1824: The Arkansas War

by Eric Flint

  After a hundred feet, she qualified the statement. “Well. Compared to summer, anyway.”

  “I’ve seen pigsties that were cleaner than this city,” Sam muttered.

  “Stop it!” Maria Hester scolded. “You promised. No politics until we get to the senator’s chambers.”

  When John Coffee entered Andrew Jackson’s office, the senator was looking out of a window. In his case, positioned as it was on the second floor of the Capitol, one that gave him a very nice view of the president’s house he hoped to occupy soon. The White House, some people were starting to call it, now that the house had been repaired and repainted after the British vandalism of the past war.

  All of the key men in Jackson’s entourage were already present in the chamber, seated here and there about the room. Judge John Overton; Tennessee state senator Hugh Lawson White; John Henry Eaton, Tennessee’s other U.S. senator; and Eaton’s brother-in-law, William H. Lewis.

  Lewis seemed gloomy, but Coffee discounted that. The man’s heavy face always gave him a solemn demeanor except when he was talking. But both Overton and Eaton seemed out of sorts as well.

  Jackson, on the other hand, seemed in something of an impish mood. Hearing Coffee enter, he gave him a peculiar smile and waved him toward one of the empty chairs. “Have a seat, John.”

  “Yes, do,” said Overton. “Maybe you can talk some sense into him.”

  Sitting down, Coffee cocked his head. “Sense about what?”

  “This,” said Eaton. He picked up some sheets of paper and handed them over.

  Coffee immediately recognized Jackson’s handwriting, which was quite unmistakable. Even if it hadn’t been, the senator’s sometimes eccentric spelling and syntax would have identified the author.

  It was a speech, evidently the one Jackson proposed to give to the Senate later that afternoon. Coffee took the time to read it slowly and carefully. Being one of Andy’s closest friends, he wasn’t surprised at all by the quality of the speech. Its intellectual content, at least, if not the specific thrust. Even after all these years, many people still kept thinking of Jackson as if he were some sort of semiliterate frontier roughneck. In point of fact, although the senator’s rudimentary formal education still left traces in his prose, Jackson was as astute and well-read a politician as most any in the United States. John Quincy Adams excepted, of course.

  When he was finished, Coffee laid the speech down on the low table in front of him.

  “If you just keep your mouth shut, Andy, I’m pretty sure this will all blow over.”

  “That’s just what I told him,” Eaton complained. “The votes were in all over the country before the news from Arkansas had time to spread. Much, anyway. And those people out West and in the South—most of the Southern states wouldn’t have gotten the news at all, before the election—who did hear about it would just assume…”

  “That Andy Jackson was another God-damned Henry Clay,” the senator interrupted. But the words weren’t snarled. Actually, they’d been said quite good-humoredly.

  Eaton flushed. “Andy, that’s not the point and you know it.”

  “Actually, it is the point,” Overton said mildly. “And you know it as well as anyone here does.”

  The judge raised his hand, forestalling Eaton’s further protest. “Not the part about another Henry Clay—and, Andy, don’t let Rachel hear you blaspheming like that. Nobody thinks Andy and Henry Clay are any more alike than bulls and roosters. What they do think is that the general who won the Horseshoe Bend and the Mississippi ain’t likely to stand by twiddling his thumbs while a bunch of niggers butcher white folks.”

  “He’s right, Andy,” said Coffee. “Just keep your mouth shut, and everybody will assume that Old Hickory will be Old Hickory. Plenty of time after you settle in the White House to set them straight.”

  Jackson had been pulling out the chair to his desk, preparatory to sitting down. But now he stopped and stood up straight. “Steal the election, you mean.”

  Ramrod-straight. Coffee heaved a sigh. “You and your damn pride—and don’t give me lectures on blaspheming, Judge Overton. You, of all people.”

  “I’ll be blasted if I will,” said Jackson. “All that happened here is that Henry Clay—as foul a man as ever besmirched the halls of Congress; I hate that bastard with a passion, and you all know it—financed a pack of bandits, using his connections with the stinking Bank to raise the money, in order to weasel his way into the presidency. Give me one good reason I should support that.”

