by James Haley
“With respect, Mr. President,” protested Almonte, “no. The ship Five Points carried thirty of the latest improved field guns, with carriages and full kit.”
Jackson tapped a gnarly finger on the document he had displayed. “No, Colonel, this is the ship’s own verified manifest. There is no indication of armaments on board of any kind. By God, sir, those guns are the invention of your President’s imagination.”
“Perdón,” interrupted Santa Anna, “muy estimado señor.” He continued at length in Spanish to Almonte, who related, “You and I are both men of affairs, and heads of state. You and I know how some things must be said for the public to hear even while we know in private that the truth, for reasons of policy, must remain private. You may say what you will for your Congress and your people to hear, but you and I know the depth of your collusion with the rebels in Tejas, and it would be a kindness not to insult me by asking me to believe it also.”
Jackson’s voice became unmistakably scolding as he rose, and all the others rose with him. “General Santa Anna, I can well imagine that it would salve your wounded pride to believe that you were defeated by some power greater than that mob of angry farmers at San Jacinto. But by the Eternal, I can assure you that the United States played no part in the Texas revolution.”
Santa Anna’s mouth became very small as Almonte translated, but he stood straight, for as the captured general in the enemy capital he had no alternative. He spoke as soon as Almonte had finished. “Mr. President, it still remains, I believe, for us to discuss the matter of the boundary between our two countries, in dispute these past thirty years.”
Jackson took a more relaxed posture, folding his arms. “Actually no, sir. You are correct that the boundary is not settled, but that is a matter now between the United States and the Republic of Texas, whose independence you pledged yourself to recognize, and influence your government to recognize, in the treaties you just signed in Texas, copies of which have been given to me to consider, in extending our diplomatic recognition to the new government.”
After Almonte translated, Santa Anna snorted. “The papers that I was compelled to sign in order to escape the hangman will never be ratified by my government.”
“Well,” huffed Jackson, “wars have consequences. And when you lose a war, the consequences are seldom pleasant. I’m afraid you will have to get used to the idea that you have lost Texas. But there is one more matter that indeed we are bound to discuss. You were allowed to leave Texas alive to come here and repeat to me your pledge to recognize the independence of the Republic. Will you gratify us by giving your word on this point now?”
“Señor,” Santa Anna said through Almonte, “a captive head of state can promise nothing that his government is bound to accept. Surely you understand this. But when I return home, yes, you have my word that I will lend my influence to making peace between Mexico and Tejas.”
“Well, then, that is good enough for me; I hold your pledge fulfilled. And now, gentlemen, I beg you to excuse me. I have not been well, and it is time for my medicine.” Jackson gestured to his aide. “Mr. Donelson, if you will show these gentlemen out, and bring in some of that infernal decoction? Mr. Dickerson, if you will tarry a moment, and you, too, Captain Putnam.” Santa Anna rose, bowed stiffly but only slightly from the waist, and spoke in a tone that sounded distinctly high and formal. “My President,” said Almonte, “expresses his gratification to have met Your Excellency and hopes that you may speak again soon, and of greater substance.”
Jackson bowed in return, in equal brevity. “General Santa Anna, I hope that between your embassy and the hotel, your comforts are adequately seen to. For your comfort, we are moving you from Brown’s Hotel to Mrs. Ulrich’s boardinghouse, which is directly across the street from here. You will find it more convenient for our future meetings. If you want for anything, please to inform Mr. Forsyth, the secretary of state, and he will see to it. One more thing you may think about until we meet: rather than repeat that difficult and dangerous journey, I am willing to send you home on the safety of an American frigate.”
Santa Anna nodded as Almonte finished speaking. “Muchas gracias, señor.” They turned and left.
“Now, Bee, I might recommend that you boys start investigating properties to let, as you will be needing some storefront in which to house your consulate.”
Bee had almost reached the door, but stopped and returned a few steps. “Mr. President, our hope and our expectation is that Texas will join herself to the United States in less time than would make a consulate necessary.”
“Yes, as I am very well aware,” rejoined Jackson, “and I will do everything I can for you. But you need to know, opposition to Texas here is pretty damn strong. John Quincy Adams, the infernal little weasel, already has his people spreading the story that your whole revolution was a conspiracy to spread slave territory so as to gain the majority in Congress.”
“Not a bit of it!” snapped Bee.
“Mr. President,” said Bliven, “if I may add, I believe Mr. Bee is correct in his assertion. General Houston’s officer, who involved me in this whole campaign, is also my oldest friend; we were midshipmen together during the Barbary War. He is a Carolinian and a slave owner. We have exchanged words on the subject many times over the years, not all of them amicable. If adding to the power of the South lay anywhere in the Texians’ calculation for the war, I have no doubt that he would have said so straight out.”
Jackson gave him a long look. “I appreciate your saying that, Captain.” Jackson peered at him so long that Bliven’s blood suddenly ran cold with another possibility: that there was a conspiracy, and that it began not with some vague collusion among Southern states but with Jackson himself.
