Chapter Text
“But the Day is past. The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America.” - John Adams
July 2nd 1776 - Philadelphia
John Dickinson knew when the course of human events were not in his favor. He had tried to work (there would always be correspondence to answer, the estate to manage), but finding himself endlessly distracted, he had given up, instead devoting himself to simply thinking in his chair. He sat by the fireplace. There was no fire, but that was due more to the sweltering summer afternoon, than his own solid constitution. He was a reedy man, prone to sickness when the weather turned cold, but he was spirited, with a hawkish nose and piercing eyes.
Wind, tide, and sea could combine to make even the stubbornest of men understand that Providence had her own mind. He would not abandon his own principles, but neither would he see his own ruination standing in her way (though by the meagre tatters left of his public character, he needn’t have bothered). He had said his bit, but it had done very little to sway the resolve of the Congress. The tide had shifted against his preference for temperance, to absolute overt revolution. Today was a vote to which he could never in good conscious say ‘yae’, so he instead stayed in his Philadelphia home. He did not need to stay in Congress to know how it would end.
From his little chair, John watched the months unfold before his mind’s eye. The bells ringing, the printers working tirelessly to spread the word from colony to colony. The Congress would have little time for him now- his main business in Philadelphia had come to an end. Oh there had been unrest, even fighting, but this was now war, true War, with every dreadful misery it brought from hell, a thing that must be seen through to the end. The bloodshed that would follow, earth and guts turned up by each cannon shot, the guts of men rallied to defend their country for an unnecessary provocation, rallied by words.
His words? No, not his. Never his. He shifted, mindlessly twisting his wrist. He had advocated always a measured response. The colonies were wronged, undoubtedly, and free men, descendants of Englishmen, had every right to resist tyranny. But independence? Nay. Solitude in a harsh world, where enemies sat always, waiting to advance, at every opportunity taking what they could. He stopped himself there— God’s world was not cruel, for individual men had always the hope for salvation. But while men lived in a world of trade, and war, and politics, concerned with worldly matters they must be.
A knock at the door interrupted his reverie (And really, who might be calling upon him today?), but he did not have to wait for the doorman to announce the visitor. The visitor’s voice carried loudly through the hall to the sitting room.
“Mr. John! Mr. John are you here?”
“Do away with decorum, this boy will have none of it,” John called back, amused at the form of address. Alfred Kirkland certainly was not respectful nor proper, yet nor was he comfortable with the familiar, equitable manner among Friends. (Any other man might be affronted!) To any passing man on the street Alfred resembled a healthy 15, maybe 16, but near a decade past, he had confided in him the truth of his nature. Well, but he certainly acted the age he looked! The boy half ran into the room, nearly slipping where his shoes has trouble finding purchase on the wooden floor. The boy was in shirtsleeves (Who wouldn’t wish to be in this infernal weather— he himself had doffed his coat, with his waistcoat remaining), and his dusty blond hair was unpowdered, the back of it tied into a short queue, with little bits stuck to his forehead by sweat.
“Good afternoon!” He said, half remembering a polite bow.
“Do sit down. I’m afraid we’ve only coffee for hosting,” Dickinson said wryly, as Alfred entered the room and rounded to the chair across from him at the fireplace.
“’Tis just coffee for me,” The boy cast himself onto the seat, and waited as Dickinson called a servant to go make and bring the beverage. “Where is Mrs. Mary?”
“The library,” Dickinson said- his dear Polly held her collection close to her heart, and in their seven years of marriage he oft joked it stood closer than himself. (She would laugh and say at least he stood better than the weekly post.) “I am certain she would not mind thy company.”
“M-hhm,” the boy mumbled, suddenly reticent. As he had come to the house so animated, John ventured to assume he had come to say something rather important, at least to him, but required a moment to gather himself. No matter, he would not press the boy. He picked up the gazette on the table and gazed at its contents, as if reading. (A rather dull page. Tomorrow’s entry would be far more interesting— Ha!) Alfred was quiet for a while, long enough for the servant to return with the coffee.
“I’ve a letter from my father,”
John gave an uncommitted noise, but set the paper down.
The boy’s father. What to say on him? John had never met the man personally, but most certainly knew of him. What educated man had not heard of their England, the living spirit of the kingdom brought to life in ever-lasting youth? He was certainly alive when William the Conquerer set foot on his shores, others said he was as old as King Arthur. And just imagine his muted embarrassment and pride, when Alfred proudly declared he had sent a copy of John’s own Letters to his father, to England! (He had written back that they were sensible writings indeed.) Despite such flattery, John could not say he trusted the man. Some spirit of the nation, that is, the nation they were tied to, of men and governments, possessed these beings, that they often re-acted earthly events in mock earnestness. He feared what business Alfred might find himself in, if he kept by his father’s side in these times.
“From London?” John ventured, but Alfred shook his head.
“Halifax,” He said, and John could not be surprised. “He is with the flotilla there. He wants me to join him.”
“God has granted thee reason, Alfred” John said. It was no right thing to come between a son and his father, but neither could he blindly encourage the association. “Thou oughtest not waste it”
“I of course am still very mad at his parliament,” Alfred crossed his arms in a huff. “And he did not have to come with the redcoats!”
