NO PHILADELPHIAN WAS HAPPIER ABOUT THE Treaty of Paris than Sarah Barry. Peace freed America from Great Britain, but more important to her, it freed her husband from the dangers of war, and gave her hope that a subsequent amnesty for her brother might reunite her family. Word of the treaty had not yet reached Newport so Barry, fearing “that my Ship is not Safe from the enemy,” took the Alliance upriver to Providence. He also sent for Sarah.1
Barry was soon inundated with letters, some bearing good news. His friend William French warmly congratulated him on his arrival, wishing Barry “live long to enjoy the fruits of your Labour acquired with so much honor, Bravery and Danger.” Morris sent word that the Alliance be “Imediately fitted for Sea,” then off to Virginia “to take in a Cargo of Tobacco for Europe.” Barry could not be happier: he had his old job back. For months he had given thought to a peacetime navy; now he poured out his suggestions to Morris, from using the Alliance “to Carry Cargoes,” to reducing her crew to a number necessary “to Keep up the appearance of a public Ship.”2
Other correspondence bore bitter tidings. While Barry was at sea, Joseph Kendall sued him over their payment dispute and won, recovering £180.3 Having removed iron from Barry's shoulder, the troublesome surgeon now took money out of his account book. “I can hardly think that there is a Sett of Laws that will Condemn a Man who is fighting for them without being heard,” Barry protested, berating one official that “I am in a fine Box after Serving the Country faithfully the Whole War to be oblig'd to learn [that] evr'y Man, even Deserters that have been under me can Sue me.”4
As if unclaimed specie, no pay, and Kendall's revenge was not enough, Barry learned of another lawsuit. The American sloop Fortune, a prize Barry recaptured from the British in August, had been sold by a Continental agent without going through the legal condemnation process. Word of this reached her Connecticut owners who immediately sued Barry's agents in New England, sending him a summons which misspelled his name as “Barre.” Barry called it the “Most rascaly writ couch'd with the most dirty Language I ever beheld . . . as for their Sueing me I care not a figg for them. I comply'd with my orders and I out them, or any Dirty Scoundrels like them to Defyance. . . . I observe in the warrant they have not spelt my name right, therefore it cannot be me they have Summon'd.”5
After urging his agents to pay him “before they bring a properly spelt summons,” he also addressed wages and shares for the slaves that served on the Alliance. While noting that his agent's two slaves earned their master “120 Livres each,” he had troubling news for Congressman Ellery about his slave; Barry being unaware that “Caesar had a Master . . . A few days ago I Gave him Liberty to go to N[ew] Port, and I dare Say he is there now.”6
Barry desperately wanted to visit Philadelphia, and requested leave “as my affairs in that place are lying in a Bad Way.” While awaiting permission, two letters arrived. The first, from Morris, assured him “that the Ship should be paid off” by giving “each Man a Certificate that he belonged to the Ship.” He reconfirmed Barry's upcoming European voyage and ordered him to “transmit your charges against these officers who staid in France and be prepared to Support them before a Court Martial.”7 In short, Morris gave Barry direction on everything but the most important item on the Alliance: the chests of money.
The second letter, from Brown, was personally “handed you by the most agreeable of Messengers.”8 Truer words were never written. The messenger was Sarah, accompanied by her teenage cousin, Mary Crawthorne.9 Only eight months had passed since Sarah had seen John, but she was stunned at the changes in her husband. Though not yet forty, he had aged considerably. His perpetually tanned, leathered face was paler due to a cold and the last vestiges of the “bilious fever” that beset him in L'Orient. Damp days increased the chronic pain in his wounded shoulder. The crow's feet around his eyes were now as etched from worry as they were from sun and wind. His thick hair was graying well past his temples. Add the careworn expression of an unpaid warrior collecting more lawsuits than laurels, and John Barry no longer looked the dashing captain Sarah had married six years earlier. Nevertheless, it was a joyous reunion, especially when Sarah told him she would accompany him to Virginia and Holland.10
Brown's letter offered no encouragement about Barry's financial morass. No matter where his goods were—L'Orient, Havana, or home, it was “Imposable to Sell a Single piece of any thing. . . . There is a Total Stop put to all kinds of Trade.” Barry returned to his duties on the Alliance, winnowing the crew down to 142. Kessler and Welch were among the departed, leaving Lieutenant Elwood his only officer. With no word from Morris about the once desperately needed money for the country (at least when it was not in the country), Barry ordered Elwood and his few marines to remain aboard the Alliance, standing guard round the clock over the Spanish milled dollars. To Sarah's consternation, he packed his saddlebags and rode to Philadelphia, arriving at the end of May.11
He found Philadelphians at peace with Britain but not among themselves. The once smartly painted houses looked old and dreary. The cobbled streets, in disrepair throughout the war, filled with mud after it rained. Inflation still ran amok; if something had cost one dollar in 1777, it now cost over one hundred. One citizen, watching the city awaken from its wartime nightmare, described Philadelphians dressed in clothing “of the coarsest form . . . made by the female's spinning in the house . . . I know that two lads, both afterwards commodores in the United States Navy, were both taught to be good spinners on the little wheel.” A merchant despaired over the absence of trade goods such as tea, coffee, and sugar: “There was no regular business in anything,” he lamented; even precious salt was “smuggled in women's pockets.” Even the weather seemed to reflect Philadelphia's tempestuous mood; right before Barry's arrival a “hail storm believed the heaviest ever known here [struck] . . . stones fell of 1/2 an ounce—many windows were broken.”12
Philadelphians, needing a scapegoat, found one in Morris. While he complained to Washington that “My Credit has already been on the Brink of Ruin,” his enemies in Congress carped that it had “ever been a ruling principal with [Morris] to connect the public service with the private interest.” Morris felt secure enough about his transactions to insist Congress review his books twice a year, and while James Madison attested that “I have seen no proof of malfeasance,” nothing stilled the talk.13 Tired of the accusations, Morris submitted his resignation to Congress, who pleaded that he reconsider.
