Croatoan Joins the U.S. Government

The Croatoan’s incorporation into the United States government turned an independent supernatural organization into a covert federal agency. Negotiated in the aftermath of the American Revolution, the arrangement borrowed the Checquy’s hierarchical model and intelligence role while limiting two of its most consequential powers: the Croatoan could not forcibly recruit powered children, and it could not interfere in nonsupernatural affairs.

Background and Need for Recognition

The Checquy’s account places the negotiations in the unsettled period after the Treaty of Paris was signed and ratified on September 3, 1783. At the time, the Checquy Court in England was recovering from a supernatural crisis in Cornwall, and the Croatoan’s letters prompted an exasperated response from the Crimson Lord. The Croatoan was already performing work considered important to humanity, but the Checquy could not plausibly ask King George to finance an American counterpart after the colonies had become independent. The new government therefore had to be approached discreetly, and the Croatoan was advised to keep a low profile until its place was secure.

The plan was to send a single representative who could explain the organization’s mission and demonstrate that it possessed unusual capabilities. The choice was not simply a matter of finding an effective emissary: the representative needed to impress officials while retaining the means to escape if the reception turned hostile. This approach made the Croatoan’s continued operation depend on persuading a new sovereign government rather than relying on its former relationship with Britain.

Shadrach’s Mission and the Negotiation

The Croatoan selected Shadrach, a Bishop and former slave, to represent it. He arrived at George Washington’s home in an entrance designed to make an impression, emerging from a cloud of moths. Washington was away inspecting troops, but Martha Washington allowed Shadrach to wait. The two spent several hours in the parlor as he explained the Croatoan and its purpose; Martha understood the value the organization might offer the new nation.

Over untaxed tea, Martha and Shadrach worked through the terms of the Croatoan’s absorption into government. The account describes the negotiations as exceptionally complex and leaves open which of the two was the more effective negotiator. Their agreement was already in place when George Washington returned home, so he found a covert supernatural agency incorporated into the government. The scene gives the organization a distinctly political founding: its place in the new administration was secured through a negotiated arrangement, not simply through an order from the president.

Institutional Design and Limits

The resulting agency resembled the Checquy in important structural respects. It received a very large budget and retained a hierarchy, including a ruling Court. Martha objected that such a governing circle sat uneasily with the new nation’s ideals, but Shadrach insisted on keeping it. The Croatoan thus adopted a familiar institutional form even as it entered a government founded in opposition to inherited monarchical authority.

Its recruitment powers, however, were not identical to those of the Checquy. The Checquy had long possessed authority to claim citizens with powers, and its methods could include persuading or deceiving parents into surrendering children. The Croatoan was denied the right to extract powered children forcibly from their families. Martha had supported granting that power, but George Washington was firm against it. Croatoan members instead had to recruit operatives through appeals to duty and responsibility. The narrative notes that this approach worked almost as well as compulsion, while avoiding a direct contradiction of the Constitution.

The agreement also restricted the Croatoan’s remit to supernatural affairs. Like the Checquy, it was not to intervene in ordinary political or social matters. This boundary was central to the organization’s legitimacy: it could serve the new government against unnatural threats, but its mandate did not authorize it to govern the country at large.

Consequences and Significance

The incorporation gave the Croatoan a secure institutional home and substantial resources. George Washington was already known for spending heavily on intelligence, and the account reveals that a sizable portion of that budget supported the organization’s activities. The Croatoan’s growth followed the growth of the United States, though the two did not expand at the same rate: fewer powered children were born in the continental United States than in the United Kingdom, and the country also faced fewer supernatural threats overall.

The settlement presents the Croatoan as both an analogue to the Checquy and a product of a different political compact. It kept the Checquy’s hierarchy, secrecy, and specialized service to the state, but the prohibition on forced child recruitment marked a real limit on its authority. Its founding therefore depended on a balance: the government accepted a powerful hidden agency, while defining the exceptional domain in which that agency could act and withholding one of the Checquy’s most intrusive means of acquiring members.