1824:TheArkansasWar



 


CHAPTER 26





Washington, D.C.

DECEMBER 19, 1824
 
“Please, Colonel Taylor, have a seat.” General Brown half rose from the seat behind his desk when Zachary entered his office, motioning toward a chair next to the one occupied by General Winfield Scott. A bit to the side sat Thomas Jesup, the army’s quartermaster general.
Taylor would have felt awkward under any circumstances in such august company. Since the reorganization and drastic reduction in the size of the army ordered by Congress in 1821, Jacob Brown was the only remaining major general, and thus the commanding general of the entire U.S. Army. Winfield Scott was one of its two remaining brigadier generals of the line and commanded the eastern department of the military. For the moment, at least. Rumors were that he and Brigadier General Edmund Gaines, who commanded the western department, would soon be exchanging posts.
In short, he was sitting in an office with three of the army’s four generals. Nor were they “political generals,” although Brown had begun his career as a political appointee. All three of them were considered by the entire U.S. military—except for a few rivals in the officer corps like Gaines—to be the army’s best fighting generals. Brown had been in overall command of the Army of the Niagara, which had won the first major American land victory in the war with Britain; Scott, the general in command of the forces that triumphed at the Chippewa; Jesup, then a colonel, had commanded the 25th Infantry regiment that Scott had used in the battle to drive back the British right flank.
The presence of Jesup was a bit reassuring, since Jesup had been Taylor’s principal supporter in the army’s high command since the days they’d worked together in the northwest frontier. Still, the situation was nerve-wracking. Zachary had been half expecting to receive a summons for a court-martial since he arrived in the capital.
He decided to deal with that immediately. “General, I’m quite aware that I had no specific orders to report to Washington. Still, as soon as I was assured that my post in Baton Rouge was in good order, I felt it incumbent—”
Jesup chuckled. Brown waved his hand. “Oh, relax, Zack. You’re not in any trouble.”
“Not from us, anyway,” Scott murmured.
Taylor glanced at him. Then, looked back at Brown.
“The reason I asked you here,” the major general said, “is because of these.” He leaned over and picked some papers from his desk. The movement was stiff and ungainly, as his earlier rise from the chair had been. Brown had suffered a bad stroke three years earlier and was still recovering from the effects.
Even from the distance, Taylor recognized the handwriting on the sheets. Which was hardly surprising, since it was his. Well…
Brown’s stiff face broke into a smile. “First, by the way, let me congratulate you on the sudden and marked improvement in your penmanship.”
Taylor felt himself flushing a bit. “Not mine, actually. I’d suffered, ah, something of a sprain in my wrist. Miss Julia Chinn wrote the dispatches for me, at my dictation.”
Jesup frowned slightly. “Chinn. Isn’t she Senator Johnson’s woman?”
“Wife, I believe, in reality if not in law,” corrected Scott. He gave both Jesup and Brown a quick, hard glance. “Shall we get to the point, gentlemen? We wouldn’t have invited Colonel Taylor here if we didn’t think he was trustworthy.”

Trustworthy of what? Zack wondered. But from the look Scott was now giving him, he realized he was about to find out.
“Here’s how it is, Colonel,” Scott continued. “I’m from Virginia, as you are. So’s Thomas Jesup. Our august commander”—a thumb indicated Brown—“on the other hand, is a Pennsylvania Quaker.”
“More of a New Yorker, really,” Brown said mildly, “although I was born in Pennsylvania. And I abandoned pacifism quite some time ago.”
Scott ignored him, his eyes still intent on Taylor. “Not a single New England abolitionist in the lot, you’ll notice. That said, all three of us think John Quincy Adams would make the best next president of the United States. Failing him, Andrew Jackson—yes, even me, despite my well-known feud with the man. But what’s most important is that all three of us think the election of Henry Clay, which now seems almost certain, is going to be a disaster. Not simply for the nation, but for the army in particular.”
Brown winced. Jesup was scowling openly.
For his part, Taylor was simply trying to keep from gaping openmouthed. Even by the standards of the U.S. Army, whose top officers politicked aggressively, this sort of blunt and open statement concerning current politics was almost unheard of. From any officer, at least, who didn’t expect to be relieved from duty.
Which—
Scott smiled crookedly. “Oh, I shan’t give the bastard the satisfaction of discharging me. The day it’s officially announced that Henry Clay will be the sixth president of the United States, I shall tender my resignation from the army.”
