by Eric Flint
Now he waved the empty glass at Adams, who was in a corner talking with Van Buren. “I imagine Sam did exactly the same to that poor bastard. Except—being a pigheaded Massachusetts scholar—it probably took John Quincy twice as long to admit he was cornered as it took me. How about another drink?”
The slaves did push the limits of “rowdy,” although nothing important actually got broken. But on both occasions when the overseers came to Jackson for instructions, he sent them away.
The masters were pretty rowdy themselves by then. His pious wife Rachel, much disapproving, went early to bed. They were even beginning to blaspheme quite openly, laughing all the while.
Especially after John Quincy Adams, no longer even remotely sober, proposed an alternative title for their new party: the National Illegitimate Party. With its clear and simple fighting slogan: Better a Plain Black Bastard in Office than a Fancy White-Striped Skunk.
CHAPTER 42
Washington, D.C.
NOVEMBER 1, 1825
“It’s definite,” said Adam Beatty. He laid a copy of the National Intelligencer onto the president’s desk. “Today’s edition. It has the full text of the program of the new party. The ‘Declaration of Principles,’ the silly bastards are calling it.”
At Clay’s courteous nod, Beatty took a seat in one of the chairs surrounding the desk where Clay’s other political advisers were already seated. Fortunately, not adjoining Porter’s. By now, Peter’s dislike for the Kentucky legislator had grown into pure loathing.
“Everything’s there, Henry,” Beatty continued, grinning. “And—believe me—it’s every bit as insane as any of the rumors. Ha! The bedlamites might as well have cut their own throats and been done with it!”
Clay already had the newspaper spread in front of him and was starting to read the first-page headline story. Most of the advisers—all of them, actually, except Porter himself—were craning their necks. Josiah Johnston, sitting the closest, had half risen out of his chair.
Beatty rummaged in his satchel. “No need to strain yourselves, gentlemen. I obtained plenty of copies. Enough for everyone.”
A moment later, Porter had a copy of the Intelligencer on his own lap. He didn’t give it more than a cursory glance, though, for the same reason he hadn’t craned his neck with the others. He’d already read it before coming to the meeting this morning.
Twice. All the way through and back again.
“They’re madmen, I tell you!” exclaimed Beatty, still with that grin. “They’re even advocating amalgamation!”
Porter cleared his throat. There were limits, and he had finally reached all of them.
“No, actually—and I’d advise you to be careful how you phrase that. They are not advocating amalgamation. They’re simply calling for the removal of all laws that regulate marriage by criteria of color.”
Beatty was giving him that look that Porter had come to detest. Half frowning, because he was stupid. Half jeering, because his stupidity had no bottom.
“If you can’t understand the difference, Representative Beatty, it’s the difference between advocating divorce and allowing for it in the law. I do not advocate that you divorce your wife.”
Not that the poor woman probably wouldn’t thank me.
“I do, however, propose to make it legally possible for you to do so, should that be your choice.”
He didn’t bother disguising the underlying sneer.
Clay spoke a bit hastily to keep the matter from escalating. “Yes, yes, Peter, of course you’re right.” He gave Beatty a veiled look from under lowered brows. “Do be careful about that, Adam. We don’t want to be accused of outright fabrication.”
Porter had become all too familiar with that veiled expression, also. More and more, Clay was separating his lines of action and using different advisers for different purposes. He might just as well have said: By all means throw the charge around, Adam—with wild abandon—just make sure it can’t be traced back to me.
Granted, Clay had always been a rough political fighter, even if he wore gloves. Porter had admired the trait in times past, and he wouldn’t have objected if the gloves came off. The problem was that Henry was doing the opposite as time went on. He was adding more gloves at the same time his blows were getting lower.
It was becoming…filthy. There was no other word for it.
Johnston spoke next. “We shouldn’t have any trouble, now, getting Congress to pass the military appropriations bill. None at all, I’d think.”
Porter levered himself upright. That issue was his principal concern. “Henry, I want to advise you again that I think it would be a mistake to present that bill to Congress.”
The other advisers were looking either pained, in the case of Johnston, or derisive, in the case of Beatty, or something in between. Clay’s face had no expression at all.
Porter knew this was his last chance, so he decided to use whatever leverage he had. What little leverage he had any longer.
He pointed to the Intelligencer. “Let the ramifications of that settle in for a bit. In a month or two, I think you’d be able to get the appropriations bill passed that we need.”
“Oh, for the love of—” Beatty broke off the incipient blasphemy. Clay didn’t approve of such, and at least part of his disapproval was actually genuine.
Beatty slid forward, perched on the edge of his chair. “We’ve been over this more often than I want to remember. Mr. Porter, no one except you thinks it will take an army the size of the Russian tsars to squelch a pack of rioting negroes. A simple doubling of the regiments—”
Weeks—months—of simmering doubts and frustration boiled to the surface. Without realizing he’d done so, Porter was on his feet.
