1824: The Arkansas War

by Eric Flint

  Sheff didn’t know whether it had happened by pure accident or by conscious design on the colonel’s part. Either way, in effect, he’d used the companies on his right—Sheff ’s among them—to pin the Americans while the companies of his left and the artillery pounded them into pieces. Much the way a barroom brawler might use one hand to hold his opponent while he flailed away with the other fist.

  It wouldn’t have worked if the Americans had had guns of their own to bring counterbattery fire. But they didn’t. Sheff was guessing, but he was pretty sure the American guns were still stuck in front of the Post or by the river, guarding against a sally by the riverboats upstream.

  As battle tactics went, this one was dandy. But it was rough on Sheff ’s people.

  “Fire!”

  The musket volleys were starting to get a bit ragged, as many casualties as they’d suffered. But not as ragged as the ones coming in return. Sheff was impressed that the one American regiment was still fighting at all. Tough bastards, for sure.

  Sam joined up with Colonel Street after the 2nd Regiment had bypassed the U.S. forces tangled up at the Post and were heading straight for the militias. He’d bided his time, since he wanted to gauge how well the militia commanders would handle the sudden crisis they’d found themselves in.

  Just about as he’d expected. Officers running back and forth, shouting orders most of which countermanded one another. The men, for their part, doing whatever struck their fancy.

  Some of them had formed a line. Not much of a line, but a line. They’d even gotten two of their four-pounders into something that approximated a decent position.

  Approximated, no better. The guns weren’t far enough forward. That was typical of militia artillery. It took experience and confidence for artillery crews to be willing to position themselves far enough in advance of their infantry to do much good. Militias could almost never manage the thing properly.

  Sam couldn’t really blame them. Not only did the gun crews need to be confident that they had the skill to pull their guns back into the shelter of the infantry in time; also they needed to be confident that the infantry would be there to shelter them in the first place. More often than not, militia infantry would break, leaving the artillerymen they were supposed to protect high and dry. Ten years earlier, some of the men who were now serving in the Arkansas artillery had been cursing militiamen who’d left them exposed to the mercy of British regulars at the Battle of Bladenburg.

  Another chunk of militiamen—several chunks, rather, and big ones—were obviously making preparations for a hasty retreat. “Rout,” to call things by their right name.

  Those were the complete idiots. They had to be idiots. There were two thousand Choctaw warriors out there, and at least two hundred men from Brown’s Raiders. They’d been lying low, as instructed. But if the militiamen broke and ran, they’d be like rabbits at the mercy of predators.

  Most of the militiamen, about half, were doing neither. They were just milling around in confusion, not sure what to do.

  “It ain’t complicated, boys,” Sam murmured, kicking his horse into motion to rejoin the 2nd. “You can stand and die, or you can run and die. But either way, lots of you are gonna die today.”

  Sheff finally received his first wound. A small one, just a bullet that grazed his ribs. Barely even a flesh wound, and he was too busy anyway to take the time to bind it up. The uniform would be a ruin by the end of the day, but he didn’t care anymore. He could barely remember the thrill of that first day he’d put it on.

  Truth be told, he was a little relieved. His luck had been too good. Maybe this would even things out a bit.

  Then, not fifteen seconds later, he saw a musket ball catch his uncle Jem in the throat and rip his neck open. Jem had been standing just in front of the line and slightly off to the side. He collapsed to the ground like a pile of rags, dropping his musket.

  Sheff stared at him blankly for a moment. But there was nothing he could do.

  Nothing at all. With that wound, his uncle would bleed out long before any aid could get to him—and no possible medical treatment could prevent his death, anyway.

  Ruthlessly, Sheff stifled the spike of anguish that started to come. Only victory mattered. Only the regiment mattered.

  “Reload!” he shouted, channeling the grief into his voice, bringing it to just the right high pitch for a battlefield. More like a shriek than a shout. It was the first time he’d ever really done it right—and he knew he’d never forget how to do it again, no matter how many battles he fought.

  Harrison was just plain astonished. That first Arkansas regiment was still fighting. Staggering some, to be sure, especially the companies on their right. The volleys no longer came with their earlier crispness. But they were still recognizable volleys—and at the range the fight was now taking place by the wall of the Post, aiming was completely meaningless. That was sheer murder.

  He’d never seen anything like it. The closest comparison had been that last charge on Tecumseh at the Thames. But that had been quick, however desperately fought. This was like fighting some sort of mindless machine. Black ants, wearing uniforms and armed with muskets.

  “God damn you!” he shrieked at the Arkansans.

  There came no response except another volley.

  Sam found the final moments of the 2nd Arkansas’ charge on the militias rather fascinating. The regiments had been trained in the tactic, and Driscol had predicted its success—so had Robert Ross—but Sam had wondered.

  The term “column” was a misnomer, he now realized, applied to the fighting formation of the French armies of the Revolution. This bore no resemblance at all to a long, slender line of men marching down a road.

  It was more like a sledgehammer. Or perhaps a very blunt spear. Fifty men across, at the front, firing as they came, with the rest of the regiment in close support. The formation relied on speed and impact, more like a cavalry charge than anything else Sam could think of.

