by Eric Flint
The dinner table seemed as long as a small ship, with tall and stately candlesticks serving for masts and sails. Johnson at one end; Julia, presiding over the meal, facing him at the other. With, in two long rows down the side, well over a dozen other people in addition to Sam and the children. Disabled war veterans or their widows, for the most part. But there was also one of nearby Lexington’s prominent lawyers, and one of the local plantation owners.
Sam wasn’t surprised to see them there. Not all of the South’s well-to-do disliked Johnson. Many admired him. That was true, starting with the president of the United States himself, James Monroe, who came from Virginia gentry. As always, in Sam’s experience—contrary to Patrick Driscol’s tendency to label people in sharp and definite categories—attitudes and habits blurred at the edges. Blurred so far, often enough, that no boundary was to be seen at all.
Fine for Patrick—the “Laird of Arkansas,” in truth, even if no one used the term to his face—to sit up there in the mountains and divide the world and its morals into black and white. Sam lived down here in a world of grays and browns, just about everywhere he looked. And…being honest, he was more comfortable in that world. He had plenty of gray in his own soul, as young as he might be, and he’d always thought brown to be the warmest color of all.
“Clay’s going to make a run for it,” the plantation owner predicted. “In fact, he’s already started.”
The lawyer sitting across from him laughed sarcastically. “What else is new? Henry Clay was dreaming about the presidency while he was still in his mother’s womb. More ambitious than Sam Hill, he is.”
Johnson smiled into his whiskey tumbler. So did Sam. It was the same smile, half derisive and half philosophical. The difference was simply that the senator’s tumbler was half full and Sam’s was…
Empty, now that he looked into it. How had that happened?
“Don’t make light of it, Jack,” cautioned the lawyer. “I’m thinking he’s got a very good chance at getting what he wants. With Monroe gone after next year, who else does it leave? Beyond Quincy Adams and the general, of course—and they’ve both got handicaps.”
“Andy Jackson’s the most popular man in America!” the senator stoutly proclaimed.
The lawyer, blessed with the name of Cicero Jones, gave him a look that might have graced the face of the ancient Roman statesman after whom he’d been named—just before he fell beneath the swords of the Second Triumvirate.
“Maybe so, Dick. But…”
For an instant, Jones’s glance flicked toward Sam. Then he looked down at his plate. “But not as much as he used to be,” he concluded glumly.
That was enough to tip Sam’s decision over the immediate issue at hand. He held up his tumbler toward one of the slaves waiting on the table. “Some more whiskey, if you would.”
As the slave made to comply, Sam gave Johnson a level gaze. “That’s my doing. The settlement I made of the Algiers business hurt the general worse than the Treaty of Oothcaloga helped him. No doubt about it, I think.”
Now that Sam had said it out loud, Cicero Jones was clearly relieved. “No doubt about it at all,” the lawyer echoed.
Across from him, Jack Hartfield shrugged and spread his hands. As portly as the plantation owner was, the expansive gesture did unfortunate things to his tightly buttoned vest.
Adaline managed to keep quiet, but Imogene burst into a giggle. Sam almost did, too, for that matter. The way the button flew from Hartfield and bounced off one of the candlesticks was genuinely comical.
Hartfield himself grinned. But his good cheer didn’t keep the girl from her chastisement.
“Imogene!” exclaimed Julia. A hand the color of coffee-with-cream smacked her daughter, leaving a red mark on a cheek whose color wasn’t much lighter. “Do that again and you’ll finish dinner in your room!”
“Oh, go easy on her, Julia,” chuckled the plantation owner. “It was pretty funny. I probably would have laughed myself, ’cept I don’t want to think what my wife’ll have to say when I get home. I’m afraid I bust a lot of those.”
“Don’t matter,” insisted Julia. She wagged a finger in Imogene’s face. “You behave yourself, young lady. You know better than that.”
Imogene assumed a properly chastened look. Although Sam didn’t miss the angry glare she gave her sister across the table, once Julia looked away. Adaline’s face had that insufferably smug look that a twin has whenever her sibling is rightfully punished—and she herself gets away with it.
