1824: The Arkansas War: Chapter Twenty Five

Natchez, Mississippi
December 15, 1824

    The bullet missed, but it did manage to shatter a bottle of whiskey sitting on the bartop that was close enough to shower Ray Thompson with its contents. Crouching behind the bar next to Powers, he cursed bitterly. It was rotgut, naturally. He’d be stinking for hours. Assuming he survived the next few minutes.

    “Can’t you ever just keep your mouth shut?” he hissed.

    Powers finished re-loading his pistol. “Damnation, this tavern was my old watering hole.” He peered up at the bartop above them. “How many were there?”

    “Four, till you shot one and I shot another.”

    “The tavern-keeper?”

    “He ran off. I don’t think he was one of them. But they’ll have friends coming, you watch. And meantime they’ve got us pinned here, and”—Ray rapped a knuckle against one of the planks that formed the base of the bar—“sooner or later it’s going to occur to those stupid yahoos to try to shoot through these planks to see how thick they are. I’m not looking forward to the results.”

    Powers winced. “Neither am I.” He gave Thompson a calculating look. “We got no choice, I’m thinking. Right at ‘em is the only way.”

    Ray shook his head. “Yeah, we got no choice. But I’m only joining you if you swear you’ll stop using your own name.”

    “Yeah. Fine. I swear. Mother’s grave, whatever you want.”

    Thompson didn’t bother to answer. He was too busy gauging the distance to the only unshattered bottle still on the bar top.

    “I’ll go first, right over the top. You come around the side.”

    Powers nodded. Since there was no point in dallying, Ray rose up enough to tap the bottle over with the barrel of the pistol.

    Almost instantly, a shot was fired, smashing into the wood behind the bar.

    “Thank God for yahoos.” But he was erect before he finished the statement, where he could see the room, his pistol tracking the man who’d fired.

    Dumber’n sheep. The idiot was standing up, reloading. Ray shot him in the chest. Then, lunged to his left, just in time to evade the shot fired by the man’s partner. He kept lunging leftward, half-running and half-scrambling, but never dropping out of sight. That would keep the man’s eyes on him while Scott—

    Powers’ shot came, from the other side of the bar. Ray stopped and looked over. Good enough. He didn’t think Scott had killed him outright, but it was good enough.

    “Fucking yahoos,” Power snarled on their way out of the tavern. “Why the hell do they care if we hurt Clay’s chances? The bastards never bother to vote, anyway. Too stupid to read the ballot.”

    Ten minutes later, they were ready to head for the Natchez Trace.

    “Now we’re horse thieves, too,” Ray complained, as he led his mount out of the barn they’d broken into.

    Powers was in a cheerier mood. “Lookit this. Found it tacked on the wall in there.”

    He handed over a printed notice.

    Thompson didn’t look at it, though, until they were out of the town’s limits. Killing three or four men might be forgiven, in Natchez—depending on who their friends and relatives were—but stealing a horse was a hanging offense.

    When he did look at it, reading slowly because of the horse’s gait, he whistled.

    “Ten thousand dollars. Whoo-eee.”

    Then, he shrugged and handed it back to Powers. “Lot of good it does us.”

    But Powers was still smiling. “O ye of little faith. I know him, Ray. Andrew Clark’s the first cousin of an old friend of mine.”

    Thompson looked over at him skeptically. “And, what of it? He did the killing in Washington, Scott. If your geography’s gotten hazy since our seafaring days, that’s about a thousand miles from here, as the crow flies—and we ain’t crows. By now, he could be anywhere.”

    “’Could’ be, sure. But he won’t be. Where’s he going to go? That’s a snooty family he comes from, real Georgia gentlemen. If he’d killed Houston, he’d have been all right. They’d hide him as long as it took. But killing Houston’s wife, won’t nobody in those circles touch him. In fact, they’d turn in him faster’n anybody. Even the yahoos in Louisiana would. Well, half of ‘em, anyway.”

    Ray thought about it. That was true enough, actually. Killing a woman, unless she was a whore or a cheating wife, was one of the few ways a man could cross the line with southern and western roughnecks. Almost as bad as horse-stealing.

    The last thought reminded him of their own predicament. “What’re we going to do with these horses, Scott?”

    “Let ‘em go, what else? As soon as we reach Port Gibson. That’s stretching it a little, but I figure we can probably get away with it. Being as there was four of them, and us not knowing how many friends they might have.”

