Letters

“We must have Canada!” they declared. Father understood, with a chill, that “we” already meant The United States of America. If Canada were not among those states, they argued, the British could crush the unborn republic betwixt its armies to the north & west and its navies to the east & south. The key to Canada was old New France, never easy under British rule: Arnold’s strategy, in which General Washington & the Massachusetts Committee of Safety concurr’d, was a three-prong’d attack: one force (General Montgomery’s, say) should move down the St. Lawrence from Maine to take Quebec; a 2nd (Arnold’s own, he hoped) up thro Lake Champlain to take Crown Point, Ticonderoga, and Montreal; a 3rd thro the Mohawk Valley to Niagara. “We” would then control the St. Lawrence &: the Lakes; Canada would be “ours.” The French would surely help, in hopes of regaining New France for themselves; the habitants could be relied upon at least not to aid the British. The great uncertainty was the allegiance of the Six Nations: Could my father not be prevail’d upon to accept a commission & persuade the Mohawks to remain neutral, the Senecas to lay siege to Forts Erie & Niagara?

He could not, tho he affirm’d the soundness of the strategy. He urged young Burr to enlist with Arnold instead of Washington if he wanted action, and caution’d Arnold to beware the jealousy betwixt the Massachusetts & Connecticut Committees of Safety, which, together with the rivalry & reciprocal sabotage common to generals, was bound to make joint operations all but impossible. He himself, Father declared, was withdrawing to another Cambridge: not the one on the river Cam in Mother England, where his grandfather had gone to school with Henry More & Isaac Newton, but the one in tidewater Maryland. Not his fatherland (Heaven forfend!), but his grandfatherland, where that same ancestor had made certain decisions respecting his own deepest loyalty.

Burr & Arnold had not heard of this Cambridge, nor were they much inclined to hear. Was it in the neighborhood of Annapolis? One day’s sail, my father replied, but a world away, and the last white outpost before the wild & trackless marshes. Above this Cambridge the river-names were English: Severn, Chester, Wye, Miles — it was a wonder the Chesapeake itself had not been dubb’d the Wash, or the Bristol. But at this Cambridge it was the Great Choptank, larger than Cam & Charles together, with the Thames at Oxford thrown in; and after the Great Choptank the Little Choptank, the Honga, Nanticoke, Wicomico, Manokin, Annemessex, Onancock, Pungoteague, Nandua, Occohannock, Nasswadox, Mattawoman—

Enough, cry Burr & Arnold: ’tis the beat of savage drums! To which my father replies: ’Tis the voice of the one true Continental, his vanisht forebears, in whose ranks he was off come morning to enlist.

All this my mother told me — your grandmother Nancy, who is about to enter the story. Andrew III’s investigation of his latefound father had led him from Annapolis to Castines Hundred; my own father’s re-investigation of that same ancestor reverst that route, as he was determined to reverse his father’s judgement of the 3rd Henry Burlingame. From Castines Hundred, where he paid his respects to the incumbent Baron (sire of the current one), he made his way 1st down to Annapolis, to search the records of the province and dig thro the library at St. John’s College; then over the Bay to Cambridge & Cooke’s Point, once the seat of the family, to consult more local records & the memories of old inhabitants.