For ten days Morris held meetings with Barry, who presented an account of his service from the Lexington to the Alliance. After reviewing Barry's extensive documentation, Morris promised he would have the captain paid after an auditor's review, and finally made arrangements to free Barry from his Spanish milled dollars upon his return to Providence. They discussed upcoming plans for the Alliance's voyage to Holland. Barry's request to pad his crew with Philadelphia sailors, so successful the previous summer, was denied, as was his request that Richard Dale be appointed second-in-command. Morris wanted Alexander Murray. He admitted that Barry's suspicions about Green's shifty behavior were well founded; Green had, indeed, loaded the Duc de Lauzon “beyond any Allowance [that] Captains are entitled to.” Last, Morris informed Barry that he had been vindicated regarding his marooned officers: each had been found guilty of abandoning his duties.14
Visits with Brown were pleasant solely in companionship. Not only were Barry's stateside goods unsold; Barclay was still shipping more goods from France, bought with Barry's prize money and contrary to his directions. In his enthusiasm to be of service, the agent was making Barry's money disappear. Brown helped Barry draft a letter remonstrating Barclay. “I have lost a Great Dale of money,” Barry stated, demanding “Interest for the money laying in your hands.”15
John Paul Jones was back in town. He was supposed to be in Boston for the court-martial of both Captains Sam Nicholson and John Manley (a task that would have been very much to his liking), but Morris found him “so unwell that I gave up expectation of his going.” When the two captains last met, Jones was off to Portsmouth, picking up where Barry left off, supervising completion of the ship-of-the-line America. Jones worked tirelessly to complete the task, and she was launched in November. But it was a hollow accomplishment. Lacking both money and sailors—Jones could ask Barry about that one—Morris saw the America's launching as a twofold opportunity. He presented her to the French, both in thanks for their support and as a way to get the titanic vessel off Congress' books. In his last act as a captain in the Continental Navy, Jones turned command of the largest ship yet built in the western hemisphere over to the French. James Nicholson's petulant boast that Jones would “never get America to sea” was correct and incorrect at the same time.16
Among his peers Jones had few friends, but Barry was one. The Scotsman wrote a letter of introduction on Barry's behalf to the House of Deauville et Fils in Amsterdam, requesting that “As Captn Barry is an entire Stranger to Holland any civilities you may show will the more Oblige.”17 They parted company: Jones to recover his health at a Moravian sanitarium in Bethlehem, and Barry back to Providence. They never saw each other again.18 Despite Barry's wound, mutinies, and money woes, the war had ended better for him than for le Chevalier Jones.
Barry returned to Providence, finding the Alliance nearly converted from man-of-war to merchantman and “perfectly sound.”19 The specie was transferred ashore, replaced in the hold by most of the Alliance's guns: yesterday's arms were today's ballast. On June 20, Barry picked up a pilot and departed Providence. Sarah and her cousin watched from the quarterdeck as the Alliance stood down the Pawtuxet. The frigate never looked better, nor was her captain ever prouder.20 The old superstition that women aboard ship were bad luck went unspoken. Virginia beckoned.
Then, in seconds, all happiness on board ended. The Alliance was “going four or five miles an hour” when disaster struck: “The Pilot ran her against a submerged Rock.”21 The impact was sudden and loud; the Alliance's copper sheathing was no defense against stone. To Barry's horror, a series of heavy, splitting, cracking sounds came from Alliance's hull. After the initial shudder, she stopped dead in the water.
Instantly, Barry sent the carpenter and his mates to assess the damage. Barry never documented what he called the pilot, but doubtless the invective was fitting—if less profane than usual due to the presence of the ladies. For two hours the Alliance lay trapped. When the carpenter reported that “the Ship made no more Water,” Barry let the rising tide float her off the rock, with “hope [Alliance] received no Damage.”22 Embarrassed before his wife, of all people, at this turn of events, Barry again sent the Alliance downriver.
Now the ladies took their turn in this darkening comedy. Entering Narragansett Bay the wind picked up, the water turned rough, and the Alliance began reacting to the elements. Although a mariner's wife, Sarah and her cousin were landsmen. As their stomachs began to pitch and roll with the ship, their complexions went from rosy pink to a pale green, and the excitement of good winds and great sailing were lost on them. As quickly and as lady-like as they could, they returned to their cabins. For the next four days, the ladies held a death grip on two oaken buckets, sea-sick for the entire passage to Virginia.23 With ship and spouse in poor health, Barry resumed his career as merchant captain.
For Sarah, as stoic and brave as any Philadelphian in the past six years, this was the most grueling ordeal of her life. Dreams of crossing the Atlantic were replaced with a vow that, if she lived through this, a coach back to Philadelphia would be her reward. “Mrs. Barry has been so sick on the passage here that she has given over going any further,” her husband wrote.24
Barry and Morris incorrectly assumed the Alliance's layover in Virginia would be five weeks, but Morris's Virginia agent, Daniel Clark, was totally unprepared for Barry's arrival. Six weeks later the Alliance was still at anchor, but Sarah's companionship did wonders for Barry's mood: “it is all in vane to Grumble,” he amiably rationalized. Finally, on August 20, the last of the tobacco was stowed. Slow as Clark was, he was thorough; Barry happily “put more tobacco in the two decks than I intended”—over five hundred hogsheads. He wrote Morris, “I flatter myself that my conduct will give Satisfaction and Shall always think myself happy and doing every thing in my power to merit your esteem.”25
After watching the Alliance make sail and head for Holland, Clark saw the ladies to their coach, and they began their 400-mile journey over bumpy, eighteenth-century roads. Uncomfortable as the ride was, it was easier on their stomachs than the Alliance. Writing “from the Capes of Virginia on the 24th,” Barry anticipated “a very good prospect before us.” Back in his element, at the task he knew so well, and “with a Moderate breeze wind and smooth Sea,” Barry foresaw a swift voyage, and a short stay in Holland.26
It was not to be: Barry's hopes were dashed by the same “sunken Rock” last seen in Rhode Island. The Alliance was entering the Atlantic when “we discovered all of a Sudden the Ship to make nineteen Inches [of water] per hr.” This alarming discovery coincided with a change in the weather; “the wind in a short time after increased and of course made the Sea a little rougher and She then made one Inch and a half pr. Minute.” The Alliance proceeded to prove a rule of nautical physics, “as the Wind and Sea increased . . . the Leake did also in proportion.” Soon there was three feet of saltwater in the Alliance's hold, enough to ruin the “lower teare [tier] of Tobacco.”27