Barnard Bee thanked him and left, and when they were alone Jackson motioned between the two remaining. “Captain, have you made the acquaintance of Mr. Dickerson, our secretary of the navy?”
“Only by his name, sir.” Again he saluted, and they shook hands. Dickerson was as old as Jackson but better preserved, and it was apparent from what remained that he must once have been very dashing, as he had a full head of white hair and a quick eye. Beneath his tightly done-up uniform he might have sagged and bulged as all old men do, but thus hemmed in, his trim and erect bearing subtracted many years from his appearance.
Jackson strolled to the window and gazed down, saying at length, “There he goes, the Napoleon of the West. Can you imagine, calling himself that? He’s proud, but if there is one thing I cannot abide, it’s a man who can’t admit when he’s been whipped. At least he’s not wearing one of those gaudy uniforms of his, looking like some Emperor Almighty.”
“No, sir,” ventured Bliven. “You may be aware, Mr. President, that his wardrobe was captured along with the Mexican camp. The last I heard of his uniform, it was being shared among the privates who captured him.”
Jackson barked out a laugh that extended until it became a cackle, then a wheeze, and finally a deep cough. “Donelson!”
Jackson’s personal secretary dashed into the room bearing a small brown bottle and a silver spoon. Jackson reached out. “Never mind that thing. Give me the bottle.” He drew a long swig from its tiny mouth, then squinted and screwed up his lips. “Shit! Oh! I tell you, the best thing about this damn brew is the laudanum in it. My God, that is foul.” Donelson had already poured him a glass of whiskey that Jackson reached out and traded the bottle for. Jackson took half of it in his mouth and held it, then leaned his head back and gargled loudly before downing it. “Oh, God Eternal. Sit back down, gentlemen. Well, Putnam, you had quite an adventure, didn’t you? Have you had enough of a chance to rest up?”
“I have spent the summer at home, yes, sir. In Texas I was stricken with a relapse of malarial fever, but a New England winter is very bracing, and the swamp fever has largely passed.”
“I am told that after your last battle you came ashore at that little town
of Velasco. That is where Santa Anna signed these two treaties?”
“Yes, sir. I was there when he was brought down from San Jacinto.”
“Would you say that he was threatened or abused into signing them?”
Bliven thought on it. “I cannot speak to abuse, sir, but it is true that there was widespread demand among the army that he should be tried and executed. I am certain that, considering what his course would have been had the roles been reversed, he was indeed surprised not to have been killed.”
“No doubt.”
“That was in May, and I made my way home. I have no knowledge as to the conditions of his confinement since then. I heard that the army did seize his camp kit. Many of his furnishings were of solid silver, even his chamber pot. And they tell me he had a fantastical saddle, mounted with gold and platina. I believe their intention was to auction it off in order to pay the soldiers something.”
“I see. And you passed time with General Houston, I believe. What was your impression of him?”
“I did not see him at the time of the battle or after. I understand that he was most dangerously wounded.”
“He was taken to New Orleans for treatment,” said Jackson in a thoughtful change of tone. “I am told now that he will recover, although he will limp. He is a hard man to kill, as we learned back in fourteen.”
“I did see him in Nacogdoches during the last winter,” Bliven added. “In all candor, Mr. President, I found him one of the most capable men I have ever met, not just in managing his army but in foreseeing consequences of competing courses of action and preparing for the future.”
“I am not surprised. Was he well?”
“Perfectly, so far as my observation extended.”
“Was he sober?”
“Entirely, sir. He never offered us liquor and indeed averred that there was none in the camp.”
Jackson chuckled quietly. “In our former association, when he was much younger, I never saw him sober for two hours together.”
“Yes, sir, that is surely his reputation. It seemed that everyone else in Texas accepts that he is a drunkard whether or not they support him politically. But by legend some of his sprees must have been epic.”
“Well, if you had been through everything that he has, you might drink, too.”
“I heard this also from some of the more fair-minded men down there.”
“Well, this is a good thing.” Jackson paused, turning something over in his mind.
“Sir?” Bliven cleared his throat and looked dubiously at the secretary of the navy.
“Be at ease, Captain. You may speak freely, Mr. Dickerson is in our confidence.”
“Thank you, sir. Mr. President, there is one point that has raised itself since my arrival in the city on which I would be grateful if you could gratify my curiosity.”
“If I can, yes.”
“My whole late mission in the Gulf, sir, was shrouded in great secrecy. I lay ill in Velasco for a time, and Santa Anna was brought there for a longer time. We never engaged in conversation, but I was with a crowd of citizens that once viewed him while he was chained to his tree in Velasco. I cannot be certain that he never saw me or heard of my presence. Considering the almighty secrecy, I am wondering why you would risk bringing me into the same room with him when he might make a connection between me and losing those guns that cost him such a disaster?”
Jackson tightened his lips and nodded. “A fair question, Captain, and, more than fair, it shows an admirable alertness to the dangers of an encounter. Do you play at cards?”
“Only when I must, sir, and when I judge that it would be in my interest to lose a small sum of money to someone particular.”
