1824: The Arkansas War (60 page)

CHAPTER 40

The Hermitage Nashville, Tennessee

O
CTOBER 12, 1825

“—not budging an inch on the subject of the Bank! No, sir, Mr. John Quincy Adams. Not—one—inch.” Andrew Jackson broke off his angry stalking back and forth in the living room of the Hermitage. Planting his bony hands on his hips, he leaned over and, from a distance of not more than two feet, bestowed his patented Andy Jackson glare on the short, chunky man sitting in the chair in front of him.

Who, for his part, was glaring right back. Watching the two of them from the far side of the room, Jackson’s old friend and confidant John Coffee didn’t even try to hide his grin.

You had to tip your hat to Quincy Adams. The whole Jackson style just plain aggravated him, but he’d soon learned how to deal with it. The man might have the mind of a scholar, but he could be just as pugnacious as anyone in Jackson’s camp, including Andy himself.

“—don’t care about all that fancy economics prattle,” Jackson was continuing. “The issue’s not finances in the first place. It’s politics! A national bank with the authority of the federal government behind it is a mortal threat to the republic. You might as well put a viper in a baby’s crib.”

Standing by a window not far away, Thomas Hart Benton cleared his throat noisily. Noisily enough, in fact, to break off Andy in mid-tirade and intercept the harsh riposte that Quincy Adams was obviously about to launch.

“Got to say I agree with Andy here, John,” the senator from Missouri said, in a mild tone of voice. He then gave the Tennessee senator a look of deep reproach. “Though I can’t see where there’s any call for him to get so rambunctious about it.”

Thomas Hart Benton! Complaining that someone
else
was being “too rambunctious.” Coffee still had vivid memories of the gunfight in the City Hotel, not more than a few miles away though a considerable number of years back in time. It’d been a fistfight and knife fight, too, no holds or weapons barred.

“But he does cut to the heart of it, I think.” Benton took a few steps forward, placing himself in front of most of the men gathered in the room. The senator was a natural orator of the rip-roaring school, and he began lapsing into the sort of speech he might give on the Senate floor.

“I plain can’t see why, in a confederacy of such vast extent, so many independent states, so many rival commercial cities, there should be but one moneyed tribunal, before which all the rival and contending elements must appear.”

Sure enough, his left hand was slipping into his waist, and the right was beginning to wave about. “What a condition for a confederacy of states! But one single dispenser of money, to which every citizen, every trader, every merchant, every manufacturer, every planter, every corporation, every city, every state, and the federal government itself must apply, in every emergency, for the most indispensable loan!”

He was in full roar, now, the right hand no longer waving about but pointing—no, thrusting—the forefinger of denunciation from a mighty thick fist of righteousness. Fortunately, at a blank spot on a wall, beyond which lay defenseless farmland, rather than at John Quincy Adams.

Though, to be sure, Adams was not far from the line of fire. Benton had only to lower the hand perhaps a foot and shift it three inches to the left to bring the man from Massachusetts directly into the accusatory finger’s aim.

“And this!—in the face of the fact that in every contest for human rights, the great moneyed institutions of the world have uniformly been found on the side of kings and nobles, against the lives and liberties of the people!”

Adams clapped his hands together. Once, twice, thrice.

“Splendidly said, Thomas! And I can assure you that should I ever choose to forgo the barren soil of New England for the fertile vistas of Missouri, I shall certainly cast my vote for you upon every possible occasion.”

That brought a laugh to the room. A booming one from Benton.

Coffee laughed, too, but his laugh faded quickly. Choked off at the source, so to speak. Adams had turned his head slightly, and Coffee finally spotted the little gleam somewhere in there.

Uh-oh.
Belatedly, he remembered. Adams had so few of the overt political skills of most of the men in that room that it was easy to start underestimating the rest of the man. Even Andy Jackson, by now, would allow—not often, and then only grudgingly, true, but he’d still admit it—that John Quincy Adams had probably the finest political brain in the nation.

That didn’t mean he was necessarily right on any given issue or dispute. He had his own biases, his own sectional and class views and interests, as much as any man. Not to mention that stiff Puritan way of looking at the world, so different from that of the Jackson camp, all of whom were certainly Christians but few of whom belonged to any church or regularly attended services.

But you underestimated that rapier intelligence at your peril.

“Fine, gentlemen,” he said firmly. “We’ve argued this matter long enough. Clearly, I’m in a small minority on this issue, in present company. A minority of one, to be precise.”

Sitting on a divan nearby, Governor Shulze waggled his hand. “Say one and a half, John.” With his German accent, it came out more like “vun-unda-haff.”

Shulze gave the room at large a mildly apologetic glance. “I understand—even agree, for the most part—with the points made by the senators from Tennessee and Missouri. Still, mine is a state with much industry and manufacture. I should not care to return to the financial chaos of previous times when it comes to the nation’s banking system. I have also seen poor men—even thrifty German ones—stripped of all they own because a wildcat bank collapsed, and through no fault of their own. That is a form of tyranny, also.”

Adams gave him a nod. On the opposite side of the room, so did Jackson. Shulze was raising the practical and financial side of the problem, which not even Andy would deny existed so long as the basic principle was retained.

But John Coffee barely noticed all that. His attention was riveted on Adams. There was a great big giant trapdoor opening here somewhere. He was sure of it.

Adams cleared his throat, almost as noisily as Benton had done a few moments ago.

“So I shall concede the point, while not restricting myself from saying what I believe on the issue as a representative from my state. In the event I should be elected, of course.”

