LYDIA BAILEY by Kenneth Roberts, Down East Books, 2001 (reprint), 488 pages, $17.95.

In the foreword to “Lydia Bailey,” author Kenneth Roberts wastes no time letting the reader know his narrator, Albion Hamlin, is a man of principle much puzzled by the “hell and ruin … brought on innocent people and innocent countries by men who make a virtue of consistency.”

That Emersonian consistency will set the theme for Hamlin’s epic exploits in the courtrooms of 19th century America and the battlegrounds of Haiti and Africa. But “Lydia Bailey” is no dry account of a post-revolutionary America. It’s history with a personality, a tale of fiction wrapped in fact, with the kind of detail that breathes life into the people and events of a long-dead past.

Those familiar with Kenneth Roberts will recall his best sellers, “Northwest Passage,” “Arundel” and “Rabble in Arms,” historical novels written half a century ago that sired his reputation as master of the genre and prompted a Pulitzer Prize citation in 1957, 10 years after Doubleday & Co. first published the book of this review. This year, perhaps to inspire a generation not familiar with Roberts’ works, Down East Books has issued a reprint of “Lydia Bailey.”

As noted, the reader is immediately caught up in the foreword, which goes on to describe the pre-Revolutionary War events that first forced Hamlin and his family to flee the province of Maine in 1775, only to return 20 years later, welcomed by the same people who earlier had chased them to Canada. Hamlin’s bitter recollection of these events advances Roberts’ sometimes ironic theme of a foolish consistency.

“In 1775 he [Hamlin’s uncle, Colonel William Tyng] had been driven from the city for being loyal to the government he had sworn to uphold. In 1794, he was received with open arms because he had been loyal to England in 1775; for Portland was a Federalist stronghold, and the Federalists, fearing that the ideas of the French Revolution might become popular in America and so cost them their newly acquired wealth, had fallen in love with everything English because England was at war with France – which shows how political principles for which men die in a given year are relegated to the attic the following year … ”

Albion Hamlin’s skepticism toward the politics of the day inevitably land him in court defending the editor of Boston’s Independent Argus on charges of sedition for an editorial upbraiding the Federalists for the Alien and Sedition Laws of 1798. Here’s an example of Roberts’ storytelling genius bringing history alive: Hamlin must argue his case before Justice Chase – that would be Chief Justice Samuel Chase, renowned for his offensive harangues from the bench against the Republican “mobocracy,” and a blatant Federalist sympathizer. The same Justice Chase that President Thomas Jefferson would later try to have impeached. Here’s Justice Chase as Roberts describes him:

“Chase was a giant of a man with so huge a backside that he seemed wedged permanently in his chair. He was bland-appearing, with pursed lips that looked as though they were mumbling cardamom seeds. Since he was heavy-eyed, with thin, bristly hair and a thin, bristly suggestion of a beard, he reminded me a little of Henry VIII. When he leaned forward to deliver an opinion … his lips drew away from his yellow teeth, and his eyes popped wide open, so that I was reminded of Henry VIII gnawing a bone and dripping gravy on his doublet.”

Needless to say, Hamlin loses his case in Chase’s court and is jailed himself for acts of sedition committed in his arguments against the law. All is not lost, however, as a slovenly and bombastic Samuel Adams comes to his rescue. Hamlin escapes jail and flees to the nation’s capital. There, the reader is treated to glimpses of Thomas Jefferson, a red-haired, mild-mannered man who politely asks for the butter at the Washington, D.C., rooming house where Hamlin is staying as he investigates the French seizure of U.S. ships in the West Indies.

Hamlin, by this time in love with the Lydia Bailey of the title, or rather with her portrait, is on a quest for a government settlement for goods lost in just such a seizure. That quest soon evolves into a mission to find Miss Bailey, who had been presumed dead, but he suddenly discovers is alive and working as a nanny to two French children in Haiti. Hamlin books passage to the West Indies, where an unexpected battle fueled by racial bigotry and the grand schemes of Napoleon Bonaparte await him.

In Haiti, Hamlin finally meets the woman in the portrait, along with a “dwarfish” and determined Toussaint L’Ouverture, the noble black leader who rallied the former Haitian slaves to fight the French for their continued freedom. In another example of the historical detail Roberts casually weaves into his story, Hamlin at one point is repulsed by the unexpected appearance of Napoleon’s rakish 18-year-old sister, seen scandalously dressed and flirting on the deck of a French man-of-war.

Eventually, Hamlin and Lydia, now his wife, travel to Tripoli, where the reader is treated to a firsthand account of America’s struggles with the cutthroat pirates of the Barbary States.

In the end, Roberts brings Hamlin full circle, and he finds himself no wiser, no less skeptical than when he began his tale. In the closing lines of the book, he asks: “Why must so many men be what they consistently are – condoners of injustice or the victims of it, doomed to soured souls, never-ending rancor, and the needless bitterness and sickening burdens of an unintelligible world?” It’s a question the reader is left to ponder, while digesting a more human look at the facts behind a very human story.