Barry kept the pumps going through the night. By morning, with the Alliance “midway between the Capes of Virginia and the Delaware,” he determined that only by heading home could he save the undamaged tobacco. In two days the Alliance was in the Delaware. Barry speedily composed a letter to Morris, sending it by courier from Bombay Hook. He was uncharacteristically philosophical: “As is often the Case...Peoples Expectations are buoyed up with great Prospects they frequently find themselves Disappointed.”28
By the time the poor Alliance docked at his wharf, Morris enlisted a trio of congressmen to check the frigate's condition. They recommended that the tobacco be unloaded, “freighted to Europe on the best terms,” and that Morris “discharge the officers and crew” and order a thorough inspection of the Alliance.29
Never before had Barry failed Morris, who bristled at the cavalier tone of Barry's report. “The Misfortune which [the Alliance] has sustained” not only angered Morris, it mortified him. His first venture at public trade never got out of American waters. “Repairing this Ship cannot but be expensive,” he fumed, calling the Alliance “an old Vessel” for good measure. He discharged everyone but Barry, Murray, and a few hands.30 With Joshua Humphreys and Thomas Read, they formed a committee to “survey and Estimate” the damage and cost of repairs.31
It had been years since Barry had had such a long stint at home. He never really had the chance to accommodate himself to the house he and Sarah purchased on Spruce Street, bought during the interminable legal wrangling over the Austin estate.32 For once, Barry got to greet Sarah upon her return, but any pleasant surprise at this twist ended when Barry shared the latest news of their perilous finances. Barclay's latest update pleaded that Barry “not post any Bills.”33 In Havana, Seagrove was “sorry to inform” that, while “a great part of Capt. Barry's goods” were sold, Seagrove “was obliged to give a credit” due to the fluctuating cost of cotton in Cuba.34
After learning that the State Assembly was offering half-pay and land grants to resident army officers, Barry led his fellow navy officers in bombarding the Assembly with petitions in the hopes of recovering similar financial rewards for their services. These “Memorials” were flowery and, at times, desperately self-aggrandizing. Barry's—the first of several he would be compelled to write—reviewed his naval career, mentioned the “Wound in his Shoulder, which has proved very injurious,” and concluded that
the State of Pennsylvania, for whose commerce and whose trade he is assured reaped many Advantages from his Exertions on this Station and welfare he found himself deeply interested . . . will, he relies claim the indulgence of your Honors so as to admit him to the emoluments of Land &Half-Pay . . . Your Honourable House has been pleased to extend to the Penna. Line . . . your Memorialist Sincerely hopes, that the prayer of his Memorial will experience a happy reception.35
Barry's memorial received a “happy reception” but not immediate results. It would be another year before naval officers received equity in the eyes of the Assembly. Like other veterans, he was heartened by Morris's decree that “American Officers and Soldiers” would receive “Certificates” that would entitle them to their pay along with interest—but when?36
Each workday Barry was rowed to the Alliance to oversee the survey. On one crisp autumn morning he had visitors: British Commodores Sweeney and Affleck, in Philadelphia on a diplomatic mission. Barry graciously welcomed them aboard. Another guest remarked how these “sons of Neptune [were] as intimate as brothers. To have seen them together it might readily have been supposed that they had been engaged throughout life in the same service.” For several days they regaled each other with their war stories. Before departing, “Sweeney, taking Barry affectionately by the hand,” was emotionally overcome. “Adieu, my countryman,” he said. Barry was a bit puzzled. Politely, he replied, “Not exactly so . . . you, Commodore are Briton. I am an American.” Sweeney good-naturedly disagreed, pressing his point:
“I am,” responded Sweeney “an Irishman, and so are you too, Barry, for if not you ought to be. You have too many of the strong features of a genuine Irishman for me to be mistaken . . . your attachment to the cause of the country for which you have fought and bled is both natural and highly to your honor—but, by God, you are too good a fellow for old Ireland to relinquish the claim that she has upon your best affections.”
Barry laughed in acknowledgement, and, as his guests were rowed away, ordered a salute fired from one of the six guns remaining on deck.37
John Brown's wedding to a relative of Thomas Willing gave Barry a few hours' respite from his money woes and the frigate's structural ones, but by December his concern over the Alliance was dwarfed by worry over her crew.38 There were constant visits from his men—more than a few destitute—asking, demanding, or begging for their “balance of Prize money.” One sailor, though deathly ill, could not afford the cost of hospitalization. Hat in hand, Barry went to see what Morris could do: “Capt. Barry [came] to get a poor Seaman into the Hospital but as This Man had been discharged the Service, I could not meddle with it,” Morris wrote in his diary.39 It pained Barry to see so many of his men down on their luck and out in the streets, loitering outside the wharf taverns and the London Coffeehouse where, just months earlier, glasses were raised to their seamanship and courage. Now, discharged sailors aimlessly haunted the waterfront, hoping for a berth on a foreign merchantman.
Their plight led him to enter into an odd venture with Brown. With no money of his own, Barry borrowed two hundred dollars from the Philadelphia Bank. Then he and Brown bought up prize warrants from the neediest Alliances, after Brown convinced Barry that this was the only way he could provide assistance. They could not afford to pay face value, but most sailors were happy to settle for a lesser amount, remitted in cash. If this seems an unscrupulous scheme of making money on the hard-earned prize shares of Barry's sailors, it also kept quite a few out of debtor's prison, and others from starving.40
That winter he was “incessantly called upon and threatened with suits,” forced “in several instances . . . to advance my own money to satisfy them which is very hard.” He fired off angry letters to Barclay: for a year, Barry “had full confidence that you would have provided Funds for payment.”41 Where were they?
The winter was one of the coldest Philadelphians could remember. By Christmas, the Delaware was “frozen over opposite the city.” Barry presented his report on the state of the Alliance to Congress the next day. He optimistically believed “the Ship will be fit for any Service for three or four Years” and stated, “The necessary repairs were estimated at 5,866 2/3 dollars.”42 Government coffers were so bare that Barry might as well have asked for a million. Morris, believing he had final say in the matter, wanted to wait until the only other Continental ship, the General Washington, returned to Philadelphia.
