Centuries ago, in a land long since drowned, a man stepped out of a tavern and closed the door. His heart was heavy with fear and anger and worry. The distant hooting of an owl echoed through the trees as he stepped into the night. Smoking his clay pipe, the man walked home with apprehension, stopping near the top of a hill to look down at his farm.
“What troubles you, Daniel,” inquired a woman’s voice.
Looking around, the man saw a well-dressed woman sitting on a tree stump. He could not believe that he had been so lost in his thoughts that he had missed her sitting there holding a torch, especially a torch that shone so brightly and steadily-for it did not gutter and flicker in the wind.
“I am worried that the tax men will take my farm,” he answered, not knowing why he shared this burden with a strange woman that he did not recognize. She was handsome, but in the sturdy way of the Yankee women who labored in the snow alongside their husbands. He appreciated her strong beauty, but knew that it was not feminine wiles that moved his tongue.
“Yes, they are going to take your farm. I’m sorry.” The strange woman looked genuinely sad. “It was necessary.”
“What do you mean, necessary? Are you the one taking my farm?”
“Directly? No. But you offered it to me when you took up my cause, and now it is needful that it be sacrificed.”
“To you? I never… Who ARE you?”
“You do not recognize me?” The woman looked genuinely hurt. Her eyes widened, and in the torchlight shone silver, like mirrors. The man felt his attention pulled into those vast, shining eyes.
He stood, again, in a field that he had stood in many years ago. The sun beat down upon his woolen tunic, smoke and stench filled his nose. Ragged militiamen crowded around him, seeking reassurance, courage, leadership from the poor farmer. He himself looked about for guidance. A sea of carmine marched inexorably closer- the finest and most feared soldiers in the world advanced across the field, bearing death. Horrified now, the man glanced about like a drowning man seeking a tree limb. His eyes locked upon a giant of a man astride a white horse. The General. Behind him, almost invisible, a woman whispered in his ear.
Standing again upon the hilltop, the man realized that this strange woman’s collar and bodice were not of cloth, but of hammered bronze. Her dress was not cloth, but mail so finely wrought as to drape and billow in the breeze. She shifted, and he could see the hilt of a sword buckled about Her waist.
“Columbia.” As the name left his lips he had to fight the buckling of his knees. Terror and ardor played across his bones as he faced Her, knowing that Her words rang with truth.
“Or, as Doctor Franklin preferred, America. And other names to other men in other days.” She smiled briefly and then Her face grew serious.
“When your great men declared independence, they pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor- to each other, and to me and to my Republic. Many of those men’s sacrifices have already been laid upon my altar. When you took up their cause, you offered the same.”
“But the war is won. Why do you come for me now?”
“Is it? Just now you came from a meeting in which your friends begged you to take up your sword and lead them against the tyrants in Boston.”
“I sold my sword. I needed the money.”
“This sword?” She gestured at the hilt at Her waist. The man could see that it was the very same sword given to him by LaFayette. “My sword is every sword wielded for justice. My spear is every spear thrust against tyranny. Do not despair at the want of a sword, I offer you another.”
“To defeat Bowdoin and his bankers?”
“No. To be defeated by them.”
The man recoiled in horror. “Why then offer me the sword if I am to lose?”
“My strategy is not measured in single human lifetimes. A war amongst men is but a skirmish in my campaign. If my Republic, OUR Republic, is to survive the next century, you must fight Boston… and lose.”
“Will I die?”
“It is hard to say. You might. Certainly, some of your followers will lay their lives upon my altar. Live or die, I can promise you disgrace and if you live, financial ruin.”
“Then why try?”
“Right now, these United States are anything but united. Your neighbors to the north, the rugged hill folk of Vermont, have been forced to declare independence from the very nation they helped to birth. Commerce between the states is tenuous, they cannot agree on what money has value. Poor men, many of them veterans, find themselves silenced in the halls of power that they fought to erect. The young eagle is tearing itself apart before it even fully hatches.”
“So let Washington fix it. Let the other great men fix it. I’m a farmer.”
“You are also a soldier, a leader- and a good one.”
“But there are others, better leaders. Let them put the Republic back together.”
“If they could, do you not think I would require it of them? Your poverty, your relative isolation, your non-involvement in petty politics… all these place you and only YOU at the touchhole. You and you alone can ignite this conflict and see it through to its necessary end.”
The man trembled, his eyes glittering with tears at the enormous burden placed upon his soul. “If I do this, will it save the Republic? Will it end the conflicts tearing us apart?”
“No, Daniel. But it will make a stronger nation, one that might be able to survive what must come next.”
“Next? NEXT?!” He trembled now in fury as much as fear. “How much more death do you want? Are you so bloodthirsty that you demand endless war of us?”
“Not I, but the weakness of men- the same great men who led your nation to independence. They embraced my Republic, but they did not offer it to all who dwell upon these shores.”
“The slaves,” he breathed.
“And the Indians, and the women, and the countless hordes that will come to dwell in the light of my freedom. By not accepting them now, your leaders have guaranteed that those people must purchase entrance into my Republic by struggle, sacrifice, and sadly- blood.”
The men fell to his knees and wept. “It is too much! You ask me to give up the last of what I have, and for what? A world in which my children and their children must make the same sacrifices? Is there no end?”
He fell Her hand upon his cheek, and She lifted his chin until he gazed deep into the silvery pools of Her eyes. Through Her eyes he saw terrible horrors and a growing peace that followed in their wake. He saw injustice and cruelty- yet he saw the spread of laws and equality and charity as humankind sought to give a better world to their children. “My campaign is long, Daniel. I have waged this war for longer than men have recorded their history. Every battle fought in my name, every victory, every defeat, every sacrifice- each one advances my strategy. Each one brings your kind closer to the civilization that you are ultimately capable of. Each one brings humanity closer to my Republic.”
“But is there a final victory?”
“Victory is never certain, Daniel. All I can offer you is a sword, and my promise that in future days other men and women will study your struggle and decide that your sacrifice improved the lives of the generations that followed.”
“You promise this?” He struggled to rise.
She offered him Her hand. “I promise that if you do as I have told you, if you withhold nothing and fight as if you can win- history will declare your defeat a victory.”
He took Her hand and rose, finding himself alone in the dark holding a sword.