“So will I,” said Brown. “My health is poor, as it happens, so that gives me a graceful way to do it.” He gave Scott something of a sly glance. “Unlike what I suspect will be Winfield’s more flamboyant language.”
“The tactics Henry Clay is using to win the presidency are a stench in the nation’s nostrils,” stated Scott, “and I will not hesitate to say so publicly when the time comes. Leaving aside everything else, he’s recklessly using the army as if we were simply a card in his game. He knows perfectly well that the army is far too grossly understrength to be talking as if a victory over Arkansas is simply a matter of will and purpose.”
Jesup cleared his throat. “I’ll stay. They’d find me hard to replace, and they won’t care that much anyway.”
That was probably true, Taylor thought. Jesup had brought professional order and system into what had in earlier times been a disgracefully slapdash manner of keeping the military supplied. And since the quartermaster corps was outside the normal chain of command for line units, an ambitious officer like Gaines wouldn’t consider him a rival.
Not knowing what to say, Taylor kept his mouth shut. He looked back at Brown.
“You’ll be staying in service, yes?” asked the major general.
Zack nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“Good,” said Brown. He lifted the sheets. “These reports were excellent. What’s your assessment of our chances in a war with the Confederacy?”
“It depends, sir. If it were done right, there’s no question we would win. Despite the Confederacy’s considerable geographic advantage in a defensive war—which is what they’d be fighting, of course—the overall disparity in numbers is simply overwhelming. The United States has a population of about ten million people; the Confederacy, less than two hundred thousand. But it won’t be easy, it won’t be quick, and…”
He relaxed a bit. The rest of what he had to say would certainly bring no censure from the men in this room. “And, finally, it’s just absurd to think it can be done with an army the size ours has been since the demobilization after the war with England. We’ve got—what? Not much more than six thousand regular soldiers in the whole country?”
“About that,” agreed Brown. “Officially—the real numbers vary a bit—the bill passed by Congress in 1821 allows us five hundred and forty commissioned officers and slightly over five thousand, five hundred enlisted men. Divided into seven infantry and four artillery regiments.”
“Clay will call for an immediate expansion of the armed forces,” Jesup predicted.
Scott’s answering grimace was just short of a sneer. “Oh, splendid. Even in the war with Britain, it took a year and a half to build up to fifteen thousand men. By the end of the war, we had not more than thirty-five thousand regulars. Half of whom, throughout, did purely garrison duty. And that war was generally popular outside New England. This new war, if it begins, will be anathema in New England and popular nowhere except in some—not all—of the Southern states.”
Now the expression on his face was an outright sneer. “The same states of the Deep South, I remind you, whose contributions to the war against England were pitiful.”
Jesup grunted. “They didn’t even do much against the Creeks except plunder helpless villages. The real fighting, outside of regulars, was done by border state militias.”
It was a harsh indictment, but Taylor couldn’t find any real fault with it. Throughout the recent war, Jackson’s Tennessee militia had borne the brunt of the fighting in the southern theater; first against the Creeks and later the British. The Kentuckians had contributed a large number of soldiers also, although they’d generally produced mediocre officers. The rest of the South, outside of the many officers produced by Virginia, hadn’t done much. The Georgia militia, in particular, had been as notorious for its incapacity in the field against a real enemy as for its penchant for committing atrocities against noncombatants. Jackson had despised them and made no bones about it.
“And Clay won’t have the Tennessee militia as a southern anchor, this time around,” Jesup continued. “Not a chance. Not with the stance Jackson’s taken. He’s already starting to call it Henry Clay’s War. Usually with a string of adjectives attached, the mildest of which is ‘benighted.’ ”
Winfield Scott raised an eyebrow. “William Carroll’s the governor of Tennessee, though, Tom. Not Andrew Jackson—and they’re political enemies.”
Jesup waggled his hand. “Yes and no. There’s no personal animosity between them, and not really all that much in the way of real political issues in dispute. Their ‘enmity’ is mostly just a matter of old factional quarrels in Tennessee politics. Go back a few years, and they were close friends and allies. Who’s to say they can’t be again?”
“Yes, I agree,” said Brown. “Despite his reputation, Jackson’s perfectly capable of ending a feud if there’s no personal injury involved.”
“Even then!” snorted Scott. “He’s burying the hatchet with Thomas Hart Benton right now.”
