by Eric Flint
It hadn't been all show, either. Very little of it, in fact. Allowing for his constant absences as the administration's special commissioner for Indian affairs, Houston had proved to be something of a model husband. He treated Maria Hester exceedingly well; she, in turn, doted on the man. And, thankfully, Houston's notorious womanizing had vanished entirely after his marriage. There'd been not a trace of scandal, thereafter.
His steadily worsening affection for whiskey, which had become a growing concern for the president, was something that Houston kept away from his wife. However much whiskey he guzzled in the nation's taverns-that, too, had become something of a legend-he did not do the same at home. He drank little, as a rule, in his wife's presence; was invariably a cheerful rather than a nasty drunk, on the few occasions when he did; and quit altogether after his son was born.
Even Houston's stubborn insistence on naming the child Andrew Jackson Houston hadn't caused much in the way of family tension. Monroe had made no formal objection of any kind, whatever he might have said in private. In any event, the president was far too shrewd a politician not to use the occasion to defuse the tensions with Jackson that had begun to build. As political tensions always did around Jackson, the man being what he was.
So, despite Houston's faults-and which man had no faults? Adams asked himself; certainly not he-the president liked his son-in-law. So did John Quincy Adams, for that matter, and he was not a man given to many personal likings.
Adams glanced at the general sitting in the chair next to him. So, for that matter, did Winfield Scott. At least, once he'd realized that Houston's resignation from the army and subsequent preoccupation with Indian affairs meant that he was no longer a rival in the military.
Yes, everybody liked Sam Houston. You could not have found a man in the United States who would tell you otherwise. Until they finally discovered that, beneath the good-looking and boyishly cheerful exterior, there lurked the brain and the heart of a Machiavellian monster.
A few months after his marriage, all of Houston's scheming and deal-making had come to fruition later that year with the Treaty of Oothcaloga.
The Confederacy of the Arkansas had been born that day. At first, the great migration of the Cherokees and the Creeks that followed had been hailed across the nation as a stroke of political genius on the part of the Monroe administration. By none more loudly than Andrew Jackson, of course, who had by then solidified his position as the champion of the western settlers. But even Calhoun had grudgingly indicated his approval.
For that one brief moment in time, the so-called Era of Good Feelings had seemed established for eternity. But, in hindsight, it had only been the crest of a wave. On January 13, 1820-almost five years to the day after he and his Iron Battalion had broken the British at the Battle of the Mississippi-Patrick Driscol and those same black artillerymen routed the Louisiana militia in what had since come to be called the Battle of Algiers. The four years that followed had been a steadily darkening political nightmare.
Houston was blamed for that, too, nowadays, by many people. His diplomacy had defused the crisis, long enough to allow Driscol and his followers to leave New Orleans and migrate to the new Confederacy. So, a full-scale war had been averted.
But John Calhoun had never forgiven the Monroe administration for the settlement Houston engineered, and Monroe's approval of it. Servile insurrections should be crushed and their survivors mercilessly scourged, he argued, not allowed to flee unscathed-and never mind that the "servile insurrection" had actually been the work of freedmen defending their legal rights against local overlords.
To John Calhoun and his followers, a nigger was a nigger. Rightless by nature, legalistic twaddles be damned. The black race was fit only to hew wood and draw water for those who were their superiors.
A few months after the Algiers Incident, Calhoun resigned his post as secretary of war in order to run for senator from South Carolina. He won the election, very handily, and had been a thorn in the side of the administration since. It had been Calhoun who led the charge in Congress to pass the Freedmen Exclusion Act, which would have required all freedmen to leave the United States within a year of manumission. Monroe had vetoed the bill on the obvious ground that it was a gross violation of states' rights, whereupon Calhoun had given his open support to freedmen exclusion legislation passed by various states and municipalities, and his tacit blessing to more savage and informal methods of exclusion.