  The earlier good humor was gone, now. He gave his advisers the same blue-eyed glare that was famous across much of the country. “No, sirs, I shall not.”

  But none of those men had remained Andy Jackson’s friends and advisers by being easily intimidated. “That ain’t the point, Andy,” said Overton. “It all comes down to the race issue. You know it just as well as we do. Yes, sure, Crittenden’s men were bandits. But they were white bandits—and the men who massacred them were all niggers.”

  “The commander who gave the order wasn’t,” Jackson fired back. “There’s no dispute over that, not in any of the reports. His name is Patrick Driscol. As Scots-Irish as I am, and with a skin paler than mine. Formerly of the United States Army. A major, when he resigned. I know. He served under me in New Orleans and was one of the best officers I’ve ever had.”

  Silence filled the room for a time. Jackson shoved the chair back under the table and went to stand at the window again.

  By the time they were halfway down Pennsylvania Avenue, Sam wished he’d been firm about calling for a carriage. Maria Hester might have a fortitude to shame most frontier women, but—dammit—his boots were filthy. His favorite boots, too.

  Of course, his wife’s shoes were a hopeless wreck. But those were the old ones she didn’t care about anyway, that she only kept for just such promenades. Like any experienced lady of Washington, she had a nice set in her purse, ready to change into when they reached their destination.

  “Are you sure—”

  “Sam Houston, Injun fighter and war hero,” his wife jibed. “Defeated by a little mud. Just soldier on, soldier.”

  “I retired from the army, remember?”

  “Then why does everyone keep calling you Colonel?”

  Jackson let out a sigh, his stiff shoulders easing a little. “There’s something wrong with John Calhoun,” he said, so softly the men in the room had to strain to hear him. “Him, and all the men like him.”

  Overton frowned. “We were talking about Henry Clay.”

  Jackson turned around. “No, we weren’t. Clay doesn’t give a damn about Crittenden’s men, even less than I do. This isn’t about Henry Clay. Not really. This is about John Calhoun. Might be better to say, the South that Calhoun is doing his level best to bring into existence. Like some sort of Araby heathen, trying to summon a demon out of a sealed lamp.”

  Jackson now had his hands clasped behind his back. His jaws seemed more gaunt than ever. “I got no use for Sam Houston’s fancies about black folk. Indians, maybe a little, but not niggers. Never did, never will. It’s just a fact that the black race is inferior to the white race. Taken as a whole, at any rate. I’ll allow for the exceptional individual, here and there.”

  He paused, scanning the room. “Anybody here disagree with me?”

  After a moment, they all shook their heads.

  “Didn’t think so. That’s why slavery doesn’t bother me any. Never did. If that fraud Thomas Jefferson wants to beat his breast over it—though I notice he has yet to free a single one of his slaves—let him do it. I won’t.” His jaws grew tighter still. “But that doesn’t mean I agree with Calhoun, either. That man…”

  He took a deep breath. “That man is just plain mean. He’s like all that type of slave-owner. The same ones who played the traitor at New Orleans. The fact that I don’t think black men are the equal of white men doesn’t mean I think they aren’t still men. They’re not dumb animals, tarnation, with no rights at all. And that�
�s exactly what John Calhoun thinks—and that’s exactly where he wants to lead the nation. With Henry Clay playing his tune, because he’s the fanciest piper in town.”

  He went over to his desk and picked up one of the newspapers lying there. “Never thought I’d see the day when I thought the Intelligencer was the best paper around,” he said wryly. “But today, at least, on this issue, the fact is they are.”

  He held up the paper. “Got another article in here by that Bryant fellow. Gives you all the details you want to know—or don’t want to know—about how Crittenden’s men conducted themselves. You’ve read it, I assume?”

  Again, they all nodded.

