A Sinister Splendor

by Mike Blakely

  Taylor raised his eyebrows. “But you still have to ride back to the settlements to gather your recruits.”

  “I stand behind my claim. These men ride hard.”

  General Zachary Taylor could no longer hold the smile back from his face. “I ask that you and your men enlist as privates. Just a formality for payroll purposes. You can wear your civilian attire and your title will remain that of captain.”

  Walker bowed slightly in acceptance of the offer.

  “Captain Bliss will write your orders and provide you with a payroll for your men. I am most pleased to welcome you into the United States Army of Observation.” He stopped and offered his hand.

  “Honored to serve, sir.” Walker shook his hand with some vigor.

  Taylor heard hoofbeats down the beach and looked up to see a team of four horses pulling an 1841 model twelve-pound howitzer at a gallop. A gunner rode atop each of the horses in the team, while other artillerymen rode on the limbers, caissons, or saddle horses. A few of the men carried ramrods or sponges like flagstaffs.

  “Ah, it appears we will observe a gunnery drill by the flying artillery.”

  “Is that Major Ringgold?” Walker asked.

  “That’s him. The well-traveled author.” Taylor thought of himself serving in various frontier outposts while Ringgold dined with foreign dignitaries from France to Prussia. The general stood shoulder to shoulder with the Texas Ranger and watched the gunner rein the team to a stop. Men leaped from saddles to sand. The gun was quickly unhitched from the limber.

  “With spherical case shot, load!” shouted Ringgold.

  “To your posts!” a sergeant ordered.

  As men scrambled to their positions around the cannon, Ringgold yelled, “Load by detail! Load!”

  A gunner checked the vent hole of the weapon with a slender steel pick.

  “Sponge!” shouted the gunnery sergeant.

  A gunner with a wet sponge on the end of a pole swabbed the inside of the barrel to remove any fouling or embers from the previous shot.

  “Load spherical case shot!” the sergeant ordered.

  Taylor watched as a man holding the twelve-pound load in both hands slid it into the muzzle.

  “Ram!”

  A soldier with a ramrod stepped forward and shoved the load all the way down to the breech of the gun, while another used the steel pick to puncture the seal on the cartridge down the vent hole. Taylor nodded in approval of the way the men moved in crisp maneuvers that rivaled a ballet.

  Ringgold moved in to aim the gun at some target on the sandy bluff a half mile away. He motioned for the gunners to move the muzzle left by grabbing the trail spike and turning the carriage wheels in opposite directions while he turned the elevating screw under the breech to lift the muzzle higher.

  “Prime!” the sergeant shouted.

  A private inserted the friction primer into the vent hole and carefully uncoiled the long lanyard attached to the primer.

  “Ready! Fire!”

  The cannon roared as it spewed smoke and sparks and wheeled two feet backwards in the deep sand. A moment later its load of spherical shot case exploded just above the bluff, its shrapnel kicking up puffs of loose soil.

  “Limber!” Ringgold ordered.

  In seconds the six-pounder was hitched behind the team. The artillerymen mounted their horses and the detachment went charging back down the beach whence it had come, to set up for another practice shot.

  “So that’s Ringgold’s famous flying artillery,” Walker said.

  Taylor nodded. “Quite impressive at drill, no?”

  “Yes, sir. But what do you think of their combat potential?”

  Taylor smirked. “Too much flying and not enough artillery, I suspect. But … we shall see, Captain Walker. We shall see.”

  President

  JAMES K. POLK

  Washington, DC

  November 2, 1845

  It was just another Sunday, Polk told himself as he stepped out of the President’s Mansion and into the cold, damp morning. Sheltered overhead by the north portico, he stood alone and watched the rain. He turned up the collar of his woolen coat and pulled the silk top hat firmly down over his prominent brow. He saw the presidential carriage turn down the drive toward the mansion.

  He could think of no reason to avoid attending church simply because of the inclement weather—or the fact that he had been born exactly half a century ago on this date. A mere five decades of his trifling existence on earth scarcely warranted an absence from worship services. Let the glory be to God Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth. Polk was merely a president, creator of controversy and debt.