The New Year brought two days of warmth and a letter from Barclay. Both came with a downside. Philadelphians enjoyed “a most remarkable thaw,” but with a “disagreeable, unwholesome vapour.” Barclay's letter was like the weather—warm assurances, but sickly assets. “I am redly vex'd that you Should have been under any difficulties for want of money,” Barclay commiserated. The total share of Barry's prizes in L'Orient came to over 30,000 livres, small comfort as long as they remained unpaid.43
By March, Barry was dead broke, and the bank's loan was due. The man who knew how to fight did not know who to fight anymore. He wrote two letters; one, to President of Congress Thomas Mifflin, included a bill of exchange for $260 that Barry “Should be glad to hear that you please took Steps to honor.” The second letter was harder to write, let alone post. Setting pride aside, he reached out to his old rustling partner, Anthony Wayne, recently retired from the army and looking to restart his political career. As “the Bank has a demand on me for two hundred dollars,” Barry asked if Wayne could “oblige me with that Sum.”44
He received a warm response from Wayne, but no funds: just an empathetic letter from one penniless warrior to another. “I have met with serious disappointment from my Tenants & Others in the Payment of money due me,” Wayne answered. However, being “in full confidence of receiving a very considerable sum . . . some days hence” from “Warrants that I obtained from Mr. Morris,” Wayne asked Barry to “wait two or three weeks—as within that time I shall certainly receive Several hundred pounds.”45
When the General Washington arrived, her captain, Joshua Barney, was dolefully candid with Morris regarding her condition. Having given the America to France and sold the Bourbon, The Hague (née Deane), and the Duc de Lauzon, Morris believed that, due to “the embarrassed state of our Finances,” the best thing to do with the navy was to end its existence.46 He was convinced that Congress should “make no Effort for the Purpose till the People are taught by their Feelings to call for and require it.”47 As his substantial livelihood was based on maritime trade, he understood better than anyone America's need for a navy, but as the man in charge of the nation's pursestrings he knew it was more luxury than necessity—at least for the time being.
Initially Morris got what he wanted. Congress approved the “sale at public auction of the frigate Alliance and Ship Washington.”48 Sale of the packet posed no problem to Congress, but a pang of nationalistic conscience overcame James Madison, who then urged his colleagues to keep the Alliance—without a clue how to pay for her repairs and upkeep.49 Surprisingly, Congress agreed, “for the honour of the flag of the United States and the protection of its trade and coasts from the insults of pirates”—America's first act of homeland security.50 With Barney discharged, Barry remained the only naval officer in Congress' employ, at sixty dollars a month.
As spring temperatures thawed the Delaware, trickles of money from all sources came Barry's way. From Cuba, Seagrove wrote Brown that “Our friend Barry's Goods are mostly sold . . . I shall Bring his Cash with me.”51 In May, Barry and Brown split 900 livres, their profit on the acquisition of the Alliance's prize warrants.52 He also billed Congress for $480—eight months' back wages.53
While work commenced on the Alliance's repairs, Barry continued to receive inquiries from former naval officers, asking his advice on memorials, financial affairs, and merchant assignments, all trusting he was “at ease in Philadelphia after the tedious war.” One officer Barry heard from looked to government “emoluments” to assuage his plight. Luke Matthewman had not changed his stripes much. Although in the same dire straits as his peers, he considered himself “one of the least of the sufferers” of the Revolution, although he believed “The exclusion of the Navy Officers” from land grants and monetary rewards “certainly unfair.” The self-reliant Matthewman began a new career as a bounty hunter in “the disagreeable business of transporting free Negroes from [New York] to their respective homes” which “incurred the appellation of Kidnapper.”54
Throughout 1784 Congress was deluged with memorials from former naval officers, and Barry sent a second one, with a unique twist. There had not been a commodore in the Continental Navy since unlucky Esek Hopkins. Now, with the navy consisting of one ship—his—Barry hoped that a request for the title might hasten remittance of his back pay. It did not. Soon afterward, Congress had neither a “Department of Marine” nor an Agent of the Marine. Morris's resignation was finally accepted on November 1, 1784, with no successor named. When Morris left, he gave Congress both a balanced budget and a clean slate on any claims, an accomplishment equivalent to a battlefield victory.55 He bought time for his government to determine its own fate, just as more and more representatives began seeing the ineptitude of the Articles of Confederation. But Morris's mind was elsewhere: China.
By 1783 Morris saw China as both a source of public trade and personal wealth. Europeans had been trading with China for two hundred years, none more successfully than England's East India Company. Morris wanted in on the action as both a public servant and a private merchant and began recruiting investors from the northern ports. In July, he found his first ship for the enterprise, a square-sterned vessel of “about four hundred Tons Burthen.” Graced with a woman's figurehead, he rechristened her the Empress of China. “I am sending some Ships to China in order to encourage others in the adventurous pursuits of Commerce,” he wrote to John Jay. The Empress's hold was soon filled with cordage, wine, lead, iron, and even some of Barry's Spanish milled dollars. The hottest commodity was ginseng, in high demand by the Chinese. Morris could not get enough of it.56
The captaincy of the Empress was eagerly sought after, but Morris had but one man in mind, one of his most trusted shipmasters before the war. When offered the post, John Green accepted immediately.57
Whether Barry was even considered for the post, or if Morris disregarded him due to the Alliance's mishaps is not known. Any resentment Barry felt competed with ongoing frustrations over his finances. His memorials and petitions went unanswered; back pay was still owed, and expenses were still under congressional audit.58 The case of the incorrectly sold and ironically named Fortune was still in the hands of lawyers. Other attorneys fighting over the tangled morass of the Alliance's prizes dogged Barry into 1785: “I beg I may not be troubled anymore about it,” he wrote to one agent. Nor was the latest report from Cuba any better. Seagrove informed Barry that some unsold goods had been stolen—and that was the good news. “This is not the worst my very Good Friend,” Seagrove confessed. “At present I cannot pay you.”59 Following Morris's resignation, Joseph Pennell became Commissioner of Accounts for the Marine. For over a year he ignored Barry's letters. It seemed that nobody could, or would, pay John Barry.
