to be impressed. For the time being there was no way to stop him from puffing his military reputation. He listened patiently while the General threw Washington’s name around the taproom, giving everyone the impression that the commander in chief relied heavily on Daniel Slocum’s advice.

“Yes,” said Slocum, “I told His Excellency about our situation here, exposed to the ravages of that damned banditti on Staten Island and pernicious enemies in our midst. He agreed to send us a regiment of regulars to patrol the coast this winter.”

Slocum’s already large popularity became immense with this announcement. Not even the news that General Burgoyne had surrendered at Saratoga and his entire Canadian army were prisoners of war created as much of a sensation among us as the arrival of our Continental regiment. They camped about a mile from Liberty Tavern and we all went down to take a look at them. Jonathan Gifford was not impressed. They were a Massachusetts outfit, commanded by a major named Yates. He was a tall lean Yankee with a stoop to his shoulders and a prow of a nose that gave a disconsolate cast to his solemn face. They all had twangs so broad they sounded as if they were speaking a foreign language. They were only at half strength, barely two hundred men. Their colonel and several captains had gone home to recruit. They were a scruffy-looking bunch of soldiers, confirming what we’d heard about Yankees - they had a dread of soap and water that equaled their fear of hell-fire. But they looked mean enough to fight.

That night, Yates and two captains came down to Liberty Tavern and got pretty drunk. One of the captains was a potbellied ex-shoemaker who had “liberated” some hides from a Bergen County Tory and said he would be glad to whip together some boots for anyone with ready cash. When he got no takers he grew disgruntled and began taunting us about our inability to defend ourselves. “Why from what we hee-uh,” he twanged, “the keows in Massachusetts will fight harder than you Jersey men.”

“Too bad you didn’t tell General Washington that,” Kemble said. “He could have used a few of those cows to do the fighting you Yankees forgot to do on Long Island.”

“Maybe their keows can run faster than they can,” Samson Tucker said, “and like most Yankees don’t know the difference between fighting and running. It’s all the same to them.”

“What’s this, Captain Gifford?” Yates droned. “You serve Tories in here?”

“Samson? You can’t find a better Whig in south Jersey.”

Yates sighed with astonishment. “Why, if he was up in Massachusetts we would be praying for his immortal soul, yes we would.”

“More likely he’d be wearing a Tory overcoat,” said the ex-shoemaker who had started the argument. “Hot tar and feathers.”

“How many Tories do you have up there?” scoffed Kemble. “Ten, twenty at the most?”

“Yeah,” said Samson, “take a march down Shrewsbury way. You will find enough in that one town to chase you and your damn scarecrows all the way to Boston.”

“Gentlemen, gentlemen,” Jonathan Gifford said, “you are all Americans. This name-calling is childish.”

“Amen, Captain Gifford,” said Major Yates. “We are all fighting the Lord’s battle. I only wish our chaplain was here. He would get these fellows down on their knees, yes he would, and he’d raise them up with the strength of ten.”

The next day General Slocum was growling at Jonathan Gifford and Kemble for insulting the Major and his “brave Yankees.” But he did not pursue the subject. The General had other things on his mind. With him was a small hook-nosed Scotsman named Andrew McIntosh. “Andy here’s as staunch a Whig as walks the earth,” General Slocum said, “a refugee from Philadelphia, where he had his own wharf and a fleet of ships running between the West Indies and the main. A half-dozen good Bermuda sloops that he turned to privateering and made him the terror of our coast from the capes of the Delaware to Florida. Now he’s here to do another service for his country. His business was salt before the war came. He brought it in by the ton from the Cayman Islands. With Philadelphia closed and the coast thick with British cruisers, the country’s running short of it. Believe me, it’s as needed as gunpowder. Washington himself said as much to me before I left him. So Andy and me have decided for our country’s sake to build the biggest saltworks ever seen in America down on the Manasquan. Between us, there’s a chance for a profit that will make your eyes pop. West of Philadelphia, salt is selling for twenty-five dollars a bushel and going up every day. What do you think of investing five or ten thousand?”

“I don’t have it,” Jonathan Gifford said. “Every cent I’ve got is out in the neighborhood. People needed a lot of money to rebuild their houses.”

“There ain’t nobody runs a tavern without a cash reserve,” said the General. “Put in with me now and you will have Slocum for a partner. That’s something will do you good in this county for a long time to come.”