A duel had almost resulted, then, when Sam Houston publicly labeled him-Adams could not but smile, whenever he thought of the brash youngster's handy way with words-"a tsarist, a terror-monger, and a toad. Nay, say better-a toadstool. A toad can at least hop about. Calhoun is a fungus on the nation's flank."
"What are you so cheerful about, John?" demanded Monroe.
Delicate ground, indeed. Adams stifled the smile.
"Ah, nothing, Mr. President. Just a stray thought that happened to cross my mind."
The look Monroe gave him was exceedingly skeptical. "Stray thought" and "John Quincy Adams" were not phrases that could often be found together. Anywhere within shouting distance, in fact. Disliked as he might be in many quarters, no one thought Adams's brain was given to loose functioning-and he was generally considered the best-read man in America.
But Monroe let it drop. Instead, he turned his gaze to Scott.
"What's your military assessment, General?"
Scott shrugged. "The fortifications that Driscol's built in the Ozarks and the Ouachitas pose no threat to the United States, Mr. President. They're purely defensive works, and too far-much too far-from the Mississippi to pose any threat to our commerce."
Monroe nodded. "Yes, I understand that." Perhaps a bit acerbically: "I have some military experience myself, you may recall. What I meant was-let's be frank, shall we?-what threat do they pose to our army in the event the United States goes to war with the Confederacy? Or, to put it more bluntly still, if we invade Arkansas?"
Scott looked out the window for a moment. "Assuming Driscol's in command? Which, of course, he would be, if he's still alive when-if-that time comes." He paused for another moment. "Let me put it this way, Mr. President. Were you, or anyone, to ask me to command such an expedition, I would strongly-very strongly-urge that an alternative route of attack be chosen."
" What alternative route, Winfield?" Adams demanded. It was not so much a question as a statement-and a caustically posed one, at that. If the president was known for his affable manners, the secretary of state was not.
Adams heaved himself out of his chair and went to another window than the one Monroe had been looking out earlier. The same window, in fact, that had been the focus of Scott's examination. That window allowed a view to the west.
Once there, Adams stabbed a finger at the land beyond. "Attacking the Confederacy from the south means marching through Texas. That means a war with Mexico, and probably Spain. An unprovoked war with Mexico-and no one except southern slave-owners would accept the premises for such a war as a provocation suitable for a casus belli-runs the risk of embroiling the European powers. The last thing we need. Not even Jackson would support that, as much as he hates the Dons."
He shifted his finger slightly to the north and jabbed it again. "The only other alternative is coming at the Confederacy from the north. That would be diplomatically feasible, but as a military proposition:"
He shifted his gaze back into the room, to land on Scott. "You're the expert, Winfield. What's your opinion?"
The general grimaced. "The logistics would be a nightmare. You'd have to move the troops down the Ohio to the juncture with the Mississippi. Then-"
"Passing by free states as you went, each and every one of which will be opposed to the expedition," Monroe injected. "They have no quarrel with the Confederacy. Rather the opposite, since many of them are happy to be getting rid of their own freedmen-and without the Confederacy, they can't."
Scott's grimace had never quite left his face, and now it returned wi
th a vengeance. "Yes, I understand that, Mr. President. You'd have to bivouac on the south bank of the Ohio and resupply in Kentucky ports."
The president wasn't about to let up. "I remind you that Richard Johnson keeps getting reelected by the citizens of Kentucky, General. What's he likely to say about that?"
"He'd pitch a fit," Adams agreed. "There's not only the matter of his personal attitudes to be considered, either. Senator from Kentucky or not, living openly with a black woman or not, don't forget he's also the darling of the northeast workingmen-and they're even happier with the freedmen exclusion laws than Calhoun is. Except, not being slave-owners, they don't care a fig about the problem of runaway slaves. Let the darkies escape to Arkansas, and good riddance-and for sure and certain, don't expect them to support a war to get them back. Much less volunteer to fight in it."
"I wasn't advocating such an expedition, Mr. President, Secretary of State. Personally, I think it'd be sheer folly. But you asked my military opinion, and I'm simply trying to give it to you."
