CHAPTER V

THE WAR OFFICE IN THE CEDARS――AN INDIAN TALE――INCIDENTS

The old war office at Lebanon, Conn., is still to be seen. That war office is a relic room and a library now. The great cedars are gone that once surrounded it, and the old Alden Tavern, which was enlivened by colonial tales, and in later times by the queer Revolutionary tale of the humiliation of the captured Prescott, has now left behind it the borders of the village green. The ground where Washington reviewed the army of Rochambeau is still held sacred, and near by rises the church of the Revolution, and in a wind-swept New England graveyard, on the hillside, in a crumbling tomb, sleeps Governor Trumbull, Washington’s “Brother Jonathan,” whom the great leader of the soldier commoners used to consult in every stress of the war.

In the same lot of rude, mossy, zigzag headstones rests one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, William Williams, who married Governor Trumbull’s daughter.

This place of rare history stands apart from the main traveled roads. To reach it, go to Willimantic, and take a branch railroad to Lebanon, which town of hidden farms was so called from its cedars.

What a wonder to a lover of history this place is! The farms, with orchards, great barns and meadows, rise on the hill-slopes as beautiful as they are thrifty. The town is some two or more miles from the railroad, and the visitor wonders how a place that decided the greatest events of history could have been left to primitive life, simplicity, and country roads, amid all the industrial activities that circle round it in near great factory towns.

There may be seen the New England of old――the same bowery landscapes and walls that the rugged farmers knew, who left their plows for Bunker Hill, after the Lexington alarm. Putnam often rode over these hills, and young John Trumbull, as we have shown, began his historical pictures there.

The little gambrel-roofed house called the war office, where the greatest and most decisive events of the Revolution had their origin, or support, was probably the country store of Governor Trumbull’s father, and was erected near the beginning of the eighteenth century.

Why did this little building gain this great importance, an importance greater than any other, except, perhaps, the old State House, Boston, and Independence Hall, Philadelphia? Let us repeat some facts for clearness.

Lebanon of the cedars lay on the direct road to Boston, and was connected with the principal Connecticut towns. There was sounded the Lexington alarm. The Connecticut Assembly delegated great powers to a committee of public safety. Governor Trumbull, who was the leading spirit of it, and three other members, resided in Lebanon, and held the early sessions of the committee there. This committee continued its sessions here during the war.

The house occupied by Governor Trumbull still stands, as we have said, but the tavern is gone.

The writer dined in the house a few months before beginning this story, and was shown the part of the house where the alarm-post, as we call the guard’s room, and overlook, were.

We give a picture of this most interesting house, one of the most significant in the country. The spirit of the Revolution dwelt there, and from this place it exercised a wonderful but unseen power.

The Connecticut Society of the Sons of the Revolution in the winter of 1890–’91 made provision for the preservation of the war office, as a notable relic of the Revolution.

The building was repaired. The oak framework was found to be sound, and the decayed sills were replaced by new timber, and the chimney was restored and furnished with colonial firepieces from old houses in Lebanon. Andirons made in the Revolution, old iron cranes, and primitive utensils were brought to the council room, and the place of the meetings of the Committee of Public Safety was thus made to resume the aspect of a bygone age of the farmer heroes.

The celebration of the restoration of the war office by the Sons of the Revolution took place May 14, 1891, on Flag-day, when there waved a flag with the motto of “Brother Jonathan” in company with the Star-Spangled Banner.

On that occasion the modern American flag was raised over the old war office for the first time, where

Jonathan Trumbull never failed In his store on Lebanon Hill.

Jonathan Trumbull has well been called the Cedar of Lebanon. The story of his early life is that of one of nature’s independent noblemen, than which no title is higher. His own brains and hands caused him to be a powerful influence; he made character, and character made him; he became poor, but nothing lives but righteousness, and character is everything.

The origin of his family name is interesting.

A Scottish king was out hunting, and was attacked by a bull. A young peasant threw himself before the king, twisted the bull’s horns, and saved the king’s life. The king gave him the name of “Turnbull,” with a coat of arms and the motto, _Fortuna favet audaci_. Hence the name Trumbull.