Barry joined Isaac Austin in both the settling of his mother-in-law's estate and in the battle to retake the Austin Ferry, both intertwined in William's traitorous status.60 They publicly requested “all persons indebted to the estate of SARA Austin dead” make their payments.61 For two years, Isaac beseeched the Supreme Executive Council to overturn the award of the ferry and houses to Hopkinson and the other University of Pennsylvania trustees. Each petition mentioned both Isaac's military service and his willingness to pay the Assembly's exorbitant assessment of the estate's worth: £1,800.62 Each offer was turned down.63 When the council finally held the auction, Isaac's bid was highest, but the council refused to transfer the property.64 Now Barry went to work. Learning that William was in Nova Scotia, Barry requested his assistance, and William began a series of memorials and claims.65 After some prodding, Barry's friends in the State Assembly presented a bill to the State's Committee of Grievances, who ruled in Isaac's favor.66 When the council reviewed the matter, they unanimously supported the decision.
However, the man holding the estate, George Baker, refused to turn it over, having rented the houses and assumed possession of the ferry business. Rather than acquiesce to the will of the council, Baker went to his friend, Judge George Bryan. A future governor, Bryan issued a warrant against Isaac along with “a severe reprimand” for questioning Baker's authority.67
Isaac aired his side in a long, rambling letter to the Pennsylvania Gazette. Bryan's reply described how a violent Austin allegedly accosted a woman renting the Austin home “with a cow-skin whip, on the back part of her head whilst he struggled to divest her of her dwelling.” Not to be outdone, Barry and Austin published affidavits of witnesses who refuted Baker's accusations while charging Bryan with being in “the company of certain miscreants” during the war. In December the council awarded to “Isaac Austin a certain messuage, wharf, ferry, and ferry landing,” while the Gazette commented how a “certain Naval Officer” was instrumental in returning the Austin estate to the Austin family.68 Philadelphians could readily guess who that was.
Isaac's victory presaged some judicial luck for his famous brother-in-law. To Barry's surprise, Congress ruled in his favor regarding the Fortune affair, granting “full discharge from the judgment against him” and sending Barry's shares his way.69 Morris also assigned an attorney to represent Barry in a suit regarding another runaway slave from the Alliance.70 Barry involved himself in another case concerning Joanna Young, widow of his friend John, lost at sea commanding the Saratoga four years earlier. Hearing that Congress approved half-pay measures to the widows of army officers, she petitioned for the same allowance. Congress decided that army officers were “subject to arduous duty without a prospect of booty,” while naval officers “in a less severe service were in a situation of realizing substantial riches”—the very prize shares Barry and his colleagues were still trying to claim. “The prayer of the petitioner” was denied.71
Sad news arrived from Ireland: Barry's sister, Eleanor Hayes, had passed away, leaving her invalid husband, Thomas, a widower with three young children: Michael, Patrick, and Eleanor. After mentioning his own declining health, Hayes called Barry's contributions his “Only Relief,” and “praised God for having such a friend in his later days.” Barry assured Hayes that he would “prove a real Father to his Children” when the time came to do so. Barry's other sister, Margaret Howlin, was also widowed, living in poverty. He sent them what money he could spare whenever a Philadelphia merchantman was bound to Wexford.72
He began to receive a steady influx of letters from Ireland, looking for his assistance in helping the next generation find footing in the new world as he did, “putting [them] in the way of getting Bread, Rather than they sh[oul]d Starve at home.” From Cork came a letter from Jeremiah Teahan, a former Montserrat merchant and acquaintance from Barry's days on the sloop Peggy. Teahan, while asking Barry's “assistance” in finding employment for young Irishmen and knowing Barry's “influence to be great,” did not wait for a yes or no answer. He sent the letter with a “poor young man”—a carpenter—begging Barry to “fix his Camp.”73 Nor was gender an issue regarding these requests. A Philadelphia ne'er-do-well sent for an indentured servant girl from Ireland, who arrived on board a ship at “the wharf below Race Street.” When she refused to serve him, he decided that Philadelphia's most prominent Irishman should pay the forty dollars to free her from her indenture. After all, she was from “Rosswell by Donegall.”74
One summer day in 1785 another letter was delivered by a young Irish émigré, “Matthew Doyle a lad of good repute . . . brought up to husbandry” and sent across the Atlantic by Barry's childhood hero, Uncle Nicholas. The letter young Doyle carried brought Barry about hard. Thomas Hayes was dead. Nicholas would send the three Hayes teenagers to Philadelphia upon Barry's request. Then, Nicholas raised another dolorous matter: there was no headstone for his parents' grave, and that “grieves and Troubles me Much your being So Worthy a Son to a Father and Mother, that there is no Memorial of them in the Church yard of Ruslare.” In closing, he let John know that his “Cousin Richard Barry is now in Mexico or the Spanish Main” as “Commander of A Stout Ship belonging to Dublin.” Yet another Barry had taken to the sea. It would be another year before John and Sarah sent for the Hayes children.75
At noon on May 11, a tired but elated John Green ordered a thirteen-gun salute fired as the Empress of China entered New York harbor. His odyssey had been immensely successful. New Yorkers were agog over the Empress's “rich cargo of Teas, Silks, China, Nankins & Co.,” calling Green's voyage an “eminently distinguished, and very prosperous achievement.” Morris and company netted an astonishing 25 percent profit on their investment.76
Word of Green's triumph with his current command was sadly followed by news regarding Barry's last one. For over a year, the forlorn Alliance lay idly in Philadelphia harbor. The bold promise Congress made to repair and keep her for “the honour of the flag of the United States and the protection of its trade and coasts” was as empty as her decks, even as America was in need of her. The Philadelphia merchantman Betsey, Captain John Irwin (of the Delaware Irwins), had been captured by a Tangier corsair. It was America's first encounter with the Barbary Pirates, having been spared this embarrassment when under the protection of the British Empire and the tribute England paid the Barbary States. The Emperor of Morocco, Sidi Mahomet, who bragged of being the first leader to recognize American sovereignty (after all, he was an emperor; Louis XVI was only a king), used the Betsey's seizure as an opportunity to sign a treaty with America.77
Jefferson, America's minister in Paris, led negotiations on the Betsey's behalf, but advised Congress that the United States “will require a protecting force on the sea.”78 But Congress lacked the money for maintenance or manpower and placed this advertisement in the Pennsylvania Gazette:
Board of Treasury, New York, June 13, 1785.
SALE OF THE ALLIANCE.
On the first Tuesday of August next
WILL BE SOLD AT PUBLIC AUCTION AT THE MERCHANTS'
COFFEE HOUSE IN THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA.
THE FRIGATE ALLIANCE
Now lying in the River Delaware with all her Tackle and appurtenances (excepting her warlike appurtenances).
