1824: The Arkansas War (40 page)

The three generals looked at one another. “Makes sense to me,” said Jesup. Scott nodded.

Brown looked back at Taylor. “Please continue.”

“But the main attack would come from the north. A big army—very big, with lots of cavalry and a well-organized supply train—marching up the Missouri from St. Louis and then down onto the Indian lands of the Confederacy, following the Arkansas. The emphasis would be on using our potentially much superior cavalry in relatively open terrain, and placing pressure on the Cherokees and Creeks to sever their relations with the blacks in Arkansas. If we can succeed in doing so, we’ll then have Arkansas in a vise. Over time, by methods of siege and economic strangulation if nothing else, they’d have to surrender.”

“You’d not go directly against Driscol’s chiefdom?”

Taylor shook his head. “No, sir. The Indian nations in the trans-Arkansas region of the Confederacy are still not that well organized, not even the Cherokee, and there are already strains among them over the issue of slavery. Moreover, while they’re certainly brave enough, none of them can field a disciplined and well-trained professional army that could face U.S. regulars in the field. I cannot stress enough the need to stay away from major direct clashes with the Arkansans on their own terrain. That’ll be a bloodbath, sir. Even if we win—and I am not frankly sure we could at all, on their terrain, without a minimum of fifteen thousand men in the field—the casualties would produce an uproar in the country.”

“Explain,” Brown commanded.

Taylor shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Sir, if you’ll allow me to say so, the great danger is that the army will underestimate the Arkansas forces because of their color.”

“Jackson wouldn’t,” Scott said immediately. “The core of that army is the Iron Battalion. If he’s ever had anything to say about them other than praise, I’ve never heard it.”

“No, he probably wouldn’t,” Taylor agreed. He smiled then, for the first time since he’d entered the office. “But I think if there is one single thing we can be sure and certain of, it’s that Old Hickory is the very last man Henry Clay would ask to command an expedition against the Confederacy.”

Another laugh filled the room. Not a little one, this time.

Brown nodded. “Harrison’s likely to be put in command. By all accounts I’ve heard, he’s champing at the bit.”

Taylor thought about it for a moment. William Henry Harrison had resigned from the army in a huff in 1814, after a dispute with Secretary of War Armstrong, and had since then been engaged in a middling-successful career as a politician. He’d lost as many elections as he’d won, but he had just managed to get elected as one of the U.S. senators from Ohio. He was known to be a Clay supporter. What was more important was that, second only to Andrew Jackson, he was widely considered the nation’s greatest “Injun fighter” because of his victories over Tecumseh’s alliance at Tippecanoe and the Thames. If Clay offered to return him to the army as a major general and placed him in command of a war against the Confederacy, Harrison would most likely accept. He was an ambitious man, and he must by now have realized that his principal strength as a politician was his military reputation. Resigning from a Senate seat he’d not even warmed yet in order to answer a patriotic call to duty in a war against the Confederacy would position him nicely to succeed Clay in the White House.

Assuming he won the war, of course.

“What about General Gaines?” he asked. Zack raised the question diffidently, since he’d been very careful to keep a distance from the feud between Winfield Scott and Edmund Gaines that had, for years now, divided a good portion of the officer corps into two hostile camps. Still, it needed to be asked.

Brown shrugged. “With me and Winfield both resigning, Edmund will automatically become the next commander in chief. Unless Clay decides to supersede seniority altogether, which I think unlikely.”

“Not a chance,” stated Scott confidently. “Harrison wants the glory of a successful campaign, so he’ll not be interested. And with you and me both resigning—and I’ll make my reasons blunt and explicit, Jacob, even if you won’t—Clay will have enough problems with the remaining officers. If he alienates Gaines, he’ll have nothing.”

Again, Scott sneered. “Of course, Clay can rely on Gaines to wag his tail obligingly, no matter what nonsensical military results he demands.”

There was always that to be said for Winfield Scott. As vain and arrogant as the man could be, there was a genuine streak of integrity in him. More than a streak, actually. Jacob Brown had come into the army as a politician, and although he’d gained the respect of the military for his demonstrated courage and prowess as a soldier, he remained a politician. Scott wasn’t, and never had been. He was quite capable of resigning from the army on grounds of political principle, and stating them publicly.

Gaines, on the other hand…

Mentally, Zachary shook his head. He’d never taken sides in the long-running Scott–Gaines feud, since there’d been no practical reason to do so personally, and the causes of the feud were petty in any event. But if he had to choose between the two men, either as generals or simply as men—especially the latter—he had no doubt which way he’d go.

Yes, Gaines would wag his tail and do what his master bade him if the food bowl was filled.

“So let’s sum it, Colonel Taylor,” Scott said. “We’re looking at a war with John Calhoun as the secretary of war, Edmund Gaines sitting where I am now, Winfield out of the army entirely, and William Henry Harrison placed in command of the campaign against the Confederacy. Into this, you propose to recommend a campaign that ignores seizing Arkansas and humbling the negroes—which is the main purpose of the war from Calhoun’s viewpoint—in order to fight a long and protracted campaign against Indian tribes with which, were it not for their ties to Arkansas, the United States no longer has any real quarrel.”

