1824: The Arkansas War

by Eric Flint

  Easier said than done, though, in the real world where battles are actually fought.

  His own 1st and 7th Regiments—the 1st, especially, which had taken the brunt of the fighting right by the Post—were too badly battered for the purpose. They’d stood their ground like good regulars, but they were in no shape to launch a pursuit. He’d have to use the 3rd and 5th.

  Mostly the 3rd. Lieutenant Colonel Cutler had come out of the Post and, by now, had his regiment pretty well organized. But Harrison still hadn’t seen the commanding officer of the 5th. He might be dead; he might be injured; he might just be too confused to understand what he was supposed to do. Whatever the reason, the 5th as such was still incoherent. What Harrison had available, right now, were maybe half of its companies for a pursuit. By the time the others finished their withdrawal from the Post and got into position, it would be too late.

  Much too late. The gunsmoke had finally cleared away, most of it, and Harrison could see that the top commanders of the Arkansans had taken direct charge of the withdrawal, substituting themselves for the regiment’s fallen officers. That regiment was pulling back in good order, even managing to take most of their wounded with them.

  The moment passed. There was no chance, he realized. Especially since—

  Belatedly, he remembered. Hurriedly, he trotted his horse to the rear, to one of the artillery berms where he could get a better view of what was happening downriver. What was that other Arkansas regiment up to? For all he knew, he might soon be fending them off.

  On the way, he took the time to level silent curses on himself. He’d lost control of this battle from the very beginning, and he knew it. His plans had been too complex. He’d taken the risk of dividing his forces without enough of a staff and regimental officers who’d worked together and shaken themselves down. He hadn’t even been able to remember the names of some of his aides, for the love of God.

  So, now, here he was—forced to serve as his own scout because his staff had disintegrated around him and his regimental commanders were completely preoccupied with their own affairs.

  He also cursed Henry Clay and John Calhoun. They’d lied to him, damn them. Reassured him that he’d simply be facing savages—better still, negroes who didn’t even have the martial customs of the savages. And William Henry Harrison—he went back to cursing himself—had been too ambitious, too eager, to question their assurances.

  He reached the berm. To his immense relief, he saw that the second Arkansas regiment had broken off their own pursuit of the militias and were returning. But they were back in that peculiar thick column formation and were angling away from the battlefield. Clearly enough, they’d be coming back the same way they went, avoiding his own forces until they could reunite with their fellow regiment.

  In short, the battle was over—unless Harrison insisted on trying to continue it. Which he was no more inclined to do than he was to order a charge on the moon. He slumped in the saddle. He was exhausted. Mentally, even more than physically.

  He’d suffered a wound somewhere along the way, too, he suddenly realized. The whole left side of his torso ached. Looking, he couldn’t see any blood. But when he pulled up his tunic, he saw a huge bruise beginning to form over his rib cage. The ribs themselves weren’t broken, obviously. With a rib flail, he’d have been completely incapacitated. But some of them might well be cracked. He’d find out by the morrow.

  God only knew what had happened. He had no memory at all of having any injury inflicted on him. But it could easily happen in such a ferociously fought and confused battle—confusing for him, at any rate. The most likely cause was a glancing blow from a cannonball, although to the best of Harrison’s recollection the enemy had used canister throughout the engagement.

  His mind in something of a daze, he watched the second Arkansas regiment moving across the Delta to the northwest. That part of his brain that was still working professionally—which was no small part, given his experience—recognized that Taylor’s report had been quite accurate in this respect also. The Arkansans could march like nobody’s business. He’d remember that in the future.

  Somebody was talking to him. Looking down, he saw that the commander of the 5th Regiment was there, standing atop the berm and looking up at him. Harrison groped for the man’s name and couldn’t find it.

  “—do about the Chickasaws, General?”

  Harrison had to grope for the meaning of the question, too. Fortunately, the colonel’s pointing finger gave him the clue. Aided, a moment later, by the sound of six-pounders going off.

  Looking in the direction the 5th’s commander was pointing, Harrison could see dozens of Chickasaw warriors—hundreds, within a minute—pouring out of the Post. Some through the main entrance, some through the two breaches in the east wall, some by simply taking the risk of climbing over the walls and jumping.

  The batteries by the river were firing on them, as Harrison had instructed them to do. Quite a few of the fleeing Chickasaws were being killed before they could get out of range. They were racing upriver as fast as they could run.

  No danger there, in short—which, at the moment, was all Harrison cared about.

  “Just let them go, Colonel.”

  Peters. That was his name. Lieutenant Colonel Curtis Peters.

  “Just let them go, Colonel Peters,” he repeated. He forced up the energy for a compliment. “You battered them badly, I take it. Very well done.”

  Peters nodded. “I estimate we killed four hundred hostiles in there, General. Well. Three hundred, for sure. At no great cost to ourselves. We were able to trap most of them in the mess hall and had four guns to bring to bear. By the time we sent in the infantry, they were too rattled to put up much of a resistance. But we couldn’t catch all of them, of course.”