“I’m telling you the truth,” Jonathan Gifford said, lying with a clear conscience. He had ten thousand dollars in his strongbox. But he had no intention of going into business with Daniel Slocum.

“Well, that disappoints me,” Slocum said. “Disappoints me greatly. But I half-expected it from you.”

While McIntosh slurped his ale, Slocum went to work on Kemble. “But I don’t expect the young squire here to disappoint me. We need his help. There ain’t no one else in the county that can raise the lads we need to work this thing. Andy here says we will need between forty and sixty hands. There ain’t no one but you that can make them understand the importance of salt to this. country.”

“It’s the presairvation of the nation, so to speak,” said McIntosh with a shrill cackle at his own joke.

“They’ll be paid militia wages and be exempt from call-out.”

Gifford agreed to help raise the men. Neither he not Jonathan Gifford realized it at the moment, but they were present at the launching of the great salt boom of 1777. It is one of the more disgraceful and perhaps better forgotten episodes of the Revolution in New Jersey. But I have promised to tell the whole truth about our supposed Golden Age. Salt was one of the few natural resources with which our continent was not blessed. Before the war most of it was imported from Europe or the West Indies. As the British fleet tightened its patrols off our coast it became more precious than gold. There was no other cheap way to preserve meat and without meat the average American was devoutly convinced then as now that he would wither like a daffodil in September. We are an incurably carnivorous people.

There was one obvious source of salt lapping the shores of New Jersey - the Atlantic Ocean. Heretofore the process of extracting this precious item from the surrounding liquid had been too expensive to compete with imported salt. This was no longer the case and merchants like McIntosh rushed to our shore to make a fortune. General Slocum was determined to be in the vanguard of this column. With Kemble’s help he signed up sixty young men in two furious days. They marched south to the Manasquan, convinced that they were joining their General on a military mission. In the next few weeks, other salt entrepreneurs poured into the neighborhood and offered twice, then three times the wages Slocum was paying. The strength of our militia dwindled to the vanishing point, giving the loyalists new grounds for complacency and arrogance.

“Thank God we have the Continentals,” Kemble said at first.

But Major Yates and his Yankees began to look less and less like the answer to anyone’s prayers except their own. They showed practically no interest in patrolling the shore. Their chief activity, besides singing hymns and listening to three-hour sermons from their chaplain, was serving as escorts to the latest arrivals in our little village - Deputy Commissary Beebe and Deputy Quartermaster Beatty. Beatty was built like a birch tree, with a small head on his narrow shoulders. Beebe was his opposite - fat as a mulberry bush with a pumpkin-size head. They were part of a small army of similar government servants Who sat themselves down in every town in New Jersey. The commissaries bought food for the Continental army and the quartermasters forage for its horses.

Beatty and Beebe were armed with thousands of Continental dollars. But this medium of exchange was beginning to lose its appeal to almost everyone, including the stoutest Whigs. Already its value had begun to decline. It took two dollars to buy what one had bought in 1776. It slowly dawned on us that Yates and his soldiers were there to intimidate Whigs and Tories alike into taking paper money for our oats, wheat, corn, and hay.

But the Tories were the ones who learned to dread the approach of Yates and his troops, slouching sullenly beside Beatty and Beebe’s wagons. For them the term “Tory” included neutrals like my father. Slocum had supplied Yates with a list of the “disaffected and suspected.” We were on it.

My father greeted Yates, flanked by Beatty and Beebe, at our front door with the same philosophic calm he had displayed to Major Moncrieff. Beneath this deceptive exterior, to which he was trained from boyhood, his feelings could be and often were in turmoil. After Moncrieff and his British foragers had left us with our barns in ashes and our hen house empty, he had gone to bed for two weeks with a high fever and other alarming symptoms of apoplexy. He was weak and melancholy most of the summer and was only beginning to take an interest in the farm when these new foragers arrived.

“We are here to purchase supplies for the troops and horses of the Continental army,” said Beatty.

“I am prepared to accept your money, gentlemen,” my father said. “But I hope you will take into account the depreciation. At New Brunswick I hear it is already over two to one.”.

Yates shook his head lugubriously, a saint contemplating a sinner lost beyond redemption. “It is almost hard to believe, yes it is,” he said. “A man so deep in the toils of Satan, he don’t even know it. I vow it makes me think the devil is setting up a church, and the next thing men like this will be declaring themselves justified.”

