Chapter Twelve
BOSTON
Massachusetts Bay Colony
My decision could not be reconsidered; once we entered Boston we wouldn’t be able to leave without a physician’s certificate.
But I did not have second thoughts. With my children, I patiently submitted to being smoked along with all our money and papers,
as this was said to help prevent contagion.
Then we passed into Boston, a scene of such destruction as I never could have imagined. Eleven months Boston had been under
siege, and now we passed a burned-out church, piles of rubble where houses used to be, and a stump was all that remained of
Boston’s Liberty Tree. Castle William was half blown to bits, and the Old South Meeting House was covered in manure, for the
British had used it as a stable.
The British had left everything filthy, falling down, or forsaken—including our old house on Queen Street. One of our rooms
had been used for poultry, another for coal, and a third for salt. The floors were mildewed, the ceiling collapsing, and the
paper falling from the walls. I’d hire a girl to clean it and do my best to rent or sell it, but I feared it must be condemned.
I fisted my hands, thankful at least that not all the houses were destroyed. One of my uncles’s town houses was in good, but spare, condition. There we were reunited with
my sisters and their children, for we had all agreed to my plan to convalesce together. It was the most ideal situation I
could conceive of to take the smallpox by way of controlled dose.
“Two percent don’t survive the treatment,” fretted my older sister, Mary.
To which my younger sister, Elizabeth, argued, “But a person is much more certain to die of smallpox if contracted the natural way.”
Nodding in agreement, I said, “Twenty to thirty percent die if they haven’t been inoculated. Simply hoping never to catch
it the natural way cannot be chanced.”
Still it was a frightful risk to take with my children’s lives. I’d write to John about it only after the deed was done. He
was sweltering in Philadelphia, debating a proposed declaration of independence. Nothing good could come of terrifying him
for his family’s lives.
I’d be frightened enough for the both of us.
I took the inoculation first—allowing the doctor to make a small incision in my forearm into which he placed an infected,
pus-laden thread. Then I lined up the children, from oldest to youngest.
“Will it hurt?” Nabby asked, biting her lower lip and tugging at her lace cuff.
“A little,” I said of the cut. “But whatever comes, I will be right here with you.”
I am giving my child smallpox, some part of my mind screamed. If I should lose her, I would never recover. But the threat would come one way or the other.
So, I would be with her through it all; that was my solemn vow.
I felt an echoing pain as the knife pierced her tender flesh and bright red blood flowed down to her elbow. But Nabby only
winced at the cut, for which I was desperately grateful.
She provided a good example for her brothers, each of whom stood the operation stoically, like good little soldiers!
Nine-year-old Johnny watched the doctor work with obvious fascination. Six-year-old Charlie cheekily offered the doctor his
toy horse if he wouldn’t make it hurt too much. Finally, nearly four-year-old Tommy turned his mop of unruly hair into my
shoulder with a whimper, but not a cry. And I promised them, “Once recovered, none of us need ever worry about smallpox again.”
Even so, it was an anxious affair.
Mary and her little ones showed so few symptoms that we feared it had not taken—but in a house nearby, Mrs. Warren lay so
dangerously ill her life was despaired of. I sent up a prayer for her, for I could not imagine the world without my courageous
friend and mentor. For my part, my eyes were aflame, but only one eruption appeared on my arm. Johnny had it exactly as one
would wish—enough to be sick but not troubled. Unfortunately, Nabby and the younger boys showed no symptoms and had to go
through it all a second time to make sure the treatment took.
As per the doctor’s instructions, we lay upon the carpet or straw beds or anything hard, abstaining from spirits, salt, and
fats. Fruit we ate, and those who liked vegetables unseasoned could eat them, but that was not me. My easier trial allowed
me to take constant care of my babes, for which I was grateful. Because I would do everything to return them to health, making
me empathize with what I’d always felt was my mother’s oversolicitousness. Somewhere in heaven, she was giving me a knowing
smile.
