Captain Putnam for the Republic of Texas

by James Haley

  “Thompson? The Georgia congressman?”

  “The same.”

  “Is he not Jackson’s man through and through, one of the great shouters to force all the Indians to move west? What good can he do? Why would they listen to anything he has to say? It seems like all he could do is hasten a conflict.”

  Parkins lowered his gaze in a sour way. “I gather from your accent, Captain Putnam, that you are a New England man.”

  “Connecticut.”

  “Then the chances are that your political views would disagree with most of the people in this section.”

  Bliven sensed a challenge coming. “My personal opinions are of no moment. You and I are military officers, sworn to our duty irrespective of our private thoughts.”

  Parkins relaxed just a little. “I am happy to hear you say it. But look”—he grinned suddenly, which caught Bliven by surprise—“if that is how you feel, and be honest with me now, you are probably also of the opinion that the United States committed a terrible wrong in wresting Florida away from Spain in the first place. Are you not?”

  “I—” Bliven shook his head. “Why would you ask?”

  Parkins stood suddenly. “Because there is something I want to show you. Bring your drink.” He was out the door so quickly, there was nothing to do but follow him across the courtyard to the northeast corner, where they entered a casemate. “We have been busily engaged in fixing up the fortress into effectiveness. It was quite dilapidated, and the Spanish left it in some disorder. This first room here”—it was dim and cool within—“was called the pennancarra, the place of punishment. Do you see the iron rings in the walls there? That was where they hung prisoners up by their wrists. You see this little hole in the wall? That connects to the old chapel, so the prisoners could hear mass before they were put to death.”

  Bliven heard this out, stone-faced.

  “Last year one of the men noticed this arched doorway that had been rocked up. There was no access from any other direction, so we broke through; let me show you.” They ducked through the narrow opening into a room, more dim than the first, in the realm of twenty feet square but irregularly shaped by the parapet above it. “See what we found? Do you know what this ruined old device was?”

  Bliven regarded the remains of a wooden frame secured to the far wall and, next to it, a geared, ratcheted wheel on its side, a lever lying on the floor. “Why, it looks like it must have been a rack!”

  “It is a rack, Captain, of the kind that Torquemada and the priests of the Inquisition would have known very well.”

  “Well!” Bliven disapproved of the implied generalization that all priests tortured for the Inquisition, but he found himself giving Parkins credit for knowing who Torquemada was. “Captain Parkins, I have long been quite a student of history, but I confess I never imagined to see such an instrument in my own country.”

  “You know what else we found in here? A skeleton, sealed up, left dead or alive we don’t know, decades ago or centuries we don’t know. We finally gave him a Christian burial, poor bastard. Come, let us return to my office.” He led the way back to the south end of the court. “So, the next time you launch into some self-righteous exposition about poor little Spain losing her empire and how cruel the United States was to take control of Florida away from her, you might remember what you have seen here this day.”

  “Captain,” shot Bliven, “I protest that I never said any such thing.”

  Parkins turned, smiling again. “No, but you have thought it. Am I wrong?”

  In spite of himself, Bliven found himself appreciating this abrupt man, perhaps warily approving of him, and his shortcuts to get to the heart of a matter. “No, you are not wrong. Now tell me: What aid is it that you require in your present exigency?”

  “You are an American warship. I presume you have marines aboard?”

  “Yes, a rifle company of forty-five, with a lieutenant, a sergeant, and two corporals.”

  “Excellent. There is a militia company gathering, awaiting my order to proceed to Fort King. They are civilians, each carrying their own arms and with no uniforms. We need to make some impression on the Seminoles of American military discipline, and the presence of a uniformed company would just do the trick. I cannot send my own troops from here without leaving the place open to attack. Therefore, I would be grateful if you would lend me your marines for a few days, escort the militia to Fort King and be present for the council, and help keep order if needed.”