    Again, Ray thought about it. That was…

    Also true enough. There was a certain protocol involved. Actually stealing a man’s horse was a hanging offense, sure enough. But if a man let the horse go while it was still close enough to find its way home—or be returned by someone else, who knew the brand—most people were inclined to let it go as more-or-less borrowing the horse just to get out of a bad spot. Which their’s had certainly been. Often enough, it became a laughing matter.

    It wasn’t sure-fire, of course. But at least it gave you an arguing point, if you got caught.

    “Okay, then what?”

    “Port Gibson’s where we want, anyway.” Powers flashed Thompson a grin. “Being as how you and me is for a Mississippi steamboat and St. Louis. I figure we can get hired on, easy enough. This soon after the massacre, a lot of the regular men’ll still be nervous about steaming past the Arkansas.”

    Thompson grimaced. “Scott, I’m nervous about steaming past it. Unless they’re even dumber than yahoos, they’ll still have that flotilla there. One or two boats anyway—and they’re likely to be none too fussy about diplomatic protocol. What if they stop our boat and search it? They find us, we’re for the rope.”

    “Yeah, sure. But it’s been two and a half months since Arkansas Post. I figure by now the U.S. State Department has made plenty of protests to the Confederacy on the subject of interfering with American commerce on the Mississippi. Say whatever else you will about the bastard, Quincy Adams ain’t no slouch. As long as we stay out of sight when our boat gets to the Arkansas, we should be safe enough.” His cheery expression was disfigured for a moment by a scowl. “Which won’t be hard, since we’ll probably be working in the boiler room.”

    Ray matched the grimace. Boiler room work was just as hard as it was dangerous.

    Not, however, as dangerous as staying in yahoo country, with their names black as mud because of that damned Bryant. And even if they always used aliases, there were just too many men in the area who knew them personally.

    Nor could they return to more civilized parts of the United States. Leaving aside what difficulties they might encounter due to Bryant’s articles—which could be serious, given that Clay might well be the next President—they had several other awkward issues to deal with. Scott had arrest warrants out for him, and Ray had creditors. Not the sort of creditors who demanded imprisonment for debt, either, as a last resort. The sort who started with broken knees.

    “All right, then.”

    “Oh, stop being gloomy,” Scott said. “We need to get to St. Louis, anyway, on account of this.” He patted the pocket into which he’d stuffed the reward notice.

    “Why?”

    “Don’t you pay any attention? I told you. Well, maybe not all of it. Andrew Clark’s cousin is the black sheep of the family. He’s the one person Clark could find shelter with, and he’s in Missouri.”

    “In St. Louis?”

    “Well. No.” Powers seemed to be avoiding his gaze. “Further west. Missouri Territory.”

    Ray rolled his eyes. “Wonderful. He’s a bandit, isn’t he?”

    “Some might call him that, I suppose.”

    “’Some’,” Ray mimicked sarcastically. “Let me guess. Ninety-nine out of a hundred citizens of Missouri.”

    Scott grinned. “Nah, not that many. Maybe ninety-five out of a hundred.”

    He gave Ray a sideways look. “What? You worried about our good names?”

    Thompson said nothing. What was there to say?

    “What I thought. Face it, Ray. We ain’t exactly upstanding citizens, our own selves. Not even around bandits. Southern ones, for sure.”

New Antrim, Arkansas
December 16, 1824

    “I don’t care if we go bankrupt, Henry.” Patrick Driscol rasp seemed more pronounced that ever. “What difference does it make, if Arkansas goes under? I’ll be dead on a battlefield, you’ll be a slave picking cotton in the Delta, and even the engineer fellow here”—a thumb indicated Henry Shreve, who was scowling at him from the doorway—“is likely to be standing trial for treason. Never gave up his U.S. citizenship, you know.”

    “That’s not funny, Patrick!” Shreve’s scowl grew darker still.

    “No, I suppose not. It’s still true.” Driscol smiled thinly. “Of course, you could always have a sudden conversion on the road to Damascus. ‘Re-conversion,’ I guess I should say. Hurry on down to Memphis, confess the error of your wicked ways, and offer your services to the Fulton-Livingston Company. Word has it they’ve already got the contract for supplying the U.S. army, in the event war comes. I’m sure they’d hire you on.”