The wife of Trumbull, as we have shown, came from a family equally noble. She was the great-granddaughter of Robinson of Leyden, the patriarch of the church of the Pilgrim Fathers in Holland. It was he who said to the Pilgrims on their departure: “Go ye forth into the wilderness, and new light shall break forth from the Word.”

He had intended to follow the Pilgrims to America, but died in Holland.

Jonathan Trumbull was born in Lebanon, Conn., 1710. He was a successful trader at sea for a time; he then lost his ships and property and became a poor man, when he was called into the public service, and from that time devoted himself to patriotic duties, without any thought of poverty or riches, but only to fulfil the duties into which he had been called. He lived not for himself, but for others; not for the present, but for the future; he forgot himself, and it was fame.

His son, John Trumbull, the famous historical painter, pictures by anecdotes some of the scenes of his early home. Among these incidents is the following story, which carries its own lesson:

AN INDIAN TALE

“At the age of nine or ten a circumstance occurred which deserves to be written on adamant. In the wars of New England with the aborigines, the Mohegan tribe of Indians early became friends of the English. Their favorite ground was on the banks of the river (now the Thames) between New London and Norwich. A small remnant of the Mohegans still exists, and they are sacredly protected in the possession and enjoyment of their favorite domain on the banks of the Thames. The government of this tribe had become hereditary in the family of the celebrated chief Uncas. During the time of my father’s mercantile prosperity he had employed several Indians of this tribe in hunting animals, whose skins were valuable for their fur. Among these hunters was one named Zachary, of the royal race, an excellent hunter, but as drunken and worthless an Indian as ever lived. When he had somewhat passed the age of fifty, several members of the royal family who stood between Zachary and the throne of his tribe died, and he found himself with only one life between him and empire. In this moment his better genius resumed its sway, and he reflected seriously. ‘How can such a drunken wretch as I am aspire to be the chief of this honorable race――what will my people say――and how will the shades of my noble ancestors look down indignant upon such a base successor? Can I succeed to the great Uncas? I will drink no more!’ He solemnly resolved never again to taste any drink but water, and he kept his resolution.

“I had heard this story, and did not entirely believe it; for young as I was, I already partook in the prevailing contempt for Indians. In the beginning of May, the annual election of the principal officers of the (then) colony was held at Hartford, the capital. My father attended officially, and it was customary for the chief of the Mohegans also to attend.

“Zachary had succeeded to the rule of his tribe. My father’s house was situated about midway on the road between Mohegan and Hartford, and the old chief was in the habit of coming a few days before the election and dining with his brother governor. One day the mischievous thought struck me, to try the sincerity of the old man’s temperance. The family were seated at dinner, and there was excellent home-brewed beer on the table. I addressed the old chief: ‘Zachary, this beer is excellent; will you taste it?’ The old man dropped his knife and fork, leaning forward with a stern intensity of expression; his black eye, sparkling with indignation, was fixed on me. ‘John,’ said he, ‘you do not know what you are doing. You are serving the devil, boy! Do you not know that I am an Indian? I tell you that I am, and that, if I should but taste your beer, I could never stop until I got to rum, and became again the drunken, contemptible wretch your father remembers me to have been. _John, while you live never again tempt any man to break a good resolution._’

“Socrates never uttered a more valuable precept; Demosthenes could not have given it in more solemn tones of eloquence. I was thunderstruck. My parents were deeply affected; they looked at each other, at me, and at the venerable old Indian, with deep feelings of awe and respect. They afterward frequently reminded me of the scene, and charged me never to forget it.

“Zachary lived to pass the age of eighty, and sacredly kept his resolution. He lies buried in the royal burial-place of his tribe, near the beautiful falls of the Yantic, the western branch of the Thames, in Norwich, on land now owned by my friend, Calvin Goddard, Esq. I visited the grave of the old chief lately, and there repeated to myself his inestimable lesson.”

Mr. Trumbull, the painter, also thus pictures his own youth, and what a character it presents in the studies he made, and the books he read!

“About this time, when I was nine or ten years old, my father’s mercantile failure took place. He had been for years a successful merchant, and looked forward to an old age of ease and affluence; but in one season almost every vessel, and all the property which he had upon the ocean, was swept away, and he was a poor man at so late a period of life as left no hope of retrieving his affairs.

