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Overview
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…" On his farm in Maryland, sixteen-year-old Caleb Jacobson hears rumors of an armed rebellioni of the Massachusetts colonists against he oppressive tyranny of King George III and his soliders. Educated in a small Quaker school, Caleb has been taught that it is wrong to raise one's hand against another. Yet Caleb is a free black living in a slave colony. He knows firsthand the horrors and hardships of slavery and wonders what good an American victory will do if his fellow blacks - including his best friend Gaddi - remain shackled in bondage. Then comes news that the British Governor Lord Dunmore promises freedom to any slave who joins his army against the Americans. Can he be trusted to keep his work? Or should Caleb support the colonists' fight in hope of a better future for his people? Caleb will have to choose."
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781466856110 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Tor Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 11/05/2013 |
| Series: | Young Founders , #2 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 224 |
| File size: | 274 KB |
| Age Range: | 13 - 18 Years |
About the Author
Elizabeth Massie is author of numerous novels for young adult, middle grade, and primary readers. These include the Young Founders series, the Daughters of Liberty trilogy, The Great Chicago Fire: 1871, The Fight for Right, Read All About It, and more. A former middle school teacher, Elizabeth enjoys exploring both important and little-known moments in American history and presenting those moments to readers through the struggles and triumphs of her characters.
Elizabeth lives in the historic Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, very close to where her family moved in 1747. She says, "Every place is historic. Well-known or not, every town, city, and county has its own compelling tale of people and events, a story that plays a part in the continuing story that is our history."
Elizabeth Massie is author of numerous novels for young adult, middle grade, and primary readers. These include the Young Founders series, the Daughters of Liberty trilogy, The Great Chicago Fire: 1871, The Fight for Right, Read All About It, and more. A former middle school teacher, Elizabeth enjoys exploring both important and little-known moments in American history and presenting those moments to readers through the struggles and triumphs of her characters.
Elizabeth lives in the historic Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, very close to where her family moved in 1747. She says, “Every place is historic. Well-known or not, every town, city, and county has its own compelling tale of people and events, a story that plays a part in the continuing story that is our history.”
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
March 4, 1766
CHAPTER 2
May 30, 1766
CHAPTER 3
The rolling road passed Adam Donaughby's farm, traveling along the southern border of the property like the soiled and ragged hem of a woman's gown, a broad path of hard-packed earth with sprigs of determined chicory cutting through here and there. The road was most traveled in the summer and fall, when the wilderness farms of western Maryland had their loads of tobacco ready to take to the warehouses on the river near Baltimore. Hogsheads packed with dried tobacco would rumble down the road, powered by horse, oxen, or black men. The remaining traffic consisted of salesmen's wagons, couriers, and occasional folk on their way to visit family in the far reaches of the colony.
Six-year-old Caleb Jacobson stood by the rail fence of Adam Donaughby's property, clutching a sack of thorny raspberry bushes and a small shovel, and staring at the fight going on in the middle of the road. It was a mighty battle on a small scale. Two chipmunks had found each other, and had flung themselves on each other with a vengeance, with flying fur and chattering teeth. Little feet kicked, little noses flared. Every few seconds one would hop high in the air and come down again, as if trying to show his opponent he was bigger than he actually was.
"Ho there!" Caleb called to the chipmunks. "Stop that!"
The chipmunks rolled in the dust. One freed himself from the tangle, ran several feet away, then turned back to bare his teeth.
"Stop that!" shouted Caleb.
The little creatures dove at each other. Caleb scooped up several pieces of rock from beneath the tangle of fragrant honeysuckle along the fence bottom and hurled them at the chipmunks. They landed with a click and a clatter. The startled animals fell away from each other and ran into the weeds beside the road.
"You aren't supposed to fight!" Caleb said to the spot in the weeds where the chipmunks had disappeared. "Fighting is the devil's work!"
A crow overhead cawed as if in answer, then settled on the top branch of a roadside cedar tree.