Moving stiffly, Brown sat up straight in his chair and placed his left hand on the desk. His other hand remained in his lap, since he’d lost most of the use of his right arm after his stroke.
“There’s no chance at all that Governor Carroll will agree to let the Tennessee militia be used in any war against the Confederacy,” he said firmly. “Not this war, at any rate. And there’s no better chance, in my judgment, that the Kentucky militia will be available to Clay, either. The current governor, John Adair, served under Jackson at New Orleans. And both he and his successor, Joseph Desha, are members of the Relief Party. They’re Clay’s political enemies, not his friends.”
Taylor didn’t have the familiarity of the three generals in the room with the politics of the nation as a whole, but he did know Kentucky politics. So, finally, he ventured an opinion.
“I agree. And for sure and certain, Senator Johnson’s going to be against any such war. Leaving aside his political allegiance to Jackson, his two daughters are going to school in Arkansas, and his—ah—Julia Chinn is still residing there also. At least for the moment.”
Brown cocked his head. “She didn’t return to Kentucky?”
“No. That was her original plan, but…well…The girls are only twelve.”
He had to fight a little to keep a straight face. It’d have been more accurate to add going on thirteen, with their eyes already on two boys not all that much older.
“So, there it is,” stated Jesup. “A war fought with a regular army stripped to the bone, and without the Tennessee and Kentucky militias to provide the additional men we relied on in the southern theater against the Creeks and the British.”
Brown picked it up immediately. “Yes, there it is. So what’s your assessment, Colonel Taylor? And please add, if you would, your own recommendations.”
“Assume for the moment that you were in overall command,” chimed in Scott.
Taylor didn’t hesitate. He’d now spent months considering the problem. “Whatever else, avoid the obvious route. The Arkansas River valley is a trap that could easily turn into a death trap.”
He saw Scott and Brown exchange glances. Triumphant, in the case of Scott’s; acknowledging, in the case of Brown’s. Apparently he wasn’t the only one who’d been pondering the matter.
“Well fortified?” That came from Jesup.
“Arkansas Post is as well built a fort as any in North America, outside the coastal regions,” Taylor stated. “I wasn’t able to personally inspect the fortifications farther up the river, but from what I was able to determine, they’re possibly even more formidable.”
“I did inspect them, not long ago,” said Scott. “Your assessment is quite accurate, Colonel.”
Taylor nodded. “I’d simply establish a stronghold at the confluence to block the Confederacy’s access to the Mississippi. Then, launch a diversionary attack up the Red River—”
“How would you deal with the Great Raft?” Brown interrupted.
Taylor smiled. “With great difficulty, sir.”
A little laugh filled the room. “Still, with some patience and good logistics,” Taylor continued, “it’s not impossible. But I stress that this would be merely a diversion. Its main purpose would be to force the Confederates to maintain a considerable military force on their southern border. The Confederacy’s great advantage is geography; its great disadvantage, a small population from which to draw soldiers. We’d need to use the former, as best we could—however hard it might be—to place as great a strain as possible on the latter.”
The three generals looked at one another. “Makes sense to me,” said Jesup. Scott nodded.
Brown looked back at Taylor. “Please continue.”
“But the main attack would come from the north. A big army—very big, with lots of cavalry and a well-organized supply train—marching up the Missouri from St. Louis and then down onto the Indian lands of the Confederacy, following the Arkansas. The emphasis would be on using our potentially much superior cavalry in relatively open terrain, and placing pressure on the Cherokees and Creeks to sever their relations with the blacks in Arkansas. If we can succeed in doing so, we’ll then have Arkansas in a vise. Over time, by methods of siege and economic strangulation if nothing else, they’d have to surrender.”
“You’d not go directly against Driscol’s chiefdom?”
Taylor shook his head. “No, sir. The Indian nations in the trans-Arkansas region of the Confederacy are still not that well organized, not even the Cherokee, and there are already strains among them over the issue of slavery. Moreover, while they’re certainly brave enough, none of them can field a disciplined and well-trained professional army that could face U.S. regulars in the field. I cannot stress enough the need to stay away from major direct clashes with the Arkansans on their own terrain. That’ll be a bloodbath, sir. Even if we win—and I am not frankly sure we could at all, on their terrain, without a minimum of fifteen thousand men in the field—the casualties would produce an uproar in the country.”
“Explain,” Brown commanded.