  Watching it in action, he could now understand why the formation had eventually been abandoned. Very well trained and disciplined professional armies, formed into lines, could bring too much fire to bear on the front of the column. Hundreds of men against fifty.

  But that presupposed the sort of professional armies trained and led by generals like the Duke of Wellington, or Napoleon and his marshals. Against levies raised by French noblemen—or Georgia and Louisiana gentry—the French column did very splendidly indeed.

  It struck the Georgians like a hammer. An axe, rather, since the bayonets came down at the final moment.

  The Georgians, not the Louisianans. The militia units had very distinctive and different colors, naturally, and the Arkansans knew what to look for. Any Louisianan or Alabaman who got in their way would get dealt with, to be sure. But on this day, July the 23rd of the Year of Our Lord 1825, Sam Houston and the 2nd Arkansas were looking to kill Georgians.

  Another hybrid. Black people didn’t actually have any reason to detest Georgians more than any other Southern militia. But the Cherokees and Creeks hated them with a passion. And, whatever strains might exist in the Confederacy between its different races and peoples, there was also much that united them. Some of those black men in uniform now had Cherokee or Creek wives or paramours—either way, usually with children in the bargain—and all of them had Cherokee and Creek neighbors.

  The Georgians had made the mistake of coming to Arkansas to commit their depredations. The nearest friendly jury was four hundred miles away as the crow flies—and not one of them had a pair of wings.

  The Louisianans peeled away before the blow came and were already racing in a panic downriver. The Alabamans put up a bit of a fight before—very wisely—sidling out of the way and scrambling upriver for the shelter of the regulars.

  The 2nd Arkansas let the Louisianans go. The Choctaws and Brown’s men would deal with them. They wanted the Georgians.

  David Ross was half fascinated and half appalled. Officially attached as an
observer to the battery that was part of Houston’s column, he had an excellent view of the fighting that erupted on the north bank of the Arkansas when the 2nd Regiment struck the Georgians. He didn’t even have any specific duties to keep his attention elsewhere. His status in the Arkansas Army was still unsettled, since no one was ready to accept him as a straightforward soldier except David himself. His father and the Laird—and Sam Houston, apparently—all felt the possible diplomatic complications were still too uncertain, should word get out that the son of a British major general was actively serving against the United States.

  In practice, everyone understood that being an “observer” also meant that he would be getting informal training as an artillery officer. But since no one really wanted him getting underfoot in the furious fire that the battery was leveling on the Georgians, he spent most of his time just watching.

  That was another massacre taking place down there on the riverbank. But the most fascinating—and appalling—thing about it was the lack of any apparent murderous frenzy. David thought he finally understood, deep in his bones, why the Laird had ordered that massacre of Crittenden’s army the previous year. Many of the soldiers in the 2nd were veterans of that affair, and they’d imparted the lessons and the attitudes to the newer recruits. What resulted was an implacable determination to kill as many men as the regiment possibly could, today, coupled with the confidence that they could.

  So, it was like watching craftsmen at their trade, even if the trade itself was murder. Almost all the fury and frenzy was being displayed by the Georgians. Many of them had fled, or were trying to, but many of them were fighting back. But it did them precious little good. They fought as individuals, for the most part, and poorly trained ones at that. Whereas the Arkansans they faced were maintaining order and discipline even now that the bayonets had been brought into play.

  So was the artillery. The captain in command had positioned them on the left flank of the 2nd Regiment. To the fore, when the engagement began; now, perhaps two hundred yards to the rear. But they were firing balls, not canister, and two hundred yards for that shot amounted to point-blank range. The artillerymen were being careful to keep their fire well away from the regiment, but with the huge numbers of Georgians—some Louisianans, too—who were spilling down the Arkansas, that left them with plenty of targets.

  The ground was even dry enough, this far into summer, to allow for the grazing shots that good artillery always tried for when facing infantry. The guns were trained low, so that the balls would strike the ground some yards before the enemy and then carom into their ranks somewhere around waist-high. A six-pound ball fired in such a manner could easily kill or maim half a dozen men or more if it caught them in a clump.

  There were a lot of clumps down there: first of men, then of offal.

  After a while, David looked away. For the first time in his now twenty years of life, he wondered if he really wanted to become a soldier.

  He thought so, still. But he understood, better, something about his father that had never been very clear to him before. Robert Ross had always seemed strangely reticent about his exploits, given that there were enough of them to cover an entire wall at their home back in Rostrevor with the mementos.

  David thought he understood now. The reticence was because many of those memories were not ones his father wished to dwell upon. The mementos were there to remind him—perhaps reassure him—that there had been a reason for them in the first place. A full-grown and very mature man’s way of doing something that little boys often did. Make sure there was a light of some sort shining into a room at night, so that when a sudden nightmare-inspired waking came, the monsters in the room could be seen for what they were.

  Sam didn’t participate in the slaughter. Not directly, at least. But that was only because he felt duty bound to make sure the situation as a whole didn’t get out of control. There was always the possibility that Harrison might send some of the regulars down to the aid of the Georgian militia.

