by Eric Flint
“Can he do it in the first place, Sam?” Ross asked. The British general seemed simultaneously curious and bewildered. “I confess I find the inner workings of your American political system well-nigh unfathomable, at times. You’ve just explained—it was only yesterday—that Clay’s election does not reflect any real sentiment for war on the part of most of the United States. So why would Clay be able to get Congress to agree to a declaration of war?”
“Because Congress—that Congress—doesn’t have any choice. Most of them are going to be in hot water when the session’s over and they return to their home districts, Robert, and they know it. The truth is, if Clay didn’t have to get the Senate to go along also, he could probably get a declaration of war in a week. Every one of those congressmen who voted him into the president’s house has to stand for reelection in two years. Less than two years, now. What they’ll all be hoping is that a short, glorious, and victorious war will wash away the memory of their sins.”
“Ah.” Robert leaned back in his chair. Then, as his gaze moved across the officers at the table, a smile came to his face. “Well, then. As your more-or-less official military adviser—and one who has often been critical these past months—let me be the first to state that the prospects that the United States will enjoy a short and glorious war in Arkansas are slim to none. They might still achieve victory, of course. But they won’t win quickly, and they certainly won’t win easily.”
Most of the officers returned the cool smile. Charles Ball’s was openly sarcastic. “Glorious, is it? They’ll find out all ’bout glory, come winter in the Ozarks and Ouachitas.”
“But I interrupted you, Sam,” said Ross. “Continue, please.”
“Figure he’ll get his declaration of war by the end of April. Then, it’ll take him—the army, I should say—another six weeks to get their units ready to be moved to the confluence.”
“Clay could order the preparations to be made prior to a declaration of war, couldn’t he?”
Sam waggled his hand back and forth. “Yes…but it won’t be as easy as all that. Especially if he leaves Jesup as the quartermaster general. Which he almost has to do, now that Brown and Scott have resigned from the army. He’s too short of experienced officers to let Jesup go also.”
“You told us—again, just yesterday—that Jesup was a superb quartermaster.”
It was Sam’s turn to smile coolly. “Indeed he is. But I’ll remind you that great skill at doing a job efficiently can just as easily be turned to doing it incredibly in-efficiently—but in such a way that Jesup’s bosses can’t figure out what he’s doing. Somehow, in all the smoke and dust and confusion, everything just seems to take forever.”
“Why would—”
Ross broke off and leaned back. “Ah. I see. The war is no more popular in the army than it is in the country at large.”
“Well…it’s not that simple. Harrison—you can bet on it—will practically jump for joy when he receives Clay’s summons to return to the army as a major general. So will Gaines, when he finally realizes his ambition to replace Brown as the head of the army and gets rid of his arch-enemy Winfield Scott. There’ll be some other officers, too, especially the ones around Gaines, who’ll see the war as a route for quick promotion. But most of the officers…Well, a lot of them are Southern, true enough, but those are mostly from Virginia and the border states. They’ll certainly do their duty, but they won’t be making any great exertions until Congress declares war and it’s a settled issue.”
Sam half rose, reached into the middle of the table, and placed his finger on a spot in the big map that covered much of it. Then, shifted it to two others. “I figure they’ll muster at Louisville, St. Louis, and Baton Rouge. There’s another few weeks. It’ll take time to assemble enough riverboats, if nothing else. There’s no way Harrison’s going to try to move that many troops without using the rivers and water transport. Then Harrison will want to move all his units at once—as best as he can coordinate it—so he doesn’t get caught on the Arkansas side of the river with only part of his forces available. That can be done, but it’ll also take time.”
He leaned back from the table into his chair. “Mid-June, at the very earliest. Personally, I think it’ll take him a month longer than that.”
Ross nodded. “So. Mid-July. Enough time for one big battle in the Delta—perhaps two, if the engagement is close—before both armies will have to take time to regroup and recuperate. And by the time that’s done, we’re well into fall. Mostly likely, Harrison will wait until next spring to start his march on New Antrim.”