  The black carriage, pulled by two black horses, rattled up under the porte cochere and stopped. The driver sat on his seat, exposed to the elements, wrapped in his raincoat. He nodded at the president and Polk forced a smile as he touched his hat brim. He turned back toward the door of the mansion. Where was Knox? Why couldn’t people be prompt? He was forever waiting for someone to show up on time. Cabinet members, senators, foreign dignitaries. His personal secretary, Colonel J. Knox Walker, was more reliable than most, but Polk now found himself waiting on him, too.

  Knox burst from the door as if aware of the president’s frustration. “My apologies, Mr. President. I couldn’t find my gloves.”

  “Precisely the reason God gave us pockets.”

  “Yes, sir. By the way, Mr. President, many happy returns on your birthday.”

  “Thank you, Knox. Come along now, we must hasten our pace or we will arrive late for church and have to sit down front.” Polk charged forward and climbed into the carriage. “Take us to the Foundry church,” he said to the driver, before ducking his head into the enclosed cab.

  Knox climbed in behind him and sat on the seat across from him. “Sir, don’t you usually attend the Presbyterian church?”

  The coach lurched forward, the horses excited by the brisk climate.

  “Mrs. Polk is Presbyterian. I am a Methodist.”

  “I am aware of that, sir.”

  “Mrs. Polk did not care to step out into the rain on this fine day, so I am going to attend the Methodist services at the Foundry church for a change.”

  Knox, a fellow Tennessean, smiled at him. “Of course. Very well. Sir, while we have a moment, I wanted to remind you of Secretary Buchanan’s scheduled meeting with you tomorrow to discuss the diplomatic mission to Spain…”

  Polk nodded as his mind drifted. Knox was forever reminding him of things. The mission to Spain was among the least of his worries on this day. Weightier concerns burdened his thoughts. In fact, Secretary of State James Buchanan, whose name Knox had just uttered, was among them.

  One might think that a man would find utmost satisfaction in serving as secretary of state for four years. Few loftier positions existed in government. But Buchanan had recently become enchanted with the idea of being nominated for the vacant seat on the Supreme Court.

  “I would rather be chief justice of the Supreme Court someday than to be president of the United States,” Buchanan had said in a private meeting on the matter.

  Polk cared very little for what Buchanan would “rather be,” but he did not say so out loud.

  “You know I rely upon you,” he replied, instead. “I need you in my cabinet. There is much to be done.”

  Buchanan had resigned himself to his role as secretary of state, but Polk would often wonder if he should not have encouraged Buchanan to seek the seat on the bench. Buchanan often disagreed with him, notably on the issue of the tariff, and especially on the Oregon question.

  “We must not take the hard line with Great Britain over the Oregon boundary,” Buchanan had insisted in a recent cabinet meeting. “Heaven forbid we find ourselves at war with both Britain and Mexico!”

  “We will do what is right on both fronts,” Polk had argued. “One issue has absolutely nothing to do with the other. We must not give Great Britain the slightest hint that we fear fighting two wars at once!”


  Polk had the memory of General Jackson behind him on this. In his last letter to Polk before his death, Jackson had written, “War is a blessing compared with national degradation. To prevent war with England, a bold and undaunted front must be exposed. England with all her boast dare not go to war.”

  Knox was still going on about the challenge of finding an able ambassador to Spain. Polk tried to look out at Lafayette Park through the window, only to find the glass fogged over. His thoughts drifted to the problems with Mexico.

  Mexico had warned for a decade that if the United States were to annex the Republic of Texas as a new American state, she would consider such a move an act of war. President Herrera had broken off diplomatic relations with the United States soon after the annexation was approved by Congress. Polk had been attempting to reestablish relations to avoid a war—or at least to foster the appearance of avoiding war. But the anger in Mexico toward both Texas and the United States was rooted deep in years of border warfare.

