1824: The Arkansas War

by Eric Flint

  Sam waved a hand. “But it doesn’t matter, anyway. As long as you make the trip while Monroe’s in office, I can provide you with a military escort as far as the Confederacy. A small one, but that’ll be enough. After that, the Cherokees will escort you the rest of the way.”

  Julia pursed her lips. “That gives us almost a year. How soon will this Mr. Smith have the school up and running?”

  Sam shrugged. “I don’t know. Not that soon, I wouldn’t think. But you can put the girls up at the Wolfe Tone in the meantime. Tiana will look after them.”

  Johnson looked a bit dubious. As well he might. The young Cherokee princess who’d married the notorious Patrick Driscol enjoyed her own reputation in the United States. Granted, a more favorable one than her husband’s, since in her case most of it was in the form of overwrought and long-winded verses written by New England poets.

  Ridiculous verses, too, for anyone who knew the realities of Indian and frontier life. Sam had shown one of the more famous poems to Tiana once—Edward Coote Pinkney’s “The Cherokee Bride”—and her comment, after reading less than a third of it, had been a terse “Well, he’s never gutted a deer.”

  But however uncertain the senator might be at the prospect, Julia was firm. “We’ll do it, then. Look for us coming toward the end of the summer.”

  Sam nodded. “Good. I probably won’t be there myself, then, but I’ll let Patrick and Tiana know that you’re coming.”

  When they found out at lunch, the girls were ecstatic.

  “We get to play Indians!” squealed Imogene.

  “With Indians,” her sister corrected her.

  Imogene bestowed the inimitable sneer of a twelve-year-old upon a hopelessly ignorant sibling. “In Arkansas, silly, there’s no difference. Everybody knows that!”

  Johnson looked to be growing more dubious by the minute. But since Julia wasn’t wavering, it didn’t really matter.

  Johnson left shortly thereafter to attend to some business around the plantation. After he was gone, Julia asked Sam quietly: “How much of that is really true? What Imogene said, I mean.”

  By then—noon being a thing of the past—Sam had a tumbler of whiskey in his hand and was leaning back comfortably in one of the porch chairs. “Not much, Julia. Not the way Imogene put it, anyway.”

  He took a sip from his whiskey, feeling the usual contentment the liquor gave him as it warmed its way down. “You’re familiar enough with the Indians down here in the South. The way they figure descent and inheritance, through the mother rather than the father, makes a lot of difference when it comes to the way they figure which race starts here and which one ends there. It’s not that they don’t see the difference, mind you.”

  He chuckled harshly. “In a lot of ways, they’re worse than white men. At least, our clan feuds don’t tend to spring up that sudden and last forever. But that’s because what really matters to them is not which race a person belongs to, but which clan. And clans intermarry. They always have. So…”

  Another sip, longer this time, helped him focus his thoughts. “So the country they’re putting together out there in Arkansas looks strange to us. A lot stranger than their tribes used to look, I think, because they’re taking so much of it from us in the first place that most of it looks pretty familiar. In Arkansas, everything’s a hybrid. Race counts, sure, but it doesn’t trump everything the way it does here in the U.S.”

  He chuckled again, but the sound this time was much softer. Amusement rather than sarcasm. “They’ve even got newspapers. Five of ’em, at my last count. Four in English, and one that just started up that’s trying out Sequoyah’s new Cherokee script. The most popular is the one that’s owned by Major Ridge’s son and nephew. John Ridge and Buck Watie set it up in New Antrim, you know—or ‘the Little Rock,’ as the Cherokees call the town.”

  “Why there?” she asked. “I thought most of the Cherokees lived further west.”

  “They do. But newspapers need big towns to prosper, and the only big towns in the Confederacy are New Antrim and Fort of 98. Even the Cherokee capital at Tahlequah doesn’t have more than two thousand people.”

  Sam considered tracing a map for her but gave up the idea almost immediately. With Julia’s stern housekeeping regimen, there wasn’t enough dust on the floor of the porch to do the trick—and he wasn’t about to waste this good whiskey wetting his finger in it. So, he made do with words alone.