He started to say something but broke off. Sam wasn’t sure, but he suspected Ross wanted to reopen the issue of how—or whether—to defend New Antrim. But since that was a contentious issue, and one that didn’t need to be settled immediately, the British general returned to the Delta.
“Where in the Delta? I remind you, gentlemen, that I don’t much care for the terrain around Arkansas Post. It’s not terrible, but the terrain farther upriver would be more in our favor. Their artillery is considerably superior—in weight, at least. The soggier the terrain, the better for us.”
“We don’t have any choice, Robert,” Driscol said. “Yes, we all agree, the Chickasaw chiefs are bedlamites to think they can hold Arkansas Post. But—they’re Chickasaws. Just as fierce—and just as dumb—as any Scot highlanders. They’ll insist on standing their ground, and…”
He shrugged. “As much as it might please my more cold-blooded instincts, we can’t very well just stand by while they get massacred.”
Patrick started to say something further, but Sam cut him off. In the few weeks since he’d arrived in Arkansas, he’d inevitably become the principal liaison between the Arkansas Army and the Indian chiefdoms in Oklahoma. And the Choctaws in New Antrim, for that matter.
“It’s more complicated than that. The mixed-bloods politically dominate the Chickasaws nowadays, just like they do the Cherokees and the Creeks. With the Chickasaws, that’s centered on the Colbert clan. But it’s a touchy business, and they can’t afford to aggravate the full-bloods too much. Those are still, by a large margin, the majority of the tribe, and their blood is up. If it was just up to the Colberts, I’m sure they’d already be halfway to Oklahoma.”
“With their slaves,” Patrick growled. “Of which they have a good thousand, for four thousand Chickasaws. A higher percentage than your average white Southern state has, South Carolina aside.”
He leaned forward in his own chair and pointed a finger at Sam. “So don’t you even think of arguing the matter when the time comes. If we have to save those Chickasaw bastards from their own pigheadedness, they’ll pay the price, Sam. Pay it in full. We will strip them of every single one of their slaves. Every—single—one.”
A grunt of agreement went up from the six black officers at the table. Well, five of them. Charles Ball just grinned.
But Sam wasn’t fooled by the grin. The top-ranked black officer of the army of Arkansas wasn’t much given to denouncing the injustices of the world. Or even worrying about them in private, for that matter. But he was, if anything, the most ruthless of the lot.
Sam hesitated for a moment. He didn’t care at all about the Chickasaws losing their slaves. The smallest of the Southern tribes, they’d been the one that had adopted slavery more extensively than any of the others. Between that and their own current stupidity, he figured they had it coming. The problem was that any such peremptory action would certainly stir up a lot of antagonism with the other tribes, especially the Cherokees. And relations between Arkansas and the Oklahoma chiefdoms were already tense.
But—
The ancient Romans knew it, and so did Sam. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? If the Indian tribes in the Oklahoma portion of the Confederacy depended on the black soldiers of Arkansas to protect them from the United States…
They might as well just sign slavery’s death warrant and be done with it. Sooner or later, it was bound to happen, and Sam found hims
elf not caring much any longer how it came to pass. He hoped it could be done peacefully. But if it couldn’t, he was no more forgiving of slavery in his new country than he’d become of it in his old one. The day he’d crossed the Mississippi and set foot on Arkansas soil was the day he’d left slavery behind forever.
The first thing he’d done had been to free Chester, Dinah, and Sukey. When Chester had then offered to pay back the cost of his purchase—Dinah’s and Sukey’s, too—Sam had refused the money.
“It’s blood money,” he said curtly. “My wife’s blood. You keep it, Chester, and make a life for yourself.”
Dinah and Sukey had started wailing immediately—and it hadn’t taken little Andy more than ten seconds to start wailing also, when the boy figured out he might be losing his nursemaids.