“A little repentance on a rail might do wonders for him,” said the shoemaker Captain.

“We don’t have time,” Yates said. “But we will exact justice from this fellow, in the Lord’s name, for the sake of our, suffering country-.”

He took a small black book from his pocket and paged methodically through it, a parody of St. Peter on doomsday. “Yes, here he is, failed to pay the fine of two hundred and fifty dollars levied for refusal to perform militia duty.”

“I told General Slocum I would not pay that fine. The courts will decide which of us is right,” my father said.

“The time is past when vipers like you can escape the hand of justice by bribing juries and judges,” Yates droned. “I have orders to secure from your house chattel goods to the sum of two hundred and fifty dollars, this day.”

“I would like to see that order,” my father said.

Yates whipped his sword from the scabbard and put the point of it against my father’s throat. “Here it is. The same order the Lord sent to Gideon and Joshua. I am ready to deliver it. Say but the word.”

My father stood there with the sword at his throat for a full minute. For the first time it dawned on me that in an oblique way he was a man of courage. I think he considered the possibility of dying on that sword.

He finally stepped aside and let Yates and ten of his men troop through our house. My father was a rich man, thanks to the combination of his law practice and a well-run three-hundred-acre farm. Our furniture, wallpaper, rugs equaled the splendor of Kemble Manor, if our house was not quite so large.

“Look at the way this Tory lives while honest Whigs are shivering in tents,” Yates said. He put the point of his sword into the blue satin upholstery of a sample chair made by Philadelphia’s Benjamin Randolph and ripped it up the middle.

A shriek from the doorway announced that my mother had arrived. “How dare you, sir. How dare you ruin my property?”.

“Why, madam, I don’t know,” Yates said with a clumsy bow. “Perhaps the Lord was guiding my hand. You know what He says, vengeance is mine.”

My mother, with a majesty that came naturally to an upper-class Bostonian, began denouncing the Major as a blackguard, a pirate, a hypocrite, and a vandal. He caught the Yankee echo in her tirade. Twenty years in New Jersey had not erased it from her tongue.

“I see you are from New England,” Yates said. “What was your family name?”

“Oliver,” blazed my mother.

Yates groaned like a branded Sinner. “You are one of that nest of Tory vipers that was feeding on the vitals of poor people, swilling from the public trough like the King’s favorite hogs for generation after generation? Why, madam, hearing that inspires my sword to wander again.”

He whipped his weapon from his scabbard and gouged the blue damask cushion of one of our Philadelphia sofas down the middle from left to right.

My mother ran wailing from the room.

“You may have a legal right to confiscate my property, Major,” my father said. “How do you justify this destruction?”

“Why, this is a Tory house,” Yates said. “We have been sent down here to prosecute you vermin. It is our duty to rip up every cursed cushion in this house. That is where you are likely to be concealing secret messages, money to recruit your Satan-loving traitors. Get to work, men.”

We stood there and watched them rip apart the cushions of every piece of furniture in the parlor, the dining room, the study, Yates with his sword, the men with their bayonets. My father’s lips were trembling. Any moment I thought he would collapse.

“Upstairs, men, and do the same job in their bedrooms,” Yates said.

Within sixty seconds my sister Sally started screaming. One of the men, a stocky fellow with an inch of dirt on his face, came back downstairs to tell us that the Tory bitch had locked herself in her room. Should they knock down the door? I went upstairs and talked Sally into unlocking the door. She stood there whimpering while they ripped her feather bed apart with their bayonets and flung open the chest where she stored her gowns.

“By Beelzebub, look at this here finery,” said their leader, hauling out satin and silk and damask ball gowns. “If that ain’t the most sinful stuff I’ve ever seen, my name ain’t Silas Gobble. I think I’ll take this one for my old lady.”

They each decided to take one for their old ladies.

Sally went almost berserk with rage. “That’s stealing,” she screamed. “Stealing.”

Silas Gobble gave her a Yankee horselaugh. “You can’t steal from a Tory, hussy, don’t you know that? We are confiscatin’ enemy property here.”

“Traitors’ property,” said the stocky fellow with the dirt on his face.

Downstairs we found my father watching Major Yates hacking out of the frame the portrait of my great-grandfather, the first Kemble to come to America. The Major wanted the frame but not the painting. Next, he ordered the men to roll up the Kirman rug on the floor.

“That rug is worth five times the fine you are supposedly collecting, Major,” my father said.