Again, it was all Sam could do not to laugh. Fortunately, the tumbler arrived and he was able to disguise his amusement with a hefty slug of its contents. A heftier slug than he’d actually intended. It was hard to resist, though. The whiskey served at Blue Spring Farm was the best Sam had had in months. And that was a lot of whiskey back.
Once the humor of his mishap had settled, Hartfield went on with what he’d been about to say. “I don’t think it’s really fair to blame young Houston. If the general had just kept quiet about the matter, instead of…”
He shrugged. Even more expansively than he had before, now that further damage was impossible. The button that had popped off his vest had been the last survivor.
“That unfortunate speech.”
That was something of a euphemism, in Sam’s opinion. As much as he admired Andy Jackson, there was no denying the man had a savage streak in his nature that was sometimes as wide as the Mississippi River. If the clash at Algiers had been between any other group of black men—free or slave, it mattered not—and a properly constituted white militia, Andy Jackson would have been among the first to demand loudly that the niggers be put in their place. For that matter, he’d probably have offered to lead the punitive expedition personally.
But those hadn’t been just any black men. Those had been the men of the Iron Battalion, led by the same Patrick Driscol, who’d broken the British at the Battle of the Mississippi—the battle that had turned Jackson from a regional into a national figure. If Andy Jackson could be savage about race, he could be even more savage—a lot more savage—when it came to matters of honor, and courage, and cowardice.
Whatever the color of their skin—and their commander’s skin was as white as Jackson’s own—Old Hickory had a genuine admiration for the Iron Battalion. And, on the reverse side, despised no group of wealthy men in the United States so much as he despised the plantation owners in and around New Orleans who had, in the main, refused to participate in the fight against the invading redcoats. And had done so—to put the icing on the cake—because they feared their own slaves more than they did a foreign enemy.
Jackson had had choice words to say about that Louisiana gentry during the New Orleans campaign in the war against the British. His words spoken in public—and reprinted in most of the newspapers of the nation—the day after the Algiers Incident had been choicer still. Poltroons and criminals applied to rich white men, and the terms stalwart fellows and yeomen defending their rights applied to poor black ones, were all true, to be sure. But they’d caused the general’s popularity in the South and the West—theretofore almost unanimous except for Henry Clay and his coterie—to plummet like a stone.
Only so far, of course. Soon enough, the plunging stone had reached the secure ledge of support from the poorer class of the Southwest’s voters. For the most part, they’d been no happier with the result of the clash at Algiers than any other white men of the region. On the other hand, as the saying went, it was no skin off their nose. All the more so, since the battle had been precipitated by the lascivious conduct of some of the New Orleans Creoles, whose wealth and Frenchified habits the poor Scots-Irish settlers resented—and a good percentage considered not that much better than niggers anyway.
Still, when all the dust settled, Andy Jackson’s popularity in the South and West was no longer as overwhelming as it had been. Clay, of course, had immediately seized the opportunity to continue the Jackson-bashing he’d begun two years earlier over the general’s
conduct of the Florida campaign. The Speaker of the House had had his own choice words to say on the floor of Congress. He’d even gone to the extreme of offering to lead a punitive expedition to Louisiana himself.
The offer had been as histrionic as it was ridiculous. First, because Henry Clay had no military experience whatsoever—indeed, he routinely dismissed Jackson as a “mere military chieftain,” in no way suitable for higher positions in the Republic. Second, because he knew perfectly well that there was no chance at all that President Monroe would appoint him to the position, even in the unlikely event that he authorized such a mission in the first place. Always the Virginia gentleman, James Monroe kept his private feelings to himself. But Sam was his son-in-law, and he knew perfectly well that if Monroe’s dislike and distrust of Henry Clay was less savage than Jackson’s, it was not an inch shallower.
Ridiculous and histrionic as it might have been, however, Clay’s stance had enhanced his own popularity in the region—and the congressman from Kentucky had already been the second most popular figure there, after Jackson. Considerably more popular among the region’s gentry.