A description of the ship and inventory of her tackle and appurtenances will be published on the day of sale.
The payment for the convenience of the purchaser may be made in Good negotiable paper payable and four equal monthly installments.
N. B. the sale will commence at twelve o'clock precisely.79
It now became the last official duty of the navy's last officer to prepare its last ship for decommission. By July 9, all vestiges of her status as a ship of war were removed. An unseasonable, vicious north wind accompanied a pelting rain on August 1, when a small crowd of onlookers joined merchants, carpenters, and chandlers as the coffeehouse auctioneer sold off everything that belonged to the Alliance. Even at 1785 prices she went for a fraction of her true worth. A consortium under Benjamin Eyre, the shipwright who had assessed her condition with Barry two years earlier, bought her for £2,887, the equivalent of $7,700. Eyre paid with “Morris notes”–certificates of public debt, purchased at 2 shillings 3 pence on the pound.80
Thousands of miles away in the Mediterranean, Algerian corsairs captured a second Philadelphia ship. Soon the press ran amok with rumors, including one that the London Packet, in Thomas Truxton's capable hands and bearing Benjamin Franklin home from France, was also seized. Her arrival at the Capes laid that story to rest. Secretary of Treasury John Jay's idea to build “five forty Gun ships” placed “under Direction of a brave experienced Commodore” was wishful thinking.81
This crisis and the sale of his beloved Alliance were not as present in Barry's mind as was his ongoing crusade to recover the rest of his back pay and prize money. Some prize shares had arrived, but his accounts were still under audit.82 With Morris out of office, his bills were reviewed by men who did not know Barry nearly as well. Nor, did it seem to him, that they cared a whit if the debts to navy veterans were ever paid.83
Thomas Read was back in town. Richard Henry Lee, one of the earliest advocates for a navy, was now President of Congress. Read and Barry saw his appointment as a slim chance to be heard and, hopefully, paid. With many officers living hand-to-mouth and Congress's rejection of the Widow Young's petition, they delivered a joint memorial to Congress for themselves and “the other Officers of the Continental Navy.” Possibly ghostwritten by John Brown, it was a logical plea for justice, calling attention to the fact “that they are the only Class of Officers in the United States who remain neglected and totally unprovided for,” they petitioned “that they may be placed on a footing similar to that of their Brother Officers in the Land Services as to Half-pay or Commutation and Lands.” Weeks passed. “We never heard anything of it,” Barry complained. With Lee's compliance, the memorial died in committee.84
Two years had passed since Barry was last at sea, and he was restless, watching inferior captains get plum assignments. Now that Green (whom Barry still held in contempt) had proven Morris correct about China, friends like Truxton were being enticed to sail to the other side of the world for adventure and profit. With no results coming from his letters and memorials to Congress, Barry began to see China as his only way of restoring his financial fortune—and he had new reasons besides the simple justice of collecting his well-earned money.
His first was a new address. In the fall of 1785 he sold his Spruce Street home and, taking what money he and Sarah had, bought a “plantation”—actually a farm—called Strawberry Hill. Located three miles above Philadelphia in Northern Liberties, the estate consisted of sixty-two acres of fields and woods, and looked down over the Delaware River to Petty's Island. It shared a carriage path off Frankford Road with Elias Boudinot's estate, Rose Hill.85
The second reason was his health. He was forty, with thirty years at sea behind him. Besides his aching shoulder, he was having occasional difficulty breathing. Over time the attacks increased in length and frequency. Sometimes symptoms warned him of a spell; sometimes it came on without warning. Some ended in seconds, some fought him for days. It was asthma.86
Philadelphia had one of the hemisphere's foremost experts on the disease. Benjamin Rush first wrote a treatise on asthma back in 1770, advocating warm baths and questioning whether the disease was contagious.87 Rush began treating Barry after his return from Virginia in 1783 and physician and patient became close confidantes for the rest of Barry's life. While “Bleeding . . . I believe, has done more harm than good,” he did bleed Barry. The captain was confined to his home for a month; four visits from Rush, including a “physician's courtesy” discount, cost Barry £1.15.88 In addition to bleeding, other remedies were prescribed and tried on Barry. One contemporary patient “obtained relief by the use of anti-spasmodic and expectorant medicines” although his “stomach was often disordered by their influence.” His doctor used the patient's own words to describe the treatment's results: “I inhaled the medicated vapor . . . before going to rest. The first sensations it occasioned me, were slight fatigue and breathing, and an aching pain in the breast; which, however, subsided by degrees; and when expectoration took place . . . I felt completed relieved.”89
If the hazards of years at sea combined with life in a dirty, eighteenth-century city were part of Barry's world, so too now was the life of an asthmatic. Over the years Rush tinkered with his patient's treatments, but the prognosis for Barry's health was grim. Physicians already knew that chronic asthma hardened the lining of the lungs, and the resultant effect on both breathing and the heart. By 1785 there was a host of treatments, from what was considered state-of-the-art science to folk cures. Different herbs were inhaled, as was turpentine and vinegar; one “fanciful idea” was “the desiccation of marshmallows.”90
Strawberry Hill's bucolic setting made it as much a sanitarium as it was a country estate (it also extended Rush's travel time and, hence, his bill). The Barrys loved their new home, and the captain shared this joy in his correspondence. “I find you have entirely removed in the Country & bid adieu to the City,” one friend wrote.91
That fall, Barry, along with his naval comrades, was recognized by his peers from the Continental Army—for service if not by payment—and elected to the Society of the Cincinnati. The group took its name from Cincinnatus, the legendary citizen-warrior who dropped his plowshare for his sword, defeated Rome's enemies, secured the restoration of its republic, and returned to his fields—an allegory obviously meant to flatter Washington. For Henry Knox, the society was an opportunity for officers to keep in touch through reunions, promote charitable interests, and serve as a tangible reminder that their cause—liberty—was an ongoing struggle. Washington was named the society's first president. Membership would be passed down to surviving sons. The organization's emblem—the bald eagle, and Cincinnatus himself—was embossed on certificates of membership and medals given to each member. The logo soon found its way to Canton, where it was etched on fine china ordered by society members. Thomas Paine, asked to write a song about the society, did so with enthusiasm.92