  “So, what you are requesting is for me to leave my ship here as the bosun and carpenter make their repairs while I detail my marine company to attend the Seminole council and overawe the Indians with their discipline and ferocious demeanor.”

  Parkins lolled his head from side to side. “Essentially, yes. And be prepared to help in the event of fighting.”

  “I see.” Bliven frowned as he considered his options. Parkins had no authority to order him into the venture, but in this new Navy Bliven’s reputation might well be destroyed if he refused his help after the case had been made that lives were in danger. He did not particularly care, but he had Clarity and the boys to think of. “You will understand that I have no authority to let you have them indefinitely. You cannot station them there. We must be back underway as soon as our repairs are effected.”

  “I understand. They will, however, be very helpful in getting us through what will be a fraught moment.”

  “Very well, then, Captain, you shall have our cooperation. Now, how do we accomplish this object?”

  “Captain Putnam, I thank you. Your supportive attitude will not go unreported. Now, let me explain that forty miles north of here lies the opening of the St. Johns River. At least, they call it a river; it is really more a long, long estuary, brackish water, barely a current, rather like the river Plate in South America.”

  “Yes, I have been to the river Plate; I know what you are describing.”

  “Good. So, the St. Johns River goes upstream, almost due south, for seventy or eighty miles. It varies from one to three miles wide and is navigable. Thus St. Augustine, where we are, really sits on a kind of peninsula between the ocean and the river. In your ship’s broken condition I could not ask you to sail up to the river mouth and then back down. It would take too long anyway.”

  “Quite right.”

  “The river passes southward on its course, fifteen miles west of here, where there is a landing and a settlement. I will ask you to send your marine company overland to this settlement. There is a road, or at least a well-worn trace. They will not have to wade—at least, not very often. They will find boats waiting there to take them to Fort King.”

  Bliven found himself leery of letting his marines get so far from his control and recall but could not say so directly. Only one solution came to him: “I should lead them myself. Will not the presence of someone of a captain’s rank also make an impression on these Indians?”

  “Oh, my, yes, it would. I appreciate your initiative so very much.”

  “Very well. That is how we shall have it.”

  * * *

  * * *

  That, then, was how Captain Bliven Putnam came to be sweating in the middle of a Florida swamp. He and the marines marched west to the landing on the St. Johns, where they boarded a small steamboat that churned and chugged for over thirty miles upstream before putting in at a landing on the right bank, at the mouth of a river their guide called the Ocklawaha. There they went into camp, a night of endless slaps at mosquitoes, and the frequent curses and dispatching of venomous black snakes they called moccasin snakes. They were of the same family as rattlesnakes but lacking the rattle, and with a wicked disposition, if struck at and not killed with the first blow, to attack.

  Their guide was a Creole, white but swarthy, stout, with curly black hair and eyes of bright green, named Shifflette. Bliven and the marine lieutenant found him indispensab
le in pointing out to them natural features whose sight the men might find demoralizing but which were essentially harmless—such as horned beetles the size of breakfast biscuits—and those that they needed to avoid, such as the moccasin snakes, and leeches if they stepped into water, and they learned to be vigilant for the ridged backs just breaking the surface of gigantic alligators, some of whom it seemed could not have fit into the keeping room of his house without curling their tails, and whose spike-toothed maws could seize a man and drag him under, giving him barely time to scream or thrash.

  In the morning they resumed, and the Ocklawaha proved much narrower than the St. Johns, with a stronger current, and was a hard job for their local boatmen to pull against. The farther miles upstream gave Bliven time to stew on this whole kettle of events that was Jackson’s doing, him and his implacable determination to throw all the eastern Indians off from their lands and award them to white people.

