1824: The Arkansas War

by Eric Flint

  That…was true. Adams realized that he’d been so preoccupied with the personal aspect of his decision to withdraw from the race that he hadn’t considered what tactical results would follow in the political arena. If the election was thrown into the House, with his supporters giving their votes to Jackson…

  He drew in a breath so sharply it was almost a hiss. “Oh, good heavens.”

  Jackson nodded. “ ‘Good heavens,’ is right, John—except I wouldn’t put the word ‘heaven’ in there at all. There’s only one way Clay could win. He’d have to get Calhoun’s full support and almost all of Crawford’s.”

  “I don’t think he can get all,” Adams mused. “Van Buren and his people are supporting Crawford because of his extreme states’ rights views. They’re New Yorkers, not Southerners. They’ll have no liking for a war with Arkansas.”

  “No, they won’t. But the problem is that Van Buren—they don’t call him the Little Magician for nothing—is sometimes too smart for his own good. Might be better to say, he’s so good at political tactics that he tends to lose sight of their purpose. He’s likely to figure that Clay’s war talk is just hot air. Campaign blather, that’ll vanish like the dew after the inaugural address.”

  The senator rose, went over to the cabinet, and unstoppered the whiskey bottle. “Would you care for another?” he asked as he began refilling his own glass.

  Adams looked down at his whiskey. There wasn’t much left.

  It really was very good whiskey. On the other hand, he reminded himself, he was prone to intemperance if he didn’t maintain good self-control.

  What decided him was an oddity. He was starting to enjoy this conversation.

  “Yes, please.”

  The glasses refilled and Jackson back in his chair, the senator resumed. “What it all comes down to is that Clay is going to have to throw his lot in with Calhoun and Crawford. Lock, stock, and barrel. And you can be damn sure that Calhoun is going to insist on a war. In fact—watch and see if I’m not right—he’ll insist on the post of secretary of war for himself, so he can make sure it gets done.”

  Adams sipped his whiskey thoughtfully. “Yes, I can see that. Clay will offer the position of secretary of state to Crawford, of course. That would position Crawford to succeed him in the White House, four or eight years from now.”

  “In Crawford’s medical condition,” Jackson said mildly, “he couldn’t handle the work. No one knows that better than you.”

  Adams sniffed. “No, he couldn’t. Frankly, I don’t think he could even on his best days. But it doesn’t matter, Andy. All the better from Clay’s point of view, since the Speaker—”

  Oh, blast it. He’d thrown in his lot with frontier roughnecks, after all, so why not at least enjoy the benefits?

  “Since the rotten bastard fancies himself a great diplomat, he’ll just figure on managing the State Department personally.”

  Jackson grinned. “Still sore over the Russell letter, huh?”

  Adams couldn’t resist returning the grin. It was quite infectious, really.

  “Certainly. The man committed a forgery to try to smear my reputation during the negotiations with Britain—and I know perfectly well Clay was the one put him up to it. If only I could prove it.”

  He took another drink. No sip, this time. “I genuinely detest Henry Clay.”

  “Well, so do I, partner. So, like I said, let’s gut the bastard. Forget this election. We’ll have four years to do it—and we’ll know exactly where to find him.” He waved the glass in the direction of the White House. “Just down the street a ways.”

  Monroe came upon Houston just as his son-in-law was gently closing the door to his grandson’s room.

  “Is he asleep, finally?” he asked.

  Houston glanced over his shoulder. “Yes. He’ll have nightmares again, though. So, with your permission—”

  “Of course. I’ve already told the servant to vacate the room next door so you can occupy it for the night.”

  Houston looked genuinely haggard. He’d gotten no sleep himself since the murder. “Thank you. I wouldn’t want to sleep in our—that—bedroom anyway. I don’t think I could bear it.”

  “Yes, I understand. If you’d like, I can manage other arrangements. More permanent ones, I mean.”

  Houston shook his head. “No, thank you, sir. Any arrangements you made would be invalid come March, anyway. But, as it happens, I’ve already decided to seek residence elsewhere.”

  “You’re going to Arkansas.” It was a statement, not a question.