  “Patrick’s chiefdom ends at Fort of 98, where the Poteau River meets the Arkansas. Most of the Cherokees and Creeks live in the lands west of there. By now, they’re spread out quite a ways, each clan staking out a big chunk. Mostly along the Arkansas, Canadian, and Cimarron rivers—but Chief Bowles and his people settled south of the Red River.”

  Julia frowned. “I thought they weren’t supposed to do that.”

  “They’re not. According to the Treaty of Oothcaloga—I ought to know, since I drafted it—the southern border of the Confederacy of the Arkansas is marked by the Red River. But Indians don’t generally pay much attention to stuff like that. People like John Ross will, even Major Ridge these days, but not someone like The Bowl and the traditionalists who follow him.”

  He took another sip. “Right now, nobody’s saying much. But once somebody figures out how to clear the Great Raft and make the Red navigable—which is bound to happen, sooner or later—there’ll be Sam Hill looking to collect the bill.”

  She cocked her head, gazing at him. “I’d think you’d be more upset at the prospect.”

  He shrugged. “That won’t happen any time soon, Julia. By then, it’s not likely I’ll still be in charge of Indian affairs for the government. I’ve spoken to Henry Shreve about it. He’s the steamboat genius Patrick Driscol went into partnership with, if you didn’t know.”

  “The one who got into that big legal fight over Fulton’s monopoly?”

  Sam nodded. “The very man. He won that fight in court, but the Fulton-Livingston steamboat company was still able to make things miserable for him in New Orleans. Legal monopoly or not, they’ve got the backing of the Louisiana authorities. When Patrick made him the offer to set up his own company on the Arkansas, he jumped at it. Anyway, the point is that Shreve told me it’s possible to clear the Great Raft out of the Red. In fact, in his spare time—which isn’t much, as busy as the new companies in Arkansas are keeping him—he’s starting to design a special steamboat to do the job. A ‘snagboat,’ he calls it. But even Henry Shreve doesn’t think he could have it ready in less than five years—assuming he could find somebody to back him.”

  “And how likely is that?”

  Sam shrugged again. “It’d almost have to be the government. A project like that would be too expensive for a private company, with no obvious quick profit to be made.” After another sip of whiskey, he added: “The U.S. government, I mean. No way the Confederacy would do it. Even if they had the money, which they don’t.”

  Seeing her head still cocked quizzically, he explained. “John Ross and Major Ridge think the Great Raft is just dandy, Julia. Patrick probably burns incense to keep it there. Well, he would if the scoundrel had a religious bone anywhere in his body.”

  Her head was still cocked. Sam shook his own. “You’ve never met Patrick Driscol.”

  He finished the whiskey and set the tumbler down on the floor of the porch. “He’s probably my closest friend, Julia, but there are times I swear the man scares me. Scares Sam Hill, for that matter. I don’t think there’s a harder man alive, anywhere in the world. He’s gotten stinking rich over the past few years, but not because he paid much attention to it. That came from luck—the proverbial right place at the right time—and having Tiana for a wife.” A quick grin came and went. “Not to mention Tiana’s rapscallion father, who seems to be able to squeeze money out of anything. But Patrick himself never thinks like a rich man. He thinks like a poor Scots-Irish rebel, still seeing redcoats everywhere he looks. Even if the coats look to be blue, these days.”

  “You
want more whiskey?”

  “I was hoping you’d ask,” he replied, smiling cheerfully. “Yes, please. One more and I’ll be steady enough for that blasted horse. I felt peckish, waking up this morning.”

  “Well, I don’t wonder. As much as you drank last night.”

  She said nothing more. Just got up and went into the house. One of the many things Sam liked about Julia Chinn was that she wasn’t given to nattering. Not even at the senator, really.

  She was back a few seconds later with a half-full bottle and refilled his tumbler. And that was another thing Sam liked about the woman. No half-full tumblers when she poured.

  He took a hefty first sip and continued. “My point is that Patrick never stops thinking like a soldier. Doesn’t matter how rich he gets. He’s wound up making money hand over fist with each new company he sets up—not to mention his bank—but that’s never why he does it. Each and every one of those companies, even the bank, has a military purpose.”