While Knox saw the society as a chance for peaceful camaraderie, and Washington welcomed it as a harmless organization honoring the service of his brave officers, others viewed it differently. Alexander Hamilton believed it was a wondrous opportunity for political advancement. Noncombatants viewed it with derision; to Samuel Adams, it was a “rapid stride towards a hereditary military nobility.” Benjamin Franklin, calling it an “order of hereditary knights,” acerbically suggested that membership be passed “up to parents rather than down to children.” It inspired his essay nominating the wild turkey—“a bird of courage”—as the national bird, rather than the eagle—“a bird of bad moral character” and a “rank coward . . . by no means a proper emblem for the brave and honest Cincinnati, who have driven all the king birds from our country.”93
Along with Jones and other naval captains, Barry accepted the offer to join, but like Washington, he stayed above—and away from—any vested partisanship found throughout the society. His pride as a member was documented for history; years later, when he sat for a portrait by Gilbert Stuart, his medal was prominently displayed upon his chest.94
By March 1786, the war had been over for three years, but Barry was still pursuing payment for some services he had rendered in 1776. When one of Pennell's bean counters finally answered Barry's inquiries with a condescending letter, Barry fired back a warning that he would gladly come to New York to demand his money. Another bureaucrat admonished him “that it is unnecessary for you at this time to come to New York,” as “Congress had displaced Mr. Pennell with Colonel Benjamin Walker”—who also ignored Barry's letters regarding long overdue payment. When Walker finally answered one of Barry's posted broadsides, it was bureaucracy at its finest: “None of the books or papers of the Alliance in this office extend beyond 1781,” he wrote, asking Barry to come up with the missing records. The shell game continued. Even after he presented the Alliance's books, Walker begged “leave to refer you for more particulars.”95
As best they could, John and Sarah were enjoying their new social life, hosting dinners at Strawberry Hill. In addition to meetings of “the Sea-Captains Club,” Barry attended monthly dinners of the Hibernian Fire Company. These overreaching “firefighters” were among the wealthiest and best-known Philadelphians, including Morris, Brown, Charles Biddle, and Matthew Meas, purser from the Bonhomme Richard (and badly wounded at Flamborough Head). Missing any meetings did not result in fines as long as Barry kept “his Buckets, Bags and Basket” in town.96 Most members were budding Federalists, having witnessed first-hand the ineptitude of the Articles of Confederation.
William Austin continued writing Barry from Nova Scotia, grateful for the news of the restitution of the family property, which allowed Barry “to pay any person I am indebted to which will be a great consolation to me.” Asking Barry “to keep this matter to yourself,” Austin wrote freely, praising the “Bounty and goodness” of the British government “in making compensation to those poor people”—himself included—“who have suffered” the confiscation of their American property. Now persona non grata to his siblings, Austin asked his brother-in-law to “give my Love to my Sister and Brother.” He also passed on to Barry how much Nova Scotia had changed “since you was here,” sailing the Industry before the war, in what seemed a different lifetime.97
By the end of 1786 Barry and many former naval officers were past bitterness over lack of congressional recognition or assistance. They soon had company. In western Massachusetts, Daniel Shays, a veteran of Bunker Hill, organized the first revolt against farm foreclosures and skyrocketing tax assessments. A fearful Congress authorized Knox to lead a force against the rag-tag New Englanders. Shays's Rebellion illuminated the impotency of Congress. More and more Americans were coming to the conclusion already reached by groups like the Hibernian Fire Company—a stronger government might be the only way the infant United States of America would ever learn to walk.98
For Barry, public and financial issues took a back seat for at least one spring day in 1787, when he received word that the ship Rising Sun was approaching Philadelphia, back from a voyage to Wexford. Her captain was Barry's friend John Rossiter, another Wexford emigrant. Standing on the dock, the Barrys waited anxiously while the gangplank was lowered and the passengers disembarked. Then they saw Rossiter with two teenage boys, soon swept up in the welcoming arms of their uncle and tearful embrace of their aunt.99
Michael Hayes, the oldest at eighteen, explained his sister Eleanor's absence: recently married, she chose to remain in Ireland. Sixteen-year-old brother Patrick was slim and boyishly good-looking, possessing the family's cramped facial features above a well-defined jawline, his eyes more piercing than his uncle's. After a fine meal in town, the Barrys brought Michael and Patrick to their new home at Strawberry Hill.100
Michael soon returned to service on the Rising Sun, bound to Jamaica.101 Patrick must have felt like a frog turned prince. Strawberry Hill was heaven to him. At that age Barry had already begun taking on the world, with no parental compass. Now he was determined to provide that guidance. Sarah was already a veteran at caring for a relative's children. The childless Barrys would raise Patrick as the son they never had.
By mid-1787 the China trade was no longer a novelty. No less than four American vessels were at the anchorage at Whampoa Reach, including the Canton—the former London Packet—with Truxton as captain and part owner. Even the Alliance sailed for China. Benjamin Eyre's partners could not afford her upkeep, and she was snatched up by none other than Robert Morris. With the same speed in which he and Barry refit peacetime vessels for war in the early days of the Revolution, Morris had her in prime condition, with James Read as captain and Richard Dale as first mate.102
Finally, Barry's turn came. No less than seventeen investors, Morris and Stephen Girard among them, were financing construction of the Asia, built specifically for the China trade. Her shipwright was Joseph Marsh, one of Philadelphia's best. At nearly four hundred tons, she was smaller than the Alliance, but better designed for trade than the old frigate. The Asia was the prototype of a new design, the Philadelphia China trader, and compared favorably to the classic merchantman of the East India Company. In June, her owners journeyed up Frankford Road to Strawberry Hill and requested the honor of having Barry serve as captain for her maiden voyage. While he did not need to be asked twice, he negotiated well for himself. His prospective shares in the undertaking could make him a wealthy man—if he was successful.103
His good news brought mixed emotions from Sarah. Happy as she was for her husband, she knew it meant a two-year separation, and became even more sorrowful when he announced that Patrick would accompany him.