“Tarnation, I didn’t say you had to leave!” Sam exclaimed, throwing up his hands with exasperation. “I’ll hire you. But—I’m warning you!—I haven’t got much money left. So the pay’s as bad as you could ask for.”
“Better’n it was, which was nothing, Mr. Sam,” Chester pointed out placidly. “In that case, I believe I’ll hire on, too. May as well keep saving up my money.”
CHAPTER 31
New Antrim, Arkansas
JULY 18, 1825
That night, the Women’s Council threw a ball for the soldiers of Arkansas. It was specifically intended for the 2nd and 3rd Infantry Regiments and the 3rd Artillery Battalion, who would be marching out of New Antrim on the morrow to meet the invading U.S. Army coming up the Arkansas. But the women weren’t being particularly finicky about the matter. As long as a man was wearing a uniform of the Arkansas Army—or that of one of the other chiefdoms, of which there were a handful present—he’d be allowed into the festivities.
Winfield Scott and William Cullen Bryant were granted an exception, being distinguished visitors vouched for by the Laird himself. But the three old black women guarding the entrance to the Wolfe Tone Hotel gave them no friendly looks as they were passed through. Nothing personal, just a matter of principle.
Once they got past the fearsome trio, Scott chuckled. “Amazing to see such devotion to the classics, wouldn’t you say, William? Given that—I’d wager a year’s income—not one of them can read.”
Bryant gave him a quizzical look.
Scott waved his hand expansively. They were now halfway into the great foyer, heading for the still larger central dining area that doubled as the ballroom. The foyer was packed with people, and from the sounds coming through the double doors, the ballroom was more crowded still.
“The three-headed Cerberus at the door—and Lysistrata here, right before your eyes. Upsidedown, of course, the way most things are in Arkansas. I predict a wave of births nine months from now.”
Bryant examined a group nearby. Five young soldiers—four of them black, one white—were exchanging repartee with six young black women. The uniforms of the young men were matched by what came very close to uniforms on the part of the girls. “Ballroom gowns,” technically, but in addition to being very simply and plainly made, they were all the same color. White, with a bit of blue trim here and there. Bryant was pretty sure they’d been mass-produced for the occasion by one of the same clothing companies that made the uniforms.
Those were private enterprises, technically. But Bryant had already come to realize that for Arkansans—especially black Arkansans—the distinction between private enterprise and government was much fuzzier than it was in the United States. Chief Driscol and his political subordinates did not meddle with the ownership of enterprises, to be sure. But they did expect the businesses to be cooperative with the chiefdom’s policies—and they had the Bank of Arkansas to enforce their desires, if nothing else.
True, Driscol and Crowell’s bank was also supposed to be private. But in practice it served Arkansas in the capacity of a state bank—even more so, really, than the Second Bank of the United States.
There was a certain irony there. Patrick Driscol, in terms of his political ideology, was as ferocious a democrat as any in the Republican Party in the United States. But the American Party was and had been from its inception heavily influenced by the aristocratic attitudes of men like its founder, Thomas Jefferson—not to mention its current most extreme partisan, John Randolph. For such men, government was always the great threat to their personal liberties, so they emphasized its iniquities. For a man like Driscol, and for those who followed him, the government—so long as it was their own—served as both a shield and a support.
The merits of either view could be argued in the abstract. But in the end, Bryant had concluded it was simply the different perspectives of wealthy slave-owners versus poor freedmen. The methods used by Driscol and his people worked in Arkansas—worked quite well, in fact—because the mostly black businessmen of the chiefdom saw nothing peculiar or unreasonable about them.
Nor, for that matter, did the Cherokees or Creeks. Nor would the newly arrived Choctaws. The southern Indian nations had their own customs and traditions, which harmonized far more closely with Arkansan practice than they ever had with that of Americans. The whole of the Confederacy, as it had emerged since its foundation in 1819, was a hybrid society—and nowhere more so than in Arkansas.
