1824: The Arkansas War (46 page)

The only immediate effect had been to double the transfer of arms that Brown’s Raiders carried down the rivers. It wasn’t until the federal government was finally able to get enough armed steamboats patrolling the Ohio and the Mississippi that the flood was stymied at all. Even then, it was never stopped altogether.

By which time, the proverbial barn door had been locked after the horse escaped. Arkansas was still a bit short of heavy iron plate for armoring the steamboats. But it already had enough cannons and muskets and powder and shot to fight for years.

It hadn’t even had to pay for most of it. Clay’s campaign and election had stirred the sparks of Northern abolitionism into glowing coals, and Clay’s War was fanning them now into roaring flames. A political sentiment that might have taken decades to develop was now growing explosively. There were still not more than a few hundred abolitionists in the United States willing to take up arms themselves, on behalf of “bleeding Arkansas,” either as part of Brown’s Raiders or the small Lafayette Battalions that were springing up here and there. But thousands of people were willing to donate arms of some sort—and tens of thousands willing to donate money, most of them asking no questions about what the money was spent on.

Salmon was long gone by the time Scott and Bryant returned with Patrick, late in the afternoon. Sam made sure of it. Brown’s Raiders were a double-edged sword, and they had to be handled carefully. Mostly unseen, a mysterious presence lurking in the heavily forested rivers and the mountains and the woods, they were something of a terror to the enemy’s soldiers. But if Arkansas let them get too visible, the political repercussions were likely to outweigh the military gains. As it was, Clay’s partisans—not to mention the entire press of the Deep South—were doing their level best to portray the Mississippi valley as being overrun by murderous fanatic abolitionists.

“Overrun” was absurd, of course. “Fanatics” could be argued. But “murderous” was the plain and simple truth. Patrick had put it quite well. Brown and his men were reminiscent—perhaps frighteningly so—of the Hebrews of the Old Testament. Doing God’s will to defend the Promised Land, and not at all concerned as to how many Philistines got chopped to pieces in the process. Those of them who weren’t John Brown’s brand of Calvinist when they joined the Raiders soon became so.

It was a peculiar variety of that harsh strain of Protestantism, admittedly. John Brown was actually quite tolerant of religious differences and didn’t care about theology at all. He’d even accept Catholics in the Raiders, if they were black, and make no attempt to persuade them to abandon popery. But they’d still join every night in the Bible readings. And if Brown’s interpretation of the Old Testament was perhaps a little eccentric, it had the great advantage for irregular soldiers of being very clear and straightforward. As Patrick Driscol liked to put it, every other verb was “smite.”

Winfield Scott was—had been—undoubtedly the best trainer of troops in the United States Army. He’d proved that during the war with Britain, and after it he’d been placed in charge of developing the army’s new manual of drill and field regulations.

So it wasn’t surprising that the first thing he said after resuming his seat in the hotel’s foyer was “I commend your decision not to send those three new regiments into combat quickly. But…”

He glanced at Patrick and then shook his head. “Dear God, are you really
that
confident? Patrick—Sam—you
have
to meet Harrison in the Delta. At least once, even if it’s a draw. Even if it’s a
defeat,
when it comes down to it, as long as your forces can be extracted afterward and you bloody him badly. Whereas if you allow him unchallenged possession—”

Abruptly, he closed his mouth. Then swallowed.

“Excuse me, gentlemen. It occurs to me that if I insist you respect my personal integrity, I must place the same condition upon myself. Not my business, after all, to be counseling officers of what is, in fact and leaving sentiment aside, a nation that is at war with my own.”

Patrick nodded solemnly. Every bit as solemnly, Sam said, “Yes, of course.”

But he was finding it hard not to laugh, and he was quite sure Patrick was waging the same struggle. They’d come to the same conclusion themselves, four months ago. Robert Ross had been particularly adamant about it. Sam remembered the conversation as if it’d happened yesterday.

“We’ve
got
to fight them as soon as they cross the river. Not a month later, not a week later—well, perhaps a week, but no longer than it takes to march our forces down there. Speaking of which—”

“Relax, Robert,” grunted Driscol. “We’ve been using a good half of the forced labor—sorry, the shiftless bastards who’re shirking the colors—to finish the road to Arkansas Post.”

“It’ll be ready by the end of May,” Charles Ball added, “and there’s no way they’re coming any sooner than that.”

“No chance at all,” agreed Houston. Of the four generals and four colonels sitting around the table in the Arkansas Army headquarters, Sam had by far the best sense of American politics. Ross was British, Driscol was a Scots-Irish immigrant, and the other six officers were all black men whose color had made it effectively impossible for them to engage in politics until they settled in Arkansas. “It’s now mid-March, so Clay will have just gotten inaugurated. Figure it’ll take him till the end of April before he can get Congress to declare war.”

“Can he do it in the first place, Sam?” Ross asked. The British general seemed simultaneously curious and bewildered. “I confess I find the inner workings of your American political system well-nigh unfathomable, at times. You’ve just explained—it was only yesterday—that Clay’s election does not reflect any real sentiment for war on the part of most of the United States. So why would Clay be able to get Congress to agree to a declaration of war?”

“Because Congress—
that
Congress—doesn’t have any choice. Most of them are going to be in hot water when the session’s over and they return to their home districts, Robert, and they know it. The truth is, if Clay didn’t have to get the Senate to go along also, he could probably get a declaration of war in a week. Every one of those congressmen who voted him into the president’s house has to stand for reelection in two years. Less than two years, now. What they’ll all be hoping is that a short, glorious, and victorious war will wash away the memory of their sins.”