  Julia’s eyes widened. “Whatever for? There’s a treaty with our government, and the wild Indian tribes out there can’t be that much of a threat.”

  “No, they’re not. Dangerous, yes, but not what you’d call a real threat to the Confederacy. And, nowadays, even the Osages pretty much stay out of the Arkansas Chiefdom altogether. Patrick’s soldiers are…rough, when they get riled. Not undisciplined, mind you.” The chuckle, this time, was very harsh. “Not hardly, with Patrick’s ways. But he’s a firm believer that if someone picks a fight with him, he will surely give them what they asked for. And then some. Like I said, a scary man.”

  It was getting time to go, and Sam still had one last piece of business to take care of. So he left off the sipping and drained most of the tumbler in one slug.

  “It’s the U.S. he’s thinking about, Julia. Not now, of course, with James Monroe in office. If John Quincy Adams succeeds him, that would be, if anything, even better. Adams is a diplomat by instinct and background. He’ll always try to settle something by negotiation if he can. And I don’t think Patrick even worries much, if the general gets elected instead. As ornery as they both are—and it’s hard to choose between the man from County Antrim and Old Hickory—he and Andy Jackson could manage to get along. Well enough, anyway. No, it’s Clay he’s thinking about. You never know what Henry Clay will decide to do if he thinks it’ll advance his prospects.”

  Julia made a face. Her common-law husband detested Henry Clay. Clearly enough, she didn’t disagree with him on the subject.

  Neither did Sam. He didn’t share Andy Jackson’s corrosive hatred for Clay, but that was simply because Sam didn’t have it in him to hate anyone that much. If he did, though, Clay would be pretty much at the top of his list also. In the near vicinity, for sure. The man’s personal morals stank, and his political morals were even worse.

  “So, to get back to the point, there’s no way Patrick would want the Red River cleared of the Great Raft. In fact, I think that’s the main reason he went into business with Henry Shreve. Sure, and he’s gotten rich from that partnership, too—everything Patrick touches seems to turn to gold, these days—but that’s not why he did it. Now that Fulton’s dead, Shreve’s probably the only man in the United States today who’d have the wherewithal to figure out how to clear the Great Raft. So Patrick made sure to tie him down good and solid. As long as the Great Raft stays where it is, he doesn’t have to worry about anybody using the Red River to attack him. His southern flank is pretty well protected.”

  Julia shook her head. “Man sounds a little crazy, to me.”

  Sam drained the last of the whiskey, grinning through the glass. “So people say. Lots of them.”

  He didn’t bother to add but not me. The grin alone made it obvious enough.

  He found Richard Johnson in one of the barns, attending to farm business of one kind or another. Something to do with a cow, apparently. Sam wasn’t quite sure, because he’d decided at an early age that farming was even more boring than storekeeping. Tedium was bad enough on its own without piling study onto the affair.

  He didn’t need to, anyway, since as soon as the senator spotted him, Johnson broke off his discussion with the two slaves handling the barn animals and came over.

  “You leaving now?”

  “ ’Fraid so, Dick. I want to make it to the Confederacy by the end of the month, and…ah…”

  “You’ve got to pay a visit to the general first.”

  Sam half winced. “Yes, I do. Can’t say I’m looking forward to it, this time.”

  Johnson studied him. “On account of how you figure you may have lost the general his chance to get elected president.”

  “You could have maybe sweetened that a little. But…yeah. On account of that.”

  Johnson looked away for a moment, then shrugged. “Well, maybe you did. Although I think Jack Hartfield’s right. If Andy had just kept his mouth shut after Algiers, I don’t think the affair would have hurt him much. He was not in any way directly involved, after all.”

  “I think Jack’s probably right, too. But you know the general. Andy Jackson has a lot of virtues. Being fair-minded—especially when it involves something he did—just isn’t one of them. Not usually, at least.”

  “True enough. Well, you have my sympathies. Give the general my best regards, will you?”

  “Certainly.”

  Sam hesitated, then added: “But there’s something else I wanted to raise with you, Dick. Tell me the truth. How bad are you hurting?”