“My eldest brother was involved in the wreck as a partner, which rendered the condition of the family utterly hopeless. My mother and sisters were deeply afflicted, and although I was too young clearly to comprehend the cause, yet sympathy led me too to droop. My bodily health was frail, for the sufferings of early youth had left their impress on my constitution, and although my mind was clear and the body active, it was never strong. I therefore seldom joined my little schoolfellows in plays or exercises of an athletic kind, for there I was almost sure to be vanquished; and by degrees acquired new fondness for drawing, in which I stood unrivaled. Thus I gradually contracted a solitary habit, and after school hours frequently withdrew to my own room to a close study of my favorite pursuit.

“Such was my character at the time of my father’s failure, and this added gloomy feelings to my love of solitude. I became silent, diffident, bashful, awkward in society, and took refuge in still closer application to my books and my drawing.

“The want of pocket-money prevented me from joining my young companions in any of those little expensive frolics which often lead to future dissipation, and thus became a blessing; and my good master Tisdale had the wisdom so to vary my studies as to render them rather a pleasure than a task. Thus I went forward, without interruption, and at the age of twelve might have been admitted to enter college; for I had then read Eutropius, Cornelius Nepos, Virgil, Cicero, Horace, and Juvenal in Latin; the Greek Testament and Homer’s Iliad in Greek, and was thoroughly versed in geography, ancient and modern, in studying which I had the advantage (then rare) of a twenty-inch globe. I had also read with care Rollin’s History of Ancient Nations; also his History of the Roman Republic; Mr. Crevier’s continuation of the History of the Emperors, and Rollin’s Arts and Sciences of the Ancient Nations. In arithmetic alone I met an awful stumbling-block. I became puzzled by a sum in division, where the divisor consisted of three figures. I could not comprehend the rule for ascertaining how many times it was contained in the dividend; my mind seemed to come to a dead stand; my master would not assist me, and forbade the boys to do it, so that I well recollect the question stood on my slate unsolved nearly three months, to my extreme mortification.

“At length the solution seemed to flash upon my mind at once, and I went forward without further let or hindrance through the ordinary course of fractions, vulgar and decimal, surveying, trigonometry, geometry, navigation, etc., so that when I had reached the age of fifteen and a half years, it was stated by my good master that he could teach me little more, and that I was fully qualified to enter Harvard College in the middle of the third or junior year. This was approved by my father, and proposed to me. In the meantime my fondness for painting had grown with my growth, and in reading of the arts of antiquity I had become familiar with the names of Phidias and Praxiteles, of Zeuxis and Apelles.”

This son, who began his great career as an historical painter by drawing pictures in sand on the floor, after the manner we have shown, as he grew older and had seen Europe, determined to follow his genius. The young man gives us the following view of his father, a lovely picture in itself:

“My father urged me to study the law as the profession which in a republic leads to all emolument and distinction, and for which my early education had well prepared me. My reply was that, so far as I understood the question, law was rendered necessary by the vices of mankind; that I had already seen too much of them willingly to devote my life to a profession which would keep me perpetually involved either in the defense of innocence against fraud and injustice, or (what was much more revolting to an ingenuous mind) to the protection of guilt against just and merited punishment. In short, I pined for the arts, again entered into an elaborate defense of my predilection, and again dwelt upon the honors paid to artists in the glorious days of Greece and Athens. My father listened patiently, and when I had finished he complimented me upon the able manner in which I had defended what to him still appeared to be a bad cause.

“‘I had confirmed his opinion,’ he said, ‘that with proper study I should make a respectable lawyer; but,’ added he, ‘you must give me leave to say that you appear to have overlooked, or forgotten, one very important point in your case.’ ‘Pray, sir,’ I rejoined, ‘what was that?’ ‘You appear to forget, sir, that _Connecticut is not Athens_’; and with this pithy remark he bowed and withdrew, and never more opened his lips upon the subject. How often have those few impressive words occurred to my memory――‘Connecticut is not Athens!’ The decision was made in favor of the arts. I closed all other business, and in December, 1783, embarked at Portsmouth, N. H., for London.”

He could begin to make Connecticut like Athens by his own work.

Queer tales they told “grave people” at the ordinaries, and inns, and at the store of the war office.

