The Patriots' Club

3

The five men had gathered in the Long Room, and now stood around the stout, burnished table waiting for the clock to toll midnight. Meetings were to begin with the new day. The new day offered hope, and hope was the cornerstone of the republic. No one drank or smoked. Both were forbidden until the meeting had adjourned. There was no rule, however, against speaking. All the same, the room was silent as a crypt. A problem had arisen that none of them had foreseen. A problem unlike any the committee had ever faced.

“Damned clock,” said Mr. Morris, shooting an irritated glance at the ormolu ship’s clock set on the mantelpiece. “I’d swear it’s stopped ticking.”

The clock had come from the Bonhomme Richard, John Paul Jones’s flagship, and remained in its original condition. Jones, in his ship’s log, had lamented its tendency to run slow.

“Patience,” counseled Mr. Jay. “It won’t be but another minute, and we can all speak our conscience.”

“Easy for you to say,” responded Mr. Morris testily. “I suppose court is out of session. You can sleep all day.”

“That’ll do,” intoned Mr. Washington, and it was enough to quiet them both.

They came from government, industry, and finance. They were lawyers, businessmen, politicians, and policemen. For the first time, a member of the Fourth Estate had been offered a place at the table: a journalist with close ties to the Executive and a Midwesterner’s unvarnished honesty.

They knew each other well, if formally. Three of the five had been sitting, standing, and, as was often the case in this room, arguing, across the table from one another for twenty-odd years. The newest among them, the journalist, had been inducted three years earlier. The last-by tradition their leader, and as such prima inter pares-had guided them the past eight years, the longest period the Constitution permitted one in his position.

Tonight, they had convened to discuss his successor.

Just then, the antique clock struck the hour. The men took their seats around the table. When the final chime had rung, all heads were lowered and the prayer read.

“We now make it our earnest prayer,” said Mr. Washington, “that God would have these United States of America in his holy protection, that he would incline the hearts of the Citizens to cultivate a spirit of obedience to Government, to entertain a brotherly affection and love for one another, for their fellow Citizens at large, and particularly for their brethren who served in the Field, and, finally, that he would most graciously be pleased to dispose us all, to do Justice, to love mercy, and to demand ourselves with that charity, humility, and pacific temper of mind, which were the Characteristics of the Divine Author of our blessed Religion, and without a humble imitation of whose example in these things, we can never hope to be a happy Nation.”

“Amen,” murmured the collected voices.

It was given to Mr. Washington to preside over the meeting. He stood from his place at the head of the table and drew a breath. “Gentlemen,” he said. “I bring the meeting to order…”

“About time,” murmured Mr. Morris. “I’ve got a six A.M. flight to New York.”