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we all know only too well, matters of national honor can lead to war.”
    No one could argue with that perspective.
    â€œWe mustn’t forget,” Caleb pointed out, “the most important consideration of all, that Great Britain is our main trading partner. More than 80 percent of America’s imports come from Britain, and most of what America produces is exported to Britain. How can we ever expect to prevail in this economic war, as George correctly refers to it, if England is acting as our enemy?”
    It was a rhetorical question. No one expected an answer. Jack Endicott, nevertheless, had a comment to tag onto it.
    â€œAnd yet Jefferson is doing everything in his power to turn England into our enemy,” he stated categorically. “Dam nation , that man is an enigma. He touts free trade—and for that, I must applaud him—but then he trots out legislation and policies that are directly intended to rile up the British against us. Clearly he favors the French in this conflict. The French , by God! What has Napoléon ever done for us? Not a blasted thing! How a president so willing to sell out his country managed to be reelected to a second term is utterly beyond me.”
    Jefferson was reelected, Richard thought to himself, because there are many more Republicans in the southern and western states than Federalists in the northeastern states, and Republicans everywhere continue to revere Jefferson as an icon of American idealism. As he listened to Jack Endicott, two people came to mind: his father-in-law, the recently deceased Henry Makepeace Hardcastle, a salty Royal Navy post captain who often spouted off the way Endicott had just done; and Alexander Hamilton, a longtime family friend who was one of the most intelligent and articulate statesmen to espouse Federalist ideals, including the crucial importance of the young republic maintaining strong relations with England. A year ago last July he had been shot and killed in a “duel of honor” with Aaron Burr, Jefferson’s vice president at the time. His sound mind and wise counsel would be sorely missed, Richard suspected, in the upcoming regional and national debates.
    â€œWhat would you have us do, Jack?” Richard asked quietly into the silence that followed the tirade. Outside, rain and sleet still pelted the window glass, although with less intensity than earlier. Inside, in the center of the large room, clerks kept up their busy pen work, seemingly oblivious to the animated conversation taking place not twenty feet from their desks.
    Endicott shrugged. “I doubt there is anything we can do,” he said with resignation, “beyond waiting for developments to unfold and keeping ourselves informed. But mark my words: George is right: the Essex case marks only the first broadside aimed at us since the Peace of Amiens dissolved. Every time Britain steps up its blockade of Europe, Napoléon will step up his retaliation. And each time that happens, our country’s prosperity and the prosperity of our families will be further jeopardized. Who knows where this all might end?”
    â€œIt would seem we’re caught between the proverbial hammer and anvil,” Caleb observed gloomily, and no one could gainsay his summation.
    B Y 1805 THE B EACON H ILL area of Boston rivaled Philadelphia and Charleston as the epicenter of high society in America. From the 1740s into the 1780s, most of Boston Neck, save for the commercial hub near Long Wharf and Faneuil Hall, was a sparsely settled backwater community kept low by the ravages of war and continuing economic stagnation. Visionaries saw the potential, however, and as New England merchant fleets took to the seas in the 1780s and 1790s, they put that potential into action. Among those spearheading the social transformation was Charles Bulfinch, who designed the gilded-domed state house and oversaw its construction in 1795 on property once owned by another visionary,