Eric Flint - 1824 - The Arkansas War

It wasn't that Andy Jackson didn't share each and every one of the common prejudices of his day. He most certainly did-and then some, often enough. It was just that in his own rough-hewn way, the general could often look past those things to see what really mattered to him.

Poor white men mattered to Andy Jackson. Not too many other people did, but they did, for sure and certain. So, if one of their undoubted political champions chose to behave badly in some aspects of his personal life, Jackson would look the other way. And if the proper folk complained, they could take their complaints to Sam Hill and see what satisfaction they'd get in those very warm quarters.

"Just as warm as ever," Sam repeated forcibly. "My word on it."

Johnson's grunt combined relief with satisfaction. "Well, they ought to be," the senator stated, as if to reassure himself. "Henry Clay makes a fortune suing people on behalf of land speculators and the Second Bank of the United States, and I go broke from waiving the fees for defending them."

That was also true:as far as it went. Johnson was indeed famous as one of the few well-connected lawyers in Kentucky that a poor man or his widow could go to for legal assistance without being charged. Unfortunately, it was only part of the truth.

There were a lot of reasons Richard Mentor Johnson was always on the verge of being broke. His personal generosity ranked on that list, yes-and pretty high up on it. But not as high as his casual attitude toward bookkeeping, his inability to say "no" to just about every speculative scheme that came his way, and his predilection toward seeing only a blur instead of a line between his personal finances and those of the public. Not to mention his indulgence toward his brothers, who were separated by only a knife's edge from being outright thieves.

Sam liked Richard M. Johnson a very great deal. He'd never met a man who didn't, no matter what their attitudes on such subjects as race, whom he didn't think was a swine. But there was just no getting around the fact that, as often as not, both he and the general-not to mention the president of the United States-would like to take Johnson by the scruff of the neck and give him a real down-home shaking. Or thrash him outright, for that matter.

Some of his aggravation must have shown, for Julia hastily spoke up.

"Please come in, Sam. Something to drink? I've fresh-brewed some tea."

Sam was about to agree when Johnson broke in. "Tea for Sam Houston? Don't be silly, Julia. Sam'll have some whiskey. I'll join him myself."

The senator passed through the door into the house. Sam felt his resolve crumbling. A slug of whiskey did sound good-and it would relax him for what was coming.

As Sam made to follow Johnson, Julia placed a hand on his arm.

"How much trouble is he in, Sam?" she asked quietly.

Houston shrugged uncomfortably. "Well:Nobody's talking about arresting him or anything like that, Julia. But:"

"But nobody's going to advance him any more money, neither."

"No. Not a chance." That wasn't quite true, but close enough for the moment.

She nodded and released his arm. "Thank you. I'll join you in a while."

The restraint their mother's admonition had placed on the girls finally broke.

"Can we come in, too?" Adaline demanded.

"We want to talk with Sam!" her twin added.

"Hush, girls! Sam and your father need some private time." Julia shooed them away. "You can talk to him all you want over dinner."

1824: TheArkansasWar

It took three slugs before Sam was finally ready. Johnson seemed to sense it, because he didn't prod Sam at all until the third slug had settled in his belly. Then, sighing, he set his own half-full tumbler on the small table next to the divan and planted his hands on his knees.

"So tell me, Sam. It's bad news, I'm sure."

"The president refuses to authorize any more funds to cover the losses from the Yellowstone expedition, on the recommendation of the secretary of the treasury."

"William H. Crawford," Johnson stated, making the simple name sound like a curse.

"I don't like him, either," Sam said. "But it doesn't matter. Even if the secretary and the president proposed it, there'd be an uproar in Congress. Financially speaking, the Yellowstone expedition was a disaster." Sam raised his hand to forestall Johnson's protest. "Dick, I know most of your constituents still think the expedition was a good idea, to keep the peace on the frontier. But most of the country considers the whole thing a boondoggle."

And probably a crooked one, to boot. Half-crooked, for sure. But he left that unsaid.

Johnson didn't pursue the matter any further, not to Sam's surprise. The Yellowstone expedition and the debts it had saddled the senator with dated back several years now. Not quite ancient history, but ground that had now been trodden over several times. He hadn't really had any hopes of getting any relief there.

Instead, he moved to the subject that was much more pressing. "And the Choctaw Academy I want to set up?"

Julia Chinn came into the room at that moment, giving Sam a little breathing space. After she'd taken a seat on the divan next to the senator, Sam tried to present it as positively as possible. "Do you know Gerrit Smith?"

"That young New York fellow? Rich as Croesus, they say. Something of a philanthropist, I also heard."

"That's the one."

Johnson's eyes widened. "He's offered to back me?"

"Ah:"

There was no way around it. "Not exactly, Dick. He's willing to pay the debts you've accumulated for it and take the Academy off your hands."

"What?"

May as well give it all to him, at one swallow.

"And he won't set it up here, and he won't call it the Choctaw Academy. He wants to establish it in New Antrim. And he wants to turn it into a school-maybe later a college, attached to it-that's open to children from all races. Whites, any tribe of Indians-and negroes. He thinks that's an experiment that'll work. If it's done in the Arkansas part of the Confederacy."

Johnson was just gaping at him. Sam took a deep breath and finished. "He's even got a schoolmaster lined up. Fellow name of Beriah Green. Also a New Yorker."

Also an abolitionist, he could have added, but didn't. Whatever Johnson's relationship to Julia Chinn, the man was also a major slave-owner, with all the attitudes toward abolition that that entailed. If that seemed contradictory:

Well, it was. But it was a contradictory matter that Sam knew backwards and forwards. He'd owned slaves himself for years, despite having had reservations about slavery even as a teenager. By now, at the age of thirty, those misgivings had turned into a genuine detestation for the institution.

Sam had owned only a few slaves at any one time, true-sometimes not more than one. And he didn't depend on their labor for his sustenance the way Johnson did. Mostly, he maintained his status as a slave-owner simply out of ambition. Sam still had hopes for a political career after Monroe left office and Sam lost-as he almost certainly would-his position as special commissioner on Indian affairs. That career would have to be in the South somewhere, probably his native state of Tennessee. Sam was already notorious enough among many influential circles in that area. Owning slaves served to keep that notoriety within limits. A southern gentleman was expected to own slaves, and so he did.

Sam didn't have the same pecuniary attachment to slaveholding that a great landowner like the Kentucky senator did. Still and all, he understood the contradiction. Better than he wished he did, even leaving aside the caustic comments that his friend Patrick Driscol made whenever he visited the Confederacy.

Johnson finally found his voice. A blasphemous one, too. "I'll be damned if I will!"