  “Yes, sir, I am. As soon as I think the boy is up to the trip.”

  “Sam…”

  “No, sir.” The dark fury Monroe had sensed was rising to the surface now, filling Houston’s face. “No, sir. You forget—most people forget—that I belong to two nations, not one. My name is also Colonneh. ‘The Raven,’ in English.”

  “Sam—”

  “No, sir. I didn’t get much of a look at the man who murdered my wife. But I saw enough to know one thing, for sure. That man was not a Cherokee. That man was one of those stinking, filthy Georgians who drove the Cherokee off their land. To call ‘relocation’—yes, I know I engineered the treaty, and I used it, too—by its right name.”

  A little shudder passed through his big body. Then, softly: “So I’m going home, and taking my boy with me. Meaning no offense to you, sir, but I want him to meet his Cherokee grandfather. While John Jolly’s still alive.”

  Monroe sighed. “Please don’t forget that you shared five years of Maria Hester’s life, Sam. And I shared all of them.”

  Houston’s eyes teared. “I know that, James,” he said softly. “I don’t mean to belittle your grief, or her mother’s, or her sister’s. But you do what you feel necessary, and I will do the same. I’m not bringing up my boy in a country that murdered his mother, because it was a country full of spite and meanness. No way in Hell. We’re for Arkansas.”

  Monroe recognized the impossibility of altering his son-in-law’s course. Still…

  Forty years of political life produced unshakable habits. “Don’t burn any bridges you don’t need to, Sam. Lafayette’s visiting the country, as you know.”

  Sam frowned, thrown off by the remark. “Well, sure. His tour’s taking the whole country by storm. In fact, I met him—well, shook his hand and exchanged pleasantries—at a festival in his honor just two weeks ago. But what’s that got to do…”

  His voice trailed off, and the color of his eyes seemed to lighten a bit. “Oh.”

  Monroe was careful not to show any visible relief. If Sam Houston didn’t have much of the Scots-Irish capacity for rage, except in his worst moments, he had all of that breed’s aptitude for political maneuver. Considerably more than his rightful share, in fact.

  “Oh,” he repeated. Then, shook his head slightly. “I doubt he’d receive me, James. He’s deluged with well-wishers, and he doesn’t know me at all.”

  “Don’t be foolish. He knows who you are. Just because the Marquis is now sixty-six years old, don’t think for a moment he’s become less acute when it comes to political affairs. The hero of the Capitol, and then New Orleans?”

  Monroe cleared his throat. “Not that it matters. He certainly knows who I am, since I’m not only the president of the nation but the one who extended the invitation for him to visit. He’ll see me, Sam. In fact…”

  Monroe had to swallow for a moment. “He’s coming here tomorrow, as it happens. He asked if he could accompany us in person to the funeral.”

  Sam nodded. “In that case, I’ll be able to see him. At least briefly.”

  “Briefly, yes. Tomorrow. But…”

  Monroe paused, for a moment, thinking. “Can you postpone your departure for a week or two?”

  “Well…Yes, I suppose. Andy won’t be up for traveling immediately, anyway.”

  “Good. In that case, I think I can manage something quite a bit better than ‘briefly.’ ”

  Houston was looking at him v
ery intently now, his fury almost completely gone. “What are you thinking, James?”

  “What I am thinking, my dear son-in-law—which you are and will remain, whatever else—is that the last sight of you I want the United States to have, before you depart for Arkansas, is receiving the blessing of the Marquis de Lafayette. Who fought with George Washington and shed his blood on American soil at Brandywine, that republicanism might triumph in the world.”

  Washington, D.C.

  NOVEMBER 19, 1824

  Eleven days later, at the state dinner hosted by President Monroe at Williamson’s Hotel and attended by practically every member of Congress, the Marquis sat beside Sam Houston.

  That caused pained looks among some of the congressmen present, but not many. Word was already spreading that John Quincy Adams would throw his support to Jackson in the event the election was thrown into the House. Which, with the first election results beginning to come in, now seemed certain to happen. State dinners of this sort were such enormous affairs that there was plenty of time and space for quiet dickering. Most of the congressmen were too busy with their whispered consultations to pay much attention to the formalities of the affair.

