A Novel NNiigghhtthh aawwkkeerrss A n t h o n y T i a t o r i o © Copyright 2008 by Anthony D. Tiatorio All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author. For my wife, Judy t was very dark when Samuel led them along the Ipath he knew that circled around the town, a little below the canal, and back down to the river. It went through the briary thickets and was mostly unused, except for the fruit pickers. The marsh was thick with raspberries that time of year and they were all around them, plump, ripe and ready to eat, but the light from the canal boat nighthawker he carried was keenly focused and cut too narrow a swath through the sooty shadows for them to be seen. __________ Chapter One OSIAH HAMRICK WAS CERTAIN that John Quincy Adams would handily win reelection to the presidency in 1828. This J was how little he, and indeed most well-healed Bostonians, understood about the way America had changed in the barely fifty years since the Revolution, a revolution they had literally fashioned with their own fingers. For its first half-century the republic had been ruled by the educated few, the soft-handed children of refinement, the college educated heirs of tradition in public service. There was indeed a ruling class and it was widely assumed that, like any profession, ruling required breeding and experience; no one personified this idea more than John Quincy Adams, son of a former president and as close to a natural political aristocrat as any American could possibly come. The nation’s political elite were in every way gentlemen of wealth and social standing. But, power was about to be wrested away from these entitled few and, like any species threatened with extinction, they fought tenaciously for their survival. And, in this struggle they stopped at nothing to destroy the man they feared most, Andrew Jackson, the agent, as they saw it, of their political doom. Just as Adams represented the refined and reasoned aristocratic road, Jackson personified the path of the common people, an intuitive, raw, gut understanding of what was right and what was not. 6 Anthony Tiatorio The presidential campaign of 1828 was vicious and dirty. Jackson was charged with every conceivable crime, from treason to cold- blooded murder. Even the reputations of his wife and mother were mercilessly sullied in a futile effort to stem the rising political tide. The pot was boiling and this was not the time for timidity. It was Monday, May 26th; the Congress had just adjourned and its members were rushing home to join the fray. Josiah Hamrick believed that the election would go whichever way the winds in New York blew it. He hoped the state would stay solidly for Adams, as it had four years earlier. But, in the spring of 1828, the venerable Dewitt Clinton, champion of the Erie Canal, and perhaps the most admired man in America, was dead. His lukewarm support for Jackson in ’24 was cynically seen as a thinly veiled attempt to splinter the already almost hopelessly divided vote among the several candidates, so as to make himself the most viable alternative. It didn’t happen. Martin Van Buren and his so-called Albany regency were running the show now. Little Van, as he was sometimes called, for reasons of his own, wanted Jackson to be president, and he was in a position to help make it happen. New York was the pivot point for the nation, not only politically, but economically as well. The canal was bringing unheard of wealth to the state. In the western counties, population was doubling every two or three years and land prices had already quadrupled. New York City was clearly the country’s leading port and Wall Street traders dominated the securities markets. Only breaking the stranglehold of Philadelphia and Nicholas Biddle’s bank on the nation’s purse strings remained to be done before New York truly became the Empire State. Like many New Englanders, Josiah Hamrick’s son, Thomas, saw nothing but a pot of gold in western New York and had been seriously advising his father to go after it. The times were not good for the firm of Hamrick and Son and hadn’t been since the depression of the early ’20’s. The national need, in 1818, to retire the long term debt incurred by the Louisiana Purchase had forced the Bank of the United States to call in many loans, in order to gather the necessary cash. This, of course, shrunk the money supply, and that caused the Panic of 1819. With it Nighthawkers 7 came a drastic drop in prices as the economy quickly deflated; many businesses were threatened. Hamrick and Son was among them. The old New England economy was already in decline and had for years been rapidly hemorrhaging capital, which flowed freely from shipping into textiles and other manufactures. Josiah had flirted with the idea of selling his aging schooners and sloops and putting his profits into cotton mills. He had watched the water-powered plants spring up like summer weeds along the rivers of New England and sensed the birth of a new age, but he knew so little about manufacturing that he feared the risk. Western New York, however, intrigued Josiah, since the new Erie and Chaplain Canals were causing an explosion in the economy there and he understood trade quite well. Thomas seemed so enthusiastic when he spoke of it and he very much wanted to be closer to his only son. He remembered how, as a young man, his own father had confided in him and relied on him and how needed and proud it made him feel. Josiah wanted very much to show confidence in his own boy and take his advice, but, somehow, something seemed wrong about it all and as much as he tried, he couldn’t settle it in his mind. Still, New Englanders were flooding into western New York; the population was burgeoning and the commerce on the Hudson was booming. Like his father and grandfather before him, Josiah Hamrick’s vessels sailed in the coastal trade, as they had since well before the Revolution and, while he knew precious little about steamboats, shipping was shipping he told himself. He had discussed this with his own father, Jonathan, now eighty-one, the retired patriarch of the Hamrick family, and was encouraged. Even the old man could see that it was time to seek new directions, to make a new beginning, just as the nation itself was about to do. The west was blossoming before their eyes, as his son so often said, offering opportunity beyond their dreams. All of this urged him to go and see for himself. osiah had been away for nearly a month when the news arrived J and Thomas knew instantly that his father would be gone forever. The envelope held the few things that had been recovered, his 8 Anthony Tiatorio small notebook and some other papers, a letter, and his pocket watch, smashed and stopped at 3:45. “My God, Tom, it can’t be!” she responded half in shock at the news of her son’s tragic death. “I don’t believe it. How do we know it’s true?” Rachel Hamrick was almost eighty and had, since his mother’s death, been incredibly close to her grandson. She loved him deeply, but showed him little of the indulgence usually lavished on grandchildren. His father provided plenty of that she realized, knowing that, devastated and damaged by the loss of his young wife, he had been utterly unable to cope with the responsibility of raising a child. Perhaps it had been a mistake for her to have assumed that role so aggressively. She thought of that often as she watched Thomas grow older and increasingly further from his own father. They hardly knew each other. There was nothing even approaching intimacy between them and she blamed herself for that as she searched her grandson’s face, in this time of grief and sadness, hoping to see some signs of sorrow. “It’s true, Mimi. There’s no doubt. They sent the death certificate and there’s a letter from the sheriff of Albany County.” “He’s dead? Josiah is dead?” she asked, shaking her head, somewhat dazed and still in disbelief. “What happened? How could this have happened?” “An explosion they said, on the steamboat. Dozens were killed.” “And they’re sure it was your father?” “Yes,” he answered and for the first time she sensed a small hint of sadness in his voice. “Oh, please, Tom, let’s pray it’s not true.” But she knew. Thomas put his arms around his grandmother and the two said nothing for what seemed like an eternity. Pressed against his chest she measured his breathing, hoping for any break in the rhythm that would tell her that he had loved his father, but she noticed nothing. “Does your grandfather know?” “Not yet. The envelope just arrived,” he answered, laying the few sad items on the desk top. The broken timepiece caught her eye first and she began to cry. Struggling to get beyond her shattered emotions she said, “please, Tom, read me the letter, the one from the sheriff.” Nighthawkers 9 To the family of Josiah Hamrick of Boston Massachusetts: It is my sad duty to inform you that Mr.