Letters полностью

Tom Barlow and Andrew bury him at once, thank John Blaski for his courageous charity, and flee: the Cossacks need no particular excuse for ravaging a Jewish settlement. The two will reach Paris three weeks later, no longer friends. Indeed, while he charges no one by name of slandering him, and specifically “absolves” Ruthy (of what, we must infer) by reason of her “inconsolable grief,” Andrew concludes this portion of his letter with the meaning observations that, as Ruthy’s favorite and Joel’s nearest relative, nephew Tom will surely inherit the Barlow estate upon Ruthy’s death; that “of all the calumnies ever suffer’d silently by those whose profession does not permit reply, none stings me so sore as that ‘J. B. Petry’ saw to it Joel’s treaty was never sign’d! As well accuse me of his pneumonia, who gave up my own pelisse to warm him at the end!”

Be that as it may — and I for one, Henry, do not credit for a moment the insinuation that Andrew derived “the blanket trick” from Jeffrey Amherst’s bacteriological tactic against the Indian besiegers of Fort Pitt during Pontiac’s conspiracy — he acknowledges frankly that the death of his “father” liberates as well as grieves him. Negotiations with the Duc de Bassano cannot now be resumed until a new minister arrives from Washington: late spring at the earliest. Though Napoleon executes General Malet for treason and welcomes the declarations of war on France by Prussia and Austria as his excuse to raise yet another army and atone for the Russian debacle, he has little interest in the British-American diversion. For one thing, the Americans seem to be holding their own without assistance: though Tecumseh’s Indians have been victorious around the western Great Lakes, and Admiral Cockburn has blockaded the Chesapeake to play off the mid-Atlantic states against New York and New England, the new U.S. invasion of Canada bids to be successful. General Prevost is repulsed at Sackett’s Harbor on Lake Ontario, and the Americans loot and burn the Canadian capital at York (Toronto). The British virtually evacuate the Niagara Frontier from Fort George at the mouth to Fort Erie at the head of the Niagara River; only the timidity of old General Dearborn keeps the Americans from pressing their advantage and seizing Canada. The U.S. Navy, too, is flexing its new muscle: though of insufficient force simply to destroy the British blockade (which however generates in Baltimore an enormously profitable fleet of privateers and blockade-runners), American captains are distinguishing themselves in individual engagements. One brig alone, the Argus, after delivering Joel Barlow’s successor to Paris, wreaks such havoc with British merchant shipping in the English Channel that marine insurance rates shoot up like a Congreve rocket — a mode of economic warfare so effective that the prince regent now considers seriously Czar Alexander’s offer to negotiate a settlement of the war.

Non grata in the rue de Vaugirard, Andrew follows these developments attentively from across the Channel, where he has gone in March to test the British political weather before returning to Andrée and the twins. The Americans, he concludes, are doing altogether too well to consider yielding to the British demand for an Indian Free State, especially while Napoleon remains a threat in Europe. Cockburn’s depredations in the Chesapeake are little more than a nuisance; only Tecumseh (and Dearborn’s pusillanimity) is keeping Canada in the British Empire. But word has it that young Oliver Perry is building an American fleet from scratch at Presque Isle on Lake Erie, to help William Henry Harrison defeat Tecumseh finally and for keeps. It is time, Andrew decides, the scales were tipped a bit the other way.