New York - The Novel

been forced to remind him: “I know about the Zenger trial, James. I was here at the time.”
    “Well then, Father, you surely were not against Zenger, were you?” Wryly remembering his unfortunate boyhood performance during the visit of his Boston cousins, John Master had contented himself with replying: “I listened to my cousin Eliot from Boston speaking for Zenger strongly—and a damn sight more elegantly than you,” he had added, just to keep James in his place.
    “Back in ’77,” James had continued, “Jefferson proposed a bill to guarantee religious freedom in Virginia. What we need is an amendment along those lines. New York won’t ratify the Constitution without one, nor will Virginia.” And when the First Amendment had appeared, James had treated the matter as though it were a personal victory for Jefferson.
    No doubt it was his innate conservatism, but for all his respect for the new republic, Master could not feel entirely comfortable with what he now sensed was a profound, secular tolerance at its very heart.
    Even Washington was guilty. Of course, the president always observed the proprieties. While Trinity was being rebuilt after the fire, the Masters had attended the handsome chapel of St. Paul’s nearby, and it always gave John Master pleasure to see the president and his wife in their pew there—even if Washington did leave before communion. But there was not the least doubt, for Washington made it clear, that the president couldn’t care less what religion his fellow citizens followed. Protestant orCatholic, Jew or atheist, or even a follower of the prophet Mohamet—so long as they observed the new Constitution, Washington declared, it was all one to him.
    Others, it seemed to Master, were more devious. Before he died that spring, old Ben Franklin had claimed to be a member of every Church, and prayed with each congregation in turn. The cunning old fox.
    But Jefferson, this handsome, Southern patrician with his fine education and his fancy Parisian friends, who had returned to America to run the nation’s foreign affairs—what was he? A
deist
, probably. One of those fellows who said that there must be a supreme being of some kind, but who didn’t seem to think they needed to do a damn thing about it. A fine belief for a coxcomb.
    And now here he is, thought Master, giving me, a vestryman of Trinity, lectures about New York’s bad moral character and her unworthiness to be the capital of America. This from a man who’s been happily living in the flesh-pots of Paris, if you please!
    It was intolerable.
    “You may like it or you may not,” Master continued heatedly, “but New York, sir, is the capital of America, and it’s going to stay that way.”

    It was certainly starting to look like a capital. Life hadn’t been easy since America became a nation. Saddled with British and European trade restrictions, not to mention the war debt, many of the states were still struggling their way out of depression. But New York had been recovering more rapidly than most places. Entrepreneurial merchants found ways to trade. A constant stream of people flowed in.
    True, there were still areas where the fires had left charred ruins. But the city was rebuilding. Theaters had opened. The tower and spire of a new Trinity Church rose splendidly over the skyline. And when Congress had decided that their city should be the capital of the new nation, New Yorkers had reacted instantly. City Hall on Wall Street—Federal Hall, they called it now—had been splendidly refurbished as a temporary home for the legislature, while down at the foot of Manhattan, the old fort had already been torn down and used as landfill, to make room for a magnificent new complex to house the Senate, the House of Representatives and the various government offices by the waterside. Where else would you get such action, except in New York?
    James intervened now, trying to smooth things over.
    “The fact is, Father, many people say the New Yorkers worship only money and love luxury too much.”
    “Doesn’t seem to bother Washington,” his father retorted. The president’s magnificent cream-colored coach and six was the finest equipage in the city. George and Martha Washington had already moved into a splendid new mansion on Broadway where they entertained on a scale quite as lavish as any New York merchant prince. And anyway, where was the harm in that?
    But if Master chose to curse Jefferson, that gentleman was