“Ah.” Robert leaned back in his chair. Then, as his gaze moved across the officers at the table, a smile came to his face. “Well, then. As your more-or-less official military adviser—and one who has often been critical these past months—let me be the first to state that the prospects that the United States will enjoy a short and glorious war in Arkansas are slim to none. They might still achieve victory, of course. But they won’t win quickly, and they certainly won’t win easily.”

Most of the officers returned the cool smile. Charles Ball’s was openly sarcastic. “Glorious, is it? They’ll find out all ’bout glory, come winter in the Ozarks and Ouachitas.”

“But I interrupted you, Sam,” said Ross. “Continue, please.”

“Figure he’ll get his declaration of war by the end of April. Then, it’ll take him—the army, I should say—another six weeks to get their units ready to be moved to the confluence.”

“Clay could order the preparations to be made prior to a declaration of war, couldn’t he?”

Sam waggled his hand back and forth. “Yes…but it won’t be as easy as all that. Especially if he leaves Jesup as the quartermaster general. Which he almost has to do, now that Brown and Scott have resigned from the army. He’s too short of experienced officers to let Jesup go also.”

“You told us—again, just yesterday—that Jesup was a superb quartermaster.”

It was Sam’s turn to smile coolly. “Indeed he is. But I’ll remind you that great skill at doing a job efficiently can just as easily be turned to doing it incredibly
in
-efficiently—but in such a way that Jesup’s bosses can’t figure out what he’s doing. Somehow, in all the smoke and dust and confusion, everything just seems to take forever.”

“Why would—”

Ross broke off and leaned back. “Ah. I see. The war is no more popular in the army than it is in the country at large.”

“Well…it’s not that simple. Harrison—you can bet on it—will practically jump for joy when he receives Clay’s summons to return to the army as a major general. So will Gaines, when he finally realizes his ambition to replace Brown as the head of the army and gets rid of his arch-enemy Winfield Scott. There’ll be some other officers, too, especially the ones around Gaines, who’ll see the war as a route for quick promotion. But most of the officers…Well, a lot of them are Southern, true enough, but those are mostly from Virginia and the border states. They’ll certainly do their duty, but they won’t be making any great exertions until Congress declares war and it’s a settled issue.”

Sam half rose, reached into the middle of the table, and placed his finger on a spot in the big map that covered much of it. Then, shifted it to two others. “I figure they’ll muster at Louisville, St. Louis, and Baton Rouge. There’s another few weeks. It’ll take time to assemble enough riverboats, if nothing else. There’s no way Harrison’s going to try to move that many troops without using the rivers and water transport. Then Harrison will want to move all his units at once—as best as he can coordinate it—so he doesn’t get caught on the Arkansas side of the river with only part of his forces available. That can be done, but it’ll also take time.”

He leaned back from the table into his chair. “Mid-June, at the very earliest. Personally, I think it’ll take him a month longer than that.”

Ross nodded. “So. Mid-July. Enough time for one big battle in the Delta—perhaps two, if the engagement is close—before both armies will have to take time to regroup and recuperate. And by the time that’s done, we’re well into fall. Mostly likely, Harrison will wait until next spring to start his march on New Antrim.”

He started to say something but broke off. Sam wasn’t sure, but he suspected Ross wanted to reopen the issue of how—or whether—to defend New Antrim. But since that was a contentious issue, and one that didn’t need to be settled immediately, the British general returned to the Delta.

“Where in the Delta? I remind you, gentlemen, that I don’t much care for the terrain around Arkansas Post. It’s not terrible, but the terrain farther upriver would be more in our favor. Their artillery is considerably superior—in weight, at least. The soggier the terrain, the better for us.”

“We don’t have any choice, Robert,” Driscol said. “Yes, we all agree, the Chickasaw chiefs are bedlamites to think they can hold Arkansas Post. But—they’re Chickasaws. Just as fierce—and just as dumb—as any Scot highlanders. They’ll insist on standing their ground, and…”

He shrugged. “As much as it might please my more cold-blooded instincts, we can’t very well just stand by while they get massacred.”

Patrick started to say something further, but Sam cut him off. In the few weeks since he’d arrived in Arkansas, he’d inevitably become the principal liaison between the Arkansas Army and the Indian chiefdoms in Oklahoma. And the Choctaws in New Antrim, for that matter.

“It’s more complicated than that. The mixed-bloods politically dominate the Chickasaws nowadays, just like they do the Cherokees and the Creeks. With the Chickasaws, that’s centered on the Colbert clan. But it’s a touchy business, and they can’t afford to aggravate the full-bloods too much. Those are still, by a large margin, the majority of the tribe, and their blood is up. If it was just up to the Colberts, I’m sure they’d already be halfway to Oklahoma.”

“With their slaves,” Patrick growled. “Of which they have a good thousand, for four thousand Chickasaws. A higher percentage than your average white Southern state has, South Carolina aside.”

He leaned forward in his own chair and pointed a finger at Sam. “So don’t you even think of arguing the matter when the time comes. If we have to save those Chickasaw bastards from their own pigheadedness, they’ll pay the price, Sam. Pay it in full. We will strip them of every single one of their slaves. Every—single—one.”