The New England mind in the colonial period saw no chariots of angels in the air, and heard no rustlings of angels’ wings, like the ancient Hebrews, and looked for no goddesses, like the Greeks and Romans. Ugly hags and witches, “grave people” in winding-sheets, scared folks in a cowardly manner in lonely highways and hidden byways; bad people who died with restless consciences came forth from their “earthly beds” to make startling confessions to the living. It was a time of terror, of people fleeing from persecutions, and of Indian hostilities. Let us have another old-time store story, to picture the social life of those decisive times.

It was the beginning of the days of the “drovers,” when our tale was told, such drovers as used to go wandering over New England in the fall and spring, selling cattle, or trading in cattle, with the farmers by the way.

It was fall. Maples flamed; the grape-leaves turned yellow around the purple clusters that hung over the walls; the fringed gentians lined the brooks; the cranberries reddened; the birds gathered in flocks; the blue jays trumpeted, and the crows cawed. Great stacks of corn filled the corners of the husking-fields.

The drovers came to the valleys of the Connecticut and to the Berkshire Hills, and rested at last with full purses at the Plainfield Inn.

In the inn lived an aunt of the innkeeper, a Quaker woman by the name of Eunice.

There was a young drover named Mordecai, who was all imagination, eyes and ears. He seemed to be so earnest to learn everything that he attracted the notice of Eunice, and she said to him on one of his annual visits:

“Mordecai, and who may thy father be?”

“Gone――gone with the winds. That’s him.”

“And thy mother?”

“Gone――gone after him. That’s her. Where do you suppose they are?”

“Did they leave anything?”

“Left all they had.”

“And how much was that, Mordecai?”

“The earth――all.”

“And thou wert left all alone. I pity thee, Mordecai.”

Now, Quaker Eunice knit. She not only knit stockings and garters, but comforters for the neck, and gallows, as suspenders for trousers were then called. The latter were called _galluses_. She did not knit these useful and convenient articles for her own people alone, but for those who most needed them.

When serene Aunt Eunice saw how friendless the drover boy Mordecai was, her benevolent heart quickened, and she resolved to knit for him a comforter of many bright colors, a yard long, and a pair of gallows of stout twine, to give him on his return another year, when the cattle traders should come down from Boston. It took time to fabricate these high-art treasures of many kinds and colors. So when Mordecai was leaving the inn this year, she called after him:

“Mordecai, thee halt in thy goings.”

Mordecai looked back.

“Boy, thee has no mother to look after thee now, except from the spirit-world. I am going to knit a comforter for thee that will go around thy neck three times and hang down at that. I will set the dye-pot and dye the wool――the ash-barrel is almost full now. And thee listen. I am going to knit a pair of gallows for thee――――”

The boy’s eyes dilated. He had never heard the word used before except for the cords that hung pirates on the green isle in Boston harbor. Did she expect him to be hung?

“I will knit the gallows stout and strong, so that they will hold. But I must not tell thee all about it now――thee shall know all another year, after killing-time, in the Indian summer, when the wich-hazels that bloom in the fall are in flower.”

Mordecai, who had been filled with New England superstitions by the drovers’ tales in the country inns, stood with open mouth, when Aunt Eunice added:

“I am going to put a new invention on those gallows; it will prove a surprise to thee.”

It did.

The boy Mordecai passed a year in wonder at what the zigzag journey to hill towns at the west of the State would bring him in the holiday or rest seasons of the fall. He wandered with the drovers to the towns around Boston, and on the Charles and “Merrimack,” trading and selling cattle, and “putting up” at the inns by the way, he himself sleeping in the barns, under the swallows’ nests.

They were merry merchantmen, the drovers. Whittier describes them in a poem. Their cattle trades had a dialect of its own, and there was an unwritten law that “all was fair in trade,” to which “honorable dishonesty” clear-minded Aunt Eunice made objection, and against which she “delivered exhortations.”

Some of these merry rovers used a boy to help them in tricks of trade――to shorten the age of cattle, and the time when the latter were “broke,” and like matters.

One day in the spring tradings a Quaker on one of the Salem farms said to Mordecai:

“Boy, thee must never let thy tongue slip an untruth, or thee will come to the gallows.”