"Of course, General." Monroe's courtesy was back in full force. "Neither I nor the secretary meant any of our-ah, perhaps impatient view of the matter-to be inflicted upon you."
"Yes," Adams grunted. "My apologies, Winfield. I didn't mean to suggest you were a party to Calhoun's madness. Please continue."
Scott nodded. "It would help a great deal, Mr. President, if I had a map to work from. Is there one at hand?"
"I can have one brought, certainly." The president began to rise, but Adams waved him down. "Please! The proprieties must be maintained. The best maps are in my office, anyway. I'll get one for us. Just the trans-Mississippi region, Winfield?"
"Yes, that should do."
Adams was at the door to the president's office. "This will take a moment. There's no point sending a servant. He'll just waste time not finding it and then waste still more time trying to think up an excuse."
It was said rather sarcastically. Adams said many things rather sarcastically. It was a habit his wife chided him about. As did a veritable legion of other people, including Adams himself. He tried to restrain the habit, but:
Alas. John Quincy Adams had many virtues. Even he would allow that to be true, as relentlessly self-critical as he was. But "suffering fools gladly" was not and never would be one of them.
Still, he thought God would forgive him that sin when the time came. As sins went, it was rather a small one, after all. Even Jesus, if you studied the New Testament from the proper angle, suffered from it to a degree.
By the time Adams returned to the president's office, Monroe had cleared his desk of all the materials on it. Adams, with Scott assisting, spread the large map across the surface.
"Good. This will make it all much clearer," Scott said. "Let's begin here, at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi."
A long, powerful-looking finger pinned the spot, then slid to the north. "Then, up the Mississippi to St. Louis. At St. Louis-upstream again, you'll notice-you move along the Missouri, skirting the Ozarks to the south. Then:"
He looked up, giving the other two men a sardonic glance. "Then: what? "
"There's the Grand River," Adams suggested, but with no great force. "Eventually."
"Ah, yes, the Grand. Also called the Neosho, I believe. Hard to tell from this map, but it doesn't really look all that grand, does it? And do please note that you have to traverse a considerable distance before you can reach any headwaters of the Arkansas. By now, you've gone hundreds of miles upstream, followed by a land march with no means of supplying your troops except with horses and wagons. That's difficult even without enemy resistance being encountered-and we're bound to encounter some. From the indigenes, first-those are the Osage, you know, a fierce tribe-even before we come into Cherokee territory."
He straightened. "I won't say it can't be done. It could, certainly, with the expenditure of enough time, effort, and-most of all-money. There's simply no way around it, Mr. President, Mr. Secretary. West of the Mississippi, the main rivers all run west to east, or northwest to southeast. There is no real help there for an army large enough to do the job that tries to approach the Confederacy from the north."
Monroe pushed aside a portion of the map and sat down heavily in his chair. "I understand. The gist of it is that there is no practical alternative, unless one is prepared to wage a long and costly war, to launching a major expedition against the Indian Confederacy except up the Arkansas River valley."
"Yes, sir. The Red River can't serve, not with at least a hundred and fifty miles of it clogged up with fallen trees. The Great Raft, they call it."
"And Driscol, being a very experienced soldier, knows that perfectly well."
"Yes, sir."
"So he designed his fortifications and lines of defense-his version of Wellington's Lines of Torres Vedras in the Peninsular War-in such a way as to channel any attacker up the river."
"Yes, sir. His lines are brilliantly designed, too. Far better than I would have thought, to be honest. I think he must be getting advice from somewhere. Driscol was a sergeant in Napoleon's army, not an officer. And the only sight he would have ever gotten of Wellington's defenses would have been from a distance. Even with his huge army, Massena never made any serious attempt on Torres Vedras."
"How do you mean, 'brilliantly designed'?" asked Adams.