The day was early, but though cloudy, it was quite hot and humid already. It was July 4 of 1766, and there had been no rain in nearly three weeks. Caleb wore only a pair of breeches with the hems unbuttoned at his knee. He wore no shirt as it was too hot. He wore no shoes because he had no shoes. But his feet were used to the rocks and rough ground of the Donaughby farm. He was born there, and had lived his life there. He knew where the worst of the thistle patches liked to grow and where skin-biting outcroppings of stone hid among the weeds.
He shifted the sack of raspberry bushes from one shoulder to the other, and looked at the crow on the treetop. The bird sat as if it was a king, its sleek black feathers glistening in the sunlight.
"What's on your mind, bird?" asked Caleb. "What'dya see from way up there? A town? The ocean? Is it a pretty thing, with ships and sails? Mama says it's so."
The bird blinked and tipped his head silently. What secrets it could see, it would not share.
As Caleb turned from the fence, the sound of hoof beats on the road pulled him back around. The boy had never been off the Quaker's farm; he and his mother had their duties and their place in a hut on the bottom land of the Donaughby farm. But Caleb always stopped to see who was coming and going on the rolling road. He always wondered who they were, what they were up to, and where they were headed.
Today it was a lone rider, leaning over the pommel of his saddle and staring ahead as if in a daydream, leading another man at the end of a long rope. The man on the horse was dressed in breeches, tall boots, and a waistcoat, and his eyes were shaded beneath a tri-cornered black hat.
The man behind the horse wore a thin pair of pants, a dirty shirt, and a floppy hat pulled down over his eyes far enough that Caleb couldn't see his face. There were dust-coated rags tied around his feet. The man's hands were bound with the rope that the rider held. The man on the horse was white. The man on the ground was black. Like Caleb.
Caleb watched as the horse clopped along, heading east, and the black man stumbled behind. Every few seconds his rope-bound hands would jerk upward because he was not keeping pace with the horse. Shadows from the roadside trees strummed the travelers like fingers on a silent banjo.
"Hello there!" called Caleb. "Where you going?"
The rider did not respond. He just swiped mucus from his nose with his fist. The man on the ground glanced up. His eyes were dark, his face streaked with dirt. He gave Caleb a slow nod that seemed to be either a greeting or a warning.
"Caleb!" came a distant voice from over the knoll behind him. "Where are you? Get home now!"
Caleb scrambled up the sloping land. As he dug his toes into the dry grass, his thoughts lingered on the black man back on the road. He had asked his mother before about men he'd seen walking east and west on the rolling road, but she said very little other than, "Slavery's the devil's doin', son. I lived it." Then she would get quiet and Caleb would ask no more. Slavery. A strange word that meant men and women with damaged feet and heavy loads, people with bent heads or blazing eyes.
Caleb reached the top of the hill and paused to catch his breath. From this vantage point he could see most of Adam Donaughby's 100acre farm, "Quality and Quantity." Straight ahead across the cattle field was the Quaker family's log farmhouse, the outhouse, smokehouse, hooded well, and shed in which Mrs. Donaughby held school for the Quaker boys in the spring and fall. To the right of the house was a garden in which Mrs. Donaughby raised staples for her growing family of daughters — beans, turnips, cabbage. Corn stalks waved in the hot breeze, shimmering like green water over stones in the creek.
Behind the farmhouse was the stable and the wide pasture reserved for the horses. A stream cut through the farmland, following an irregular path from north woods to southeast woods, from horse pasture to cattle field, its banks lined with reeds, rattley briars, and stalks of milkweed with near-bursting pods. To the far left of the cattle field, down on the low land near the creek, was a small building which had once been a hay barn. Now, flanked by its own sheds, gardens, and rough fencing, it was the home of Caleb Jacobson and his mother, Francis.
Francis Jacobson was outside the door of the hut, her hands on her hips. Her hair was covered with a white bonnet and her plain black skirt billowed in the breeze. Caleb could tell by the way she was standing that she was frowning. Caleb had been sent out to collect raspberry bushes but he'd become distracted with animals he'd found — a snake shedding its skin, and then the chipmunks — and now he was late.