The next year the drovers and Mordecai took their annual journey from Cambridge to Springfield and eastern Connecticut, and stopped at the Plainfield Inn.

The trees flamed with autumnal splendors again; the sun seemed burning in the air, now with a clear flame, now with a smoky haze; there were great corn harvests everywhere. The twilight and early evening hours were still. The voices on the farms echoed――those of the huskers, and of the boys driving the oxen, with carts loaded with corn. The hunters’ moon that rose over the hills like a night sun lengthened out the day.

They went on slowly, and so allowing their cattle to graze on the succulent grasses by the roadside, and to fatten, and become lazy.

They rested at great farmhouses, bartering and selling as long as the light of the day lasted, and telling awful tales of the Indian wars and old Salem witchcraft days later in the evening.

Some of the drovers’ stories were awful indeed. One of them concerned the “Miller of Durham.” The said miller used to remain in his mill late in the evening alone. One night he was startled by the dripping of water inside of the mill-house. He turned from the hopper, and saw there a woman, with five bloody wounds, and wet garments, and wide eyes.

“Miller of Durham,” she said, “you must avenge me, or I will haunt the mill. You will find my body in the well in the abandoned coal-pit. Mattox killed me――he knows why.”

The miller knew Mattox, and he saw that the woman had a familiar look, and had probably been employed on the farm of the accused man, who was a prosperous farmer. He resolved to conceal the appearance of the accusing ghost. But the apparition followed him, and so made his life a terror that he went perforce to a magistrate and made confession. The woman’s body, with five wounds, was found in the well of the coal-pit, and Mattox was accused of the murder, tried, condemned, and executed. The story was a true one, but it was an old one. The events occurred in England on a moor.

The boy Mordecai listened to these inn tales at first with a clear conscience, and he felt secure, for he had been taught that innocence renders “apparitions” harmless; but after a time his moral condition changed, and his fears were aroused, and they grew into terrors.

For one day, as the lively cattle-owner was driving a bargain with a rich farmer under some great elms that rose like hills of greenery by the roadside, he declared that a certain cow had given fifteen quarts of milk a day during the summer, and had said, “There is the boy that milked her――the boy Mordecai, he of the Old Testament name. Speak up, Mordecai. You milked her, didn’t you, now?”

Mordecai stood silent. The cow had given some eight or ten quarts of milk a day.

“He can’t deny that he milked her,” said the bantering trader.

“And did she give fifteen quarts of milk regularly during the summer, boy?” asked the farmer.

“I did not measure the milk myself,” said the boy. “The boss did that.”

“That was I, or rather my wife,” said the drover.

Mordecai’s conscience began to be disturbed, and disturbed consciences are the stuff out of which ghosts grow.

At the next inn, in the lovely Connecticut valley, a still more terrible story was told. A forest tavern-keeper, after this tale, had trained a huge mastiff to drown his rich guests in a pond in a wood at the back of the tavern. The strong dog had been bought of a drover named Bonny, who had treated him kindly. Years passed, and the same Mr. Bonny visited the inn, and was recognized by the dog, but not by the tavern-keeper. The latter invited Mr. Bonny to go with him to the trout-pond in the wood, and while they were on the margin of the pond he suddenly whistled to his mastiff as a signal. The dog whined and howled and ran around in a circle.

“Why don’t you do as you always do?” exclaimed the tavern-keeper to the dog in anger.

The dog’s eyes blazed; he leaped upon his master and dragged him into the pond. But his master in his struggles drowned the mastiff. Mr. Bonny witnessed the scene in horror, and seeing what it meant――for several rich drovers had disappeared from the inn and had never been heard of again――he determined to conceal the matter, as the crime could not be repeated. But the dead dog howled nights, and so drew people to the pond, and disclosed the crime.

“Life,” said the story-teller, “is self-revealing: everything is found out at last. The stars in their courses fight against a liar!”

The inward eyes of Mordecai now began to expect to see “sights.” The boy’s conscience burned. He had the ghost atmosphere.

The next time that the lusty drover tried to sell the cow that had given “fifteen quarts of milk a day” he declared that she had given sixteen quarts, and called the milker as before to witness the statement.

“You milked her?” he asked.

“Yes; but you measured the milk,” said Mordecai.

