1824: The Arkansas War (62 page)

“So…”

“What’s the problem? The problem is that Julia went on for another two pages about what a splendid young fellow this here boy was. Courteous, levelheaded, responsible. He’s even an officer already, in their army. Just got promoted to captain, in fact.”

“At
eighteen?
” Jackson’s brow was close to thunderous. “What kind of army promotes an eighteen-year-old—? Oh.”

Johnson squinted at him. “Oh what, Andy?”

Jackson’s frown was fading quickly. “Didn’t you read Scott’s account of the battle?”

“Well, sure, but—”

“Dig it up and read it again. You’ll find your Imogene’s swain. I can even tell you his last name, though I don’t remember the first. Parker.”

He shook his head. It was one of those odd sorts of head-shakes, though. Admiring more than disapproving, mixed with something of just plain wonder. “That’s quite some boy, I can tell you that. But I see your problem.”

Carroll and Coffee were both lost, now. They’d also read the accounts of the battle, of course. But they hadn’t subjected them to the sort of fine-tooth-comb scrutiny that Andy had. Not that Jackson actually expected he’d ever be leading an army against Arkansas. But…you never knew, and an old general’s habits die hard.

Seeing their looks of confusion, Johnson got to the point. “Oh, come on, fellows. You both know Julia, as many times as you’ve visited Blue Spring Farm. When was the last time—or the first time—you ever heard her showering praise on
anybody?
Much less two pages worth in a letter?”

Coffee smiled. “She’s astringent that way, no doubt about it.”

Johnson was staring out the window again, his expression gloomy. “There’s only one possible explanation. This Parker boy might be a veritable paladin. But I can tell you for sure what else is true about him, that Julia just somehow never got around to mentioning in her letter. He’s black as the ace of spades, too. Only reason she’d be carrying on like that.”

“Oh.” That came from Carroll.

“Yeah. Oh.”

“Yes, Scott mentions that in his account,” Jackson added. “As negro as they come.”

He twisted his head to bring his eyes to bear on Johnson. That same frosty eagle’s look he’d bestowed on Adams earlier. “Also as valiant as they come, in whatever color. Read Scott’s report. So what do you propose to do about it, Dick?”

Johnson chuckled humorlessly. “Well, first I’ll try to talk the girl out of the foolishness. Whenever I can manage to see her next, which is Sam Hill knows when. Knowing Imogene, though…”

The sun had almost set by now. “But that’s actually why I got stubborn in the end. To go back to where we started. What it all comes down to is that I just can’t really see where anybody except the Creator who made us all has the right to pass the sins of the fathers onto their children. I hope Imogene gets more sensible about it all when she gets older. But whatever she does, I don’t ever want her having to live the lie I did. Not ever again. I wouldn’t wish that on anybody.”

There was silence for a bit, until the sun finished setting. Then Jackson called for another round of drinks.

Later that evening, when Coffee had a moment alone with Jackson, he leaned over and said quietly: “I’m not all that surprised, now that I’ve had time to think about it, that you swung over to John Quincy on the matter. But I’m still surprised you did it so fast and easy.”

Jackson’s responding smile was a bit rueful. Coffee might have even called it a bit of a guilty smile. Except that “guilt” fit Andy Jackson about as well as feathers fit a bull. Whatever else Old Hickory might be, he was surely the most self-righteous man in America.

“Well…That was Houston’s doing. I’ve gotten letters from him about every week for months now.” He nodded toward Adams. “So’s John Quincy, he tells me. When Sam puts his mind to something, that blasted youngster can be awful persuasive.”

Coffee thought about it. That was true, up to a point. Sam Houston’s silver tongue was famous all over the country, and although Coffee had never read any of his correspondence, he didn’t doubt that the man’s pen was just as silvery. Still…

“Andy, you could teach stubbornness to a mule. Nobody who ever lived can be
that
persuasive.”

Jackson’s smile broadened and lost any trace of ruefulness. “Sure he can. When he’s got Arkansas Post on his side—and he’s writing letters to a general. Think about it, John. The question Sam kept posing was as simple as it gets. As long as Arkansas stands, the issue of slavery just can’t be ignored any longer. And did I think—really think—that Arkansas could be driven under? And if so, how? Blast that conniving youngster!”

Coffee wasn’t quite following him. “And your answer was…?”

“Of course I could whip Arkansas! The first time he asked, I sent back a short summary of how I’d do it. Pretty much the same plan Zack Taylor tried to talk those idiots in Washington around. It ain’t complicated. Stay out of that death trap in the river valley after seizing as much of the Delta as we can. Threaten them on the south, doing whatever it takes to secure a route up the Red. Then make the big thrust from the north, down the Arkansas, splitting off the Indians from the negroes. It’d all end with a siege of Fort of 98. Bloody damn business, for sure, but I’d win.”