“Mr. Beatty, have you ever gotten any closer to a battlefield than you have to the moon? Because I have.” He pointed a slightly shaking finger at the newspaper. “Did you read the account of the battle, every detail of which was published in that same newspaper? And many others. They were outnumbered, and they still held off half the existing U.S. Army while inflicting worse casualties than almost any battle in the war with Britain and routing several thousand militiamen. And you—you—you—propose to call them rioting negroes, as if we faced nothing more than a minor civil disturbance?”
Clay was saying something, but Porter was simply too angry to pay attention. “Blast you! Gentlemen, we are dealing with a war, here. A very real, no-joking, war. That means we have got to mobilize the same way—”
“Peter!”
Porter broke off at that half shout. He saw that Clay was on his feet. The president’s expression was just short of a glare.
“Peter,” he said sternly, “I’m afraid I shall have to ask you to leave. And please do not return until and unless you have regained your composure.”
Porter stared at him.
“Now, please.”
There was—
Nothing to say, that he could think of. Any longer. Explosively, he let out a breath that he hadn’t even realized he was holding in.
“Yes, of course, Mr. President. My apologies.” He gathered up his own satchel and made for the door.
On the way out, he heard Clay saying: “For that matter, gentlemen, I think we should leave this whole issue out of our discussion altogether. It is now properly a matter for the Cabinet.”
The Cabinet. That meant John Calhoun, first and foremost. Who had also never in his life come closer to a battlefield than he had to the moon. And who, while he favored as big an expansion of the army as possible, had a contempt for black people so deep that it blinded him.
But as he passed through the door, Peter realized it was no longer any of his concern. There were limits. There had to be limits, and he was now past them.
Outside, on Pennsylvania Avenue, he looked down at the Capitol. Trying, for a moment, to remember how many years he had spent in the republic’s service, doing his best to help guide it.
Enough. He had his own affairs to tend to, which h
e had long neglected. What would happen would happen, unfolding according to its own grim logic. A war begun by happenstance—some scheming, too, to be honest—would now be fought by men who thought they could do everything by half measures, supplanting the other half with schemes. The half measures would fail, succeeded by fuller ones—but those, too, would be stunted by that same cleverness, which was too clever by half. Until, in the end, they found themselves in a roaring rapids, in a rudderless raft they’d thought to be a steamboat, with the falls ahead.
Be damned to them all. Peter Porter owned no slaves and never had.
He was finally able to laugh, a bit. And never would own any, of course. Not now.
New Antrim
NOVEMBER 7, 1825
Sheff Parker was surprised when Julia Chinn ushered Winfield Scott into his room. He knew who the man was, of course, and had even seen him a time or two on the streets before his injury. But they’d never exchanged so much as a single word.
He lowered the newspaper he’d been working his way through, with some relief. He’d have preferred reading an account of the new National Democratic-Republican Party’s program in an article written by Cullen Bryant and Scott. But Bryant had left a few weeks ago. He’d decided to remain in Arkansas for the duration of the war. But, that being the case, he had no desire to remain separated from his wife and daughter, so he’d gone to get them and bring them back with him.
From what Sheff had been told by Julia, Scott had considered the same course of action. But either because his family was larger—five children in all—or because his wife came from Virginian upper crust, or because he was apparently planning to cover the war from both sides of the line, he’d decided otherwise.
Unfortunately, from Sheff ’s point of view, that meant the analysis of the new party’s program was being written by John Ridge and Buck Watie. And they tended toward a far more flowery style of prose. Sheff ’s ability to read was improving rather quickly, now that he had so much time on his hands. But this was a strain.
Scott came to the bed and leaned over to see what Sheff was reading.
“Oh, dear Lord. I don’t envy you that. I leave aside the fact that their assessment misses the mark wildly, and on at least three counts.”
“Why do—ah, please have a seat, General.”
“Thank you. Why do I think that?” The tall former officer drew up a chair. “Let’s start with the most basic. If you took that seriously, you’d think the entire program of the new party—well, let’s say nine points out of ten—was essentially a fraud. Then let’s consider the fact that the estimable Ridge and Watie can’t decide whether that’s good or bad. Which is understandable enough, given their predicament. The Ridge family estates in Oklahoma have more slaves working them than all but the wealthiest plantations in the South. After that, we can move on—”
“Is it true that most of the slaves will never see freedom?”
“Oh, yes, Captain Parker, that’s quite true. The same thing will happen in Tennessee and Kentucky—and Missouri, though perhaps not Delaware—that happened in New York and most of the Northern states that adopted gradual emancipation. Before the time limit expires, most slave-owners will have sold their slaves to masters somewhere in the South. I’d be surprised if more than one out of five people who were scheduled for manumission ever receive it. The black populations of most of those states dropped precipitously in the years prior to emancipation—and I can assure you they didn’t move to Canada, the most of them.”
He nodded toward the southeast. “They—or their children—are laboring on a plantation somewhere in the Carolinas or Georgia, or perhaps working as stevedores on the docks of Savannah or Charleston. As I say, Delaware may be an exception. The Quakers and Methodists will be vigilant, and they may be able to keep that to a minimum. In any event, Delaware already has the largest freedmen population of any state in the nation, at least in percentage terms. The people of the state are fairly accustomed to it by now.”
Sheff studied the man’s face. For all the cynicism that rested on the surface of Scott’s expression, something else lay underneath.