  Johnson looked away again. “In terms of money? Pretty bad, Sam.” A half-whining note of resentment crept into his voice. “I was hoping the school…”

  The one thing Sam didn’t want to do was rehash that matter. “Forget the school,” he said forcibly. “You would have lost money on it, anyway. Did lose money, and plenty of it, before you even got it set up.”

  He summoned up the memory of his mad charge on the Creek barricade at the Horseshoe Bend. That seemed as good a model as any.

  “Look, Dick, face it. You’re a man I think well of personally, and a public figure I admire even more. But when it comes to business, you’re a walking disaster. You’ve got no head for it, at all.”

  The senator scowled but didn’t argue the point. Given his track record, that’d be pretty much impossible, even for a man as generally insouciant as he was.

  So Sam kept the charge going. “I think there’s a way out of the bind you’re in, but you’d have to be willing to do two things. First, go into partnership with a man who does know how to make businesses run profitably.”

  Johnson snorted. “And why would that be a problem for me? Except—good luck, finding a smart businessman who’d touch me with a ten-foot pole. Why should he? I’ve got nothing to bring to a partnership, Sam. No skill at it”—the scowl came back, for an instant—“as you’ve just been unkind enough to rub my nose in. And no capital to back someone who is. I’m broke, Sam. Worse than broke. I’m up to my waist in debts, and pretty soon the creditors are going to take me to court. The ones who haven’t already, that is. Won’t be surprised at all to see Henry Clay arguing the case for ’em. My biggest creditor is the Second Bank, after all, and he’s one of their top lawyers whenever he takes the time away from his political chiseling.”

  Sam took a deep breath, remembering that final moment when he’d scaled the barricade. Right after Major Montgomery got his brains blown out by a Creek bullet.

  “I’ve got a partner for you, Dick. He’ll put up the skill, and he’ll put up all the money. In fact, he’ll advance you enough to fend off your creditors. Far enough off to give you some breathing room, anyway, while he gets the business up and running and turning a profit.”

  Johnson’s eyes widened, and then immediately narrowed. “What business? And who is this paragon? Or bedlamite, I should say. Why in the world would a sane man do something like that?”

  “The business is complicated. More complicated than I can follow, to be honest. Mostly it involves setting up a big
foundry—biggest west of Cincinnati—but that also requires expanding the steamboat traffic. Expanding a foundry, I should say, since it’s already in operation. But the expansion would be major. The man I’m talking about is one of the silent partners in the steamboat business Henry Shreve and Patrick Driscol set up.”

  Another deep breath. “His name is Henry Crowell, and the reason he’s silent is because he’s black. He’s gotten rich enough over the past few years that he’d like to expand his business into the United States, but he can’t do that without a white partner as his public face.”

  Sam was half expecting an outraged reaction. Despite his relationship to Julia, Richard Johnson’s general attitudes on matters of race weren’t really all that different from those of most people in the country. Like Andy Jackson, Johnson was always willing to make personal exceptions to generalities. But the generalities themselves, he didn’t really question much.

  To his surprise, though, Johnson’s face simply seemed pensive. “Crowell? That name’s familiar.”

  “Well, it ought to be!” Sam exclaimed. “He was the teamster who supplied us at the Capitol during the battle with the British. He fought well himself, later, as part of a gun crew at the battle of the Mississippi.”

  Best to leave it at that, he thought. The same Henry Crowell had also been the cause of the Algiers Incident—as the victim who triggered it, if not the instigator—but Sam saw no reason to bring that up.

  “Yes, that’s it. But I think there was something…”

  “Look, Dick,” Sam said, maintaining the stout tone to keep Johnson from dwelling on the name, “Henry’s as good a businessman as you can find; I don’t care what color. He parlayed the supply contract I got for him for the New Orleans campaign into a small fortune—okay, real small fortune, but big enough…”

  His voice trailed off. He’d just stumbled into the pit he’d been trying to avoid.

  Alas, that was sufficient to jog Johnson’s memory. “That Crowell? The one they castrated in New Orleans? Set off the whole blasted ruckus there?”