  It was well that he had become president. Who but James K. Polk could be trusted to carry out the dream of his departed mentor, the great General Jackson? Texas had been a secret obsession of Jackson’s for decades. It was Old Hickory who had quietly urged Sam Houston down to Texas to create an independent republic that would one day become a state. That day had come. General Sam Houston was now a Texas hero and a new U.S. senator. He had done his job and garnered his reward.

  Polk saw no reason to complicate the issue. Sam Houston had defeated President Santa Anna at the Battle of San Jacinto a decade ago, capturing the Mexican head of state as he attempted to flee the battleground. Santa Anna—the captured president of Mexico—had signed the Treaties of Velasco, establishing the Rio Grande del Norte as the border between Mexico and the new Republic of Texas. To the victors go the spoils. The Del Norte, as Polk preferred to call the river, was the border. Period. Texas was now part of the United States. Polk would defend that border until the last foot soldier fell.

  But that would only be the beginning. Vast opportunities beckoned here. Nueva Mexico. Alta California. The place names rang in Polk’s dreams. The map of America he saw in his mind extended all the way to the Pacific Ocean. If Mexico could be provoked into a conflict, justification could be found for an all-out offensive war. Reparations were already due. American citizens had been mistreated in Mexico—robbed and murdered without recourse.

  Examples were manifest. Polk used two of the more extreme ones when defending the issue of indemnification. In one, an American investor had bought over half a million dollars’ worth of fine port and shipped it to Mexico for sale. When the shipment arrived in Veracruz, harbor authorities seized it. The entire shipment simply disappeared, and the investor was never compensated or allowed a court hearing in Mexico.

  In one of the worst examples Polk knew of, an American ship captain—owner of a sailing vessel and employer of his own American crew—won a contract to transport Mexican troops up and down the Gulf Coast. One day, the Mexican soldiers murdered the captain, threw his body overboard, and impressed his crew into service without pay for months. Again the Mexican courts offered no justice.

  Mexico clearly owed huge settlements to the United States for these abuses, Polk mused. Had not France invaded Veracruz in 1838 for the same reason? And yet the Mexican treasury held no money with which to pay reparations. So Mexico would pay with land—her northern frontier, to which she clung ever so tenuously. Mexico City could not protect it.

  Polk recalled that General Jackson had warned for years against foreign powers grabbing California and New Mexico. What empire would not covet the harbor at San Francisco, the silver mines and trade center at Santa Fe? It was known that England, France, and Spain wanted Mexico’s northern borderland; it was suspected that Holland and Portugal might have fanciful designs upon it, as well. Even the Russians up the coast in frozen Alaska had to desire a more temperate port.

  Why shouldn’t America snatch the prize before some other nation did? No foreign power in possession of that frontier could be trusted to remain friendly to the United States. The survival of the republic depended upon seizing it! If there was a way to add New Mexico and California to the map, Polk would pursue it. He had been trying, secretly, to purchase the region from Mexico. His envoys had offered twenty million dollars, but he was willing to pay as much as sixty million. He knew President Herrera wanted and needed the money but feared the political backlash he would suffer for selling.

  No matter. If Mexico refused to sell, war could be provoked. All that was required was to order General Zachary Taylor southward to the Rio Grande del Norte.

  Polk felt the coach come to a stop and heard Knox rambling on about the vacancy at the Spanish Embassy. “… and I’m certain Mr. Buchanan will present a list of capable candidates for the mission.” His secretary scrambled out to hold the carriage door open.

  “Thank you for the briefing, Knox.” Polk stepped down from the vehicle and onto Sixteenth Street. “I don’t suppose listening to a briefing on the day of rest would incur too much wrath from the Almighty.” He glanced up through the fat raindrops at the cut stone facade of the church—its carved masonry and stained glass.

  Entering the vestibule, he hung up his hat and coat. He and Knox found seats in the back row just in time for the service to begin. He soon realized how much he missed the Methodist rituals. The familiarity of the invocation served as a fitting birthday gift to him on this, the fiftieth anniversary of his first breath. A faint smile lifted a corner of his mouth as he remembered Sarah’s wry comment to him this morning.

