Savage Cousins

1780 For five merciless years General Washington has kept Sir Henry Clinton and his army imprisoned on Manhattan Island. As each year goes by the level of atrocities rises higher with no end in sight. There are occasional skirmishes in no-man's-lands like Westchester and western Long Island, but excursions beyond them always ends the same; near annihilation of the expedition and statistically unsustainable losses among the officers who led them. The Grand Fleet has drawn the not so...
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1780 For five merciless years General Washington has kept Sir Henry Clinton and his army imprisoned on Manhattan Island. As each year goes by the level of atrocities rises higher with no end in sight. There are occasional skirmishes in no-man's-lands like Westchester and western Long Island, but excursions beyond them always ends the same; near annihilation of the expedition and statistically unsustainable losses among the officers who led them. The Grand Fleet has drawn the not so grand duty of blockading Boston, New York and Charleston and finally Letters of Marque are sold publicly in an effort to cutoff American trade with Europe and high seas piracy. Long Island Sound (The Devil's Belt) is a hornet's nest of illicit trade, out-and-out Piracy and kidnappings for ransom. In Brooklyn, called Wallabout Bay then, the king employs 16 derelict Naval Vessels like HMS Jersey to house prisoners caught at sea. Every morning at sunrise the cry can be heard going across the water: "Rebels, bring up your dead!" The dead will in time number more than 11,500 soldiers and sailors. This is not the world of Robert Townsend and Elizabeth Livingston Smith. They are among a new generation of young American Royals. Robert Townsend, a 28 year old Quaker Merchant, is a leader among the wealthy young men of New York. Elizabeth Livingston Smith is the debutant daughter of His Majesty's Royal Chief Justice for the Province of New York. Young, charming, and ambitious, they have every reason in the world to live and all the resources needed to live well. Nonetheless with all the inevitability of Religious predestination, they meet, fall in love and answer the question: "What price freedom?" I do not wish to demean in any way the centrality of our victory at Yorktown Virginia. So far as the historical account is concerned, it is the only victory that mattered in a long and tragic war. But, there is a private war, hidden by the haze of deceit and treachery. What was to suddenly occur next was to that very private ledger what Yorktown is to the Public Record. Culper Jr.Frankly, war was always in the air. The generation that fought the war of American independence, and who paid far too high a price for it judging by what I see around me today, had known nothing but conflict with Britain. Culper Jr.