Dreams of Glory Read Online Free

scared of him. You can see why. Look at the size of the black bastard.”
    â€œGet him out of here,” the lieutenant said. “He’s making a mess.”
    Dark rivulets of melting snow, suggesting streams of blood, ran from the corpse across the raw wood floor. The two New Jersey privates picked up Caesar Muzzey and lugged him out the door of the hut.
    â€œWhat will be done about this, Lieutenant?” Caleb asked.
    The lieutenant shrugged. “What can be done? One of his own kind probably killed him. Down in Delaware, where I come from, they’re always cutting each other up over wenches, gambling debts, and the like. I lost one of my prime bucks in ’77. Throat slit from ear to ear.”
    â€œYou mean the army will make no investigation?” Caleb said.
    â€œThat’s not for me to say,” the lieutenant grunted. He was a heavyset, thick-bodied man, probably in his late twenties.

    â€œWould you be more eager to find the murderer if Muzzey were white?” Caleb asked.
    â€œWhy, I don’t know,” the lieutenant said, scratching his head morosely. “My orders are to protect General Washington, not guard every square foot of Morristown. If some damned deserter gets himself stabbed in the dark, why should it be my affair, whether he’s white or black?”
    â€œI wonder if you really mean that, Lieutenant,” Caleb said. “I’m afraid you’re like most Americans. You look down on black men because so many of them are slaves.”
    The lieutenant stared at Caleb with growing astonishment.
    â€œCaesar was a human being, Lieutenant,” Caleb continued. “With the same right to life and liberty as the rest of us. I sometimes wonder if the troubles under which we’re laboring are not being sent by God to awaken us to our indifference to our black countrymen.”
    â€œGo sing that song to General Washington,” the lieutenant said. “I only own six slaves. He’s got a good two hundred down in Virginia.”
    â€œThere are men in America, even men in Congress, who don’t think everything General Washington does is right. I wouldn’t be surprised if Mr. Stapleton here is one of them.”
    Caleb knew that New Jersey usually voted with New England against the Southerners in the Continental Congress. He had heard William Williams tell Joel Lockwood that Jerseymen were “sound.” But Chandler saw no welcoming agreement on Hugh Stapleton’s handsome face.
    â€œChaplain,” he said, “I own twenty slaves. I would gladly free every one of them—not for moral but for economic reasons. They’re literally eating me alive. Owning them has never troubled my conscience for a single instant.”
    Everyone in the hut grinned his approval. Caleb heard an inner voice whisper, Fool. It was not the first time he had heard it. During his years at Yale the secret voice had often made him writhe and sweat. But he clung to his indignation. “I’m sorry to hear you say that, Congressman. I hope someday
to have a chance to change your opinion. Meanwhile, a full report of this crime will be on its way to William Williams, member of Congress from Connecticut. He happens to be one of my neighbors in Lebanon. Mr. Williams not only feels as I do about Negro Americans, he concurs with my opinion that the officers of this army have much too callous an attitude toward the enlisted men. I wonder if you’d be so indifferent, Lieutenant, if an officer had just been found murdered?”
    â€œYou can bet your ass I wouldn’t be, Chaplain,” the officer snapped. “An officer murdered is mutiny. Which more than a few of us begin to think is the aim of those sermons you’ve been preaching.”
    â€œMy aim is justice. An end to the soldier’s sufferings.”
    â€œWho do you think is responsible for starving this army? The officers? I ain’t had a bite of fresh meat in two weeks. But