  Yes, Jackson. No one could have any doubt that behind all things Florida was, and had long been, Andrew Jackson. Gaunt, sour, profane, and violent, he had first slashed his way into the national consciousness, and adulation, during the War of 1812 with an overwhelming defeat of the British at the Battle of New Orleans. Or, rather, it was fought after the War of 1812, for the Treaty of Ghent was signed before the engagement, so it had no effect on the outcome of the conflict except to redeem the reputation of the U.S. Army, which had lurched horrifically from one disaster to the next, while it was the naval victories that kept America in the war.

  Jackson revealed much about himself in that battle, including his willingness to accept any aid, whether from friendly Indians or even pirates, in quest of victory. He was a great warrior; there was no denying that. He had nerves of steel, an almost wolflike cunning in planning a battle, and personal bravery amply demonstrated. But he also possessed a thirst for gore, as the story was widely and breathlessly repeated; Bliven hoped it was not true but had himself heard on good authority that it was. When Jackson had crushed hostile Creek Indians who had been seduced by the British at the beginning of that war, he allowed the primitive frontiersmen who made up his militia to roast potatoes in the grease that cooked out of dead hostiles as they were burned inside their redoubt.

  Great God, how did such a man ever become president of the United States? In 1818 it was Jackson who had invaded the Spanish Floridas, goaded and spurred by Southern planters—of whom indeed he was one—whose slaves had run away and been harbored by these same Seminoles.

  Yet Bliven knew even as he felt his gorge rise at the thought of Jackson that the man did not create the national will, he merely rode it, gave effect to it, used it like wet clay to mold the public perception of himself as a conqueror. It was the nation itself that was changing, becoming more crude, more violent, less educated. Yet even as the democracy included Jackson’s Westerners, they had roughened the complexion of the republic. The Founding Fathers, who could debate political philosophy in Latin, had not foreseen them.

  And it was Andrew Jackson who had become the champion, the hope—the instrument—of such people. Ten years before, in 1824, Congress had had the vision and found the craft to deny him the ultimate power of the presidency. It was true that he had received a plurality of the popular vote—a testament to the voting power of an uneducated mass. The framers had foreseen some such circumstance and countered it with an electoral college, a barrier they had erected between the mob and the possibility of ruling the country. Since he failed to receive a majority of the votes, the election had been thrown into the House of Representatives for settlement. There Henry Clay, himself a Kentuckian but not one of the rabble, who had finished second to Jackson in the popular vote, brokered a settlement with other factions sympathetic to preserving reasoned government. The House selected John Quincy Adams, son of the second president, who had finished third in the canvass, to become president. He was intelligent, scholarly, and earnest, hagridden to live up to his family’s high legacy—a good choice as a caretaker to give the nation a breathing space while considering how to deal with the rising power of the Western section. But then Adams’s unfortunate selection of Clay as his secretary of state, after Clay’s engineering to make Adams president, ignited a rage of protest and resentment. That Clay was the most qualified man in the country to fill that office was lost in the charge of dishonorable collusion to thwart the democratic majority will.

  Those Westerners had some good reason to feel that their ma jority will had been thwarted; Jackson had become their hero, and their cries of “Corrupt bargain!” gave them the added energy of grievance. In 1828 there had been no stopping them; they swept Jackson into the presidency, this time with no remedy under the Constitution to stop them. The President’s House itself was all but pulled down by the horde of frontiersmen invited there to celebrate. They came freely in and out windows, caked the carpets with their muddy boots, pissed in corners and potted plants, smashed crystal and china—and in sum gave Jackson the model for how he had conducted his policies for the past six years.

  “Captain?”

  “Mr. Shifflette, I beg your pardon, I was in a reverie.”

  He made a gesture to his right. “This is where we turn up to Silver Spring, Captain. Have your men stay alert now, for the waterway is very narrow. There is no doubt the Seminoles are watching us, but they see how many we are, and how well armed. They have been told that food and supplies are being sent to them, and they see our casks and barrels, therefore they will observe us, but likely they will do nothing.”

