“I have nowhere else to go,” I said, and grieved anew that it was true.
Death had unmoored me. It didn’t help that my birthday fell in deep December, when the days were short and dark and the spring still so far away. I’d saved enough for a spinning wheel and a loom, and spent long hours at both, but I needed the sun on my face and had no outlet for the boundless energy that bubbled and spit during the dormancy of winter. I chopped more wood than we could use and cleared the entire barnyard of snow. Jerry complained that I made him look bad, but with his brothers gone, there was more work for everyone.
I received a letter from John Paterson. It was dated six months earlier. Before Sylvanus died, before David and Daniel left. Before. Before. Before. But that it arrived on my birthday, a day I had looked forward to for so many years and now mourned, seemed providential.
He’d been made a brigadier general. His name, rank, and Newburgh Encampment were written above the wax seal. He had received my letter about the declaration, though that seemed a lifetime ago. I wondered how long it had bounced through the inconsistent and beleaguered post to finally catch up to him. We’d received a letter from Nat, the only letter we’d ever received, after he was already gone. My zest for the conversation, in the face of all that had been lost, had waned considerably, but as I read, my passion was restored.
Elizabeth said John had been sent to Canada with four brigades and sent back again when the campaign was abandoned. His regiment had been ravaged by disease and exposure, and the six hundred men he’d left New York with had been whittled down to half that when he rejoined General Lee just in time for Fort Washington to be taken by the British and Lee to be taken prisoner and then branded a traitor. John Paterson should have been disconsolate, but the letter held not a word of complaint.
June 23, 1777
Dear Miss Samson,
It is not for the man who has everything and wants more that we fight, but for the man who has nothing. In no place on earth can a man or woman who is born into certain circumstances ever hope to truly escape them. Our lots are cast from the moment we inhabit our mothers’ wombs, from the moment we draw breath. But perhaps that can change here, in this land.
Our lives are so short. Very little of what you or I do will be felt in this generation or even in the next. Your forefathers—such a pedigree you have—set foot on this continent more than 150 years ago. We will never know what it cost them to cross a sea toward a dream, yet here we are.
What will life look like 150 years from now? I suspect our descendants will take us for granted, just like we take our ancestors for granted. No one will remember John Paterson when that time comes. Even my children’s children will have no real knowledge of me or what I dreamed of, but God willing, they will reap the rewards of my efforts.
Many wonder what it is all for. I wonder what it is all for. And yet that truth, the truth of the ages, is that it is not for ourselves that we act. It is not our lives we are building, but the lives of generations that will come. America will be a beacon to the world—I believe that with all my heart—but that beacon is lit with sacrifice.
You should go to Lenox, to Paterson House. Elizabeth would welcome you. She calls you little sister. It is not Paris, but should you need a new frontier, you are welcome in our home. Two of my sisters and my mother live nearby—my beloved sister Ruth passed away last January—and it is a great comfort to me that they all have each other. As for me, I do not know when I will return. I hardly know what I have gotten myself into, and pray only for the strength to see it through.
John Paterson, Brigadier General
It was a speech so beautiful and impassioned that I wore it out with rereading and memorized whole passages, marveling endlessly that I’d even received such a communication. I suspected it was not so much a letter for me as it was a reminder to himself, as if John Paterson had needed to buoy himself up in a moment of frailty. It was his declaration to the world, and I’d simply been fortunate enough to read it.
All the best young men were gone, the educated and unlearned alike, and Middleborough had no one to teach the children their lessons. When I learned of the position, I volunteered, and Deacon and Mrs. Thomas vouched for my abilities.
“She knows much of the Bible by heart and reads and writes like a true scholar,” Deacon Thomas attested, and I was given the position, though my compensation was limited to the generosity of the families I served.
“We will consider more pay when you have proven yourself,” the local magistrate said, and I agreed, though I never saw a single shilling from him in the time I taught in the one-room schoolhouse near the Third Baptist Church.