The first book by novelist Karen A. Chase, pictured here in Philadelphia's Independence Hall, is historical fiction about the signing of the Declaration of Independence. (Photo by Ted Petrocci)
The picture we carry in our heads depicting the signing of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia back in 1776 is wrong. Not all the delegates occupied Independence Hall at the same time, despite the image in the big painting by Jonathan Trumbull. Scholars are divided about where and how the last seven signatures got affixed. Enter Karen A. Chase, a Calgary, Alberta, native who grew up touring the United States with her family and then transplanted to Virginia, whose novel “Carrying Independence” is the first of a trilogy of historical fiction about the founding documents, the Declaration, Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The story is full of skullduggery, derring-do, farewells and reunions and is the historical made personal. In a recent phone conversation, Chase cuts to the … point about her independently published novel.
Richmond magazine: The narrative includes some splendid “widescreen” sequences of battles, specifically in and around New York City, and of the native tribes converging at Fort Pitt for a peace treaty, the sweep of all their canoe and watercraft crossing the Ohio River. How did these details emerge?
Karen A. Chase: I enjoyed pulling away from the single-person perspective and showing how they’re participating in a huge event. Getting there, though — and getting it right — requires an enormous amount of research. And it came out of a combination of things: I went to the places — which, in the case of the Battle of Brooklyn, it’s almost impossible to strip down from what’s there now. [At] the Old Stone House, reconstructed in Washington Park where they think it was, there are great maps and interpretation. I devoured accounts from various histories, and online a number of enthusiasts have broken down that particular battle umpteen different ways.
Bill Welsch, from the American Revolution Round Table I’m a member of, read these sequences with an eye for detail. For example, I first had the British troops in boots; nope, Bill told me, shoes.
I went to Fraunces Tavern in New York — it was called the Queen’s Head during the Revolution — this was around 2010, early in my studies. A few rooms have been kept the same. And it was a quiet day in the museum, and I drifted around, really taking in the place. The then-education director, Jennifer Patton, invited me upstairs into their big conference room surrounded by bookshelves. … She really dismantled that part of Manhattan to let me see Fraunces Tavern as it was at the time of the novel. We spent more than an hour together, and then on my way out the door, she came running after me. I ended up going with her to look at historic sites; Manhattan was only a few blocks long in 1776. A friend who’s hiked the Appalachian Trail calls this, “trail magic,” when someone has left a bundle of food and water for you at a resting place that you didn’t expect.
I’m indebted to the thesis work of Gregory Schaff concerning the treaty negotiations at Fort Pitt with Col. George Morgan and the more than 600 Native Americans of many nations who came there to sign that treaty. The details come right out of Morgan’s journals.
RM: How did Nathaniel Marten occur to you as the protagonist charged with collecting the remaining signatures for the Declaration?
Chase: It was 2008. I’d had an idea about book going into the origins of the Constitution. To learn more about the 18th century, I went to Berkeley Plantation, the home of Benjamin Harrison, who is one of the Declaration signers, and the docent pointed to a copy that they have and said, somewhat offhandedly, "Not all the men were there on the same day. Nobody knows how those last six or seven signatures got on there." And then he walked out and the group followed him, and I was left there looking at the Declaration, and the whole book came to me right there. The opportunity swung wide open.
RM: Was there really a secret Carrying Committee authorized by Congress?
Chase: That was my invention. The Continental Congress formed a number of different committees, such as the Committees for Correspondence, for Congress communicating with itself, other colonies, seeking foreign aid. I’m creating a guy to carry the Declaration, so I can’t imagine they wouldn’t have had a committee to manage the project. Made Benjamin Franklin in charge of it, since he did lay out the post roads and was in charge of the Colonial post. That fit. It made sense.
RM: Nathaniel’s mission to track down the seven signatories provides a tour of the Colonies amid revolution, but we also meet these men — some well-known, others obscure. Here is arrogant slave owner Richard Henry Lee, but also the avuncular professor George Wythe. What informed your portrayals of them?
Chase: Things I wanted to say about the Declaration and to have Jefferson say them seemed an easy way out. George Wythe is where Jefferson learned and worked through some of these big ideas. That scene with Nathaniel and Wythe was one of the toughest to write, took weeks, because so much of it had to come out in dialogue, and we learn as writers, "Show, don’t tell." Sometimes, though, especially for complex thoughts, there’s no other satisfactory way. Otherwise it’ll sound like a textbook. Wythe is a teacher, so, he engages Nathaniel in that manner.
My job was not to put them on a pedestal. Richard Henry Lee owned 200 slaves, yet he was pro-Revolution and had much to lose in a separation from England. Still, he’s anything but noble. The staff at Stratford Hall provided me with indispensable insights. His plantation, Chantilly, down the road, isn’t there anymore. This is why, too, that Nathaniel picks up this little spy who is pursuing him, and turns out he’s a hungry scared kid doing it for money because he’s got nothing. The disparities are quite real, and people are driven to desperate measures amid the Revolution’s tumult.
RM: Perhaps one of the most shocking aspects is the prison ship where Nathaniel’s best friend Arthur ends up. The readers may not be aware that these horrendous things existed.
Chase: The Colonial forces lost around 4,500 men on the battlefield. The estimates for those who died in these ships is between 11,000 to 18,000. I wanted to give Nathaniel and Arthur extremely different experiences, Nathaniel staying out of the battle by carrying the document, while his friend Arthur feels the brunt of the war. The accounts of the barely alive men detailed to bury the dead are incredible, horrific. The memorial in Prospect Park in Brooklyn was built because for years after the war people kept finding bones and skulls from those shallow graves of the prison ship dead. And it overlooks the Navy Yards.
RM: How about the printer Mary Katherine Goddard whom Nathaniel meets? And where was she when I needed her?
Chase: [Laughs] All the men who read this love Mary Katharine Goddard. And she’s a real person. The Goddard Broadside, that Congress authorized in 1777, was the first printed version of the Declaration with the signatures. Congress wanted to bolster morale by showing the public that these men were taking a stand and that the Colonies were united. No use trying to keep their identities secret anymore. She included her name, as the printer, down at the bottom. So hers is the only woman’s name on the Declaration. She was the first postmaster of Baltimore; she ran the mail. Because she was the postmaster general she was also the first employee of the United States government. And, yes, there is a handprint on the back of [the] original [Declaration]. I imagined how it may have gotten there. That’s the beauty of this kind of writing; when history pauses, and can’t provide a complete answer, fiction can.
Chase will read from her novel on Tuesday, June 11, at 6 p.m, at Patrick Henry’s Pub and Grille, 2300 E. Broad St. In addition to the book and Chase’s signature, you can expect to see actors portraying historical figures Thomas Jefferson, George Wythe and Richard Henry Lee, straight off the book’s pages.