Jackson’s belly bounced twice in silent laughter—the first sign of ease that had escaped him. “Captain Putnam, a man like Santa Anna lives to exercise power over people and to abuse them with it. It is as important to him as his food and water. In playing against such a man, it is important to take not just enough tricks to win the game but every trick, leaving him with nothing if at all possible. If he had seen you in Velasco, or heard of you, he could prove nothing by it. For all he knows, you are merely attached to the Texian delegation. But if his suspicions are aroused, it will heighten the sense of injustice that he has been tricked, which will feed upon the impotence of being unable to do anything about it. His possible humiliation is only a small trick to take in the hand against him, but it could be a highly useful one.”
“Is there no risk of provoking him into eventually attacking the United States, as that artillery would have been positioned to do? Once he is back home he can easily obtain all the ordnance he wants.”
Jackson laughed quickly and tightly. “Well foreseen, Captain; you’ve got promise. Now, do you suppose for a moment that if he goes to war with the United States that he will emerge victorious?”
“No, sir.”
“And what do you suppose that we could exact from a prostrate Mexico? The Rocky Mountains? Perhaps even Alta California? No, sir, I would not grieve for a moment if he acts so rashly as to attack the United States! It would be his ruin and add immeasurably to the future glory of this Union.”
Bliven took this in silently, for it was the first moment that he realized in full the nature, the measure, of Andrew Jackson—that he was a man who wore his reputation as a ruffian as part of his costume that won popular appeal, that he was a man of proven violence, but also that he was a man capable of foresight. That he was a man capable of deep plotting would have rendered him even more dangerous had that ability been harnessed to his personal ambition, but now he realized that Jackson’s dedication was to the country, however different his vision might have been from his own.
“And what is more,” said Jackson, “by adding western lands to the United States, it will cut the influence of Southerners like that lunatic Calhoun who want to split the Union in two because they imagine it will protect slavery.” Without warning, Bliven erupted in a pure horselaugh. “What in hell is so funny?”
“Forgive me, Mr. President.” Bliven smiled. “I met Mr. Calhoun many years ago; he was a law student in my hometown in Connecticut. I thought he was barking mad even as a young man.”
“Did you, now? Well, that is good to know. And now, Putnam, we must talk very seriously.”
“Sir?”
“You are a military man. You take orders and you give orders. I was also a military man, and I know the comfort of having a defined position in a hierarchy. You follow me?”
“I think so, sir.”
“But now I am a political man, and I have in my hands the welfare and the advance of the nation. It is not news to you that to many people in this country I am too wild and uncouth to be entrusted with such a responsibility.” Jackson gave him a searching look with his raptor’s eyes, but Bliven forbore to respond. “You are a New England man; I guess I should not flatter myself to think that you have relished my rise to this station.”
“As you say, Mr. President, I am a military man. I have thought it better not to complicate my duties by clinging to political affiliations of any kind.”
“Mm. Well said. But look now, of late your military duties have brought you into, shall we say, some glancing contact with the heady world of international politics. And in that world, which is now my world, sometimes secrets must be kept. Indeed, some secrets must be so closely held as never, ever to be imparted to another mortal human being for as long as you live. To fail in this could be to endanger the standing, even the security, the safety, of your country. Do you take my meaning?”
“You may rely on it, Mr. President, that I feel no need to tell anyone of my recent experiences, especially since I lack the conceit to believe I have seen the whole picture. To tell my small part of it must surely convey only a small and perhaps prejudicial portion of the entire story.” What he might confide, and must eventually con
fide, to Clarity in the warmth of their embrace was not for Jackson’s approval. Jackson was foolish if he believed himself the only one who could play a game of confidences.
Jackson ran a gnarled hand through his shock of white hair. “Mm. I like you better and better. In all these matters, Captain Putnam, you have performed as admirably and honorably as your previous history led us to believe that you would. So let us think of your future. Is there any posting, any command, that you would like to have?”
“I had not thought on it, sir, although Mr. Hockley introduced me as the naval attaché to the Republic of Texas, which I am not nor have any desire to be.”
“Hm! That Texas post is yours, if you want it.”
“I thank you, sir, but no.”
“Well, maybe now that you have had a taste of international affairs, there is some foreign post where you would like to gain some experience. For instance, that young boy who is now king in the Sandwich Islands would benefit from some enlightened guidance. I know you have a history there with the old queen, God rest her soul, and I need a consul to represent us there. Would you be interested?”
Bliven thought instantly, Where better for you to make sure that no one learns of your doings in Texas than by sending me back to the other side of the world? “Mr. President, I am deeply gratified by such an expression of confidence. Perhaps you are not aware that my wife was once a missionary to that country. Will you allow me to consult with her about perhaps returning there for such a posting before giving an answer?”
“By all means, Captain!” Jackson rose, and Dickerson and Bliven as well. “Now, you take a couple of days, Mr. Dickerson will talk to you a couple of times to make sure he understands all your activities in the recent months, including, of course, any personal expenses that you incurred in performing them, and we will see you again before you leave for home.”