“If he is with the redcoats,” John decided he should be frank— subtlety did not work on Alfred Kirkland. “Then he is almost certainly here in a military fashion, to crush the sedition fomenting on these shores.”
“He is not!” Alfred frowned at him. “Sedition? England does not think it is sedition!” His voice took on a slight petulant tone. “He is very reasonable in his letters. He is only mad at what we do to protest his parliament, and only the old man so loves his tea.” Reassured, his tone became confident. “Once I see him in person, I can surely explain our cause, and he can talk directly to the king. He sees him often, you know!”
“He may have up to the present, thought so,” John let out a wheezy chuckle, that it really was not funny at all. “But he will likely change his mind after today’s vote”
“What vote?” Alfred’s blustering certainty was gone. “What has happened?”
“Why, the vote on independence!” John said, looking at him with surprise.
“It is done?” Alfred’s voice quavered, whether with excitement or uncertainty John could not tell. Likely, both.
“It was to be voted on today, and it most certainly shall pass,” He he had assumed he had come running after he had seen the vote, but evidently he was not up to date with the affairs of the Congress. “That does not mean this course is wise nor necces-“ John interrupted himself. “But it is fait accompli, we must now decide what we do with ourselves now.”
Alfred had taken a letter— certainly the one he had just mentioned— and unfolded it in its lap. The address was neatly __, in a few short lines, but the same neat handwriting in the letter crisscrossed the page to form a dense missive sent not from across an ocean, but merely a few colonies away. Alfred certainly could not be reading it this moment, but he surely knew its contents. He fiddled with the corner.
“He may not be so very mad at me,” Alfred said softly, and John was under the impression that he had just confided in him something, that he might not readily proclaim to most on the road.
“Perhaps not,” John matched his tone. “But pray forget not, Alfred, what he must be here to do.”
“I thought you did not want our country to leave England,” Alfred looked up at him confused. “But you want me away from him?”
“I have always been the first to declare, we have been wronged by England and its Parliament’s policies,” John started. “And to cast ourselves away entirely from the mother country I believe to be misguided, not now, nor in the years to come. I hold our nation’s ties with England dearly.” John paused. “But I hold the self-defense of these colonies even higher. Tho’ perhaps I do not share my peers radical revolutionary fervor, I do not entirely agree with the Friends that even to defend these shores from foreign armies is unjust and Ungodly.”
“Then I must fight,” Alfred said, setting his gaze determinedly away from the letter open in his lap. “It is what is expected, and what is right.“
“We expect nothing from thee, that thou dost not already give,” John was seized with the fear that this boy might cast carelessly his life into the hellish fields of war, for some vague notion that was what youths did. He leant forward grasped Alfred’s hands in his own, a man possessed. “Do not assume that war is what we ask of thee. Even those greatest advocates know it is no place for a child.“
“I am not—“
“—a child, yes.” John sighed. No youth wished to be fretted over, he had not at that age, but it was the inevitable fate that every one of those youths became an old man who fretted over the young. (Were it not for the gravity he could almost laugh, that he at 44 fretted over this creature near 130 years his senior) “But neither art thou a man. And if we fight to protect America, it would not do for said country to die of a bullet, or disease, or starvation, for the camps of armies can often be more deadly than the field.”
“The General said much the same,” Alfred admitted, but pressed on the attack. “But I cannot sit by, while men die in my name. It is not as if I can die in truth.”
“A man or woman may serve their country other ways” John said. “And thou art of far more use to the nascent cause here in Philadelphia, or at least amongst the merchants and farmers of these colonies, who prove still the life-blood of this nation, rather than waiting dead in a field, where thou mayst help no one.”
Alfred withdrew his hands and sat back in his chair. His conflicting thoughts danced across his expression, a message he despised to hear from a man, John hoped he was not vain in thinking, whose counsel he trusted. At last he muttered, angrily, “It is not fair, that you are going to go off and fight and not I.”
Although John had not known for certain he would join the army after deciding on his departure from Congress, when Alfred said those words it seemed obvious now that there was little else he would have chosen to done. He was struck by the occasional bouts of insight Alfred showed, when ordinarily he was far the contrary.
“It is not fair, at all, what is asked of men,” John sighed. “We can only hope God gives us the strength to see it through regardless.”
Alfred was silent, his coffee empty, yet unwilling to part with the china cup, rolling it in his hands and stroking the handle with his thumb. The letter sat in his lap, tight cross writing packed to the margins. He said nothing more, so there they sat in the front room, the bright summer’s light of what were it not for the heat be an uncommonly fine day filtering through the leaves and window pane onto their faces. When the clock stuck the hour, John sat up.
“Come,” He bade. “It is much cooler where the books are kept, and I’m certain Polly should like also to see thee if thou art here.”
The little nation’s face brightened, tucking the letter into his coat pocket and setting the coffee cup onto the silver tray. The months ahead would not be easy, but in accepting that, the two found that today was fine enough, hot as it was.