  “So, Mr. President, how does it feel to be entering your sixth decade?”

  “My dear,” he had replied, “you make me sound even older than I am.”

  She had laughed. “You must take solace in the fact that you are the youngest president ever elected.”

  It was well that Sarah had a keen sense of humor. Her wit compensated for the fact that he possessed almost none whatsoever.

  The cavernous sanctuary rang with comforting incantations that could not, however, compete with the burdens of the presidency. Polk went on musing over Oregon, Texas, the tariff, Mexico, even that trifling mission to Spain … Alta California … Nuevo Mexico …

  When his mind snapped back to the service, he heard the pastor reading from the Acts of the Apostles: “Because He hath appointed a day, in which He will judge the world in righteousness by the man whom He hath ordained; whereof He hath given assurance unto all men, in that He hath raised him from the dead.”

  “Assurance unto all men,” Polk thought. Yes, this is what he needed to hear. He would do what was right by the laws of God. God had raised Christ from the dead as a sign of assurance. Of this, Polk had no doubts.

  But all this talk of rising from the dead only reminded him of his own mortality. He was fifty years old today. In another fifty he would be sleeping with the generations which had gone before him. The vanities of this world’s honors would profit him little half a century hence.

  Like a thunderclap the epiphany hit him. Sand through the hourglass fell without pity. He had said from the beginning that he would not run for reelection and he had meant it. He would have only four years to accomplish his goals. Months of his presidency had passed and he had yet achieved very little. In this, he found a new resolve. “Who is James K. Polk?” the citizens had asked. He would show them. It was time for him to start putting his house in order.

  Private

  JOHN RILEY

  Corpus Christi, Texas

  December 7, 1845

  Riley knew now that he should have ignored the recruiter’s promises at Fort Mackinac and heeded the warnings of his former employer, Charles O’Malley. It had been a year since the presidential election. A year since war fever had infected Riley’s heart. A year since his hatred of the bloody British had driven him to enlist in the U.S. Army.

  “Fifty-four forty or fight,” Riley muttered under his breath as he trudged through the sleet
toward the mesquite brush in search of firewood. He had no idea what the latitude was here on the wretched Texas coast, but it was a far cry south of fifty-four forty.

  Soon after Riley enlisted, President Polk had backed down from that campaign threat and had begun to work with the Brits to find a compromise border line. But by then it was too late. Riley was on the muster rolls. Soon, Company K was ordered to vacate Fort Mackinac and journey south to join the rest of the Fifth Infantry on the wild shores of Texas. As O’Malley had warned, the Fifth would not be taking up arms against the British but against the Mexicans. Fellow Catholics. This did little to assuage the enmity that Private Riley felt for the pompous, Protestant, English oppressors his people had hated since before he was born.

  Still, he was a soldier and would do his duty. At least, this is what he kept telling himself he would do. But the U.S. Army did not make this an easy task for an immigrant soldier.

  “Oh, you’ll make rank quick enough,” the recruiter had told him. “A man with your gunnery experience? You’ll transfer to artillery and make sergeant major again in no time.”

  He wondered now if that recruiter had known just how big of a lie he had spoken. It was obvious that immigrants in the U.S. Army had almost no chance of earning a promotion.

  Riley rubbed his hands together for warmth and strode on toward the mesquite. He had not expected such bitter cold this far south in Texas. Apparently the army had not, either, for it had failed to provide decent coats and blankets, and the canvas tents had not arrived to replace the flimsy summer enclosures of deteriorating muslin.

  Down here on this lost coast, he could sense the indifference of the faraway bureaucrats. The army was going to conquer balmy Mexico, no? Why would they need blankets or canvas? The soldiers here at the smuggler’s outpost called Kinney’s Ranch would just have to endure these icy blasts from the northwest. The Texans here called the storms “blue northers.” They barreled down from the arctic on enormous clouds ranging from gray to blue to purple, laden with sleet, freezing rain, and whistling winds.