1824: The Arkansas War (51 page)

The first might be true of the American regulars, here. They’d find out soon enough. But the second wouldn’t be.

Couldn’t be. Until a few months ago, these American regiments had been scattered in posts all over the country, and it was a country that filled a good part of a continent. Many of those officers had never worked together, and even the ones who had, hadn’t done so since the end of the war with Britain ten years ago.

“Never forget something, gentlemen,” Robert Ross had told them in one of the seminars. “When you read accounts of a battle written afterward, it all seems very primitive. The actions of men with, it would seem, not much more in the way of sagacity than a six-year-old child.”

He stood, then, and began gesturing. His right hand straight out, forefinger pointing down. “You, remain here.”

His left hand, forefinger pointing out. “You, move around to the left—that way—and go over there.”

He brought both fingers together. “Then, attack the enemy together.”

He dropped his hands and gave them a smile. “Doesn’t seem like much, does it? Walk a straight line while rubbing your stomach. Any child can do as much.”

There’d been a little titter of a laugh. Ross had shared in the humor for a moment. But the smile faded soon enough.

“Yes, very simple indeed. But you’ll be trying to do it under the worst imaginable conditions. Conditions that are literally impossible to describe adequately in mere words. Conditions that will hammer your senses, hammer your body, and certainly destroy bodies around you, if not your own; conditions that will leave your mind grasping for sanity. And all the while, as officers, you’ll be expected and required to think and act coherently. Not only for yourself, but as leaders of men. Imagine, if you will, trying to walk a straight line while rubbing your stomach, in the middle of a house on fire and collapsing around you—and making sure all the men following you are doing the same.”

The British general resumed his seat at the table. “And now—O ye military geniuses—you propose to divide your forces as well. So you have
twice
as much to keep track of, and worry about, in the middle of all that.”

The laugh that time had been more than a titter.

Ross shrugged. “It can be done, mind you. Even done brilliantly. But it’s the sort of thing that requires a good, experienced army and very good officers—and all of them with the mutual confidence that comes from joint experience. To put it another way, it’s no trick for amateurs, or even professionals who are no longer or never were in peak condition.”

They were five hundred yards off, now. Sheff could see the lead companies of the nearest American regiment trying to form a line across the road, barring the Arkansans from coming to the fort’s relief.

They weren’t going to manage it in time, he didn’t think. Colonel Jones would follow standard Arkansas practice of coming to within three hundred yards of the foe before ordering the regiment into line formation. That was something General Ross had his doubts about, Sheff knew. But it was a tactical issue that the British general wasn’t going to argue with a soldier of Driscol’s experience if the Laird thought his army could move quickly enough to manage the risky maneuver. The Americans didn’t have that much more in the way of cavalry than the Arkansans, after all.

The terrain wasn’t bad, once you got off the road. Not soggy at all, this far into summer. There weren’t any trees, either, and not much in the way of brush, since the garrison of the Post had kept the terrain clear within half a mile of the fort’s walls. But it was still rough enough that not even the American infantry would be in good position when the clash came, much less their artillery.

Sheff could see American artillerymen in the distance, struggling to move some of the cannons from the berms where Harrison had positioned them to bombard the Post. The enemy commander must have separated his artillery units from the infantry regiments they’d normally be attached to, in order to mass all of his guns for the assault on the fort. It had probably seemed like a good idea at the time. But he’d pay the price for it now.

“Quick march!” came Colonel Jones’s piercing voice from behind. “Artillery,
up!
”

Sheff doubled the pace while he and Captain Dupont led the men off the road itself—Dupont to the left, away from the river, Sheff to the right—so the field artillery could pass through the ranks and take up position at the front. Even with their rougher footing, the 3rd was still advancing very rapidly. The Laird always thought like a sergeant. Whatever else his army could or couldn’t do, the one thing it could do superbly was
move.

Harrison was dismayed to see how quickly the two Arkansas regiments were coming into position. He’d been warned about that by Colonel Zachary Taylor—both in person, shortly before the colonel had left for Missouri, and in his written reports of the clash with Crittenden.