“So I did,” said the drover in an absent tone in which was the usual false note, “so I did. I remember now. But you used to milk her.”

“Yes,” faltered the boy, feeling that the heavens were likely to fall or the earth to cave in.

The story at the next inn, near Pittsfield, on the Albany way, outdid all the rest. A man who had robbed his neighbors by deception, after this story, had been followed nights by the clanking of an invisible chain. A neighbor whom he had ruined died, and after that the clankings of the “invisible chain” began to be heard in his bedchamber. If he ran down-stairs they followed him, clank, clank, clank, on the oak steps, and out into the garden.

Mordecai could fancy it all: the man running half-crazed down the oak stairs, with the invisible chain clanking behind him.

When the drover next tried to sell that cow he declared that she had given “eighteen quarts of milk a day,” to which he called Mordecai to witness. The boy gasped “Yes” to the question if he had milked her regularly, but he seemed to hear the clanking of the invisible chain as he acted his part for the last time. The wonderful cow was sold.

In this state of mind Mordecai came to the Plainfield Inn, and again met there the serene and truthful Aunt Eunice.

“I’ve kept my promise that I made to thee a year ago,” said the sympathetic woman, “gallows and all. The dyestuff took, and the colors of the comforter are real pretty. Thee looks troubled.”

Near midnight the foresticks in the fireplace broke and fell, and the men went to their rooms.

“Thee will sleep in the cockloft,” said Aunt Eunice to Mordecai, “but before thee goes up let me sew some buttons on thy trousers for the gallows [galluses]. Stand up by me; I have some stout thread for the purpose.”

Mordecai took off his jacket and loosened his belt, and Aunt Eunice sewed on the buttons as he stood beside her. She then attached the gallows to the back buttons, leaving them otherwise free for him to button on in front in the morning.

“See here, Mordecai,” she said. “These are no common gallows. I’ve put buckles on them――buckles that my grandfather wore in the Indian wars. These are wonderful buckles. If the gallows are too long, thee can h’ist them up, so; if they are then too short, thee can let them out again, so.”

Now, when Mordecai saw that the gallows had no connection with hanging he felt happy, and he went up to the cockloft, candle in hand.

“Be careful and not let the buckles drag upon the floor, Mordecai,” were the good woman’s last words as she saw the boy disappear with the light, holding the wonderful suspenders in his hand.

Mordecai could not sleep. The cockloft did not look right, did not fulfil his moral ideal. The great moon rose over the hills and flooded the valley with white light. He began to think of the three acted lies of which he had been a part. The cow that had given “fifteen,” “sixteen,” “seventeen,” “eighteen” quarts of milk a day had been sold――what if the purchaser should commit suicide?

At midnight he heard a cry out in the field.

“Hello! that steer is out and is at the corn-stack!”

The voice was that of a drover. Mordecai felt that he should get up and go to the corn-stack and help impound the steer.

He forgot the gallows, so they hung down to the floor behind him after he had dressed. He tried to light the candle after the old slow way, for the ladder to the cockloft was “poky,” when he heard something clink behind him. He turned around, when an iron hoof seemed to follow him around, clink, clink, clink. The sound was not alarming or vengeful or in a way terrible, but to his imagination it shook the roof.

He whirled around again.

Clink, clink!

Again.

Clink!

His heart seemed bursting, his brain to be on fire. He rushed toward the ladder and the “thing” followed him. He attempted to go down the ladder, but after some steps the “thing” held him back, when he uttered a cry that shook the whole tavern and made the people leap from their beds.

“Hel-up! Hel-up! Let go! Let go!”

The landlord came running, and saw the situation.

“I never thought that you would come to the gallows,” said he, “but you have!”

“All the powers have mercy on me now!” cried Mordecai. “But I’ll confess. Will you let me go if I confess?”

“Yes, yes,” said the landlord. “What have you on your mind?”

The drovers came running in.

“That cow didn’t give no fifteen quarts. I connived. The drover put me up to it――the Lord of massy, what will become of his soul? I’ll never connive again!”

Then said the landlord:

“I’ll have to let you go.”

He unloosened the “galluses,” which had wound around a rung in the ladder, and Mordecai kept his conscience clear even in cattle trade ever after.