Deputy Commissary Beebe and Deputy Quartermaster Beatty had by this time returned from the barns and were available for consultation. They estimated the value of the rug at $50. I informed the Major that his men had just stolen twelve dresses from my sister. “That is their affair,” I was told.

The Major wanted to know where our silver plate was. “That is where we shall make up the balance of this fine,” he said.

“The British stole it,” my father said.

Actually it was well buried behind the barn along with our candlesticks, our tea service, my mother’s jewelry, and our Meissen china.

The Major preached a little sermon on the sinfulness of lying and ordered his men to roll up the Persian rugs in the dining room and study. He took a white and gold looking glass from the hall and the white and gold damask draperies from the parlor and the chandelier of Irish cut glass from the dining room. You may wonder how I can remember these details with such exactitude after fifty years. My father methodically made an inventory of his losses. I have a copy of that inventory before me as I write this.

Outside, the Major and his men looted our smokehouse and hen house and slaughtered one of our prime sows for future consumption. As an afterthought, the Major took my sister Sally’s pet goat and tied it to the rear of the last wagon. Deputies Beebe and Beatty handed my father several hundred paper dollars, mounted their wagons, and headed back to their camp near Liberty Tavern. We stood on the steps watching them.

“Now you know how the Romans felt when the barbarians arrived, Jemmy,” my father said.

One of the soldiers bringing up the rear fell out of the column and began loading his gun. We watched, not quite believing what we saw. He raised the gun, aimed it at the house, and pulled the trigger. We all flinched with terror, thinking he was firing at us. But the bullet crashed through the dining room window. Every one laughed uproariously at our fright. We could hear them laughing, and Sally’s goat bleating in a kind of counterpoint until they were out of sight on the main road.

That night I rode down to Liberty Tavern and told the story to Kemble and Jonathan Gifford. Kemble listened with a mournful expression on his face. “You must keep it quiet, Jemmy, for the sake of the Cause,” he said. “There are too many people in this neighborhood who still respect your father. This sort of thing will arouse sympathy for him. And - ”

“You are talking damn nonsense, Kemble,” said Jonathan Gifford. “Major Yates is an officer in the Continental army. You tell your father to make an inventory of what they stole and send it to General Washington. I will be very surprised if he does not court-martial Major Yates.”

This nasty argument was interrupted by the arrival of Slocum’s Scottish partner, Andrew McIntosh. He was in an extremely good mood, and ordered himself a bottle of the best Madeira in the house and a dinner of jugged hare and beef a la mode. They were Liberty Tavern specialties. I especially loved the beef a la mode, which was served in a ragout of sweetbreads, oysters, and mushrooms.

McIntosh ate like a man ten times his size. As he demolished the Madeira, he grew talkative, for a Scotsman.

“I hate to tell ye this, Gifford, no doubt it will give ye indigestion for the rest of the week,” he said in his squeaky burr. “But we sold our first salt at New Brunswick yesterday. Forty-five dollars a bushel, Gifford. How d’ye like that? Twenty-eight thousand dollars we cleared. How’s that for dooin’ business?”

“Why, I don’t know,” Jonathan Gifford said. “There was a man in here yesterday with a wagon and a team of half-dead horses. He’d come all the way from the Wyoming Valley in Pennsylvania he said, looking for salt. They’ll starve to death this winter, if he doesn’t come back with the wagon full of it. They’d given him all the money they had in their township. The fellow was practically in tears. He asked me if I knew where he could get salt at a decent price. He said it was going for forty-five dollars a bushel in New Brunswick. lie couldn’t fill a third of his wagon at that price. I told him he might as well buy; and I loaned him the difference at six per cent.”

“From the Wyoming,” said McIntosh. “You’ll never see your money, Gifford. I’ll be damned if I know how ye stay in business if that’s what ye do with it. I traded with them in the valley before the war. They’re poor as Job on his dunghill. All ye’ll get will be excuses, and lucky ye’ll be to get them.”

“Congress set the price of salt at fifteen dollars a bushel.”

“Let Congress set till doomsday. The price will follow the market,” McIntosh said.

“But if a man can’t pay, does that mean his family will starve this winter? This fellow I’m talking about was as honest a Whig as ever lived. He had a son in the Continental army.”

“That’s a question better answered by a parson,” said McIntosh, finishing his Madeira. He reached into his satchel and spread three or four of his twenty-eight thousand dollars on the table and called for his horse.