  “So, fine,” Jackson continued. “Let me ask you this, then. Suppose a gang of white criminals broke into a black freedman’s house right here in Washington—and don’t bother yapping to me about the exclusion laws, because you know as well as I do they aren’t enforced half the time. There’s too many black servants their masters want to keep around, free or not, including me. Why? Because some of them are good servants, that’s why. Not to mention they don’t want to listen to the kids hollering when their nanny gets sent away. Or the cook who gives them treats when their parents aren’t looking.”

  Still holding the paper in his left hand, he ran the fingers of the other through his stiff gray hair. “Truth is, I’m sorry now I ever voted for those blasted laws. They’re just a violation of human nature, is all. Inferior or not, black people are still people, and most people—any color, leaving aside the Calhouns of the world—form attachments to each other. Free or slave, it don’t matter. It just don’t.”

  He stopped the hair-ruffling and slapped the paper back on the desk. “So let me ask you. A gang of white criminals breaks into a black man’s home, starts stealing everything he owns—which ain’t much—and sets to raping his womenfolk in the bargain. So he shoots them dead, like any man would do who was worth his salt. Am I supposed to demand that he gets arrested and punished? Just because he’s black?”

  He was back to glaring. “Well? Answer me. Am I?”

  After a moment, everyone looked away.

  “What I figured. Be damned if I will. They want Old Hickory, I aim to give ’em Old Hickory. Right between the eyes.”

  Thankfully, the Capitol was only a hundred yards away. For all her determination and teasing, Sam could tell that his wife was tiring. Plowing through mud was hard enough for a big man like Sam. He could just imagine how a mile of it would exhaust a small woman like Maria Hester.

  Coffee had been watching Jackson closely through his little peroration. When it was done, he chuckled.

  “What’s so funny?” the senator demanded.

  “You are, if you want to know the truth. Sam Houston’s still sticking in your throat, isn’t he?”

  Jackson glared at him. “I kept that promise, and it’s done. Told him so myself.”

  “Yes, I know. So what?” Coffee didn’t flinch at all from that blue-eyed fury. Worst thing you could do around Andy Jackson.

  After a few seconds, the glare started to fade. After a few more, Jackson even started chuckling himself.

  “Blast that youngster,” he muttered. “Still worse, once he named his firstborn after me. Now that the kid’s old enough to talk, he calls me Grandpa. Damn little conniving clever politician like his daddy.”

  He yanked out the chair and folded himself into his seat. “Yes, fine. I suppose so.” He stuck out his bony finger, like a gun. “Not that I didn’t mean it when I said I had no use for Houston’s fancies. Still.”

  Coffee understood. “You said he’d turn down the rose of fortune when you offered it to him. And you were right. He did. Proud as a peacock you were, afterward.”

  “I sure was. Proud of both of us. Him for turning it down, and me for knowing he would and knowing why.”

  He swiveled his gaze toward the other men in the room. “Do you understand, now? We’ve talked it over, like we always do. But the decision’s mine, and I’ve made it.”

  He’d never lowered the finger. Now, the bony weapon pointed to the newspaper. “There’s my rose of fortune, gentlemen, that you’re waving under my nose. The answer’s no. We’ll go into the president’s house through the front door, or we won’t go in at all. Let Henry Clay sneak himself in through the servant’s entrance if he wants it that bad.”

  The steps of the Capitol were a blessed relief from the mud. As soon as they reached the top of the steps, Maria Hester crouched and began opening her bag.

  “No way I’m going in there in these filthy things.”

  Sam smiled.

  “Colonel Houston!”

  He turned, still smiling, but the smile faded almost immediately. The man coming up the steps toward him had no friendly look on his face. As much of it as Sam could see, at any rate. The fellow had a broad-brimmed hat to go with a long cloak. He looked positively conspiratorial, like something out of a cheap stage performance.

  “May I help you, sir?”

  “You were born in Virginia, am I not correct?”

  Coffee nodded. Whether because he agreed with Jackson or not, he didn’t even know himself. But that wasn’t the point, in the end. You could always trust Andy Jackson. Not to be right, necessarily, but to be Andy Jackson. For Coffee, that was good enough.

  Judging from the nods that went around the room, the other men had come to the same conclusion.