Caleb's mother worked for Mrs. Donaughby every afternoon and evening, helping the Quaker woman with her daughters and her cooking. Francis had adopted the Quaker dress and beliefs soon after Caleb's birth. There were certain behaviors expected by God, the Quakers believed. One such behavior was punctuality. It was disrespectful to make someone wait, for it was acting as a thief of time.
Caleb clutched the shovel and sack and ran down the hill. He did not run like children would normally run, but with a heavy beat to his right foot and a skip to his left, galloping as he had seen Mr. Donaughby's horses gallop on a windy afternoon. He imagined he was riding one of the magnificent beasts, and could feel the thunderous hoofs beneath him, rhythmic and pounding. Ba-BOOM! Ba-BOOM! He dodged lazy cattle swishing flies with their tails and piles of steaming manure. He jumped the stream with ease, landing with a grunt on the other side and not losing his stride or the sack-load of bushes. A cluster of yellow butterflies scattered from his path like bits of sunlight caught in a whirlwind.
"Caleb!" called his mother. "Have you feet of molasses?"
Caleb reached the narrow path that connected the Jacobson hut with the Donaughby farmhouse on the other side of the cattle field, and followed it to the fence, through the gate, and to the doorstep. He dropped the sack and the shovel, said "Got four!," then gave his mother a big grin.
But it didn't change the inevitable.
Francis gave Caleb six healthy swats on the backside. Caleb grit his teeth and waited for it to be over. It was never enough to really hurt; Francis didn't believe in raising a hand to cause pain to another, but she did believe in making her anger clear.
"Boy!" She spun him around and put her face close to his. Her one good eye was bright with intent; her other eye, burned to uselessness before Caleb was born, stared at him like the eye of God, unblinking, unknowable, seeing nothing of the world but certainly the depths of Caleb's soul.
"I'm late to Mrs. Donaughby's 'cause of you!" Francis said. Her breath smelled of cabbage and souring milk. "She's baking today, and here I am, worried sick about you! You are not to leave the yard while I am gone! Understand me?" Caleb nodded.
"Do your chores then practice your letters."
"Yes'am," said Caleb.
Francis shook her head and her finger. The dead eye held its mysterious gaze. "Should make you go with me to tell Mrs. Donaughby you're sorry. You know I couldn't leave this house 'til I knew you were safe. What if a bear had got you? Or a wolf? Or worse, a —" She stopped herself, and shook her head. "There's lots of things to snatch up a boy, to take you away to hard places afar," she said quietly. "But you're safe, thank the Lord." She gave Caleb one last swat, this one more of a pat, and trudged off up the path that led to the Donaughby house.
Caleb watched his mother go, her shoulders driven forward, her skirt flapping. Francis Jacobson was not an old woman, at least not as old as Mrs. Donaughby and the Quaker ladies who came to visit the farm on occasion. Francis was twenty-three. But her face was thin and bony, and life hung on her like a heavy blanket.
Caleb knew that his mother had been a slave back in New York. He knew she had had a husband named George, who was Caleb's father, and who was drowned in the East River while trying to save another man's life. Francis had worked for a family named the Lewises, and had been given her free papers after a fire in the kitchen had gotten out of control and had burned Francis nearly to death and surely to no good as a house servant, for the Lewises were of a wealthy family who took their station seriously, and a maimed slave was an embarrassment. After her recovery, Francis had walked to Maryland in search of her sister, Onnie, whom she hadn't seen in four years. Francis had not found Onnie, however. Four days into Maryland, some miles east of here, she had been attacked by a wolf. Mr. Donaughby had come upon her with his rifle, and had killed the wolf. He took her to his farm, where Mrs. Donaughby nursed her back to health. The family then provided the hay barn as a home for Francis and the baby who was soon to be delivered.
Caleb left the heat of the outdoors for the inside of the hut, stepping over the threshold into the pleasant coolness. In the fireplace, coals danced with an orange glow. One of Caleb's chores was to keep the fire burning low all day so that meals could be cooked and clothes could be washed and embers could be taken outside to stoke for a candle-dipping fire or soap-boiling fire.