Normally, that would have brought a laugh, too. That Adams would be sitting in the House—in less than two months, not even having to wait for 1826—was now a foregone conclusion. As soon as John Quincy had announced his intentions, the sitting congressman from the Massachusetts 11th District had offered to resign his seat—on the condition that the governor of the state would appoint Quincy Adams to serve out his term.

The governor was no great friend and admirer of Adams, but no one expected him to do otherwise—for the simple reason that, whatever his personal inclinations, refusing to appoint Adams would pretty well guarantee his own removal from office at the next gubernatorial election. The Arkansas War had all of New England hopping mad, no state more so than Massachusetts. In the fray that was coming, the Bay State wanted its best lance in the tournament.

Coffee saw that Jackson wasn’t smiling any longer, either. Andy had spotted the same gleam.

“But having done so, I must advance a demand of my own. It strikes me as grotesque for the senator from Missouri—as well as the senators here from Kentucky and Tennessee—to be making orations on the subject of the dire threat posed by a national bank to the foundations of our democracy.”

Adams cocked an eye at Jackson. “A ‘viper’ in the crib of the republic, as I recall you putting it. A very nice turn of phrase. But having conceded the viper, I must now insist that my colleagues here explain to me how they can tolerate—decade after decade—the presence of a dragon in that very same crib. That great ancient reptile that is called slavery.”

Coffee blew out his cheeks. So. There it was.

The elephant in the middle of the room, that they had all been doing their level best to pretend wasn’t there.

Jackson sighed and looked away, staring out of one of the windows. Through whose panes he could easily see some of his own slaves—his many slaves—working in the fields beyond.

His lips quirked slightly. “Tarnation, John Quincy, the Republican Party managed to get all this way without ever much talking about that.”

“Yes. I know we did. Quite successfully. But that was because the dragon was asleep.”

For the first time since that day’s session began, Adams rose from his chair. Unlike most of the politicians there, he was not given to perorations. But, clearly enough, his time had come. John Coffee didn’t doubt for a moment that Adams had planned it this way from the opening of the informal session.

Not today’s session, either. From the beginning. From the day he arrived at the Hermitage—or, more likely, weeks earlier when he’d accepted Jackson’s invitation.

“It is time to face reality, gentlemen. We did not ask for the Arkansas War. Indeed, we opposed it. But the war is here, and none of us expects it to be over any time soon. Not before 1826, at the very earliest, and most likely not until 1828.”

He pointed a finger of his own toward the west. Not a finger of accusation, simply that of a scholar, in college, instructing students.

“The Arkansas War changes everything, gentlemen. Whether you like it or I like it. Whether you ever intended to deal with the matter, or I did.”

Adams paused long enough to finish composing his stance and expression. That Puritan rectitude business, whose self-critical honesty was perhaps even more annoying than the critical nattering at others. “And I will state here, for the record, that I never had any intention of doing so, either. Like you, I decided long ago to let the dragon sleep. As did George Washington, our first president. As did my father, who succeeded him. As did his successor, Thomas Jefferson—for all his public histrionics on the subject.”

The last was said with a sneer. The whole Adams family, even those like John Quincy who had abandoned Federalism, had a corrosive detestation of Jefferson stemming from the campaign of 1800.

But his sneer was no greater than Jackson’s. For all that the Republican Party—movement, say better—was sometimes called Jeffersonian, Andy Jackson despised Thomas Jefferson. So did the majority of the men in that room.

“As did James Madison and James Monroe, who succeeded them,” Adams went on. “And you can be quite certain that our sixth president, the estimable Henry Clay, will be moving heaven and earth to do the same. Not that Calhoun will allow him the luxury.”

He paused again, to sweep the room with a hard gaze. “Oh, no. In John C. Calhoun, you can
see
the dragon, gentlemen. Erect and breathing fire. Henry Clay will sacrifice the virgin to the beast, or the beast will devour him whole. It has come wide awake. A dragon that might well have continued sleeping for decades, had things been otherwise. Slept long enough, indeed, for all of us here to pass on to the afterlife, never having dealt with the monster. Although I suspect our descendants would not have thanked us for it, two or three generations hence. And I have come to do much more than suspect that the God we will all someday answer to will most certainly not thank us at all. In that, if nothing else, I think the scoundrel Jefferson was stating the simple truth.”

He sat down abruptly. “So. There it is. I have some proposals of my own. I am most willing to listen to proposals from anyone else. But this much I will not budge on. I will give you the bank, Senator Jackson. We have already compromised on the tariff and internal improvements, in which I conceded more than I gained. I will probably concede much else. But I
will not
—ever again—participate in a political party that does not at the very least have the simple honesty—the simple virtue, if you will—to be able to call a reptile a reptile. If it can’t even manage that much, it can’t manage anything worthwhile.”

Silence followed. Coffee looked around the room.

Andy was still staring out the window. Benton was giving Adams a look that was half a glare. Only half, though. Shulze was obviously trying not to look smug. Martin Van Buren, over in the corner, had an unreadable expression. But that was a given with the senator from New York. If there was any politician in the country slicker and smoother than Henry Clay, it was the Little Magician. The former Radical Republican’s first and immediate reaction to anything was to start calculating the votes, once he was assured that states’ rights would be respected. And no one thought Adams was challenging that principle.

Coffee then looked at Richard Johnson. The senator from Kentucky was giving Adams a look that Coffee couldn’t interpret at all. Well…

He could, actually, he thought. If you remembered that Johnson was a man as well as a politician.

Finally, he looked at the two men who, in the end, were perhaps the most important ones of all. They were sitting side by side in a divan angled to the one holding Shulze.