“Well, it’s done now,” said the lawyer. No slouch himself when it came to whiskey, Cicero Jones downed his tumbler. “But don’t fool yourselves, gentlemen. Henry Clay is now at the front of the pack who’ll be running for president, once Monroe’s term is up. Quincy Adams is respected by just about everyone—gentlemen, at least—but he’s not liked all that much, either. Too cold, too harsh, too caustic—too everything. And, like Calhoun, he’s almost a purely regional figure. Adams will take New England just as certainly as Calhoun will take the hard-core South. But that’s not enough votes to win, no matter how you slice it.”
“There’s Crawford,” pointed out Senator Johnson. Only a slight twist to his lips indicated his dislike for the secretary of the treasury. The tone of his comment had been neutral and matter-of-fact.
Jones shrugged. “Yes, there’s William Crawford. Popular in the South also, of course, being a Georgian. And the nation’s well-to-do tend to be fond of him in all regions of the country.”
“As they should!” barked Sam. Most of the disgruntlement in his tone, however, came from the state of his tumbler. Once again, not even noticing, he’d managed to drain it dry. And it would be ungracious to ask for another refill so soon. Always the generous host, Johnson still had a badly frayed pocketbook—and that whiskey was expensive.
“But he’s seen by too many people as too slick,” the lawyer continued. “I don’t think the electorate trusts him all that much. Nor should they, for that matter.”
“Hah!” exclaimed Hartfield. “Why should they look cross-eyed at Crawford? He’s not half the cut-any-corner and make-any-deal bastard that Clay is.”
The lawyer shook his head. “Yes, I know. But Clay makes pretty speeches and knows how to pose in public. Crawford’s not got half his talent for that. Not a quarter.” He took a long pull on his tumbler, leaving it as dry as Sam’s. “No, you watch. It’ll be Clay to beat. Calhoun will throw him his support as the election nears, in exchange for Clay’s backing—half-backing, at least—on the issues Calhoun holds dear. And Crawford…well, I think he’ll settle for secretary of state, if Clay will promise it to him. That’ll position Crawford to replace Clay when the time comes. He’s only fifty-one years old, after all.”
Sam considered Jones’s assessment as he considered the lawyer’s empty tumbler. He thought the assessment was about right. More to the point, he could see where it led straight to a toast.
He cleared his throat. “What you’re saying, Cicero, if I’m following you, is that if Andy Jackson is to be our next president, he’ll have to reach an accommodation with John Quincy Adams. Right?”
“Dead right.” Jones winced a little, then. “And that’ll be some trick.”
“The general thinks well of Adams,” pointed out Johnson.
“Who doesn’t?” said Jones. “A most admirable man, versed in the classics and everything. But does the general like him? And, perhaps more to the point, what does Adams think of Andy Jackson?”
“He supported him during that ruckus over Florida,” stated Johnson stubbornly.
The lawyer waved his hand. “Sure he did. John Quincy Adams is the best secretary of state the United States has ever had, if you ask me. Andy Jackson got us Florida, so Adams backed him. But that doesn’t mean he much likes the general. Face it, gentlemen.” Jones leaned forward in his seat and tapped the table with his forefinger. “First, they disagree over most issues that concern the internal affairs of the nation. Adams is still half a Federalist, when you come down to it. Half an abolitionist, too, if I’m not mistaken.”
He tapped the table again, more forcibly. “Second, political affairs are determined more by matters of blood and attitude than they are by cold intellect. I don’t think you could find two prominent men in the country more unlike than Andy Jackson and John Quincy Adams. They’re as different as the Kentucky whiskey and French wine they each prefer to drink.”
That was true enough, of course. Best of all, it was salient.
Sam rose to his feet. “A toast, then, gentlemen! To unlikely alliances!” The men at the table began to rise, all except the two veterans who were missing a leg. But their smiles were enough to indicate their full agreement with the toast.
Sam reached down for his tumbler. Then, his mouth widened as if he’d just noticed the glass was empty.
