An introduction to The Tavern Ledger

Humans are peculiar creatures.

You're soft. You have no scales worth mentioning. Your claws are frankly embarrassing. You had to invent armor because nature neglected to provide you with any, and most of you couldn't fly if thrown from a sufficiently high place.

I strongly recommend against testing that last one...

And you don't live very long.

I've never quite understood how you tolerate that.

Perhaps that's why you continue to surprise me.

I've watched men and women, who had every reason to be afraid, stand their ground anyway. I've watched ordinary people challenge kings, armies, mobs, and governments because they believed something mattered more than their own safety.

I've watched people with almost no power refuse to surrender the one thing that was always theirs to begin with.

Their freedom.

That has always impressed me.

My name is Liberty Tavernhart.

Pull up a chair.

I've Been Here a While

Precisely how long is none of your business.

Let's simply say that when I first heard whispers from across the Atlantic about a peculiar experiment taking place in the American colonies, I had already accumulated considerable experience with humanity.

Some of it was even pleasant.

I'd also accumulated considerable experience with kings, governments, and other people who believed possessing power entitled them to decide how everyone else should live.

Being a dragon tends to make one sensitive to the subject.

For much of my life, creatures like me survived by hiding. Humans have an unfortunate habit of becoming frightened by things they cannot control... and then attempting to kill them.

So imagine my interest when I began hearing people argue that an individual possessed rights simply because he existed.

Not because a king granted them.

Not because a government approved of him.

Because they were already his.

I crossed an ocean to see whether you actually meant it.

More than two centuries later, I'm still watching.

Why the Ledger?

I've collected stories.

Some involve people whose names you already know.

Others involve people you should know.

Soldiers. Spies. Sailors. Women who were told they had no place in the fight. Men who could have surrendered and chose not to. Ordinary people who discovered that history had placed them somewhere extraordinary and decided to rise to the occasion.

Those are the humans who fascinate me most.

Understand something about dragons.

Strength isn't particularly impressive to us.

I am immensely strong. I didn't earn it. I hatched that way.

But courage?

Courage is different.

A human being knows perfectly well that a musket ball can kill him. She knows a sword can cut her. He knows that his life is short and that charging toward danger may make it considerably shorter.

And sometimes you charge anyway.

Courage is not the absence of vulnerability. Vulnerability is what gives courage its meaning.

That is worth remembering.

So I intend to remember it.

A Word About History

There is one other matter we should settle before we begin.

I have lived a long time.

I have seen things.

I have also heard things.

Those are not the same.

Some stories I'll tell you because I was there. Others reached me through soldiers, travelers, sailors, tavern patrons, and friends. Still others happened somewhere I couldn't possibly have witnessed them.

I'll tell you which is which.

And memory is an imperfect thing... even a dragon's.

Humans also have a remarkable tendency to improve stories in the retelling, particularly after the third whiskey.

So when memory and the historical record disagree, we check the record.

When historians disagree, I'll tell you that too.

When something is legend rather than established fact, we'll call it legend.

A damned good story does not become true merely because we wish it were.

You have my word on that.

America

I love this country.

That does not mean I believe it incapable of being wrong.

Quite the opposite.

I love America because of what it dared to attempt.

The Declaration said that human beings possessed rights that existed before government. Your Constitution attempted to restrain political power. Your Bill of Rights told government that there were places it was not permitted to go.

You have not always lived up to those principles.

I noticed.

Slavery did not become compatible with liberty because men who spoke eloquently about freedom practiced it. Injustice does not become justice because the right political party commits it. And power does not become harmless because the person holding it happens to be someone you voted for.

The person you trust with power today will not necessarily be the person who inherits that power tomorrow.

I've lived long enough to see that lesson repeated.

Several times.

I recommend learning it more quickly than you have thus far.

But I've also watched generations of Americans struggle to make the promise larger... to extend liberty to people who had been denied it and to demand that this country live closer to the principles it proclaimed.

That struggle is part of the story too.

America is not sacred to me because of the dirt beneath my feet.

Liberty is.

America earned my affection by daring to make an experiment of it.

So... Welcome to the Tavern

There will be heroes here.

There will also be complicated people who did admirable things and terrible things, because history stubbornly refuses to organize itself into saints and villains for our convenience.

There will be forgotten Patriots, strange episodes, disputed legends, courage, hypocrisy, sacrifice, occasional stupidity and, if we're fortunate, some good whiskey.

I'll tell you what I remember.

We'll investigate what I don't.

And perhaps together we'll rescue a few extraordinary humans from the obscurity into which history has allowed them to fall.

You don't have very long, after all.

You might as well remember those who used their time well.

Pull up a chair.

The first story is coming.

And yes... I'll pour.

Don't get greedy.

Liberty Tavernhart
The Green Dragon Tavern

 

Who is Liberty Tavernhart?