Taylor shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Sir, if you’ll allow me to say so, the great danger is that the army will underestimate the Arkansas forces because of their color.”
“Jackson wouldn’t,” Scott said immediately. “The core of that army is the Iron Battalion. If he’s ever had anything to say about them other than praise, I’ve never heard it.”
“No, he probably wouldn’t,” Taylor agreed. He smiled then, for the first time since he’d entered the office. “But I think if there is one single thing we can be sure and certain of, it’s that Old Hickory is the very last man Henry Clay would ask to command an expedition against the Confederacy.”
Another laugh filled the room. Not a little one, this time.
Brown nodded. “Harrison’s likely to be put in command. By all accounts I’ve heard, he’s champing at the bit.”
Taylor thought about it for a moment. William Henry Harrison had resigned from the army in a huff in 1814, after a dispute with Secretary of War Armstrong, and had since then been engaged in a middling-successful career as a politician. He’d lost as many elections as he’d won, but he had just managed to get elected as one of the U.S. senators from Ohio. He was known to be a Clay supporter. What was more important was that, second only to Andrew Jackson, he was widely considered the nation’s greatest “Injun fighter” because of his victories over Tecumseh’s alliance at Tippecanoe and the Thames. If Clay offered to return him to the army as a major general and placed him in command of a war against the Confederacy, Harrison would most likely accept. He was an ambitious man, and he must by now have realized that his principal strength as a politician was his military reputation. Resigning from a Senate seat he’d not even warmed yet in order to answer a patriotic call to duty in a war against the Confederacy would position him nicely to succeed Clay in the White House.
Assuming he won the war, of course.
“What about General Gaines?” he asked. Zack raised the question diffidently, since he’d been very careful to keep a distance from the feud between Winfield Scott and Edmund Gaines that had, for years now, divided a good portion of the officer corps into two hostile camps. Still, it needed to be asked.
Brown shrugged. “With me and Winfield both resigning, Edmund will automatically become the next commander in chief. Unless Clay decides to supersede seniority altogether, which I think unlikely.”
“Not a chance,” stated Scott confidently. “Harrison wants the glory of a successful campaign, so he’ll not be interested. And with you and me both resigning—and I’ll make my reasons blunt and explicit, Jacob, even if you won’t—Clay will have enough problems with the remaining officers. If he alienates Gaines, he’ll have nothing.”
Again, Scott sneered. “Of course, Clay can rely on Gaines to wag his tail obligingly, no matter what nonsensical military results he demands.”
There was always that to be said for Winfield Scott. As vain and arrogant as the man could be, there was a genuine streak of integrity in him. More than a streak, actually. Jacob Brown had come into the army as a politician, and although he’d gained the respect of the military for his demonstrated courage and prowess as a soldier, he remained a politician. Scott wasn’t, and never had been. He was quite capable of resigning from the army on grounds of political principle, and stating them publicly.
Gaines, on the other hand…
Mentally, Zachary shook his head. He’d never taken sides in the long-running Scott–Gaines feud, since there’d been no practical reason to do so personally, and the causes of the feud were petty in any event. But if he had to choose between the two men, either as generals or simply as men—especially the latter—he had no doubt which way he’d go.
Yes, Gaines would wag his tail and do what his master bade him if the food bowl was filled.
“So let’s sum it, Colonel Taylor,” Scott said. “We’re looking at a war with John Calhoun as the secretary of war, Edmund Gaines sitting where I am now, Winfield out of the army entirely, and William Henry Harrison placed in command of the campaign against the Confederacy. Into this, you propose to recommend a campaign that ignores seizing Arkansas and humbling the negroes—which is the main purpose of the war from Calhoun’s viewpoint—in order to fight a long and protracted campaign against Indian tribes with which, were it not for their ties to Arkansas, the United States no longer has any real quarrel.”
Taylor took a deep breath. “Yes, sir. That’s what I recommend.”
The three generals in the room grinned.
Jesup spoke first. “Jacob, I told you so. By all means, promote this splendid officer.”
Brown chuckled. “Indeed I will. Zack, it’s within my power to promote you to full colonel. Beyond that, of course, I can’t go without authorization from Congress. If I could make you a brigadier, I would. What I can do also, however—which is more important than anything, if you’ll accept—is place you in command of all U.S. Army forces in Missouri. That’ll require you and your family to relocate to St. Louis, of course.”