  Even as he spoke, Harrison could see soldiers from the 1st Artillery hauling a six-pounder out of the Post. No easy task, that, without horses. But they couldn’t possibly have used horses to bring guns into a fort under assault. No matter how well trained, the beasts would panic.

  “Just let the Chickasaws go,” he said again. “For the moment, we need to concentrate on preparing a defense against the possibility of counterattack by the Arkansans. We’ve taken Arkansas Post”—he said that with more energy, it being the sole consolation of the day—“so let’s make sure we keep it.”

  He pointed up the river. “I’d appreciate it if you’d bring your regiment into position just west of the fort, Colonel Peters. And tell Colonel Eustis to move his batteries up with you. Those Arkansas steamboats are still up there, and it’ll be days—weeks, possibly—before we can finally get armored steamboats of our own.”

  The Arkansans hadn’t ever used their steamboats. Harrison was pretty sure they’d never intended to. Simply having them there had immobilized a good portion of his artillery, the arm in which he had the clearest advantage over his enemy.

  Grudgingly—he was not a man for which doing so came easily—Harrison admitted that his opponent had fought a considerably smarter battle than he had.

  He didn’t say it out loud, of course. “Be about it, please, Colonel.”

  Peters left. Harrison took a few more seconds to rally his spirits and energy.

  He’d need them. The battle was over, but there was still the butcher’s bill to be examined. There were dead and wounded all over the area. Small piles of them near the Post—and from what he could tell at the distance, considerably bigger piles of militiamen by the riverbank downstream.

  Leaving aside the Chickasaws in the Post—that’d be a charnel house in there; his mind shied away from it for the time being—most of the dead and wounded outside the fort were Americans. But there were a fair number of Arkansans, too. The enemy had done their best to carry off their wounded, but there was only so much that could ever be done in that respect on a still-contested field of battle.

  He’d better see to that immediately, he realized. The regulars would be furious at the casualties they’d suffered. Fur
ious enough that they might not only ignore their training but ignore practical reality as well.

  Of all the things Clay and Calhoun had lied to him about, the biggest lie had been the first.

  A short war. Blithering nonsense. The fact that both the president and the secretary of war had probably believed it themselves didn’t make it any less of a lie. It just made them stupid liars.

  Short wars can wash themselves away, along with their sins. Long wars require rules. Best to establish them immediately.

  Fortunately, if nothing else, the regulars had been too exhausted to do anything but rest. Whatever other energy they’d had available had been devoted entirely to assisting their own injured. Their officers hadn’t even started picking through the enemy soldiers lying about, separating the wounded from the dead.

  So, Harrison found himself one of the first three American officers to start moving through the enemy bodies. He was accompanied by a captain and a lieutenant from the heavily battered 1st. The captain’s name he remembered, thankfully. Trevin Matlock. The lieutenant’s was unknown to him.

  The Arkansans were lying in piles, too, especially near the Post. The first body Harrison came across was that of a young officer, lying slightly before his men. A second lieutenant. Arkansans used the same insignia as the American army, even if the uniforms were green instead of blue.

  A very young lieutenant, he could now see, once he looked more closely. As always—being from Ohio, he was not very familiar with negroes—the racial differences had momentarily obscured lesser matters like age. Not even twenty, he thought. It was hard for him to be certain, however, since the lieutenant’s skin was very dark and his features completely African. Very young, though, he was sure of that.

  The Arkansas officer wasn’t moving, but his chest was rising and falling. A very bad injury to the shoulder, that was. The sort of bone-shattering wound that usually rendered a man unconscious, even if it wasn’t directly fatal. Especially if he was already exhausted, which Harrison had no doubt he had been. The battle had been ferocious as a whole, but nowhere more so than here right by the walls of the Post, where the two armies had met at point-blank range.

  “Him,” the lieutenant from the 1st Regiment said tonelessly. “Hadn’t been for him, I think we could have beaten them here, at the end. I can’t believe he’s still alive, the bastard. I’ve half a mind—”

  “Shut up,” Captain Matlock said, just as tonelessly. “He did his job and did it well. And there’s an end to it.”

  “Indeed,” Harrison said firmly. “A most gallant foe.”

  He gave the lieutenant—very young himself—a look that was more harsh than he felt but as harsh as it needed to be.

  “We shall be following the rules of war here, Lieutenant. I trust that’s understood? And if I discover there have been any violations, I shall have the man—or officer—immediately court-martialed. Do I make myself clear?”

  The lieutenant seemed suitably abashed. “Yes, sir. Ah. Sorry.”

  “I understand, Lieutenant,” Harrison said in a milder tone. “Emotions always run high after a battle. But indulging yourself in them is a bad mistake, leaving aside any moral concerns. Do keep in mind that the day might come when you—or me, or Captain Matlock—might find ourselves in the very same position. You’ll be thankful then that you weren’t an idiot now.”

  That assumed, of course, that the enemy followed the rules of war also. Harrison was by no means sure of that, yet. Who knew what negroes would do? They’d been pure savages, by all accounts, in the small uprisings in North America and the huge one in Hispaniola.