“Please explain,” Sheff said. He lifted the paper a bit. “Why that goes against what they’re saying.”
“Because they’re like men on a battlefield who see only the casualties and don’t consider the fight. In the long run, Captain Parker—yes, I know this will sound very callous to you—it doesn’t matter what happens to those people. Give it two generations, three at the outside, and slavery is dead. Jackson knows that, Adams knows that, and you can be quite sure that John Calhoun knows it, too.”
Scott waved a dismissive hand at the newspaper. “Those lads—they’re very young, so I’ll grant them the excuse—are approaching this as if it were simply a moral issue. Which it is, of course. But battles are not won with moral splendor. They’re won by the brute force of the clash of arms.”
Sheff just waited, patiently. Sooner or later, he figured the man would get around to it.
After a moment, Scott smiled at him. “You are smart. Patrick told me you were.”
He lifted one long leg and crossed it over the other. Then, folded his hands in his lap.
“Here’s how it is, Captain Parker. Slavery expands, or it dies. For two reasons. First, because the agriculture involved is frightfully wasteful of the soil. Within a much shorter time than you might think, so-called King Cotton will look like a bedraggled down-at-the-heels little robber baron. As it already does in the northern tier of slave states. The truth is—my father-in-law dislikes to admit it, as do most of my native state’s gentry—Virginia’s main crop nowadays is slaves themselves. Whom they breed like so much livestock in order to sell to cotton growers in the Deep South.”
A sneer came to his face. “Remember that, the next time you read one of John Randolph’s perorations on liberty. But you can see where I’m going. How are slave-owners in Georgia and Alabama to make the same transition—from King Cotton to King Negro—when there are no new slave territories into which cotton production is expanding?”
Sheff thought about it. “Well, there’s Texas.”
Scott chuckled. “Yes, indeed. And—remember I told you this—I expect within ten years we’ll be seeing a war down there, too. But Texas alone, even if the South can seize it, won’t be enough. Once Kentucky and Tennessee and Missouri are closed to slavery, it begins to die in its own waste. But it won’t come to that, anyway. Because the other reason slavery needs to expand is political. The population of the North and the West in the United States grows much faster than that of the South. Because of immigration, if for no other reason. No immigrants except wealthy ones—and they’re but a handful—want to live in a slave state. Slavery depresses wages, and it stifles opportunity for small enterprise. So they move to the North and West. And now—”
He pointed to the newspaper. “—this is the essence of that program, which the estimable Ridge and Watie managed to miss completely. The border states have finally decided they are part of the West, not the South.”
“They haven’t actually decided yet,” Sheff said mildly. He wasn’t trying to be disputatious, though. He was just deeply interested in the former general’s assessment and wanted to draw it out as far as he could.
Winfield Scott really did have quite a magnificent sneer. Sheff was impressed.
“Ha! With that band of brigands leading the charge? My dear captain! Should the legislature of Tennessee be so bold as to defy Andrew Jackson, he’s quite capable of ordering the militia to train their guns on the state capitol. I believe he still holds the rank of major general in the militia, which remains fiercely attached to the man. By ‘guns,’ I include twelve-pounders. There are precious few slave-owners in the Tennessee militia, and those not major ones. One or two slaves, more like family servants than the chattel labor on big plantations. Hired hands, once they’re freed, which is an easy enough transition for all parties involved.”
Once again, he waved his hand dismissive
ly. “No, no. With Jackson and Benton and Johnson and Carroll and Desha calling for it, the border states are lost to slavery. Not immediately, but they’re lost. And once they’re gone, the South will slide further and further into political impotence. The slave states have already lost the House, and the imbalance will grow deeper every year. Now, soon enough, they’ll have lost the Senate. And I doubt if you’ll see more than—at most—one Southerner ever sitting in the president’s house again, so long as slavery lasts, where the first four of five came from the region. Five out of six, if we count Clay. Which I suppose we must, given that he’s thrown himself into Calhoun’s clutches. The blithering idiot.”
Sheff studied him for a moment. “And that doesn’t concern you?”
“Oh, of course it does. But it concerns me as a soldier of the United States, not as a Virginian. My loyalty is to the nation, Captain Parker. It always has been. I have no use for men with divided loyalties. On that if nothing else, I’ve always agreed with Andrew Jackson. So…I imagine I’ll be returning to the colors one of these fine days.”
The handsome patrician head looked very much like one of the Roman busts Sheff had seen in the Wolfe Tone Hotel. He’d wondered, a bit, why the Laird had gone to the trouble and expense of having them shipped there all the way from Philadelphia. He was normally quite frugal.
He figured he finally knew, now.
“You think there might be a war over it.”
“That’s…putting it too strongly,” Scott mused. “But it’s a possibility, yes. Although I think it’s more likely to take the form of a series of armed clashes than what you could properly call a war. Either way, I expect I’ll have work to do. My real line of work, so to speak.”
He said that last with a smile. “Which, actually, brings me to the purpose of my visit. Patrick insisted I come. I didn’t dare refuse him, of course. Him being my old master sergeant and a troll of most frightening proportions.”