While his mind worked on the matter as a whole, Taylor dealt with the latter issue. “That’s not a problem, sir. To be honest, I’d prefer moving the girls out of Louisiana. That’s not been good for their health. For the rest…”
He hesitated. Normally, of course, any officer would be delighted by such a promotion. But, although he was no expert on the workings of political infighting in Washington, Zachary Taylor was not stupid. For all intents and purposes—even if nothing was said directly—by accepting the promotion and the assignment he would be joining what amounted to a conspiracy against the man now almost certain to become the next president of the United States.
A most far-ranging and vast conspiracy, at that. One which, soon if not already, would have Andrew Jackson and John Quincy Adams involved in the cabal.
He looked at Scott. “If you’ll permit me the liberty, General, what do you plan to do upon your retirement?”
Scott smiled. “First, of course, I shall pay a visit to Senator Jackson. It’s time, I think, for he and I to end that old feud between us stemming from the Florida campaign. Second, I shall pay a visit upon John Quincy Adams to tender my respects. He’s a man I both like and admire. Thereafter…”
The smiled widened considerably. “I believe I shall try my hand at journalism. That William Cullen Bryant fellow has expressed an interest in continuing his reportage on the situation in the Confederacy. But he told me—I happened to run into him just the other day—that he could benefit from the advice of a military expert. And apparently several editors at several of the nation’s major journals have indicated a willingness to pay for it. Quite well, in fact.”
Taylor looked at Brown. The army’s commanding general shrugged. Most of the motion was in the left shoulder. The right barely moved at all. “My health really is very poor, Colonel. My doctors have been urging me for some time to relinquish the strains of military command. So I’ll simply return to private life in Brownville and resume my business affairs. Which I need to do, in any event, since I have some major debts I need to retire.”
He cleared his throat. “Of course, I retain certain connections in New York politics.”
Now Taylor looked at Jesup.
“I shall give you whatever support I can, Zack,” the quartermaster general stated firmly. “Rest assured of it.”
Much as it went against his cautious temperament, Zachary felt he had to say the heart of the thing out loud. “If I understand you correctly, General Brown, you fear that the coming war is likely to damage the U.S. Army.”
“Half wreck it, say better,” hissed Winfield Scott. “God damn Henry Clay.”
“And you want me to do what I can to salvage something from the disaster.”
“It really is too bad you can’t promote him to brigadier, Jacob,” mused Jesup.
“In essence, yes,” said Brown. “I realize it won’t be easy, Zachary. But if you can give us a good campaign in the north, I think”—he glanced around the room—“and we all think, that the damage can be repaired when the time comes.”
“Ah, General…Generals.” Zack shook his head. “There is no way—not if I were Napoleon or Alexander the Great—that I could defeat the Confederacy with a northern campaign unless it were properly mounted, equipped, and supplied, with enough men. None of which is going to be true.” He gave Jesup a quick apologetic glance. “Well, perhaps the supplies and equipment will be adequate.”
“They won’t even be that,” Jesup growled. “But I’ll give you whatever I can.”
Brown started to say something, but Scott waved him down. “It’s time for you to keep quiet, Jacob. Private citizen and behind-the-scenes politician, remember? Let me state what needs to be stated openly.”
Brown nodded and slumped back in his seat, rubbing his right arm. The general seemed very fatigued now.
“Here’s the truth, Colonel Zachary Taylor,” said Winfield Scott, looking at him directly. “Who cares if you beat the Confederacy? We have no legitimate quarrel with them in the first place. Jackson’s right. This war, if it comes—which now seems well-nigh certain—will be nothing but ‘Henry Clay’s War.’ A war launched by an unprincipled schemer and demagogue to satisfy his own personal ambitions; a war which, in terms of its goal and purpose, is nothing more sublime than John Calhoun’s rabid determination to prove to the country that a nigger is a nigger and fit only to be a slave.”
For a moment he looked as if he might spit on the floor. “Just fight us a good, clean, hard, and honest fight, Zack. That’s all. Best you can. So at least the real army will have something else to point to when Clay’s expedition comes to its catastrophe at Syracuse.”
Taylor frowned. There was no “Syracuse” in Arkansas.
Brown snorted. “Winfield, will you please stop showing off your classical education?” To Taylor, he said, “It’s a reference to the disaster the Athenians suffered in the Peloponnesian War when they followed the advice of Alcibiades and invaded Sicily.”
“Oh.”