He took a self-satisfied sip from his whiskey. “It’d work, sure as the sunrise. There just aren’t enough negroes and Indians in Arkansas—I don’t care how tough they are—to stand off eight million white Americans.”

He fell silent. Coffee frowned. “And…?”

“And what do you
think?
Sam right off sent back a letter congratulating me on my perspicacity and posed a few more questions. And did the same in all the letters that followed, until I gave up.”

Now, Coffee was completely lost. “
You
gave up? Why?”

“Figure it out, John. You’ve fought wars, too, right alongside me. Sit down when you get home, and start writing down everything you’d have to do to make that plan work. Figure the size army you’d need. Figure the logistics you’d need. That part’s not too hard. Then—Sam never let me off the hook, not once—start figuring out all the
political
changes you’d need to back all that up. By the fifth letter, I’d had martial law declared all across New England and Pennsylvania. And how do you finance the business? Nothing in the world’s as expensive as a war, especially a big one that goes on for years. By the time I got to the seventh letter—maybe the eighth—I was starting to contemplate the virtues of a national bank. So help me God, I was.”

Jackson drained the rest of his whiskey. “And there’s your answer, which Sam Houston wouldn’t let me slide away from. Yeah, sure, I
could
conquer Arkansas. But was I willing to pay the price? And for what?”

He waved the empty glass at the window, beyond which the slaves could be heard at their festivities. “So I could keep my slaves? Tarnation, I came into the world without a slave to my name, and the day I’ll destroy my republic in order to keep them is the day my name stops being Andrew Jackson. I can figure out ways to emancipate slaves without going broke in the process. Not easily, but I can. What I can’t do is figure out how to keep them—not for all that long—in a world that has Arkansas in it. Without gutting and skinning the republic. It just ain’t worth it, John. Simple as that.”

Now he waved the empty glass at Adams, who was in a corner talking with Van Buren. “I imagine Sam did exactly the same to that poor bastard. Except—being a pigheaded Massachusetts scholar—it probably took John Quincy twice as long to admit he was cornered as it took me. How about another drink?”

The slaves did push the limits of “rowdy,” although nothing important actually got broken. But on both occasions when the overseers came to Jackson for instructions, he sent them away.

The masters were pretty rowdy themselves by then. His pious wife Rachel, much disapproving, went early to bed. They were even beginning to blaspheme quite openly, laughing all the while.

Especially after John Quincy Adams, no longer even remotely sober, proposed an alternative title for their new party: the National Illegitimate Party. With its clear and simple fighting slogan:
Better a Plain Black Bastard in Office than a Fancy White-Striped Skunk.

CHAPTER 42

Washington, D.C.

N
OVEMBER 1, 1825

“It’s definite,” said Adam Beatty. He laid a copy of the
National Intelligencer
onto the president’s desk. “Today’s edition. It has the full text of the program of the new party. The ‘Declaration of Principles,’ the silly bastards are calling it.”

At Clay’s courteous nod, Beatty took a seat in one of the chairs surrounding the desk where Clay’s other political advisers were already seated. Fortunately, not adjoining Porter’s. By now, Peter’s dislike for the Kentucky legislator had grown into pure loathing.

“Everything’s there, Henry,” Beatty continued, grinning. “And—believe me—it’s every bit as insane as any of the rumors. Ha! The bedlamites might as well have cut their own throats and been done with it!”

Clay already had the newspaper spread in front of him and was starting to read the first-page headline story. Most of the advisers—all of them, actually, except Porter himself—were craning their necks. Josiah Johnston, sitting the closest, had half risen out of his chair.

Beatty rummaged in his satchel. “No need to strain yourselves, gentlemen. I obtained plenty of copies. Enough for everyone.”

A moment later, Porter had a copy of the
Intelligencer
on his own lap. He didn’t give it more than a cursory glance, though, for the same reason he hadn’t craned his neck with the others. He’d already read it before coming to the meeting this morning.

Twice. All the way through and back again.

“They’re madmen, I tell you!” exclaimed Beatty, still with that grin. “They’re even advocating amalgamation!”

Porter cleared his throat. There were limits, and he had finally reached all of them.

“No, actually—and I’d advise you to be careful how you phrase that. They are not
advocating
amalgamation. They’re simply calling for the removal of all laws that regulate marriage by criteria of color.”

Beatty was giving him that look that Porter had come to detest. Half frowning, because he was stupid. Half jeering, because his stupidity had no bottom.

