1824: The Arkansas War: Chapter Four

    It took three slugs before Sam was finally ready. Johnson seemed to sense it, because he didn’t prod Sam at all until the third slug had settled in his belly. Then, sighing, he set his own half-full tumbler on the small table next to the divan and planted his hands on his knees.

    “So tell me, Sam. It’s bad news, I’m sure.”

    “The President refuses to authorize any more funds to cover the losses from the Yellowstone expedition, on the recommendation of the Secretary of the Treasury.”

    “William H. Crawford,” Johnson stated, making the simple name sound like a curse.

    “I don’t like him either,” Sam said. “But it doesn’t matter. Even if the Secretary and the President proposed it, there’d be an uproar in Congress. Financially speaking, the Yellowstone expedition was a disaster.” Sam raised his hand, to forestall Johnson’s protest. “Dick, I know most of your constituents still think the expedition was a good idea, to keep the peace on the frontier. But most of the country considers the whole thing a boondoggle.”

    And probably a crooked one, to boot. Half-crooked, for sure. But he left that unsaid.

    Johnson didn’t pursue the matter any further, not to Sam’s surprise. The Yellowstone expedition and the debts it had saddled the senator with dated back several years now. Not quite “ancient history,” but ground that had now been trod over several times. He hadn’t really had any hopes of getting any relief there.

    Instead, he moved to the subject that was much more pressing. “And the Choctaw Academy I want to set up?”

    Julia Chinn came into the room, at that moment, giving Sam a little breathing space. After she’d taken a seat on the divan next to the senator, Sam tried to present it as positively as possible. “Do you know Gerrit Smith?”

    “That young New York fellow? Rich as Croesus, they say. Something of a philanthropist, I also heard.”

    “That’s the one.”

    Johnson’s eyes widened. “He’s offered to back me?”

    “Ah…”

    There was no way around it. “Not exactly, Dick. He’s willing to pay the debts you’ve accumulated for it and take the Academy off your hands.”

    “What?”

    May as well give it all to him, at one swallow.

    “And he won’t set it up here, and he won’t call it the ‘Choctaw Academy.’ He wants to establish it in New Antrim. And he wants to turn it into a school—maybe later a college, attached to it—that’s open to children from all races. Whites, any tribe of Indians—and negroes. He thinks that’s an experiment that’ll work. If it’s done in the Arkansas part of the Confederacy.”

    Johnson was just gaping at him. Sam took a deep breath and finished. “He’s even got a schoolmaster lined up. Fellow name of Beriah Green. Also a New Yorker.”

    Also an abolitionist, he could have added, but didn’t. Whatever Johnson’s relationship to Julia Chinn, the man was also a major slave-owner, with all the attitudes toward abolition that entailed. If that seemed contradictory…

    Well, it was. But it was a contradictory matter that Sam knew backwards and forwards. He’d owned slaves himself for years, despite having had reservations about slavery even as a teenager. By now, at the age of thirty, those misgivings had turned into a genuine detestation for the institution.

    Sam had only owned a few slaves at any one time, true—sometimes not more than one. And he didn’t depend on their labor for his sustenance the way Johnson did. Mostly, he maintained his status as a slave-owner simply out of ambition. Sam still had hopes for a political career after Monroe left office and Sam lost—as he almost certainly would—his position as Special Commissioner on Indian Affairs. That career would have to be in the south somewhere, probably his native state of Tennessee. Sam was already notorious enough among many influential circles in that area. Owning slaves served to keep that notoriety within limits. A southern gentleman was expected to own slaves; and so, he did.

    Sam didn’t have the same pecuniary attachment to slave-holding that a great landowner like the Kentucky senator did. Still and all, he understood the contradiction. Better than he wished he did, even leaving aside the caustic comments that his friend Patrick Driscol made whenever he visited the Confederacy.

    Johnson finally found his voice. A blasphemous one, too. “I’ll be damned if I will!”

    “You’ll be damned if you don’t,” Julia hissed. She leaned over and laced her fingers together. “Exactly how much of our debts will this New York fellow assume, Sam?” she asked.

