Paxton's War Read Free

aware that she invented verse of her own, and though he considered such endeavors foolish and inappropriate for young ladies, he realized that there was little he could do to stop her: like his sister, his daughter had a flair for the artistic.
    If Colleen could explain the presence of Alexander Pope’s risqué rhymes to her father, there was also, in her possession, a small packet of tracts and broadsides for which she could not so easily account. The pamphlets had been written by people whom Roy considered dangerous, and the broadsides were political satires that Colleen had written herself, and kept hidden deep in the bottom drawer of her dresser, beneath her most intimate undergarments. Her passion for the fiery words of freedom had flowered four years earlier, when she was sixteen. Her heart had been broken because Jason Paxton had departed for Europe to study music. Without romance’s golden fantasies, she was devastated. All this she had confessed to her aunt. In fact, she’d gone so far as to show her a poem she’d written about Jason. “I can see that you’re an artist,” Rianne had responded sympathetically, “but art won’t bring him back. Art sends the soul soaring, but politics is the pudding of daily life. Have a taste of pudding, my dear. Look around and see what these English fools are foisting upon us. Wake up from your poetic fantasies!” And with that, Rianne gave her niece Thomas Paine’s Common Sense .
    Young and impressionable, Colleen read the tract in one fevered sitting, and learned in the following weeks to recite many lines by heart: “Examine the passions and feelings of mankind; bring the doctrine of reconciliation to the touchstone of nature, and then tell me whether you can hereafter love, honor, and faithfully serve the power that hath carried fire and sword into your land.” No, she decided; she could not serve that power. It was plain and simple, it was common sense as the title itself said. The British were tyrants who robbed the colonists of what was rightfully theirs—their fair share of commerce and trade, and, most precious of all, their personal freedom.
    In the months that followed, and as America’s armies of the North were beaten and ran and were beaten again, she became convinced that duty demanded she contribute to the cause so eloquently expressed and in such great danger. In a style at first strained and turgid, then more and more cutting and eloquent, she wielded the only weapon she had—her pen. For the last year, the name Sandpiper, the songbird of the coast and a natural pseudonym, had begun showing up on an occasional broadside displayed aroud the countryside and in Charleston, whose recent surrender to the hated British sword chilled Colleen’s heart and redoubled her patriotic convictions.
    Checking to make certain her bedroom door was closed, she quickly opened the drawer and there, beneath hosiery and chemises, found the well-worn broadsides—sheets of paper containing revolutionary lyrics—and pamphlets that reflected the passion of the patriots. And among them, there was another sheet that meant nearly as much to her as all the others combined—a letter from Jason Paxton.
    The paper he had touched, the words that his hands had penned! Whenever she held it, he seemed close to her, so close that she could imagine the sound of his voice and picture his soft lips as he might have said the words himself.
    Emilia, Italy
    January 8, 1780
    My dear friend,
    I trust this finds you in robust health. I’m deeply grateful for your several letters, the last of which I received before leaving England for the Continent. News of the war distresses me, as always, and were it not for my music, my mood would be exceedingly melancholy. I suppose it fair to say that music enables me to escape the pressing reality of worldy affairs—at least for a while.
    After three years in England, I’m finally