“If you can’t understand the difference, Representative Beatty, it’s the difference between advocating divorce and allowing for it in the law. I do not advocate that you divorce your wife.”

Not that the poor woman probably wouldn’t thank me.

“I do, however, propose to make it legally possible for you to do so, should that be your choice.”

He didn’t bother disguising the underlying sneer.

Clay spoke a bit hastily to keep the matter from escalating. “Yes, yes, Peter, of course you’re right.” He gave Beatty a veiled look from under lowered brows. “Do be careful about that, Adam. We don’t want to be accused of outright fabrication.”

Porter had become all too familiar with that veiled expression, also. More and more, Clay was separating his lines of action and using different advisers for different purposes. He might just as well have said:
By all means throw the charge around, Adam—with wild abandon—just make sure it can’t be traced back to me.

Granted, Clay had always been a rough political fighter, even if he wore gloves. Porter had admired the trait in times past, and he wouldn’t have objected if the gloves came off. The problem was that Henry was doing the opposite as time went on. He was adding more gloves at the same time his blows were getting lower.

It was becoming…filthy. There was no other word for it.

Johnston spoke next. “We shouldn’t have any trouble, now, getting Congress to pass the military appropriations bill. None at all, I’d think.”

Porter levered himself upright. That issue was his principal concern. “Henry, I want to advise you again that I think it would be a mistake to present that bill to Congress.”

The other advisers were looking either pained, in the case of Johnston, or derisive, in the case of Beatty, or something in between. Clay’s face had no expression at all.

Porter knew this was his last chance, so he decided to use whatever leverage he had. What little leverage he had any longer.

He pointed to the
Intelligencer.
“Let the ramifications of that settle in for a bit. In a month or two, I think you’d be able to get the appropriations bill passed that we
need.
”

“Oh, for the love of—” Beatty broke off the incipient blasphemy. Clay didn’t approve of such, and at least part of his disapproval was actually genuine.

Beatty slid forward, perched on the edge of his chair. “We’ve been over this more often than I want to remember. Mr. Porter, no one except you thinks it will take an army the size of the Russian tsars to squelch a pack of rioting negroes. A simple doubling of the regiments—”

Weeks—months—of simmering doubts and frustration boiled to the surface. Without realizing he’d done so, Porter was on his feet.

“Mr. Beatty, have you ever gotten any closer to a battlefield than you have to the moon? Because I
have.
” He pointed a slightly shaking finger at the newspaper. “Did you read the account of the battle, every detail of which was published in that same newspaper? And many others. They were
outnumbered,
and they still held off half the existing U.S. Army while inflicting worse casualties than almost any battle in the war with Britain and routing several thousand militiamen. And you—you—you—propose to call them rioting negroes, as if we faced nothing more than a minor civil disturbance?”

Clay was saying something, but Porter was simply too angry to pay attention. “Blast you! Gentlemen, we are dealing with a
war,
here. A very real, no-joking,
war.
That means we have got to mobilize the same way—”

“Peter!”

Porter broke off at that half shout. He saw that Clay was on his feet. The president’s expression was just short of a glare.

“Peter,” he said sternly, “I’m afraid I shall have to ask you to leave. And please do not return until and unless you have regained your composure.”

Porter stared at him.

“Now, please.”

There was—

Nothing to say, that he could think of. Any longer. Explosively, he let out a breath that he hadn’t even realized he was holding in.

“Yes, of course, Mr. President. My apologies.” He gathered up his own satchel and made for the door.

On the way out, he heard Clay saying: “For that matter, gentlemen, I think we should leave this whole issue out of our discussion altogether. It is now properly a matter for the Cabinet.”

The Cabinet.
That meant John Calhoun, first and foremost. Who had also never in his life come closer to a battlefield than he had to the moon. And who, while he favored as big an expansion of the army as possible, had a contempt for black people so deep that it blinded him.

But as he passed through the door, Peter realized it was no longer any of his concern. There were limits. There
had
to be limits, and he was now past them.

Outside, on Pennsylvania Avenue, he looked down at the Capitol. Trying, for a moment, to remember how many years he had spent in the republic’s service, doing his best to help guide it.

Enough. He had his own affairs to tend to, which he had long neglected. What would happen would happen, unfolding according to its own grim logic. A war begun by happenstance—some scheming, too, to be honest—would now be fought by men who thought they could do everything by half measures, supplanting the other half with schemes. The half measures would fail, succeeded by fuller ones—but those, too, would be stunted by that same cleverness, which was too clever by half. Until, in the end, they found themselves in a roaring rapids, in a rudderless raft they’d thought to be a steamboat, with the falls ahead.

Be damned to them all. Peter Porter owned no slaves and never had.

He was finally able to laugh, a bit. And never would own any, of course. Not now.