    Now, Shreve’s scowl could have terrified an ogre. “Stop playing the fool! ‘Hurry on down to Memphis.’ In what? A rowboat?—seeing as how you’ve already seized everything I own, you damn tyrant. Worse than any Federalist who ever lived, you are.”

    Henry Crowell’s grunt combined amusement and exasperation. “Don’t forget the years he spent with Napoleon, Henry. Conscription—seizure of personal property—all out for the war effort—nothing’s too low for the Laird. By next Tuesday, I figure he’ll start debasing the currency.”

    “Don’t call me that, damnation. I hate that term.”

    “Why? It’s true, Patrick. And before you start prattling about your republican principles—about which Henry’s right; you’ve shredded every one these past two months—you might keep in mind that the term is prob’bly worth another regiment, as far as the army’s morale goes.”

    Shreve’s scowl lightened a bit. “He’s right about that. Black heathen savages. Bad as Frenchmen. Vive l’Empereur! Allons enfants de la patrie!”

    His French accent was quite good. Better than Driscol’s, in fact, although Driscol was more fluent in the language. So Crowell had been told, anyway. His own knowledge of French was limited to the Creole he’d picked up in New Orleans.

    “They’re hardly heathens,” grumbled Patrick. “Most of ‘em are downright Calvinists, by now, since Brown started his preaching.”

    Shreve gave him a skeptical look. Driscol shrugged. “Well, fine. Some of Marie Laveau’s voudou in there too, I suppose.”

    “John Brown doesn’t actually preach,” Crowell said mildly. “It’s more just that black folks admire the man so much. And why shouldn’t they? The Catholics are doing pretty well, too, actually. Especially since all that money started coming in from Pierre Toussaint to fund them.”

    Shreve rolled his eyes. “You had to bring that up, didn’t you?” Sourly, he crossed his arms and slouched in the doorway. “I can remember a time—o blessed days of innocent youth—when my world was a lot simpler. Sure as hell didn’t include rich black bankers in Arkansas and still richer darkies in New York. And a crazy Scots-Irishman to fan the flames of their insane ambitions.”

    Crowell’s grunt, this time, was simply amused. For all of Shreve’s more-or-less constant carping and complaining, the fact was that the Pennsylvania steamboat wizard had thrown in his lot with Arkansas as unreservedly as the poorest freedman. Henry wasn’t sure why, exactly, since it certainly wasn’t due to any commitment on Shreve’s part to abolition or even any deep faith in human equality. Shreve didn’t really care that much about such things, one way or the other. He had the mind and soul of an engineer, first, last and always.

    In the end, Henry thought, that was the key. As much and as often as Shreve protested Driscol’s ways—which did, indeed, sometimes border on Napoleonic high-handedness if not outright tyranny—the fact remained that the “Laird of Arkansas” had supported and funded Shreve’s plans and schemes far more extensively than any person or institution in the United States had ever done. Or ever would, so long as the Fulton-Livingston Company could throw its money and influence around.

    But it was time to settle the current dispute. “Fine, Patrick. Seeing as how you’re being stubborn—”

    “When is he not?” demanded Shreve.

    “—we’ll sink every dime we can in buying iron plate from the foundries in Cincinnati and Pittsburgh. The ones who’ll still do business with us, anyway.”

    Seeing Driscol’s sarcastic expression, he chucked. “Which, I admit, is all of them. Amazing, in a way, since Ohio’s supposed to be solid for Henry Clay.”

    Shreve snorted. “’Solid’ refers to politics. Money has no country.”

    He glared at Driscol. “Besides which, the United States is a republic. A nation of free men, where the idea that the government could tell a man what he could and couldn’t do with his own property is anathema.”

    “Especially when the property talks and has a black skin,” Driscol fired back. “So don’t preach to me about ‘freedom,’ Mister Shreve. I find myself quite willing to abrogate the lesser freedoms to maintain the great ones. We’re still going to buy all the iron plate we can, since we can’t make it in our own little foundries, so that when the bastards come up the river it’ll be our boats—yours, when I give them back after the war—who steam out of the encounter. And theirs which go under. Or would you rather we did it the other way around?”

    Put that way…

    Shreve threw up his hands. “Fine! I’m going back to work. Otherwise your lunatic scheme will sink the boats right there at the piers, all the iron you’ll try to bolt onto them.”

    “I wouldna dream of telling an engineer his business,” said Driscol, his Belfast accent thicker than usual. “Mind, I’d appreciate the occasional reciprocation.”