One of Major Yates’s captains burst into the taproom bawling for Kemble Stapleton. Kemble identified himself. “The Major says you must call out your militia. There’s a Tory army in the Navesink. Two thousand men, the report says.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Jonathan Gifford said. “No general would send two thousand men anywhere this late in the year.” He walked to the window and eyed the gray November sky. “All you need is a little rain and sleet to put half your men in sickbeds. There are a couple of saltworks on the Navesink, aren’t there?”

“At least two, possibly three. I haven’t been down that way in a month,” Kemble said.

“That’s what they’re after.”

“What the devil,” squawked McIntosh. “Attacking saltworks. The buggers show no quarter, do they?”

“I’m afraid it’s that kind of war,” Jonathan Gifford said. “There’s no way you can defend those places, unless you build a fort around them, which would eat into your profits, wouldn’t it, Mr. McIntosh?”

“It certainly would,” said McIntosh. “Get me my horse. I moost get this news to General Slocum.”

Jonathan Gifford was right about the raiders on the Navesink. Anthony Skinner had led a mixed force of regulars and loyalists from New York. There were two hundred of them, not two thousand, a pretty example of how fear and rumor combine to confuse the truth in war. They burned the saltworks on the Navesink and Skinner left behind him a proclamation, denouncing speculators who were feeding on the vitals of the country.

Skinner and his troops departed from that largely loyalist neighborhood without anyone firing a shot at them. Major Yates and his brave Yankees marched desultorily in their direction, but made sure they were long gone when they arrived. Although no one but the speculators who had invested several thousands in the construction of their saltworks suffered, everyone in the county was struck by the obvious fact that our Continental regiment did not exactly guarantee us protection against loyalist raiders. This feeling did not decrease when Major Yates and his infantry failed to return from their march to the Navesink.

“Maybe they went all the way to Little Egg Harbor and shipped out on privateers,” Jonathan Gifford said. “They seem more interested in stealing than fighting.”

“Tis no joke to Deputies Beatty and Beebe. They are afraid to venture more than a mile from here without an escort,” said Samson Tucker. “To hear them talk, you would think the Tories had fangs a foot long and dined on human flesh.”

Days, then a week passed without a word from or a sign of our Yankee Continentals. The southern part of the county seemed to have swallowed them. A freeze filled the rivers and the Atlantic with ice, making us all but immune to Tory raids. Most people began preparing for Christmas and forgot about our missing protectors. Even my father, once he had sent off letters of protest to General Washington and Governor Livingston, agreed it was time to try to forget the war for a few weeks.

At Liberty Tavern Kate neglected Lieutenant Rawdon to spend most of the time in the kitchen with our cooks, Molly and Bertha, boiling calves’ feet and rubbing them through a colander for mince pies, her specialty. There was mace to pound, suet to chop, cloves and nutmeg to be added in delicate balance - all this for the mincemeat. There were plum and Yorkshire puddings, Christmas pies and fruitcakes baking in the huge kitchen oven. For years every member of the family had gotten one of the tavern’s fruitcakes, made with four pounds of butter, the same weight of currants, thirty eggs, a pint of brandy. No matter how much you ate, they always seemed to last until Easter.

Even Kemble softened under the influence of the rich odors wafting through the tavern from the kitchen. But he was abruptly returned to the reality of the war by a visit from a Quaker farmer, George Evans. His son Emmanuel had volunteered to join Slocum for service in the saltworks. His father had given permission for him to go. He was glad to have a member of his family do something for the country that did not involve bearing arms.

“The lad has come home more dead than alive. Half starved, his arm turned black and blue from a burn. He tells of beatings and threats, working night and day.”

Kemble called for Dr. Davie, and they rode down to the Evans farm in the chaise. There they found the father’s description was no exaggeration. Emmanuel was a wan skeleton. Dr. Davie had to cut open his arm and clear out a pint of infected matter. Kemble asked him to describe life at the saltworks.

The fires must go day and night, the General says, so the place is always full of smoke. They fill the kettles to the top and the water boils over. That is how I got my burn. We would all come home in a minute, but the soldiers won’t let us.”

“What soldiers?”

“The Yankees. They came down to guard the place.”