And there were some compensations as we convalesced. For one thing, I had the finest room in my uncle’s house. The window
overlooked the flower garden, which was in full bloom. I’d always wanted a closet with a window I could claim all for myself
in which to read and write my letters. It was there that I read John’s most recent missive.
Someone told him I was in Boston.
The secret was out.
And now my husband wrote, “I feel like a savage to be here while my whole family will be sick in Boston. It is not possible
for me to describe my feelings upon this occasion. Nothing but the critical state of our affairs should prevent me from flying
to Boston to your assistance. Spare for nothing; I will repay with gratitude and interest any sum you borrow.”
Poor John. There was little he could do for us, so I merely asked him to send me more pins and some real tea from Philadelphia.
The true stuff was the only medicine I knew that might soothe our headaches and sore throats.
In the meantime, from our windows, we noticed patriot troops flooding into the streets under arms. I went outside and heard the buzz drifting about Boston.
“A proclamation from congress—”
“—what? Independency?—”
“Come to King Street and hear it read.”
At last! I knew my husband was on the committee charged with drafting a proclamation of independence. He’d been working for
weeks with Dr. Franklin and a Virginian named Thomas Jefferson, and then Congress itself had debated and rewritten it until
they could finally get every colony to agree to its wording. That unanimity achieved, I now hungered to hear it. Gathering
my skirts, I joined the multitudes in front of the redbrick State House.
From the little balcony overlooking the square, the words of the Declaration of Independence were read aloud, and I nearly
swooned at their boldness.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain
unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments
are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed . . .
I recognized John’s sentiments in it, but the words did not ring with his style. Instead, they seemed a perfect distillation
of the collective voice of the people. Almost like the sacred words of God . . .
I’d later learn that the wielder of so eloquent a pen wasn’t my husband but the young Mr. Jefferson. At the time, all I knew
was that these words stirred my very soul.
A fishwife come late to the reading leaned in to ask me, “What does it say?”
“It’s enumerating the king’s abuses,” I replied quickly. “Explaining why he is a tyrant, and why we will throw him off or
die trying.”
The catalog of despotism went on in more detail, in better order and with lovelier language than I was able to memorize in
one hearing. But I understood, and felt deeply, the truth of each accusation.
That the king had excited insurrections against us.
Imposed tariffs without consent. Deprived the legislature of their rightful power.
Undermined and corrupted the courts. Harassed and threatened public officials.
Obstructed immigration. Sent soldiers against us in peacetime.
Put military authority above civil authority.
Quartered armed troops among us. Deprived us of due process and trial by jury.
Sent prisoners to foreign lands to be tried for pretended offenses.
Plundered our seas. Ravaged our coasts. Burned our towns. And destroyed the lives of our people.
To hear it listed for all the world lifted my soul more than any Sabbath meeting of my life. I no longer felt the aches of
lingering smallpox, nor the grime of dust upon my skin, nor the sun’s heat on my bonnet. What I felt was bathed and baptized
in the refreshing truths.
And while I basked in it, the crowd went wild.
“Huzzah!”
“God Save our American states!”
“Heaven protect our Union!”
People swarmed the State House, pulling down the gilded lion and unicorn of the king’s arms and tearing from the facade every
vestige of royalty to be burnt in a bonfire.
We would have no more king. We would be colonies no more. We would be our own new nation. We would be free and we must be free.
John had made this possible. He was, I thought, a hero for the ages. And this made me wish to be a heroine. It’d been nearly
six months since I asked him to remember the ladies. Now I felt obligated to try again.
“My dearest friend,” I wrote, still in raptures. “If we mean to have heroes, statesmen and philosophers in this new nation,
we should have learned women. The world perhaps would laugh at me, but you have a mind too enlarged and liberal to disregard
the sentiment.” Then, to twit him, lest he get too much vanity as a hero, I added, “Don’t forget my tea, for your own sake
as well as mine.”