    Good news, finally. “Every penny, Julia. Dick, you hear that? And he’ll assume the financial burden of any further lawsuits arising from the—ah—”

    How to put it?

    Julia did it for him. “None too detailed nature of the books.” She gave her more-or-less-husband a sharp glance. “Such as they are.”

    Johnson flushed. “Hey, look…”

    “Dick, the school would have lost you money anyway,” Sam said forcefully. “Did lose you money, even before you had a chance to open the doors. So be done with it. At least this way, you walk out free and clear. You have enough other debts to worry about.”

    Johnson just stared at him. Julia took advantage of the silence to speak again.

    “One condition, Sam. This New York rich man has to agree to it, or we won’t.”

    “What’s that?”

    She looked through the open window. Outside, the sound of girls playing in the yard carried easily. “Imogene and Adaline get to attend the school. All expenses paid. If we decide to send them.”

    Sam couldn’t help but laugh. “Well, that won’t be a problem. Mr. Smith asked me to pass on to you that he’d especially like your children to attend. And he offered to pay for it himself. That’s because—ah—”

    To Sam’s relief, that stirred up Johnson’s combative instincts. “Because they’re famous,” he growled. Again, he blasphemed. “God damn all rich men.”

    The senator’s curse could have been leveled on himself and his New York benefactor, of course, as much on the southern gentry who vilified him.

    We are sinners all, Sam thought to himself. It was a rueful thought, as it so often was for him these days.

    The senator looked to Julia, now. “Are you sure about that, dearest? I don’t like the idea of our kids being that far away.”

    Her face got tight. “You know any other school will take them, outside of New England—where they’d be just as far away? And even if there was one…”

    She took a deep breath. When she spoke again, her voice started rising.

    “What happens if you die, Dick Johnson? It don’t matter what you think. By law, those two daughters you spoil so badly are your slaves.”

    “I freed you!” he protested.

    “Not till after the girls were born,” came her immediate rejoinder. “Richard Mentor Johnson, how in the world can a lawyer like you be that deaf, dumb and blind?”

    It was a good question—and the wide-open mouth of the senator made it perfectly clear that he’d never even thought about it. By Kentucky law, as well as the law in any slave state, a child born to a slave inherited the legal status of the mother, not the father. That was in complete opposition to the standard way of figuring birth status, as usually applied to white people. But the south’s gentry had made sure and certain that their frequent dalliances with slave women didn’t produce any legally and financially awkward children.

    As foul a breed of men as ever lived, was Patrick Driscol’s assessment of southern slave-owners. Sam felt the categorization was far too harsh, as was so often true of Patrick’s attitudes. But he didn’t deny there was more than a grain of truth to it. Slavery corrupted the master as much as it degraded the slave. If there was any true and certain law of nature, there it was.

    “Long as you’re alive,” Julia continued, “we don’t got to worry none. But if you pass on, the girls are just part of your estate. And you got debts. Lots and lots of debts. You think your creditors will pass them over?”

    “I’ll free them, too, then. Tomorrow!”

    She shrugged. “Good. But you trust judges way more than I do. With all those creditors circling like vultures, won’t surprise me at all to find some judge will say the manumission was invalid.”

    The next words were spoken very coldly. “They’ll be pretty, real pretty, given ‘em another three or four years. But they inherited my color, too—enough of it, anyway—along with my looks. They’ll fetch a nice price from some slave whorehouse somewhere. Your ghost can watch it happen.”

    “It’s not unheard of, Dick,” Sam said.

    The senator was back to gaping. Again, obviously, never even having considered the matter. The man’s blindness could be truly astonishing, at times. The same blindness that led him into one financial disaster after another. Not so much because Richard Mentor Johnson was dishonest or rapacious, as that it never seemed to occur to him that friends and relatives and acquaintances of his might be.

    One of the house slave women came into the room. “Dinner’s ready, Miz Julia.”

    One black woman addressing another as if she were a white mistress. The world had a lot more crazy angles in it than most people wanted to admit. Much less allow.

    Imogene and Adaline were on their best behavior at dinner. That might have been because of Sam’s presence, but he didn’t think so. It was more likely because their mother had drummed it into them over the years. Dinner, at a great house like Blue Ridge Farm, was rarely a small and private family affair. And so the girls of the family would act proper, they would, or they’d suffer the consequences.