Without saying a word to his father, Kemble mounted his horse and rode south to see for himself. He had no difficulty finding the Union Salt Works. A column of smoke rose into the gray December sky three miles up the Manasquan River. As he dismounted, he was challenged by a Yankee sentry who stood before the gate of a flimsy-looking stockade that surrounded the works on three sides. Kemble identified himself and asked to see General Slocum. In sixty seconds he was in the General’s office receiving a hearty welcome.

Slocum was wearing greasy leather breeches, a sad-colored coat out at the elbows, and the dirtiest shirt Kemble had ever seen. “Well, if it ain’t the young squire,” he roared. “What brings you down here on such a fine cold day? Has your father decided to put some money into our little business? Well, tell him it’s too late. But if he wants, I’ll let him go a fourth share in a privateer we’ve got on the stocks at Little Egg Harbor. To be named Black Daniel. How do you like that? Captain Hope Willets commands.”

“I bring no money, General. I found myself rambling down this way and thought I would stop and see how you and the men do.”

“We are thriving,” said Slocum. “Let me show you around.”

Their first stop was the boiling house. There Kemble gazed in awe at five copper and four iron pans, each weighing upwards of three thousand pounds. The copper pans were fifteen feet across. Beneath each pan was a brick furnace which sweaty, sooty militiamen stoked with wood or peat bricks. Next door to the boiling house was a storehouse which could hold eight hundred bushels of salt and next to that a pump house which gulped the water from the river into the boiling pans or into a huge covered cistern which held about a hundred and fifty hogsheads of water. There were also stables, a dwelling house, a smokehouse, and two barracks. It was a veritable industrial colony.

“How do the men like the work?” Kemble asked as they walked back to Slocum’s office.

“I hear no complaints. I believe our rations are as good or better than the Continental army.”

As Slocum spoke, about two dozen men trudged in the gate hauling carts of wood they had just finished chopping. They were escorted by a dozen Yankee Continentals with muskets. The wood choppers looked weary and disgruntled. When they saw Kemble their expressions changed to active dislike. One of them, a husky eighteen-year-old named Bayles Platt, spit on the ground near Kemble’s feet as they passed.

Slocum whirled and hauled him out of the column by his collar. “What the hell did you mean by that?”

“Why nothing, General, nothing at all,” said Platt.

“If you ever do anything like that again, you will go on bread and water. Remember, this is the army. You are under my command.”

“Why did he do that, General?” Kemble asked, as Platt rejoined the column.

“He is a damned troublemaker,” Slocum said. “We will have to give him a taste of the lash before long.”

“Emmanuel Evans did not seem to like the work down here, General.”

“Oh, that fellow. I sent him home. He is like every damn Quaker I ever met. God himself won’t be able to keep them Quakers happy in paradise, if they ever get there. Personally I think they will all keep the father of discontent company down you know where.”

“Do the men share in your profits, General?”

“What the devil are you talking about?” Slocum snapped. “They are here to serve their country as soldiers. They are producing a commodity which the army and the nation need as badly as gunpowder.”

“As I understand it,” said Kemble in a voice that could be heard a mile down the Manasquan River, “you made twenty-eight thousand dollars on your first shipment. I heard your partner McIntosh telling this to my father last week. Where did that money go, General Slocum? In your pocket and McIntosh’s pocket? Do the honorable Congress and General Washington get a share?”

“Why, goddamn you,” roared Slocum, “I’m going to put you under arrest. No man can insult General Washington in my presence.”

“I had no intention of insulting General Washington,” said Kemble, rattled by this unexpected tactic.

“You have insulted him and I intend to arrest you for it” Slocum shouted. “Major Yates, come here this instant, will you please?”

Major Yates emerged from the barracks. His eyes clouded with dislike when he saw Kemble. He did not forget those who cast slurs on Massachusetts.

“Major, this fellow has ridden all the way from Middletown to disrupt the saltworks,” Slocum said. “He has accused General Washington of peculation in its profits. I am asking you to witness his damn Tory talk. Now repeat what you just asked me about General Washington.”

“I asked you how much money you were making from this salt-works,” Kemble said. “My remark about General Washington was sarcasm.”

“But you did ask it, you did ask me what General Washington’s profits were?”

“I’m more interested in yours.”

“Did you hear him, Major?” cried Slocum. “He’s at it again, trying to bait me into smearing General Washington’s name. Who sent you down here, old Cortland Skinner himself? Damn me if you haven’t turned your coat or started working both sides like your father. What do you think, Major?”