Harrison had discounted most of it. Taylor had a reputation among some circles in the U.S. officer corps—the ones who were concentrated in Harrison’s own army, as it happened—for becoming obsessed with minutiae at the expense of the bigger sweep of things. That made him a superb trainer of garrison troops, granted, as even his longtime antagonists Colonels McNeil and Arbuckle would admit. But they’d also pointed out to Harrison, when he’d discussed Taylor’s reports with them, that Zachary Taylor had not much of a reputation as a
fighting
commander. Certainly nothing compared with Harrison’s own demonstrated skills.

Most of that latter, Harrison had also discounted as the inevitable flattery of subordinate officers to their commander. Still, it was all true enough. Taylor’s combat record in the war with Britain had been respectable but hardly distinguished. Whereas Harrison had been the victor in two of the major battles of the war, Tippecanoe and the Thames.

Today, watching the celerity and precision with which the Arkansans were maneuvering their infantry and their artillery, Harrison was developing an uneasy feeling. He’d thought of this war as being, in its essence, not much different from the campaigns he’d fought against the British and their Indian allies in the northwestern theater during the War of 1812. A mass of Indians—fundamentally undisciplined and disorganized, even if fired with zeal by Tecumseh—with a small core of British regulars who’d been as much exasperated as helped by the actions of their allies.

But he hadn’t yet seen a single Indian since he’d arrived in Arkansas, except for the Chickasaws who’d so foolishly gotten themselves trapped in Arkansas Post. That was, of course, another predictable trait of the savages. No matter how many times the United States proved to them otherwise—you’d think Jackson at the Horseshoe Bend would have settled the matter for all time—Indians still had a near-mystical faith in the value of fortifications.

Which, admittedly, did well enough against militias—just as the forts of settlers were usually good enough to withstand Indian raids. But against trained and disciplined regulars, supported by artillery, not even something as well built as Arkansas Post could be held against a superior force.

That there
were
Indian warriors out there in the Arkansas countryside around him, Harrison didn’t doubt in the least. If nothing else, he had the ambushes encountered by his small mounted reconnaissance parties to prove it to him. But that was how they were fighting—as irregulars, not as an integral part of the Arkansas Army. If the Americans broke and ran, their Choctaw and Cherokee allies would savage the fleeing troops. But so long as Harrison’s men stood their ground, it would be a straight-up fight between regular armies.

Very much, in short, the sort of war that Jacob Brown and Winfield Scott had fought farther east on the Niagara front. And Harrison was now pretty sure, watching the oncoming enemy, that beneath Brown’s claim of illness when he retired, and Scott’s histrionic claims of political principle when he did the same, something much more darkly practical had been lurking.

They
didn’t think the Arkansas War was going to be anything but a bloodbath. The sort of bloodbath they’d faced willingly at the Chippewa and Lundy’s Lane when they’d seen the survival of the nation at stake. But not something they felt the need or desire to go through again, for purposes that were considerably less sublime. As even Harrison—even President Clay, for that matter—would readily admit. Only John C. Calhoun, on the American side, thought this war was being fought over fundamental principles.

“Move it!” Harrison bellowed at the two artillery batteries he’d ordered out of the berms in support of McNeil’s and Arbuckle’s regiments. “God damn you, move it!”

CHAPTER 35

Being one of the few men in the Arkansas forces who was riding a horse, Sam had a fairly good view of what was developing, even though he was positioned behind the 3rd Infantry. So did Winfield Scott and William Cullen Bryant, who were riding next to him.

The reporters occupied a somewhat peculiar position. As noncombatants—and technically enemy civilians—they wouldn’t be privy to any of the Arkansas Army’s battle plans, of course. On the other hand, given the importance to Arkansas of getting American newspaper coverage that was as favorable as possible, Driscol was bending over backward to accommodate them.

Naturally, he’d handed Houston the job of keeping the two reporters happy but ignorant.

Sam couldn’t honestly complain, though. He wouldn’t have much to do in this battle until and unless what they’d taken to calling the Georgia Run became possible. Colonel H. Spencer Street, the commander of the 2nd Arkansas Infantry, didn’t need Sam to tell him how to handle the regiment in a battle.