Barry enthusiastically dove into his new responsibilities. His first mate was James Josiah, age thirty-six, a florid-faced, dark-eyed man who wore his hair in an eighteenth-century version of a mullet. He served in the war with Nicholas Biddle and later as a privateer. Josiah, like Dale, did not mind a subordinate position when it meant a chance for a voyage like this. His appointment was Barry's first entry in the Asia's letterbook.104
By September most of his crew had signed on; within two weeks of the Asia's launching, Josiah began overseeing storage of her cargo. Her hull and stern were beautifully decorated, and a handsome figurehead glistened on the bow, carved by the famous William Rush. It was said of Rush's craftsmanship on the Asia's sister ship, the Ganges, that Calcutta residents “knelt and prayed to the River God figure head” he designed.105
Readying the Asia kept Barry occupied, commuting daily on horseback from Strawberry Hill. But throughout that summer he was working in the shadows of the Constitutional Convention, the most important meeting in Philadelphia since the drafting of the Declaration of Independence. Since May, most of America's best and brightest political minds (Adams and Jefferson were in Europe) were sequestered in the State House, scheming, quarrelling, stonewalling, and compromising, in order to form a more perfect union.
Every day Benjamin Franklin, now eighty-one and racked with pain from a kidney stone, arrived in a sedan chair carried by four inmates from Walnut Street Prison.106 Washington served as president of the convention.107 On September 17, under “unanimous consent of the States,” the new government was announced.108 It had taken four years to write and organize the Articles of Confederation. It took only four months to draw up the Constitution.109
Now attention turned to the states to ratify the new document. Well-drawn lines divided the political camps in the Pennsylvania Assembly. Most Philadelphians, along with their neighbors in the surrounding counties, favored the newly proposed federal government—it would assist and encourage business and growth. However, their counterparts from the rural counties saw it as the establishment of the divine rights of presidents, congressmen, and judges. In their eyes, any improvement in government efficiency, commercial growth, or a centralized monetary system was offset by perceived restrictions of the rights of the individual. For Barry and his navy friends, adoption of the new Constitution meant one thing: their last, best chance to finally get paid.
On September 28, Franklin's sedan chair carried him once again to the State House; the senior delegate to the recent Constitutional Convention was also President of the State Assembly. He informed his sixty-eight colleagues of his “very great satisfaction” on the convention's results (he also secretly revealed his closing remarks, the famous “rising sun” speech, to intensify public support).110 Representatives from the backwoods counties were to a man against the Constitution, but their eastern counterparts, more numerous in number, were united in support of it.
Even though the Constitutional Convention was over, the assembly still gathered upstairs in chambers recently renovated as a carbon copy of their usual downstairs haunt.111 The desks faced in the same direction, and the “gallery”—a cordoned-off area taking up about fifteen percent of the room—was filled with spectators. Anyone with a vested interest in the outcome could attend these sessions. Barry was a regular.
These sessions were Franklin's swan song. While slyly espousing that “I do not entirely approve of this Constitution,” he desperately wanted it ratified, but followed Washington's example, keeping silent throughout the sessions. Speaker Thomas Mifflin read the long document to his colleagues. When he concluded, the gallery exploded in applause. The following day it was published in the local press, with five hundred copies printed in German for those Americans who did not speak English. The Constitution's supporters were led by men Barry knew well, including Mifflin, George Clymer, and recent convention delegate Thomas Fitzsimons. The opposition was led by James McCalmont, Jacob Miley, and James Barr.112
Fifty years old, McCalmont hailed from upper Strasbourg; at six feet four inches he was a figure to be reckoned with. He was a renowned Indian fighter, war hero, and major in the Pennsylvania militia, with a reputation as a great runner in his youth. His ability to load and accurately fire his musket at full sprint was legendary. He won Franklin County's first state election in 1784, and easily transferred his talents for confrontation, infighting, and gamesmanship from the backwoods to the Assembly chamber.113
The battle for ratification commenced. Words and blood pressure ran high; Clymer, leading the Federalists, tried to steamroller ratification, while McCalmont and the anti-Federalists, equally passionate, were determined to “oppose the measure by every possible argument.”114 To add to the tension, the debate was being fought within a shrinking calendar. The assembly was adjourning at the end of the month to allow members to go home and campaign for reelection.115 Clymer's Federalists held a two-to-one advantage, but McCalmont's anti-Federalists skillfully stonewalled attempts at passage. If they succeeded, they could delay voting on ratification by a year—perhaps even defeat it. Barry's friends in the assembly wanted Pennsylvania to be the first state to ratify the Constitution. McCalmont's side wanted to kill it.116
Friday the twenty-eighth came; Mifflin called the assembly into order. When the issue of new business came up, Clymer rose to speak. Citing “business of the highest magnitude,” he moved for a state convention to ratify the Constitution. As debate flew back and forth across the room, Fitzsimons proposed that the motion be amended, calling for “an election of delegates.” A motion by the anti-Federalists to postpone the proposal was defeated. Clymer's brother Daniel argued that the Constitution was “too generally agreeable, and too highly recommended, to be assassinated by the hand of intrigue and cabal.” A vote for the proposed selection of delegates would resolve the issue by December 1787; a vote against would delay debate to December 1788. While Barry and others watched intently, the Federalists began to shout “question!” in unison and the vote was called. The resolution passed, 43 to 19, and the gallery and Federalists lustily cheered. A motion to recess until four o'clock resoundingly passed, and the assembly went their various ways, in groups and individuals, leaving the building in search of a meal. Barry and the gallery followed.117
Around four, Barry rejoined the crowd in the gallery to witness the Federalists' victory. The representatives ambled in—only not nearly as many as had left earlier. The clock struck four. All nineteen anti-Federalists were missing. Their absence was their trump card: now, there was no quorum. There could be no vote.118
The sergeant-at-arms was ordered to search for them. Before long he returned; having found seventeen representatives at Major Boyd's boarding house, he reminded them of their duty, only to be told that “there is no House.” Mifflin, reviewing the Assembly's by-laws, found no clause that forced members to attend, only a fine for their absence.119 The Federalists had been outfoxed; one lamented, “If there was no way to compel them who deserted from duty to perform it, then God be merciful to us!” A collective groan came from the gallery as the forty-three Federalists cast dismayed eyes at Mifflin. Disgusted, he called a recess until 9:30 the next morning.120
Barry and the crowd stomped down the steps and out into the Indian summer weather. Everyone knew what would happen the next morning: another no-show by the anti-Federalists. Without a quorum, there would be no convention, perhaps no ratification for a year. How many absent assemblymen were needed to have a quorum? Barry knew the answer: two.