“A suspicious character, General, no doubt,” said Major Yates. “What the devil are you doing down here?” Kemble shouted at Yates. “You were sent to guard the people of Monmouth County, not this saltworks.”

“Why this fellow is a marvel, General, he has more brass than a nine-pounder,” Yates droned. “He wants to run your saltworks and my regiment all at once.”

“How much money is he paying you?” Kemble asked.

Yates drew a deep breath through his nose. “You don’t have to say another word to me, General. He has just damned himself out of his own mouth. He has accused an officer of the army of the United States of taking a bribe.”

“What should we do with him, Major?”

“Why, we are on detached duty, here. My officers and me will be glad to form a court-martial board, with you as chairman. We will have this spying son of Satan ready to hang tomorrow at sunrise, all done so legal-like the lord chief justice of England would split his wits to find a quibble with it.”

“Put him under arrest, Major.”

Major Yates yelled an order. A half-dozen Yankees marched Kemble to the guardhouse. There he was forced to strip and surrender his clothing and shoes.

“If you are carrying any secret messages, we will have them soon enough,” Yates said.

Kemble was left shivering in the unheated guardhouse all night without even a blanket to cover him, and with no supper, not even a glass of water. At dawn, Slocum appeared and flung his clothes unceremoniously on the floor at his feet.

“The Major’s disappointed. I won’t let him hang you. It wouldn’t be that hard to justify. You’re a member of a suspected family. Cousins, uncles, aunts on the other side. They burned them saltworks on the Navesink. How do you think they found them? Some damned spy gave them the exact location, how many guards – ”

It was clear that Slocum had seriously considered hanging Kemble. Only fear of the consequences restrained him. With all his power, Slocum was still intimidated by the Stapleton name. If Kemble had been a Talbot, he might have ended his life in those gloomy woods beside the gray sluggish Manasquan that December.

“I told you once before not to cross me, lad. Now I’m telling you again, for the second and last time. Go home and keep your Mouth shut about what’s ‘happening here. We still need your name to turn out the men in the district. But that is. all you are good for. You are out of your depth in this war. If you mind your business, when it is all over, Slocum will take good care of you. He’ll send you to the legislature, maybe to Congress. You can have your choice of Tory estates. Any place but Kemble Manor. That goes to Slocum.”

Kemble finished dressing. He barely noticed that the Yankees had slashed the linings of his coat and cloak, searching for secret documents. He was full of loathing for this gross barrel of a man confronting him, and equally full of loathing for himself. He had collaborated with Slocum to give him the power he was now using to foul our Revolution with his greed. Worst of all, Jonathan Gifford, the man whom Kemble had sneered at and condemned, had been right about Slocum from the start. Partly far this reason, and partly because he clung to his sinking belief in the politics of enlightenment and virtue, Kemble suppressed his loathing and tried once more to speak to Slocum as a friend, an ally.

“There is only one way you can right the wrong you have done here, General. You must sell the rest of the salt you produce below the market price set by Congress and even give away some of it to the poor. You must also share the profits with the men who are doing the work.”

“You are out of your goddamn mind,” roared Slocum. “Share the profits with them cattle? Slocum is not risking his head in this war for nothing. You rich bastards are all alike. You expect the poor man to risk his neck for glory and when it’s all over go back to sweating a bare living on his lousy acres. Well, you can stuff your glory up your ass, young squire. Now get the hell out of here. Just remember, if you say one word against Slocum you’ll regret it all your life.”

Outside it began to rain. Acrid smoke billowed from the chimneys of the boiling house and swirled through the saltworks. Kemble walked through the drizzle to his horse, still tied to the tree where he had left him. He mounted and turned to Slocum, who was standing at the gate.

“General Slocum,” he said. “Did you ever see a letter Dr. Franklin published after Bunker Hill? He wrote it to a friend in England.”

“I don’t think I saw it. What did he say?”

“‘You are now my enemy and I am yours.’”

With a curse Slocum snatched a musket from one of the sentries at the gate, aimed it at Kemble, and pulled the trigger. The bullet came within a foot of his head.

“There is my answer to you. The next shot won’t miss,” Slocum roared.

Kemble shoved spurs into his horse and got out of the clearing into the safety of the trees. For the first time he faced the fact that Daniel Slocum was not just an uneducated Whig. He was something much more dangerous - something that did not exist in the American future as Kemble envisioned it - an evil man.