  But rebellions and uprisings were almost invariably savage, no matter the color of the men involved. The negroes he was fighting here were part of a regular army, established by a government that the United States had diplomatically recognized. Still did, for that matter, even if war had been declared. Harrison could only hope that they’d conduct themselves like white men.

  Whether they did or not, however, he would. Civilized behavior and custom was determined by its own imperatives, not petty bargaining with breeds outside the law.

  “See to it, Captain Matlock, if you would. I want any wounded Arkansans gathered where they can be given medical attention, whenever our surgeons can be freed from tending our own. There’s probably a suitable area somewhere in the Post.”

  He started to move off but paused. “And place a guard over them, Captain. Reliable men, with a steady sergeant in command.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  An hour later, after he was sure the regular units were steady and Harrison was satisfied that they could repel any Arkansas counterattack, he went downriver to see how the militias were doing. He took Captain Matlock with him, since he no longer had any of the three lieutenants he’d had for aides at the beginning of the battle. Fleming was dead; Riehl would be retired from the service with that wound, assuming he survived; and he’d finally found the missing third lieutenant.

  The lieutenant had been brought before him, rather. The youngster’s wits were quite gone. He’d been found by soldiers from the 7th huddled in a ball some fifty yards from the lines, weeping uncontrollably. Harrison had a vague recollection of sending the boy with orders to Colonel Arbuckle. He’d never gotten there, apparently, his nerve having completely broken along the way.

  Harrison still couldn’t remember his name, and the young lieutenant had been too incoherent to provide it himself. No matter. He’d learn it when the time came to put together a court-martial. Which there had to be, given the circumstances.

  Harrison would be demanding the death penalty, which was called for in cases of pusillanimity in the face of the enemy. He didn’t care for the idea, but he simply had no choice. The nameless lieutenant who’d die in a few weeks at the end of a rope would be just one more casualty that could be properly laid at the feet of Clay and Calhoun, from Harrison’s viewpoint. In a short war, sins could be forgiven as well as washed away. In a long war, they couldn’t. Simple as that.

  The commanders of the militias—those few of them Harrison could find, most having run away with their men—were livid.

  But Harrison’s energy was coming back, and he was no mild-mannered man himself.

  “Shut. Up.” He glared at the loudest of the Georgian officers. Insofar as the term “officer” wasn’t a bad joke to begin with. The man was actually a Georgia state representative whose military experience was entirely limited, so far as Harrison knew, to having gotten himself appointed a “colonel” in the expedition for the sake of garnering some more votes. Georgians seemed to grow militia colonels with the same profligacy that they grew cotton. And they were just about as fluffy.

  “You had three thousand men,” he rasped, “to face not more than seven hundred. And you tell me the fault was mine? You ran like rabbits from a force a quarter the size of your own because I didn’t give you proper support? Be damned to you, sir!”

  Angrily, he pointed back at the Post. “My regulars defeated the forces we faced while taking the fort as well as preventing the enemy steamboats from coming into play.”

  That was taking some liberties, perhaps, but it was technically correct. By ancient custom, the army that held the field at the end of a battle was considered the victor, even if the term was more a formality than anything else. The fact that the Arkansans hadn’t been “defeated,” so much as simply choosing to withdraw from the field, could be ignored.

  The American forces at Lundy’s Lane had done the same, after all, whereupon the British had claimed to be the winners of the battle. In the world where professional soldiers dealt with each other, it simply didn’t matter. Protocol would be respected, even if both sides knew perfectly well that, in all important respects, the battle had been something quite different.

  The Georgian and his three fellows were glaring back. So were the two Louisiana officers present. One of them was also a state representative—also with the rank of “colonel.” It seemed to be an iron law with militias that the
y had as many colonels as they did privates, with precious few majors or captains—and not a single paltry lieutenant—anywhere to be found.

  They could glare all they wanted. What could they say? Even politicians playing at being soldiers had enough sense to realize that their forces had suffered a complete humiliation today.

  Not that it would make a difference in the long run, Harrison was gloomily certain. They’d shut up today, sure enough. But in the months to come—half of them would be finding excuses to leave the campaign as soon as possible—they’d be back in their state legislatures and doing their level best to ruin Harrison’s reputation. So would their fellows in the Congress of the United States. Unfortunately, while militias were rarely worth much on a battlefield, they were quite potent in the American political arena.

  “So just shut up,” he repeated. “And I’d recommend you get busy rounding up your men.”

  He waved a hand at the surrounding countryside. “Leave them out there for very long, and they’ll be coming back in pieces.”

  The glares started to fade then, replaced by worry.

  “I’ll provide units from the Fifth and Third to help you,” Harrison said, in a milder tone. “With some artillery.”

  That eased the worry from their faces some, but not much. These so-called officers weren’t really concerned about the military aspects of the situation so much as the political ones. They would have to answer to their constituents directly, where Harrison would at least have the shield of the professional army. And all they had to do was look around to see that a lot of their constituents were now dead, an equal if not greater number were badly injured, and all the survivors would be blaming them for the disaster, no matter how much of it they tried to shift onto Harrison’s shoulders.

  So would their relatives back home. Especially those whose husbands and sons weren’t coming back.