The general turned to face him. "Consider the problem he faces. Even with the recent flood of immigrants coming from the freedmen communities, added to the constant influx of runaway slaves and the settlers sponsored by the American Colonization Society, there still can't be more than some tens of thousands of negroes in that Arkansas Chiefdom, as the Confederates call their respective states. Certainly not more than eighty thousand, I shouldn't think. Add to that perhaps ten thousand whites by now, all told."
" That many?" The president's eyebrows were lifted. "Whites, I mean. I wouldn't have thought:"
He glanced at Adams. "Again, a smile. Why?"
Adams had also resumed his seat. Now he leaned his short, heavy frame back into it. "I can't say I'm surprised, Mr. President. Not every white man in America shares Calhoun's attitudes."
Nor do most of them come from Virginia gentry, as you do. But he left that unsaid, of course. "There are the missionaries, first of all. A very heavy presence of Quakers, naturally, and they tend to move in entire families. Then, a fair number-call it a heavy sprinkling-of young radicals. Abolitionists, they're starting to call themselves."
Monroe made a face. For all the president's humane nature, which Adams would be the first to allow, the man was still the product of his upbringing. Though a slave-owner himself, Monroe-like his close friends and predecessors Thomas Jefferson and James Madison-considered the institution of slavery problematic at best, and probably an outright evil. Still, any drastic and rapid abolition of slavery was considered impossible, and the attempt to do it, economically and socially disastrous.
Adams, a New Englander, thought it was probably impossible also, for political reasons. But he would have accepted the economic and social disasters abolition might bring, for the sake of the greater political disaster they would avert. More and more, he was becoming convinced that if slavery festered for too long, it would produce, in the end, one of the most horrible episodes of bloodshed any nation had ever endured. And would steadily undermine the foundations of the republic before it got there.
But there was no point reopening that debate here and now, so Adams continued to the next point.
"I imagine that most of the whites there, however, are simply settlers. No different, really, from any western settlers. Scots-Irish in the main, of course."
"I'd think they'd bridle at being ruled by blacks," Monroe said.
The president was a very perceptive man, so the moment those words were spoken, his gaze moved to Scott. "And now you're smiling, General. Why?"
Scott coughed into his fist as a way of suppressing his amusement. "You have to be there to understand the thing,
Mr. President. Yes, it's true that most of the chiefs-they've adopted Cherokee terminology-are negroes. Still, they're elected-and whites can vote also. They can run for office, as well, and a disproportionate number of them get elected. Even the negroes in Arkansas are more likely to vote for a white man, all other things being equal.
"What's most important, however, is that the principal chief-that's their equivalent of what we'd call the governor of the state-is Patrick Driscol. You can't even say he gets elected in a landslide, since nobody ever runs against him."
He coughed again, into a large fist. "They don't call him that, though, except the Cherokees and Creeks who live in the province. Of whom, by the way, there are perhaps another five thousand. 'Principal chief,' I mean. I was quite entertained during the weeks I was there, I assure you, to discover that every white or black man I encountered refers to Patrick Driscol as the Laird of Arkansas."
The fist couldn't possibly suppress the grin that came then. "Not to his face, of course."
Adams smiled. Monroe, who knew Driscol personally, laughed aloud. "I can imagine not!"
After the moment's humor was gone, Scott said: "Perhaps you remember Driscol's young soldier, who accompanied him everywhere he went during the war. McParland? The young deserter whose faked execution I had Driscol stage, shortly before the Battle of the Chippewa?"
Monroe frowned slightly, dredging his memory. "Oh, yes. I remember him now. A country boy."
Scott nodded. "Yes. From a poor family in upstate New York. Except none of them live in New York, any longer. The entire family-uncles, aunts, cousins, and all-pulled up stakes and moved to Arkansas several years ago. And they're no longer poor, either. They're rather prosperous; in fact, since they own one of the furniture factories that Houston fostered in Fort of 98. Which, incidentally, has become surrounded by quite a large town. More in the way of a small city, by now. There are a number of advantages to moving to Arkansas, for a poor white settler, now that Driscol has established his rule there. For one thing, there's far less danger from Indian attacks, for obvious reasons."