  Peter Porter was one of the exceptions. He’d gotten an invitation through the offices of the Speaker, so he was there also. But since he was not a congressman, he paid little attention to the small maneuvers taking place at the multitudes of tables in the huge dining room. Instead, he spent the time carefully studying the men at the central table.

  James Monroe. Sam Houston. The Marquis de Lafayette.

  Porter had had enough military experience to understand—he was pretty sure, anyway—what he was seeing. Strategists at work, not tacticians. He tried, at one point in the evening, to get Clay’s attention. But the Speaker was preoccupied with his negotiations with several of the congressmen from North Carolina.

  “Tomorrow, Peter. I couldn’t possibly find the time to speak to you tonight.”

  Toward the end of the evening, the Marquis rose and offered three toasts.

  The first, in solemn remembrance of the president’s daughter.

  The second, in honor of his heroic son-in-law, who had so valiantly defended the Capitol of the United States from enemy attack—and then repeated the deed, a few months later, at New Orleans.

  The third—

  Smiling broadly, the Marquis prefaced his toast by announcing that Sam Houston was moving to Arkansas and taking his young son with him. They would depart two days hence.

  So, another toast: “To the New World, so clearly blessed by the Almighty! To the New World! Which has produced yet another great republic on its soil!”

  Andrew Jackson was the first to rise to the toast. Had he not been a bit too portly, John Quincy Adams might have beaten him to it.

  Outside the hotel, later, Clay brushed Porter off again. “Not now, Peter, sorry. Yes, I know it’s a bit awkward. A minor setback. But I think we’re on the verge of taking all of North Carolina from Jackson. South Carolina, Calhoun can promise us for sure.”

  Off he went. Porter was left alone in the night, watching the crowd spilling out of Williamson’s Hotel.

  Setback.

  “Jesus Christ,” Porter muttered to no one at all. “Who cares about that? This thing is careening out of control.”

  CHAPTER 25

  Natchez, Mississippi

  DECEMBER 15, 1824

  The bullet missed, but it did manage to shatter a bottle of whiskey sitting on the bar top that was close enough to shower Ray Thompson with its contents. Crouching behind the bar next to Powers, he cursed bitterly. It was rotgut, naturally. He’d be stinking for hours. Assuming he survived the next few minutes.

  “Can’t you ever just keep your mouth shut?” he hissed.

  Powers finished reloading his pistol. “Damnation, this tavern was my old watering hole.” He peered up at the bar top above them. “How many were there?”

  “Four, till you shot one and I shot another.”

  “The tavern keeper?”

  “He ran off. I don’t think he was one of them. But they’ll have friends coming, you watch. And meantime they’ve got us pinned here, and”—Ray rapped a knuckle against one of the planks that formed the base of the bar—“sooner or later it’s going to occur to those stupid yahoos to try to shoot through these planks to see how thick they are. I’m not looking forward to the results.”

  Powers winced. “Neither am I.” He gave Thompson a calculating look. “We got no choice, I’m thinking. Right at ’em is the only way.”

  Ray shook his head. “Yeah, we got no choice. But I’m only joining you if you swear you’ll stop using your own name.”

  “Yeah. Fine. I swear. Mother’s grave, whatever you want.”

  Thompson didn’t bother to answer. He was too busy gauging the distance to the only unshattered bottle still on the bar top.

  “I’ll go first, right over the top. You come around the side.”

  Powers nodded. Since there was no point in dallying, Ray rose up enough to tap the bottle over with the barrel of the pistol.

  Almost instantly, a shot was fired, smashing into the wood behind the bar.

  “Thank God for yahoos.” But he was erect before he finished the statement, where he could see the room, his pistol tracking the man who’d fired.

  Dumber’n sheep. The idiot was standing up, reloading. Ray shot him in the chest. Then, lunged to his left, just in time to evade the shot fired by the man’s partner. He kept lunging leftward, half running and half scrambling, but never dropping out of sight. That would keep the man’s eyes on him while Scott—

  Powers’s shot came from the other side of the bar. Ray stopped and looked over. Good enough. He didn’t think Scott had killed him outright, but it was good enough.

