New York - The Novel

that he couldn’t spare Solomon at present.
    So there wasn’t much more that Hudson could do.

    One of the first things that John Master had done when he returned was to write a letter to James. He informed him about his mother’s sickness. As she lay in her room, Mercy would wonder aloud to her husband, almost every day, when she would see her son again. John told James plainly that, at the least, it was time he made a visit. There was nothing else he could do. It would be many weeks before he could expect a reply from London.
    Meanwhile, nothing stood still in the colony. Ironically, it was Ben Franklin who caused the next crisis. Still more ironically, he did so by trying to calm things down.
    A few years ago, a royal official named Hutchinson had written to a friend from Massachusetts. Incensed by the difficulties he was encountering, he told his friend it would be better to curb English liberties in the colonies, to make sure that America was kept firmly under Britain’s thumb. By chance, Franklin saw the letters in London. And because he still believed in Britain’s grand imperial destiny, he sent them privately to friends in America—not to cause trouble, but to warn them of the sort of reaction their intransigence was stirring up. It was a horrible miscalculation. His friends in Massachusetts published the Hutchinson letters that summer.
    The colonies were in an uproar. Here was proof positive that the English wanted to destroy American liberties. And almost as if on cue, the British government was able to supply a measure on which their rage could focus.
    The problem was simple enough. It concerned another part of the empire. The mighty East India Company had got itself into a mess.
    “They have huge overstocks of tea,” Albion wrote to Master, “and they can’t shift them.” As usual, when huge trading enterprises mismanage their affairs, the company turned to the government to bail them out. The solution suggested was to dump the tea on the large American market. “Until the overstocks are cleared, this will be bad for merchants like yourself, who’ll be cut out,” Albion wrote. “But there’s no doubt that the American market can absorb the tea.”
    The problem was that the tea still carried the duty that was so disliked.
    “It is sure to be seen,” Master sighed to Mercy, “as a government conspiracy.”
    There was one intelligent solution, Albion explained, and it was suggested by Ben Franklin. Dump the tea, he was telling his friends in London, but take off the duty. The overstocks would be cleared, the colonists would get cheap tea. Merchants like Master would suffer, but only for a short while, and everyone else would be happy.
    “Will they do it, John?” Mercy asked him.
    “I shouldn’t think so. They’d see it as giving in.” Master had shaken his head. “I’m afraid there’s nothing to do but take the tea, and hope for wiser statesmen in the future.”
    “You think there’ll be trouble?”
    “Probably.”

    There was trouble. When news of the new Tea Act arrived that summer, Sears and the Liberty Boys were out on the streets in no time. Anyone accepting the tea would be a traitor, they said, and Master was disappointed that many of the merchants agreed with them.
    “This is going to be just like the Stamp Act again,” he said sadly. He could only hope the shipments of tea would be delayed as long as possible.
    At the end of the summer, a letter came from James. He sent tender words to his mother. He and Vanessa were discussing when they could make a journey across to New York, he told his father, and he would make arrangements as soon as he could. The letter was full of affection, but Master found it unsatisfactory. He hoped that James’s next communication would contain more definite plans.
    Through the autumn the city’s mood grew uglier. By November, some of the Liberty Boys were saying that when the tea ships arrived, they’d destroy the cargo and kill the governor too. The East India Company agents in the town were so scared they started resigning. New York waited tensely.
    But it was from Massachusetts that word finally came. In December, a man came riding down the old Boston road. He was a silversmith who enjoyed the excitement of being a courier. His name was Paul Revere. The news he brought was startling. The first tea ships had arrived in Boston,and a party of men, some of them quite respectable citizens, had boarded the ships dressed as Indians, and