  It was evening when the four boats pulled into the landing, and the boatmen unloaded them at once lest the Indians steal them in the night and discover not the foodstuffs they had been promised, but the powder and lead sent to fight them. Bliven was presented to the agent, Wiley Thompson, and was shocked to discover almost a twin of Jackson: the haughty gaze, the carefully tousled hair, the ruffled cravat spilling out the throat of a theatrically high standing collar.

  The next day the Seminole chiefs were summoned to a noon meal, to be followed by the weighty exchanges of a council. Even as he found Thompson costumed for his role, the Seminoles were equal to their parts as well, dressed in a colorful, even gaudy assemblage of bright pantaloons and calico hunting shirts tied down with sashes, their heads bound in turbans, all hung with ropes of beads and chains. The marines stood through the whole proceeding, their rifled muskets at parade rest, the lieutenant and sergeant at the right of the line, the corporals with their platoons.

  To Bliven’s surprise, Shifflette proved to be not just their guide but also the interpreter between the Seminole chiefs and Thompson. His countenance grew increasingly worried as the tone passed from businesslike to terse to impatient and then to angry. When he saw some of the Indians reach to pull their bows from their shoulders, Bliven said quietly, “Lieutenant.”

  “Marines, en garde!” he snapped in response, and the line in one motion had their rifles in hand, bayonets pointing forward. Calm was restored, and the council dissolved with promises on the part of all to retire and consider well what the other side had said. They would set a future time to meet again.

  Bliven walked the agent back to his quarters. “Mr. Thompson, do you believe you will be attacked?”

  “No, no. There is little likelihood of that being imminent. They would not mount an attack unless they were in much greater numbers. What they will do is send out runners to the other bands, perhaps as far away as Apalachicola, to send warriors here. Then we will have to see.”

  “So you have no further need of my marines at present?”

  “No. We thank you. I am aware that you must resume your voyage as soon as your ship is repaired.”

  “Very well.” They shook hands. “I wish you luck, sir.”

  Bliven sought out Shifflette and asked him when they might leave, and he replied, “This instant would not be too soon.”

  “It is not my custom to run from a fight, but Mr.
Thompson just said he did not believe they would attack.”

  Shifflette let out his breath, measuring how much he could risk saying, before expelling a single harrumph. “Thompson is foolish. Of course they will not attack—not in the way he expects. They will not march on Fort King by companies. Indians fight by stealth, by ambush. An arrow from behind a tree, and there is one less enemy for them to fight. Captain, are you not aware of what the Spanish peasant guerrillas did to Napoleon’s troops in the Peninsular War? People will begin to disappear, and it will begin tonight, I do believe.”

  Bliven thought it a wonder that Shifflette should have an on-point military analogy at hand to justify his opinion. “How do you come to know about that?”

  “Mon ami, I was there. Now, march your men down to the boats. This is not your fight.”

  They boarded and pushed off a quarter of an hour later. Aided by the massive surge from the Silver Spring, they made rapid progress, so much faster than going up that the men at the tillers had to be ever alert to keep from running aground in the speed of the current.

  “Mr. Shifflette?”

  The Creole interpreter joined him in the stern. “Yes, Captain?”

  “That one main Seminole chief, the one who got more angry than anyone: What was his name?”

  “Ah, that was Mickanoppee. He is one of the chiefs who never signed the treaty agreeing to move west.”

  “Can you tell me what was said in that great explosion he had? I could not hear you, as you were right in Mr. Thompson’s ear.”

  “Well, let me see. He said to Mr. Thompson, ‘You say our chiefs signed the agreement to leave Florida. That is not all the truth. You got them drunk and told them their women and children could not be protected unless they signed. So I say you are a liar.’”

  “Is that true?”

  “It is, yes. And he said, ‘You accuse us of sheltering slaves that run away from you. I say: Who gave you the right to own anybody? I do not know why the great God created different colors of men, some white, some black, some red. But I think it was not so that one color may own another. What kind of heart do you have, to think this way?’”