  “All right, then,” said Eaton. “We’ll almost surely lose this election. But there’s 1828 to look to.”

  “Clay’s sure to go for two terms,” cautioned White.

  Overton started to say something, but Jackson cut him off. “He’ll try. Whether he can do it or not—”

  A loud clap coming from outside interrupted him. Jackson’s head twisted around to the window. “That was a gunshot.”

  Sam never went armed in the streets of Washington. Now he was half regretting it. He was fully regretting not having accepted Chester’s offer to come along. This man—

  “I asked you a question, sir!”

  “And did so most uncivilly,” Sam snapped back. “But the answer is no secret. Yes, I was—”

  “You are a traitor, then!”

  “Sam!” Maria Hester shrieked.

  A pistol was coming out from under the cloak. Sam started to lunge for him.

  Maria Hester came up from her crouch, wildly swinging her bag. The fancy shoes she’d gotten half out went flying, one of them into the man’s face.

  He flinched. The pistol went off but missed. Sam smashed his face with a fist. It was a big fist, and Sam was in a fury. His assailant’s lips were shredded against his teeth, and some teeth went skittering down the steps. So did the man himself, his hat coming loose and his cloak swirling like a blanket.

  Sam started to follow. He was going to beat this bastard into—

  “Sam…”

  Overton was the first one at the window. “Oh, dear God,” he said.

  By the time Coffee and Jackson and the others came out of the Capitol onto the steps, Maria Hester had bled to death. The shot that Sam thought to have missed had struck her instead, severing the big artery under her arm. Coffee couldn’t remember the name of it. But he’d seen men die on a battlefield from just such a wound.

  Of the assailant there was no trace, beyond spots of blood and broken teeth. Houston had, understandably, paid the man no further attention once he realized his wife had been shot.

  “Put a five-thousand-dollar reward out, in my name,” Jackson ordered. His face was pale as a sheet, and he was trembling with rage. “Dead or alive.”

  Coffee nodded. Medical orderlies had arrived by now and were tending to Maria Hester. To her corpse, rather. Or trying to. Houston was still holding her body, his face blank. His own clothes were soaked with her blood, but he didn’t seem to notice.

  “Anything else, immediately?”

  “Yes.” Jackson swallowed. Just a reflex, to control his fury. This was no feigned Andy Jackson tantrum, either. Coffe
e knew the signs. This was the real thing, the rage of a man famous all over the frontier for his capacity for violence.

  “Yes,” he repeated. “Just remember that I’d already made my decision.”

  Coffee hissed. “Andy, you can’t give that speech this afternoon. In your state—”

  “Watch me.”

  The speech was as bad as Coffee feared. Not the words themselves, so much. It was the tone and, worst of all, the coda that Jackson added that had never been part of his written text.

  “…the basest, meanest scoundrel, that ever disgraced the image of his God—nothing too mean or low for Henry Clay to condescend to, secretly to carry his cowardly and base purpose…

  “…he is personally void of good morals, and politically a reckless demagogue, ambitious and regardless of truth when it comes in the way of his ambition…”

  That the words he spoke were all true, in Coffee’s opinion, made no difference. All the assiduous work that Andy had done in Washington since he’d been elected senator two years earlier—and done exceedingly well—were washed away. The suave and sophisticated political leader that the capital’s elite had come to know and even admire was gone; the frontier half savage that they feared, risen to the surface.

  It didn’t help that he’d ended his speech by referring the Speaker of the House to “all the laws which govern and regulate the conduct of men of honor.” Which amounted, under the circumstances, to a challenge to a duel, should Clay choose to take exception to his remarks.

  To be sure, Clay himself had been known to make similar noises in the course of public controversies. But “noises” were all they were: just typical Clay theatrics that nobody took in earnest.

  Coming from Jackson, the words were taken dead seriously. The senator from Tennessee was one of the most notorious duelists in America.

  Clay made no public response, of course. Since he hadn’t been present in the Senate when Jackson gave the speech, he could ignore it. To do otherwise would be politically foolish, and personally…