While ruminating, Bryant had continued to observe the group of young people standing by the entrance to the ballroom, waiting for enough space to be cleared to allow them to enter.
Two of the girls were obviously mulattos, or perhaps a quadroon in the case of one. The lighter-skinned of the two was very pretty, as was one of the negresses. All six of the girls, however, shared the general attractiveness of lively young women, regardless of appearance. And all of them had very bright eyes.
So did the young men. Boys, almost. Not one of them—or one of the girls—looked to be older than twenty.
Bryant found it all somewhat unsettling. His upbringing led him to disapprove of Arkansan customs when it came to sex. He wouldn’t go so far as to use the term “licentious,” himself, but he wouldn’t strenuously object to it, either, if used by someone else. When it came to relations between the sexes, Arkansan youth behaved in a manner that was quite scandalous by American standards, especially those of New England. Still worse were the lax and tolerant attitudes of their elders.
But…
Another hybrid, he supposed. The black people who had poured into Arkansas over the past few years had come from shattered communities that had never, even in the best of times, enjoyed much in the way of social cohesion. So, already predisposed toward it anyway, they’d come to adopt and modify many of the cultural traditions of their Cherokee neighbors, if not some of the extreme customs of the Creeks. Just the year before, for instance, the chiefdom had passed a law allowing for matrilineal descent if a family chose to exercise that alternative. Whether they did or not, women were under no restrictions concerning property, and in the event of divorce they were entitled to keep whatever they’d brought into the marriage as well as half of whatever had been acquired since.
Bryant did not really approve, especially since he knew of several New England women who were already expressing an unhealthy interest in Arkansan custom. Giving such unnatural latitude to women, he thought, led to a casual attitude toward fornication. Bastardy, which was a major scandal and disgrace in the United States, was treated in Arkansas as a purely civil matter. The man involved—or boy, often enough—was expected to recognize his paternity and, if nothing else, provide support for the child. If he didn’t, in fact, the penalties visited upon him by the woman’s male relatives could be extremely harsh.
But that was as far as it went. He could marry her or not as he chose. For the girl, the matter was purely one of personal preference. She had no worries of being cast out by her family or of being unable to care for the child. As with the Cherokees, the bastard would simply be brought up by the clan—extended and interconnected families, in the case of the negroes—which were developing some of the features of outright clans, as
if it were perfectly legitimate.
“And will you look at that white fellow!” Scott chuckled softly. “Every bit as lustful as any plantation owner’s scion, except he won’t bother hiding the matter.”
It was true enough. The young white soldier’s eyes were just as bright as those of any of his comrades in uniform, and he was paying very close attention to the prettiest of the negresses. She, for her part, seemed to reciprocate his interest. The New England poet and reporter wouldn’t be at all surprised to discover that, some nine months hence, the world’s population had been increased by another mulatto.
Again, Bryant’s lips tightened disapprovingly. But Scott’s quip also brought out that other side of his upbringing. The white Arkansas soldier’s lust might be as reprehensible as that of any young plantation owner’s son in Virginia or South Carolina, but there remained one critical difference.
“I’m afraid I can’t see the analogy, General. Where I come from, rape is not considered to be a form of seduction.”
Scott’s back stiffened. Bryant realized he’d offended him. His general disapproval of the situation had made his comment emerge more harshly than he’d intended. Winfield Scott was a Virginian himself, after all.
Fortunately, after a moment, Scott seemed to relax. Indeed, he smiled sardonically.
“True enough, William. True enough.” Scott gave the young white soldier another glance, then shrugged slightly. “And I’m also a soldier,” he murmured, “and a few days from now that boy might very well be torn in half by a cannonball. So I can’t say I’ll fret over the possibility he might leave something of himself behind.”
He took Bryant by the elbow. The crush at the door was easing. The group they’d been observing was already passing through the double doors. “Finally. Our chance! Come on, William. I confess to being rather fascinated by the chance to see how Arkansans will manage a formal ball. Mind you, I expect the worst.”