Chapter Fourteen #2
“He can’t just leave us, can he?” Johnny asked. “Not in the middle of haying.”
“He’s a free man in what we hope to make a free country,” I said, realizing that I had no cause to blame the man for having
been tempted away with an offer of one hundred dollars. Congress had issued continental currency to finance the army, resulting
in dizzying inflation. Money was already worth only a third of what it used to be, and soon our currency would be worth less
than blank paper.
When I explained this to Johnny, he asked, “What’s inflation?”
“It means the money we hold today will buy less tomorrow.”
My boy looked thoughtful. “Then shouldn’t we buy as much as possible today?”
“If it’s something that keeps or can easily sell . . .”
Congress was promising to pay 6 percent interest on war bonds. It was, as far as I knew, the only way of defending our savings
against depreciation. So that night I sent money to the loan office. Of course, I couldn’t keep this secret like my pin money.
And I feared my husband’s judgment because John held so-called stockjobbers and “paper men” in low regard. But thankfully,
he was far too absorbed in his work in Philadelphia to lecture me; instead, he expressed gratitude for a friend who looked
after his interests so well.
Meanwhile, I eagerly awaited his promised return to be with me for the impending birth of our child. If the birth should go
hard, at least I’d be comforted by John’s presence. When I closed my eyes, I could still remember him whispering, “I am yours, yours, yours . . .”
Then I received brutal evidence to the contrary.
John’s latest letter sent me retreating behind a bolted door to the darkest corner of the bedroom where I sobbed secretly
into my hands. He said he couldn’t return for the birth of our child. Nor could he be with me for the delicate months after.
For Washington’s victories at Trenton and Princeton weren’t enough.
We were losing the war.
John was needed in Congress, where he presided over the Board of War, so he would not, could not, keep his promise to come home.
I had done well, so far, without him. But how could I manage our home and our farmhands from childbed? I had little choice
but to go to my husband’s only surviving brother for help—a brother who testily reminded me that he had hay of his own to
bring in.
In the end, it was left to me and my children and our few hired hands. We did our best. Nabby carried water for the men. Johnny
drove the hay cart and used a rake to turn the field. Charlie rescued critters who put themselves in the way of the scythes,
thereby befriending a singing sparrow that he made his pet.
Even little Tommy tried to help when he saw some hens robbing the pea vines. He went into the garden to shoo them, but someone
had carelessly set a scythe, and he ran against it, badly cutting his leg.
We had to send for my good Uncle Tufts to come sew it up.
“Your little ones are too young for dangerous work, Abigail,” Uncle Tufts scolded, rolling his sleeves up to help with some
farm chores that were much beneath his dignity and training. “As much as your Johnny wishes he was ready to be the man of
the house, he cannot yet carry the burden.”
I thanked him profusely, shaking my head, not knowing what would become of us were it not for Cotton Tufts. “What my boys
need is a preparation for manhood that only a father can provide.”
“Their father is still in a better position to help them than some,” he said, reminding me that my brother, Bill, serving
as captain of the marines on a privateer ship, had been captured by the British. He, too, was a father of little children
and now I had to worry he might starve on one of those prison ships.
Not long after, I carried that worry with all the others into my own personal battle upon the midwife’s chair, pulling hard
on the cloth straps as I strained to bring forth another child.
Tragically, it was a battle lost before it had even begun.
For nine months I had pleased myself with the idea of presenting to my husband a fine babe, born into a free country. But
those dreams were now buried in a little grave, transitory as the morning cloud, short-lived as the dewdrops.
Another ill-fated daughter.
She had been a very fine babe, with hair as dark as mine. When she was born, it looked as though her eyes were only closed for sleep. But she’d
died in my womb in the small hours of the morning when I awakened to convulsions.
I’d known even as I heaved and screamed upon that birthing chair that I would deliver a dead babe. As the drying blood chilled
my thighs and no cry came, I realized I would have to bury another child—a daughter without even a name. Tiny lips tinged
with blue, tiny fists with rigid fingers that never once opened to reach for me in this world. A daughter with no father at
home to press a farewell kiss to her little brow before putting her in the ground.
I was convinced that if I hadn’t been so distressed, the babe would have lived. Blame stole into my painful grief as I sobbed
over the little body. I blamed the British. I blamed the king. And I tried desperately not to blame my husband.
I understood why he hadn’t come home. I knew his time was not his own, nor mine.
Nevertheless, John had made a vow to me—not only respecting this pregnancy in particular, but also in marriage itself, to
forsake all others. A vow he’d made before God.
Yet, in a choice between ensuring the safety and happiness of his wife and child, or that of the country being birthed, John
had chosen the country. And I was only beginning to understand that he always would.