  “Fucking yahoos,” Powers snarled on their way out of the tavern. “Why the hell do they care if we hurt Clay’s chances? The bastards never bother to vote, anyway. Too stupid to read the ballot.”

  Ten minutes later they were ready to head for the Natchez Trace.

  “Now we’re horse thieves, too,” Ray complained as he led his mount out of the barn they’d broken into.

  Powers was in a cheerier mood. “Lookit this. Found it tacked on the wall in there.”

  He handed over a printed notice.

  Thompson didn’t look at it, though, until they were out of the town’s limits. Killing three or four men might be forgiven in Natchez, depending on who their friends and relatives were, but stealing a horse was a hanging offense.

  When he did look at it, reading slowly because of the horse’s gait, he whistled.

  “Ten thousand dollars. Whoo-eee.”

  Then he shrugged and handed it back to Powers. “Lot of good it does us.”

  But Powers was still smiling. “O ye of little faith. I know him, Ray. Andrew Clark’s the first cousin of an old friend of mine.”

  Thompson looked over at him skeptically. “And what of it? He did the killing in Washington, Scott. If your geography’s gotten hazy since our seafaring days, that’s about a thousand miles from here as the crow flies—and we ain’t crows. By now he could be anywhere.”

  “ ‘Could be,’ sure. But he won’t be. Where’s he going to go? That’s a snooty family he comes from, real Georgia gentlemen. If he’d killed Houston, he’d have been all right. They’d hide him as long as it took. But killing Houston’s wife, won’t nobody in those circles touch him. In fact, they’d turn him in faster’n anybody. Even the yahoos in Louisiana would. Well, half of ’em, anyway.”

  Ray thought about it. That was true enough, actually. Killing a woman, unless she was a whore or a cheating wife, was one of the few ways a man could cross the line with Southern and Western roughnecks. Almost as bad as horse stealing.

  The last thought reminded him of their own predicament. “What’re we going to do with these horses, Scott?”

  “Let ’em go; what else? As soon as we reach Port Gibson. That’s stretching it a littl
e, but I figure we can probably get away with it. Being as there was four of them, and us not knowing how many friends they might have.”

  Again, Ray thought about it. That was…

  Also true enough. There was a certain protocol involved. Actually stealing a man’s horse was a hanging offense, sure enough. But if a man let the horse go while it was still close enough to find its way home—or be returned by someone else who knew the brand—most people were inclined to let it go as more-or-less borrowing the horse just to get out of a bad spot. Which theirs had certainly been. Often enough, it became a laughing matter.

  It wasn’t surefire, of course. But at least it gave you an arguing point if you got caught.

  “Okay, then what?”

  “Port Gibson’s where we want, anyway.” Powers flashed Thompson a grin. “Being as how you and me is for a Mississippi steamboat and St. Louis. I figure we can get hired on, easy enough. This soon after the massacre, a lot of the regular men’ll still be nervous about steaming past the Arkansas.”

  Thompson grimaced. “Scott, I’m nervous about steaming past it. Unless they’re even dumber than yahoos, they’ll still have that flotilla there. One or two boats anyway—and they’re likely to be none too fussy about diplomatic protocol. What if they stop our boat and search it? They find us, we’re for the rope.”

  “Yeah, sure. But it’s been two and a half months since Arkansas Post. I figure by now the U.S. State Department has made plenty of protests to the Confederacy on the subject of interfering with American commerce on the Mississippi. Say whatever else you will about the bastard, Quincy Adams ain’t no slouch. As long as we stay out of sight when our boat gets to the Arkansas, we should be safe enough.” His cheery expression was disfigured for a moment by a scowl. “Which won’t be hard, since we’ll probably be working in the boiler room.”

  Ray matched the grimace. Boiler room work was just as hard as it was dangerous.

  Not, however, as dangerous as staying in yahoo country, with their names black as mud because of that damned Bryant. And even if they always used aliases, there were just too many men in the area who knew them personally.