    The dinner table seemed as long as a small ship, with tall and stately candlesticks serving for masts and sails. Johnson at one end; Julia, presiding over the meal, facing him at the other. With, in two long rows down the side, well over a dozen other people in addition to Sam and the children. Disabled war veterans or their widows, for the most part. But there was also one of nearby Lexington’s prominent lawyers, and one of the local plantation owners.

    Sam wasn’t surprised to see them there. Not all of the south’s well-to-do disliked Johnson. Many admired him. That was true starting with the President of the United States himself, James Monroe, who came from Virginia gentry. As always, in Sam’s experience—contrary to Patrick Driscol’s tendency to label people in sharp and definite categories—attitudes and habits blurred at the edges. Blurred so far, often enough, that there was no boundary to be seen at all.

    Fine for Patrick—the “Laird of Arkansas,” in truth, even if no one used the term to his face—to sit up there in the mountains and divide the world and its morals into black and white. Sam lived down here in a world of grays and browns, just about everywhere he looked. And…

    Being honest, was more comfortable in that world. He had plenty of gray in his own soul, as young as he might be, and he’d always thought brown to be the warmest color of all.

    “Clay’s going to make a run for it,” the plantation owner predicted. “In fact, he’s already started.”

    The lawyer sitting across from him laughed sarcastically. “What else is new? Henry Clay was dreaming about the Presidency while he was still in his mother’s womb. More ambitious than Sam Hill, he is.”

    Johnson smiled into his whiskey tumbler. So did Sam. It was the same smile, half-derisive and half-philosophical. The difference was simply that the senator’s tumbler was half-full and Sam’s was…

    Empty, now that he looked into it. How had that happened?

    “Don’t make light of it, Jack,” cautioned the lawyer. “I’m thinking he’s got a very good chance at getting what he wants. With Monroe gone after next year, who else does it leave? Beyond Quincy Adams and the General, of course—and they’ve both got handicaps.”

     “Andy Jackson’s the most popular man in America!” the senator stoutly proclaimed.

    The lawyer, blessed with the name of Cicero Jones, gave him a look that might have graced the face of the ancient Roman statesman after whom he’d been named—just before he fell beneath the swords of the Second Triumvirate.

    “Maybe so, Dick. But…”

    For an instant, Jones’ glance flicked toward Sam. Then, looked down at his plate. “But not as much as he used to be,” he concluded glumly.

    That was enough to tip Sam’s decision over the immediate issue at hand. He held up his tumbler toward one of the slaves waiting at the table. “Some more whiskey, if you would.”

    As the slave made to comply, Sam gave Johnson a level gaze. “That’s my doing. The settlement I made of the Algiers business hurt the General worse than the Treaty of Oothcaloga helped him. No doubt about it, I think.”

    Now that Sam had said it out loud, Cicero Jones was clearly relieved. “No doubt about it at all,” the lawyer echoed.

    Across from him, Jack Hartfield shrugged and spread his hands. As portly as the plantation owner was, the expansive gesture did unfortunate things to his tightly-buttoned vest.

    Adaline managed to keep quiet, but Imogene burst into a giggle. Sam almost did too, for that matter. The way the button flew from Hartfield and bounced off one of the candlesticks was genuinely comical.

    Hartfield himself grinned. But his good cheer didn’t keep the girl from her chastisement.

    “Imogene!” exclaimed Julia. A hand the color of coffee-with-cream smacked her daughter, leaving a red mark on a cheek whose color wasn’t much lighter. “Do that again and you’ll finish dinner in your room!”

    “Oh, go easy on her, Julia,” chuckled the plantation owner. “It was pretty funny. I probably would have laughed myself, ‘cept I don’t want to think what my wife’ll have to say when I get home. I’m afraid I bust a lot of those.”

     “Don’t matter,” insisted Julia. She wagged a finger in Imogene’s face. “You behave yourself, young lady. You know better than that.”

    Imogene assumed a properly chastened look. Although Sam didn’t miss the angry glare she gave her sister across the table, once Julia looked away. Adaline’s face had that insufferably smug look that a twin has whenever her sibling is rightfully punished—and she gets away with it.