  Not much of a possibility, granted. Sam couldn’t see enough of the fighting that was still raging around Arkansas Post to get a clear sense of the battle’s progress. But for his purposes, all that mattered was the sound of it. There was no way, in the face of such ferocious and continuing gunfire, that Harrison was going to make the mistake of dividing his forces again.

  Too bad for the Georgians. They were on their own. Sam had never met William Henry Harrison, but if the professional soldier from Ohio had a different attitude toward militias than almost any other professional officer Sam had ever met, he was certainly hiding it well that day.

  So, Sam Houston didn’t kill a single Georgian himself. But he watched with pitiless eyes. So far as he was concerned, each and every one of those men shot or bayoneted or clubbed to death on the banks of the Arkansas River was no different from the Georgian who’d murdered his wife. The whole state could burn in hell for all he cared.

  And hundreds of them were killed before it was all over. The slaughter at the river wasn’t as bad as the slaughter of Crittenden’s army the year before, but that was only because the Georgians weren’t trapped in a peninsula. A much higher percentage of them managed to make their escape into the countryside.

  Where two thousand Choctaw warriors waited, with a very recent and burning grudge to settle. And if the Choctaw grudge was more with Mississippians or Louisianans, they’d settle for Georgians.

  Brown’s men were out there, too, and they didn’t care at all about the fine distinctions between states. John Brown had agreed to abide by Chief Driscol’s rules when it came to fighting U.S. regulars. But the militias weren’t included in those prohibitions. So far as Brown and his people were concerned, those militiamen—be they from Georgia or Louisiana or Mississippi or Alabama, it made no difference—had come to Arkansas for the express purpose of reenslaving its citizens.

  That made them damned in the eyes of the Lord, pure and simple, and as plain to see as the nose in front of your face. It was right there in the Bible. There was no good reason not to assist the Lord in his righteous work of sending them on their way to eternal hellfire. Indeed, it was a duty, and Brown was not the man to shirk his duty.

  “All right, Charles, pull them out,” Patrick Driscol commanded.

  General Ball nodded and sent the order. He’d been waiting for the order for some time. Only a man as troll-blooded as the Laird could have held off that long. By now, the 3rd Arkansas was a bleeding ruin.

  But not broken. Not even close. They’d gone head-to-head for as long as it took against two—and then units from three, and then four—regiments of U.S. regulars. Moving forward or standing their ground, never retreating an inch.

  For years, the Iron Battalion had served the black people of Arkansas as a magic talisman. There hadn’t actually been much reality to it for some time, since the Iron Battalion as such no longer existed. They’d had to break it up in order to use its men as the core around which to build other and larger units.

  After today, it wouldn’t matter at all. After today, Arkansas had the 3rd Infantry, which stood its ground, and the 2nd, which broke the state of Georgia.

  And hadn’t used the 1st Infantry at all—which might actually be the best.

  This war might go on for years. Probably would, in fact. But it was already won where it mattered. Arkansans would have the stomach to fight forever, after Second Arkansas Post. The Americans had been dragged into this war by politicians and had no stomach for it at all outside of some of the Southern states.

  From here on, it was just a matter of how long it would take the enemy to figure it out.

  For all Sheff knew, he was now the commanding officer of the regiment. The companies on its right wing, for sure. Colonel Jones was gone. Wounded, not dead, although it might have been a mortal wound. He’d looked awful bad. Sheff didn’t know what had happened to the major or any of the captains of the left wing. The captains of the three companies by the Post had all been killed or wounded by now.
The gunsmoke was so thick you couldn’t see much in any direction, except once in a while when a gust of wind cleared the air for a bit.

  Sheff hadn’t spent any time wondering about the colonel’s fate. He’d stopped wondering about anyone’s fate, including his own. He’d reached some sort of pure state of mind, he decided. Slogans that he’d once recited to himself as if they were prayers had become simple realities.

  Only victory mattered. Only the regiment mattered. They’d fight until the last man shot the last bullet, and then they’d lower the bayonets.

  “Pull out! Pull out!”

  Sheff recognized General Ball’s voice, but the words didn’t quite register. He ordered another volley. Couldn’t hardly call it a volley any longer—but the same could be said for what was coming the other way.

  “Listen to me, Lieutenant Parker! Pull the men out! Move!”

  That registered. Groggily—his brain really wasn’t working too well anymore—Sheff tried to remember the orders for calling a retreat.

  No. Fighting withdrawal. Big difference.

  He got the first two orders out. Properly, he was pretty sure. But while he was still groping for the next evolution, a musket ball took him square in the shoulder and spun him around. Around, and down, taking all consciousness with it.

  The last thing he remembered was a great sense of relief. He’d done his duty and could finally rest.

  CHAPTER 37

  For a moment, Harrison was tempted to order a pursuit. The Arkansas regiment his men had been fighting while the other one went after the militias was pulling back now. It was a fighting withdrawal, not a retreat—certainly not a rout. But that evolution was extremely difficult to manage properly, especially by a regiment that had lost so many of its officers. If he brought enough pressure to bear, they might finally crack.