“Ah. How awkward.”
“Grover!” Johnson barked at one of the slaves standing by the sideboard. “What are you daydreaming about? See to it that Sam’s whiskey is refilled!”
CHAPTER 5
The next morning, at breakfast, Johnson waited until the girls were finished and had excused themselves from the table before returning to the subject of the new school.
More precisely, to where the new school might lead them.
“Tarnation, Sam—I’ll make this as plain as I can—I want them to marry white men. Even if they have to move to Vermont or Massachusetts in order to do it. And how many white men are they going to run into, over there in Black Arkansas?”
“They’re only twelve years old, Dick,” Sam pointed out mildly. “Hardly something you’ve got to worry about right now.”
The senator wasn’t mollified. “They’ll grow up fast enough. Faster than you expect. If there’s any sure and certain law about kids, that’s it. They always grow up faster than you expect.”
Sam glanced at Julia. Her expression was unreadable: just a blank face that might simply be contemplating clouds in the sky. He wondered how she felt about the matter.
But since there was no point in asking, he decided bluntness was the only tactic suitable.
“They’ll marry whoever they marry, Dick. If you think you can stop them—here any more than in Arkansas—you’re dreaming. You heard about the ruckus with Major Ridge’s son? Over in Connecticut?”
Johnson chuckled. “Who didn’t? I heard the girl even went on a hunger strike.”
“Yep, she did. Stuck to it, too, until her parents got so worried they caved in and let her marry John Ridge after all. Cherokee or not. But here’s really the point I was making. Did you hear what happened to her family afterward?”
The senator shook his head.
“Well, after the wedding they wound up moving to New Antrim also. I guess, after visiting the town to make sure their daughter wasn’t winding up in some Indian lean-to—” He grinned widely. “Which Patrick Driscol’s Wolfe Tone Hotel most certainly isn’t, not with Tiana running the place. Anyway, it seems they found New Antrim most congenial. Especially since it was maybe the only town in the continent, outside of Fort of 98, where their daughter wouldn’t be hounded every day. Neither would they, for that matter. It got pretty rough on them, too, you know. One newspaper article even called for drowning the girl’s mother along with whipping the girl herself. John Ridge himself, of course, was for hanging.”
“I heard.” Johnson’s lip cu
rled. “So much for that snooty New England so-called upper crust. You can say what you like about the country folks hereabouts, but at least”—he nodded toward Julia—“she doesn’t have to worry none, just going down to the store to buy provisions.”
“Folks are right nice to me,” she agreed.
“What’s your point, Sam?” asked Johnson.
“I’d think it was obvious. The one thing you can at least be sure of, if one or both of your daughters winds up marrying somebody you think is unsuitable, over there in Arkansas, is that nobody else will.”
He gave Johnson a cocked-head look. “Never been there, have you? You ought to go visit sometime. Soon.”
“Yes,” said Julia. “Soon. But…”
“It can be dangerous these days,” said Johnson. His hand reached out and squeezed Julia’s forearm. “Traveling, I mean, for anyone with her color. Even the color of Imogene and Adaline. Those so-called slave-catchers have been running pretty wild.”
Sam grinned savagely. “Less wild than they used to be, I bet. When I passed through Cincinnati, I heard about the killing.”
Johnson grimaced. “Don’t make light of it, Sam. Most people down here were pretty upset about that.”
“Sure. So what? ‘Most people’ aren’t running around trying to catch so-called runaway slaves. Who, most times, are just freedmen trying to make it safely to Arkansas. Which they have to, thanks to that bastard Calhoun and his Cossacks stirring up lynch mobs all over the country. So what difference does it make if they’re ‘upset’ because some unknown abolitionist fiend gunned down a slave-catcher across the river? What matters is that the slave-catchers are a lot more than just ‘upset.’ ” His grin grew still more savage. “Why, I do believe they’re downright nervous. Seeing as how they don’t know who the fiend and his fifty brothers were. Or where they might pop up next.”