Later that day, after he returned from the War Department, a message was delivered to Zack at his lodgings. From Thomas Hart Benton, inviting him to dinner at the Washington home of the senator from Missouri.
Taylor had never had more than the most casual encounters with Benton, but the senator greeted him as if they were old friends. Which was perhaps not that surprising, since, just before dinner began…
Andrew Jackson arrived. Ushered in through the rear entrance—to avoid being spotted, Zack assumed—but otherwise treated by Benton as if he were a long-lost brother.
The only term Zack could think of was “bizarre.” To the best of his knowledge, the last time Andrew Jackson and Thomas Hart Benton had met in person was on the front porch—later spilling into the lobby—of the City Hotel in Nashville. Being as it was one of the more legendary affrays of the frontier, Zack even knew the details. That encounter had begun with Jackson threatening Benton with a pistol, then being shot in the shoulder by Benton’s brother Jesse, then exchanging shots—all of which missed—with Benton himself, who, for his part, was then assailed by Jackson’s friend John Coffee, whose first shot missed and whose subsequent attempt at pistol whipping Benton was thwarted by the now-senator’s fall down a flight of stairs in the hotel.
Meanwhile, Jackson’s nephew Stockley Hays had wrestled Jesse Benton to the floor of the hotel, stabbing him repeatedly in the arm with a knife. Fortunately for Hays, when Jesse shot him at point-blank range with his second pistol, the gun misfired.
Half raw violence, half comic opera. And here they were, twelve years later, the two principals in the brawl—acting as if nothing untoward had ever happened between them!
Zack would have ascribed the weird situation to the old saw about politics making strange bedfellows, but…
Politically speaking, they weren’t strange bedfellows at all. The feud between Andrew Jackson and Thomas Hart Benton had always been purely personal, stemming from Benton’s anger at Jackson’s behavior when the general—as he then was—had served as William Carroll’s second in Carroll’s previous duel with Jesse Benton. There had never actually been any serious political quarrels among any of the men involved. Twelve years later, Jackson was a Tennessee senator, Carroll was the governor of the state, Benton was a Missouri senator—and all three of them detested Henry Clay.
So, Zack wasn’t surprised when, after dinner, the whiskey bottle was opened and talk immediately turned to his forthcoming assignment.
Which Jackson and Benton both knew about—in considerable detail—not more than eight hours after Taylor himself had first been informed.
Wide-ranging conspiracy, indeed. He almost felt sorry for Henry Clay.
“I’ll see to it you get the Missouri militia put under your command, Zack,” said Benton.
Taylor tried to stifle a wince but, obviously, was not entirely successful.
Jackson laughed. “The colonel’s got no use for any blasted volunteers, Tom! Can’t say I blame him much. Until they’d been tested and horsewhipped, no militia I ever seen—not even Tennessee’s—was worth the contents of a spittoon.”
“I’ve not had any great success with militia units in the field,” Taylor admitted cautiously.
But Benton just grinned. “Who does? Yeah, sure, it’s proper Republican doctrine, and we all swear by it.” He waved his half-empty whiskey glass at Jackson. “Him, too, you betchum. But nobody with any sense wants to fight a real war with anything except regulars. Still and all—”
He slurped some more whiskey. “The main thing is that I figure if you’re in charge of the militia, you can at least keep them out of mischief. Use ’em to garrison your supply depots, whatever. Otherwise—sure as sunrise if Harrison’s in charge—they’ll be sent down to Arkansas.”
When he set down the whiskey glass, his good cheer seemed to have vanished. “Here’s the thing, Zack,” the Missouri senator said quietly. “When all the dust settles, I figure Missouri will still have Arkansas to deal with on our southern border. And I’d just as soon the war didn’t leave the kind of memories behind that winds up with ten or twenty years of border raids, ambushes, and massacres of isolated settlements afterward. You understand what I mean?”
Taylor eyed him a bit warily. “Missouri’s a slave state, Senator.”
“I told you. Call me Tom.”
“Tom. No matter what I do, there’ll still be the problem of runaway slaves.”
Benton sneered. Jackson was more pungent.
“Fuck that,” he said forcibly. “That’s just a problem—and it ain’t that big a problem anyway. Problems can be negotiated. Put me and Patrick Driscol across from each other at a table, and within a day we’ll have a solution for it that won’t please anybody much but everybody can live with.”