On the hearth by the fire was a large pot in which was some potato and pork stew, left over from breakfast and intended for dinner and supper. Caleb scooped out a glob of still-warm stew with his hand, and sucked his fingers until the food and the flavor was gone. Caleb then studied his fingers. Those on his left hand were normal, but the last three fingers on his right hand were fused together to the last knuckle. He'd been born this way, but having three attached fingers had never been a problem except that Jeremiah Martin, who went to Mrs. Donaughby's school along with Caleb and the other boys, made sport of it. When Mrs. Donaughby could not hear, Jeremiah would sing, "Paddle paw, paddle paw, Your mother broke the Lord's good law!"
Caleb knew his mother had done nothing wrong for him to have a hand such as he did. Francis had explained his deformity to him. When she had been with child, a hawk had swooped down upon her in the field, startling her so badly that she had swooned, and lay unconscious until a grazing cow awakened her. Two months later, Caleb was born with a hand shaped more like a wing than a hand. But it was nothing of which to be ashamed, Francis explained. She had done nothing wrong, nor had he.
Caleb got up from the stool, put the lid back on the pot, and got the broom from the corner by the door. The first chore was to chase outside all the summer grit that had found its way inside since yesterday.
The Jacobson hut was a cozy, one-room structure. Though once the hay barn, it had been altered with a bark-shingled roof, a door that latched, two shuttered windows, a rough wooden floor, and the simple stone fireplace. Caleb's earliest memories were the smells — summer flowers, frying fish. There was a stool, a chair, and a bed on which Francis slept. Caleb did not have his own bed, but a straw-stuffed mattress that he kept pushed beneath Francis's bed during the day and pulled out to the floor at night. Several times a year, Francis would rip open the mattress ticks and put in fresh straw. Caleb savored the nights after fresh straw was put in. It smelled good, like pleasant dreams.
Over the fireplace was a rack with Francis's cooking utensils, given to her by Mrs. Donaughby. On a wall rack by the door was Francis's rifle. She hunted rabbits to supplement the chickens and hogs they raised. Even with only one good eye, she was a fair shot. Caleb couldn't wait for the day when she would allow him to use the rifle.
On a small table was a bowl of walnuts and a clay pot in which Francis put wildflowers to "brighten our home in honor of the goodness of the Lord." The pot was filled with blue chicory and orange daylilies. From the rafters hung braids of dried mint, sage, and bags of pine needles for tea. In the corners of the hut were barrels of potatoes and flour.
Caleb swept the floor, pushing the dirt out the door, then added small bits of wood to the fire. He dragged the braided rug outside and hung it over the garden fence and smacked the dust from it with the willow rug beater. Once the rug was back in place beside the bed, he went outside again to plant the raspberry bushes he'd collected that morning.
Caleb took the shovel and went into the garden. Unlike the rail-fenced garden by the Donaughby's farmhouse, the Jacobson's garden was surrounded with a barricade of tall piles of brush. This barricade was thick and practically impenetrable, and kept deer out of the vegetable rows. Every so often a rabbit would wriggle through the tight tangles, but Caleb would catch it and it would become a meal.
On the far side of the garden, Caleb leaned into the shovel, breaking the hard soil with its sharp tip. The earth he turned over was dry and crumbling. The next shovelful was darker, finer, and a wriggling grub within the soil twisted angrily, protesting its disturbance. Caleb dumped the soil to the side, and leaned in to the shovel once more.
With the first hole dug, he carefully placed the roots of the small raspberry bush in, filled the dirt around it, and tamped it down with his bare foot. Then he dug the second hole. He thought of the pies and cobblers his mother would make with the fruit next year. He wouldn't have to scour the farm for the berries as he'd always done.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "1776: Son of Liberty"
by .
Copyright © 2000 Elizabeth Massie.
Excerpted by permission of Tom Doherty Associates.
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