    Again, it was all Sam could do not to laugh. Fortunately, the tumbler arrived and he was able to disguise his amusement with a hefty slug of its contents. A heftier slug than he’d actually intended. It was hard to resist, though. The whiskey served at Blue Ridge Farm was the best Sam had had in months. And that was a lot of whiskey back.

    Once the humor of his mishap settled, Hartfield went on with what he’d been about to say. “I don’t think it’s really fair to blame young Houston. If the General had just kept quiet about the matter, instead of…”

    He shrugged. Even more expansively then he had before, now that further damage was impossible. The button that had popped off his vest had been the last survivor.

    “That unfortunate speech.”

    That was something of a euphemism, in Sam’s opinion. As much as he admired Andy Jackson, there was no denying the man had a savage streak in his nature that was sometimes as wide as the Mississippi river. If the clash at Algiers had been between any other group of black men—free or slave, it mattered not—and a properly constituted white militia, Andy Jackson would have been among the first to demand loudly that the niggers be put in their place. For that matter, he’d probably have offered to lead the punitive expedition personally.

    But those hadn’t been just any black men. Those had been the men of the Iron Battalion, led by the same Patrick Driscol, who’d broken the British at the Battle of the Mississippi—the battle that had turned Jackson from a regional into a national figure. If Andy Jackson could be savage about race, he could be even more savage—a lot more savage—when it came to matters of honor, and courage, and cowardice.

    Whatever the color of their skin—and their commander’s skin was as white as Jackson’s own—Old Hickory had a genuine admiration for the Iron Battalion. And, on the reverse side, despised no group of wealthy men in the United States so much as he despised the plantation owners in and around New Orleans who had, in the main, refused to participate in the fight against the invading redcoats. And had done so, to put the icing on the cake, because they feared their own slaves more than they did a foreign enemy.

    Jackson had had choice words to say about that Louisiana gentry, during the New Orleans campaign in the war against the British. His words spoken in public—and reprinted in most of the newspapers of the nation—the day after the Algiers incident, had been choicer still. Poltroons and criminals applied to rich white men, and the terms stalwart fellows and yeomen defending their rights applied to poor black ones…

    We’re all true, to be sure. But they’d caused the General’s popularity in the south and the west—theretofore almost unanimous except for Henry Clay and his coterie—to plummet like a stone.

    Only so far, of course. Soon enough, the plunging stone had reached the secure ledge of support from the poorer class of the southwest’s voters. For the most part, they’d been no happier with the result of the clash at Algiers than any other white men of the region. On the other hand, as the saying went, it was no skin off their nose. All the more so, since the battle had been precipitated by the lascivious conduct of some of New Orleans’ Creoles, whose wealth and Frenchified habits the poor Scot-Irish settlers resented—and a good percentage considered not that much better than niggers anyway.

    Still, when all the dust settled, Andy Jackson’s popularity in the south and west was no longer as overwhelming as it had been. Clay, of course, had immediately seized the opportunity to continue the Jackson-bashing he’d begun two years earlier over the General’s conduct of the Florida campaign. The Speaker of the House had had his own choice words to say on the floor of Congress. He’d even gone to the extreme of offering to lead a punitive expedition to Louisiana himself.

    The offer had been as histrionic as it was ridiculous. First, because Henry Clay had no military experience whatsoever—indeed, he routinely dismissed Jackson as a “mere military chieftain,” in no way suitable for higher positions in the Republic. Secondly, because he knew perfectly well that there was no chance at all that President Monroe would appoint him to the position, even in the unlikely event that he authorized such a mission in the first place. Always the Virginia gentleman, James Monroe kept his private feelings to himself. But Sam was his son-in-law, and he knew perfectly well that if Monroe’s dislike and distrust of Henry Clay was less savage than Jackson’s, it was not an inch shallower.

    Ridiculous and histrionic as it might have been, however, Clay’s stance had enhanced his own popularity in the region—and the Congressman from Kentucky had already been the second most popular figure there, after Jackson. Considerably more popular, among the region’s gentry.