Zack shifted his skeptical gaze to Jackson. “I feel obliged to remind you, Sena—ah, Andy—that John Calhoun wouldn’t agree with you. Neither would most big plantation owners in the South.”
“That’s because John Calhoun is a stinking liar and a man with a cesspool for a soul, and most slave-owners have the brains of rabbits.” The Tennessee senator half slammed his glass back onto the table next to him. Fortunately, it was empty by now.
“I’m one of the biggest slave-owners in Tennessee, Zack. So is Dick Johnson. You want to know why neither one of us is hollering and yelling about it? Because the plain and simple truth—any slave-owner knows this, if he’s willing to be honest about it—is that the only slaves that run away from a master who treats his slaves properly are the ones who are troublemakers anyway. Good riddance, frankly. If I catch one of my slaves running away—sure, it happens, from time to time—the first thing I do is have him whipped. On general principles. But the second thing I do—always—is sell him, because I don’t want him around. And if he makes his escape to Arkansas, I just shrug it off. Let Driscol deal with the shiftless bastard if he can.”
Taylor’s family were major slave-owners in Kentucky. And…
Well, Jackson was right. If a plantation was managed properly, with the slaves decently housed and fed and the overseers kept on a short leash, most slaves didn’t run away. And the ones who did, sure enough, were usually a problem in any case.
Still…
“Calhoun’s not likely to agree with that, Andy, no matter what the evidence.”
Jackson’s glare was a genuine marvel to behold. Given that it wasn’t aimed at Zack, at least. He’d hate to be on the receiving end of the thing.
“I told you,” Jackson snarled. “Calhoun’s a heathen; I don’t care how many times he goes to church and invokes the name of the Almighty. Calhoun doesn’t care about runaway slaves any more than I do. What he does care about is his pagan notion that slavery is a positive good. Which it ain’t, as any man with any sense can plainly see. It’s an economic necessity for the republic, that’s all it is. So we keep it.”
He held out his glass to Benton for a refill. “Who knows?” Jackson continued, after taking a sip. “Maybe Sam Houston’s right, and maybe someday we’ll give it up finally. But in the meantime we’ve got it—and Calhoun is bound and determined to lock slavery in forever. And that’s why he’s demanding a war. If a bunch of niggers out there in Arkansas can build a country of their own—whipping white men in the bargain, in a fair fight—then what happens to his heathen idolatry?”
Taylor hesitated. Jackson was being very friendly, but…
Mentally, he shrugged. This was another thing that just had to be said out loud. “I feel a need to point out to you, Andy, that if negroes can build a reasonable country of their own—and defend it—then….”
But Jackson simply grinned. “Yeah, sure. Then what happens to my point of view?” He waved the glass about. “Or Tom’s. Or yours, for that matter.”
Cheerful as could be, the Tennessee senator took another sip from his whiskey. “I’m not worried about it, though, because I think you got a better chance—lot better chance—of filling an inside straight than seeing negroes build a country that’s worth anything. Doesn’t mean they can’t defend it, mind you. Give ’em good leadership, and they make plenty good soldiers. They proved that in New Orleans, and they’re proving it again now. But all the rest? A stable republic, prosperity, learning, and education? No, I don’t think so.”
He gave Zack a disconcertingly direct stare. “From the way you’re fidgeting a little, I take it you don’t agree?”
Zachary had been nursing his own whiskey, too nervous in such company to be relaxed enough to match Jackson’s and Benton’s pace. Now he shrugged, and downed his glass in one gulp.
“To be honest, Andy, I don’t know. A few months ago, I’d have agreed with you without even thinking about it. But I’ve been to Arkansas myself recently. And…I just don’t know any more. Some of those black people are right impressive. And that’s just the way it is.”
Jackson didn’t argue the matter. Instead, he maintained that calm, level, blue-eyed stare while he finished his whiskey. Not by downing it, just with a steady even sip.
When he was done, he set down the glass and grinned again.
“Well, maybe that’s true. If it is, though, we’re in trouble. First, because we’ll have to listen to Sam Houston crowing ‘I told you so’ till we’re ready to strangle him. What’s worse is that all three of us—me for sure—are likely to have some fast talking to do in the afterlife.”
So, what had been perhaps the most peculiar day in Zachary Taylor’s life ended with a laugh. And he was able to tell himself, as he half staggered his way back to his lodgings, that at least he’d joined a cabal that drank whiskey instead of wine. Even John Quincy Adams, apparently, these days. And wasn’t that another marvel?