New Antrim

N
OVEMBER 7, 1825

Sheff Parker was surprised when Julia Chinn ushered Winfield Scott into his room. He knew who the man was, of course, and had even seen him a time or two on the streets before his injury. But they’d never exchanged so much as a single word.

He lowered the newspaper he’d been working his way through, with some relief. He’d have preferred reading an account of the new National Democratic-Republican Party’s program in an article written by Cullen Bryant and Scott. But Bryant had left a few weeks ago. He’d decided to remain in Arkansas for the duration of the war. But, that being the case, he had no desire to remain separated from his wife and daughter, so he’d gone to get them and bring them back with him.

From what Sheff had been told by Julia, Scott had considered the same course of action. But either because his family was larger—five children in all—or because his wife came from Virginian upper crust, or because he was apparently planning to cover the war from both sides of the line, he’d decided otherwise.

Unfortunately, from Sheff ’s point of view, that meant the analysis of the new party’s program was being written by John Ridge and Buck Watie. And they tended toward a far more flowery style of prose. Sheff ’s ability to read was improving rather quickly, now that he had so much time on his hands. But this was a strain.

Scott came to the bed and leaned over to see what Sheff was reading.

“Oh, dear Lord. I don’t envy you that. I leave aside the fact that their assessment misses the mark wildly, and on at least three counts.”

“Why do—ah, please have a seat, General.”

“Thank you. Why do I think that?” The tall former officer drew up a chair. “Let’s start with the most basic. If you took that seriously, you’d think the entire program of the new party—well, let’s say nine points out of ten—was essentially a fraud. Then let’s consider the fact that the estimable Ridge and Watie can’t decide whether that’s good or bad. Which is understandable enough, given their predicament. The Ridge family estates in Oklahoma have more slaves working them than all but the wealthiest plantations in the South. After that, we can move on—”

“Is it true that most of the slaves will never see freedom?”

“Oh, yes, Captain Parker, that’s quite true. The same thing will happen in Tennessee and Kentucky—and Missouri, though perhaps not Delaware—that happened in New York and most of the Northern states that adopted gradual emancipation. Before the time limit expires, most slave-owners will have sold their slaves to masters somewhere in the South. I’d be surprised if more than one out of five people who were scheduled for manumission ever receive it. The black populations of most of those states dropped precipitously in the years prior to emancipation—and I can assure you they didn’t move to Canada, the most of them.”

He nodded toward the southeast. “They—or their children—are laboring on a plantation somewhere in the Carolinas or Georgia, or perhaps working as stevedores on the docks of Savannah or Charleston. As I say, Delaware may be an exception. The Quakers and Methodists will be vigilant, and they may be able to keep that to a minimum. In any event, Delaware already has the largest freedmen population of any state in the nation, at least in percentage terms. The people of the state are fairly accustomed to it by now.”

Sheff studied the man’s face. For all the cynicism that rested on the surface of Scott’s expression, something else lay underneath.

“Please explain,” Sheff said. He lifted the paper a bit. “Why that goes against what they’re saying.”

“Because they’re like men on a battlefield who see only the casualties and don’t consider the fight. In the long run, Captain Parker—yes, I know this will sound very callous to you—it doesn’t matter what happens to those people. Give it two generations, three at the outside, and slavery is dead. Jackson knows that, Adams knows that, and you can be quite sure that John Calhoun knows it, too.”

Scott waved a dismissive hand at the newspaper. “Those lads—they’re very young, so I’ll grant them the excuse—are approaching this as if it were simply a moral issue. Which it is, of course. But battles are not won with moral splendor. They’re won by the brute force of the clash of arms.”

Sheff just waited, patiently. Sooner or later, he figured the man would get around to it.

After a moment, Scott smiled at him. “You
are
smart. Patrick told me you were.”

He lifted one long leg and crossed it over the other. Then, folded his hands in his lap.

“Here’s how it is, Captain Parker. Slavery expands, or it dies. For two reasons. First, because the agriculture involved is frightfully wasteful of the soil. Within a much shorter time than you might think, so-called King Cotton will look like a bedraggled down-at-the-heels little robber baron. As it already does in the northern tier of slave states. The truth is—my father-in-law dislikes to admit it, as do most of my native state’s gentry—Virginia’s main crop nowadays is slaves themselves. Whom they breed like so much livestock in order to sell to cotton growers in the Deep South.”

A sneer came to his face. “Remember that, the next time you read one of John Randolph’s perorations on liberty. But you can see where I’m going. How are slave-owners in Georgia and Alabama to make the same transition—from King Cotton to King Negro—when there are no new slave territories into which cotton production is expanding?”