    “Well, it’s done now,” said the lawyer. No slouch himself when it came to whiskey, Cicero Jones downed his tumbler. “But don’t fool yourselves, gentlemen. Henry Clay is now at the front of the pack who’ll be running for President, once Monroe’s term is up. Quincy Adams is respected by just about everyone—gentlemen, at least—but he’s not liked all that much, either. Too cold, too harsh, too caustic—too everything. And, like Calhoun, he’s almost a purely regional figure. Adams will take New England just as certainly as Calhoun will take the hard-core south. But that’s not enough votes to win, no matter how you slice it.”

    “There’s Crawford,” pointed out Senator Johnson. Only a slight twist to his lips indicated his dislike for the Secretary of the Treasury. The tone of his comment had been neutral and matter-of-fact.

    Jones shrugged. “Yes, there’s William Crawford. Popular in the south also, of course, being a Georgian. And the nation’s well-to-do tend to be fond of him, in all regions of the country.”

    “As they should!” barked Sam. Most of the disgruntlement in his tone, however, came from the state of his tumbler.  Once again, not even noticing, he’d managed to drain it dry. And it would be ungracious to ask for another refill, so soon. Always the generous host, Johnson’s pocketbook was still badly frayed—and that whiskey was expensive.

    “But he’s seen by too many people as too slick,” the lawyer continued. “I don’t think the electorate trusts him all that much. Nor should they, for that matter.”

    “Hah!” exclaimed Hartfield. “Why should they look cross-eyed at Crawford? He’s not half the cut-any-corner and make-any-deal bastard that Clay is.”

    The lawyer shook his head. “Yes, I know. But Clay makes pretty speeches and knows how to pose in public. Crawford’s not got half his talent for that. Not a quarter.” He took a long pull on his tumbler, leaving it as dry as Sam’s. “No, you watch. It’ll be Clay to beat. Calhoun will throw him his support, as the election nears, in exchange for Clay’s backing—half-backing, at least—on the issues Calhoun holds dear. And Crawford… well, I think he’ll settle for Secretary of State, if Clay will promise it to him. That’ll position Crawford to replace Clay, when the time comes. He’s only fifty-one years old, after all.”

    Sam considered Jones’ assessment, as he considered the lawyer’s empty tumbler. He thought the assessment was about right. More to the point, he could see where it led straight to a toast.

    He cleared his throat. “What you’re saying, Cicero, if I’m following you, is that if Andy Jackson is to be our next President, he’ll have to reach an accommodation with John Quincy Adams. Right?”

    “Dead right.” Jones winced a little, then. “And that’ll be some trick.”

    “The General thinks well of Adams,” pointed out Johnson.

    “Who doesn’t?” said Jones. “A most admirable man, versed in the classics and everything. But does the General like him? And, perhaps more to the point, what does Adams think of Andy Jackson?”

    “He supported him during that ruckus over Florida,” stated Johnson stubbornly.

    The lawyer waved his hand. “Sure he did. John Quincy Adams is the best Secretary of State the United States has ever had, if you ask me. Andy Jackson got us Florida, so Adams backed him. But that doesn’t mean he much likes the General. Face it, gentlemen.” Jones leaned forward in his seat and tapped the table with his forefinger. “First, they disagree over most issues that concern the internal affairs of the nation. Adams is still half a Federalist, when you come down to it. Half an abolitionist, too, if I’m not mistaken.”

    He tapped the table again, more forcefully. “Second, political affairs are determined more by matters of blood and attitude than they are cold intellect. I don’t think you could find two prominent men in the country more unlike than Andy Jackson and John Quincy Adams.”

    That was true enough, of course. Best of all, it was salient.

    Sam rose to his feet. “A toast, then, gentlemen! To unlikely alliances!” The men at the table began to rise, all except the two veterans who were missing a leg. But their smiles were enough to indicate their full agreement with the toast.

    Sam reached down for his tumbler. Then, his mouth widened, as if he’d just noticed the glass was empty.

    “Ah. How awkward.”

    “Grover!” Johnson barked at one of the slaves standing by the headboard. “What are you daydreaming about? See to it that Sam’s whiskey is refilled!”