If the Georgia Run took shape, things would be different. Meaning no disrespect to Colonel Street, but Driscol wanted a more experienced commander in charge in the event that a complex maneuver became possible. At that point, of course, keeping Winfield Scott and Cullen Bryant happy but ignorant would be a moot point. What was about to transpire would be blindingly obvious to anyone.

Street had been perfectly happy with the arrangement. Spence, as everyone called him except in the field, was an unassuming officer. One of Charles Ball’s naval gunners from the Capitol, later the Iron Battalion at New Orleans, he’d steadily worked his way up the ranks in the Arkansas Army because he was immensely reliable and cool under fire. But he wasn’t the man to pull off something that required flair and initiative, and he knew it himself.

The formalities were being respected, anyway. Street would remain in command of the 2nd. Houston would officially assume overall command of a maneuver that involved one of the batteries from the 3rd Battalion as well as Spencer’s regiment. An impromptu miniature brigade, as it were.

He glanced over to make sure the battery was maintaining position. When he did so, his eyes met those of John Ridge. The newly commissioned Cherokee lieutenant had been assigned to the artillery, as had his cousin. Major Ridge had insisted on that. The way the Cherokee chief looked at it, if his oldest son and his nephew were bound and determined to put on the green uniform of Arkansas, then they’d damn well learn to use the big guns while they were at it.

Sam didn’t blame him. Who could know what the future might hold? One of the biggest military weaknesses of any Indian tribe was that they had no artillery at all and wouldn’t really know how to use it if they did. Soon enough, whatever else, that would no longer be true of the Cherokees.

John Ridge gave Houston a nod. Then he went back to paying attention to what Callender McParland was explaining to him. For this battle, as new as he was, John’s rank was a formality. In practice, he’d be watching McParland to see how it was done. His cousin Buck Watie had an identical position with Lieutenant Thomas Talley, who commanded the other battery that had come with the expedition.

John would be the one who got all the excitement if the Georgia Run happened. His cousin Buck would be stuck with the unglamorous—and deadly brutal—business of slugging it out alongside the 3rd Arkansas against the American regulars.

Sam didn’t envy them. That was likely to get purely murderous before it was over.

Movement in the distance caught his eye. Looking up, he saw what appeared to be three people scuttling through one of the little groves that dotted the plain. He thought they were black but couldn’t really be certain. Perhaps sixty or seventy yards behind them, he could see two more people. Definitely Chickasaws, from the costumes. One of them appeared to be a woman; the other, an old man brandishing some sort of weapon. Sam couldn’t tell what it was, exactly, this far away. Perhaps a spear, perhaps an antique long-barreled musket.

“What’s that all about?” asked Winfield Scott. The former American general was squinting at the same distant little drama.

“At a guess, some of the Chickasaw slaves just ran off, figuring they could make it to New Antrim before the Chickasaw warriors in the Post could get on their trail.” Sam nodded toward the woods. “Most of the Chickasaws are out there in hiding. The noncombatants, that is. They’ve got, at most, seven hundred warriors. That’s enough in itself to pack the Post fuller of men than it should be. No room for women and children, so the Chickasaws sent them off into the woods. That means women and old men, watching over maybe a thousand slaves.”

Sam gave his head a slight backward jerk. “With freedom and sanctuary not much more than a hundred miles upstream. You can figure out what the odds are that they’ll be able to keep things under control.”

“Ah.” The general gave Houston a quizzical look. “You don’t seem much disturbed by the prospect that your Chickasaw allies will soon be very disgruntled allies.”

“Frankly, who cares?” Sam’s face felt tight. “Everybody in Arkansas, including me, is sick and tired of Chickasaws. For over a hundred years, the bastards have picked fights with everybody and made slaves out of anybody they could. So fuck ’em if they’re finally between the hammer and the anvil.”

“Yes, I understand. But I’d think it would cause you a great deal of trouble. With the rest of the Confederacy, I mean.”