    But Shreve had already left.

Washington, D.C.
December 18, 1824

    “Well, that’s it,” said Adam Beatty. “We’ll have a merry Christmas, gentlemen. With Louisiana’s vote having come in, everything’s been reported.”

    At the head of the table in the boarding house, Henry Clay rubbed his face wearily. “Summarize it, please.”

    “Nationwide, Jackson has the plurality of votes, though not by as large a margin as it appeared he would in mid-summer. That’s the ‘Arkansas effect,’ most likely, coming in at the last minute. Still, he’s got eighty-five electoral votes, just a little under one-third of the total. Adams comes a pretty close second, with seventy-six.”

    “In short,” Peter Porter said bluntly, “our two principal enemies—who’ve now formed an alliance, with Adams willing to throw his support to Jackson—have a total of one hundred and sixty-one votes. Which is a clear majority in the Electoral College. And the same percentage, roughly speaking, in the popular vote.”

    “A little over sixty percent,” Beatty agreed. “But it really doesn’t matter, because the Electoral College is not where the issue gets settled, according to the Constitution. Since no single candidate won a majority, the three top candidates are the ones chosen from by the House. And there—”

    He smiled widely. “Henry’s the third man. Clear-cut, no question about it. He got forty-two votes to Crawford’s thirty-four, and Calhoun’s twenty-five. All we’ve got to do, gentlemen, is turn that forty percent in the electoral college into fifty-one percent in the House.”

    Put that way, Porter mused, it didn’t sound so bad. But the sense he’d had of a situation steadily unraveling was getting stronger all the while. Because the other way to look at it, was that the man who could only muster…

    Porter was good at arithmetic. Silently, in his head, he did the calculations.

    And was appalled. Henry Clay had gotten barely sixteen percent of the popular and electoral votes. Which Beatty was cheerily projecting he could triple—more than triple—in order to get elected, purely and solely based on political maneuvering in the House of Representatives.

    That it could be done, Porter didn’t much doubt. Clay’s ability to manipulate the House was practically legendary by now. But could a President elected in such a manner actually carry out the tasks and duties of the nation’s chief executive in the years to follow? That was another matter entirely.

    His musings were interrupted by Clay’s voice. “Peter, are the rumors we’ve been hearing about Van Buren true, in your estimate?”

    A bit startled, Porter looked up. “Well… It’s hard to know. Van Buren plays the game very close to the chest. But I think it’s likely, yes. Jackson, unlike Adams, has always had a clear stance on states’ rights, which is what matters to the New York Radicals. They simply don’t have the same concerns regarding Arkansas and the issues surrounding it that Calhoun’s people do, and some of Crawford’s.” He cleared his throat. “Some others of Crawford’s, I should say, since they were in that camp themselves.”

    Clay nodded, his expression weary but still alert. “In other words, Crawford’s camp is breaking up.”

    “Pretty much, yes. His northern supporters shifting toward Jackson, his southern ones in our direction. More toward Calhoun than us, though, and keeping in mind that it’s certainly not a split down the middle. Most of his support was in the south, to begin with. New York was really his only major northern stronghold.”

    “The key’s the south, then,” stated Josiah Johnston. “It’s that simple. We haven’t got enough, even getting all of Calhoun and Crawford’s votes. And we can’t possibly hope to crack anything away in New England, that matters. Or Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Or Tennessee.”

    He stopped there, a bit awkwardly. Porter didn’t blame him. He could have added: or Kentucky, probably. The two most populous border states had gone for Jackson, even Clay’s home state.

    Clay sat up straight. “All right. I agree with Josiah. It’s simple enough. We’ve got to keep Calhoun solid—that, whatever else—and win over Crawford’s southern supporters. Then—”

    He took a deep breath. “Ignore New England altogether. Ignore Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Go straight at the southern congressional delegations, and a few of the softer western ones, like Indiana and Illinois. We can assume that Ohio and Missouri will remain solid for us. Persuade them that the allegiance many of their states showed for Jackson was an error, produced by the fact that news of Arkansas—and Jackson’s disturbing reaction to it—hadn’t had time to reach the populace before they voted. Surely they would have voted otherwise, had they known.”

    “Remember Arkansas Post!” Beatty exclaimed. “That’s the drum we beat.”

    Clay looked around the room. Everyone nodded. Even Porter, in the end. What else was there to do?