Sam shrugged. “Yes and no. The Cherokees and Creeks are none too fond of Chickasaws, either. The Choctaws purely hate them, even if they do speak the same language. Besides, the Choctaws have never engaged much in slavery, not even their mixed-bloods. The Cherokees and Creeks have, but most of the ones who own slaves”—again, that little backward jerk of his head—“are way back there in Oklahoma. The Cherokees and Creeks who live in Arkansas—we figure there’s now about six thousand and two thousand, respectively—don’t own slaves to begin with. Besides, by now I think it’s an open question which way they’d swing in the event of a real clash.”

He looked over at Scott and Bryant. “Finally, there are all the pure-blood traditionalists. They don’t own hardly any slaves, not even the Chickasaw ones. So what do they care if some rich mixed-bloods have to start working for a living?”

He started to add a comment about people like The Bowl and Chief Aktoka but broke off when he heard Colonel Jones’s shout from ahead.

“Quick march! Artillery UP!”

“And here we go,” he said.

Fifty yards behind Houston and the other battery, Lieutenant Buck Watie was feeling nervous. More nervous than he’d ever felt in his life.

He wasn’t scared, exactly. But that was simply because fear seemed completely inadequate to the situation. Buck knew the battle plan—he’d been one of the officers at the back of the mess hall when Driscol and Ball explained it—and he knew what the role of his battery would be.

It wasn’t complicated, to put it mildly. They’d stand with the 3rd Infantry and go toe-to-toe with the American regulars, while Houston and the 2nd Infantry—and his cousin’s battery, talk about having all the luck!—kept an eye out for the Georgia Run.

A man got scared when he contemplated taking a risk. This wasn’t a risk. This was that crazy white man’s way of fighting a battle. Plant yourself—standing straight up, right out in the open!—in plain sight of your enemy, and then swap gunfire until one or the other of you quit. And the reason you quit was because you’d been bled dry.

Madness was what it was. There was no skill involved, no way a man could use his reflexes and cunning. The “risk” was no risk at all, but a certainty. Such-and-such percentage would die; such-and-such percentage would be mortally wounded; such-and-such percentage would survive but would be permanently maimed or disfigured; such-and-such percentage would suffer temporary wounds; and such-and-such percentage would somehow, miraculously, emerge entirely unscathed.

The only question was which one of those percentages you wound up falling into. Which was determined by nothing but pure, blind, stupid luck.

“You white people are insane,” he muttered to his fellow lieutenant and instructor, Thomas Talley.

Belatedly, he remembered. Talley’s answering grin was all the brighter because the white teeth stood out so sharply against skin the color of old coffee.

“You right,” Talley said. “We is definitely crazy. On the other hand, we ain’t color-blind.”

Harrison was up on his horse by now. Everyone—except the Arkansans—was moving too slowly.

Much too slowly. He had the sick sensation a man gets while watching a carriage sliding off a bridge. Every moment of the disaster as clear as crystal, and seeming to take forever. But with no way to move fast enough to stop it from happening.

“God
damn
it! Get that artillery over there!”

The familiar clap of six-pounders jerked his eyes to the front. He saw two companies of the 1st Infantry staggering back from the enemy. McNeil
still
hadn’t gotten them into a proper line, and already the Arkansan artillery had hammered his lead companies with a volley. Canister, from the looks of it.

Thankfully, Arbuckle’s regiment was almost in position. Within a few minutes, that leading Arkansas regiment would be matched up against two American ones, and good ones at that. Coming around the fort the way they were, the Arkansans were hemmed in, too. Even with understrength regiments, McNeil and Arbuckle would have that leading enemy regiment outnumbered, without enough room for the Arkansans to bring their other regiment into play very quickly or easily.

It’d be brutal, though, if the Arkansans stood their ground. Brutal as all hell.

“Fire!” Sheff yelled, echoing Captain Dupont’s command. He did his best to emulate that high-pitched, piercing tone that both Driscol and Ball had mastered on battlefields. With his natural tenor voice, he thought he did pretty well, too.

Not that anyone—including him—could possibly tell. The whole regiment fired the volley on cue, as if six hundred and fifty men had one single brain and one single trigger finger. Anyone’s voice, in that incredible white-clouded thunderclap, vanished without a trace.