Taylor took a deep breath. “Yes, sir. That’s what I recommend.”

The three generals in the room grinned.

Jesup spoke first. “Jacob, I told you so. By all means, promote this splendid officer.”

Brown chuckled. “Indeed I will. Zack, it’s within my power to promote you to full colonel. Beyond that, of course, I can’t go without authorization from Congress. If I could make you a brigadier, I would. What I can do also, however—which is more important than anything, if you’ll accept—is place you in command of all U.S. Army forces in Missouri. That’ll require you and your family to relocate to St. Louis, of course.”

While his mind worked on the matter as a whole, Taylor dealt with the latter issue. “That’s not a problem, sir. To be honest, I’d prefer moving the girls out of Louisiana. That’s not been good for their health. For the rest…”

He hesitated. Normally, of course, any officer would be delighted by such a promotion. But, although he was no expert on the workings of political infighting in Washington, Zachary Taylor was not stupid. For all intents and purposes—even if nothing was said directly—by accepting the promotion and the assignment he would be joining what amounted to a conspiracy against the man now almost certain to become the next president of the United States.

A most far-ranging and vast conspiracy, at that. One which, soon if not already, would have Andrew Jackson and John Quincy Adams involved in the cabal.

He looked at Scott. “If you’ll permit me the liberty, General, what do you plan to do upon your retirement?”

Scott smiled. “First, of course, I shall pay a visit to Senator Jackson. It’s time, I think, for he and I to end that old feud between us stemming from the Florida campaign. Second, I shall pay a visit upon John Quincy Adams to tender my respects. He’s a man I both like and admire. Thereafter…”

The smiled widened considerably. “I believe I shall try my hand at journalism. That William Cullen Bryant fellow has expressed an interest in continuing his reportage on the situation in the Confederacy. But he told me—I happened to run into him just the other day—that he could benefit from the advice of a military expert. And apparently several editors at several of the nation’s major journals have indicated a willingness to pay for it. Quite well, in fact.”

Taylor looked at Brown. The army’s commanding general shrugged. Most of the motion was in the left shoulder. The right barely moved at all. “My health really is very poor, Colonel. My doctors have been urging me for some time to relinquish the strains of military command. So I’ll simply return to private life in Brownville and resume my business affairs. Which I need to do, in any event, since I have some major debts I need to retire.”

He cleared his throat. “Of course, I retain certain connections in New York politics.”

Now Taylor looked at Jesup.

“I shall give you whatever support I can, Zack,” the quartermaster general stated firmly. “Rest assured of it.”

Much as it went against his cautious temperament, Zachary felt he had to say the heart of the thing out loud. “If I understand you correctly, General Brown, you fear that the coming war is likely to damage the U.S. Army.”

“Half wreck it, say better,” hissed Winfield Scott. “God damn Henry Clay.”

“And you want me to do what I can to salvage something from the disaster.”

“It really is too bad you can’t promote him to brigadier, Jacob,” mused Jesup.

“In essence, yes,” said Brown. “I realize it won’t be easy, Zachary. But if you can give us a good campaign in the north, I think”—he glanced around the room—“and we all think, that the damage can be repaired when the time comes.”

“Ah, General…Generals.” Zack shook his head. “There is no way—not if I were Napoleon or Alexander the Great—that I could defeat the Confederacy with a northern campaign unless it were properly mounted, equipped, and supplied, with enough men. None of which is going to be true.” He gave Jesup a quick apologetic glance. “Well, perhaps the supplies and equipment will be adequate.”

“They won’t even be that,” Jesup growled. “But I’ll give you whatever I can.”

Brown started to say something, but Scott waved him down. “It’s time for you to keep quiet, Jacob. Private citizen and behind-the-scenes politician, remember? Let me state what needs to be stated openly.”

Brown nodded and slumped back in his seat, rubbing his right arm. The general seemed very fatigued now.

“Here’s the truth, Colonel Zachary Taylor,” said Winfield Scott, looking at him directly. “Who cares if you beat the Confederacy? We have no legitimate quarrel with them in the first place. Jackson’s right. This war, if it comes—which now seems well-nigh certain—will be nothing but ‘Henry Clay’s War.’ A war launched by an unprincipled schemer and demagogue to satisfy his own personal ambitions; a war which, in terms of its goal and purpose, is nothing more sublime than John Calhoun’s rabid determination to prove to the country that a nigger is a nigger and fit only to be a slave.”

For a moment he looked as if he might spit on the floor. “Just fight us a good, clean, hard, and honest fight, Zack. That’s all. Best you can. So at least the real army will have something else to point to when Clay’s expedition comes to its catastrophe at Syracuse.”

Taylor frowned. There was no “Syracuse” in Arkansas.

Brown snorted. “Winfield,
will
you please stop showing off your classical education?” To Taylor, he said, “It’s a reference to the disaster the Athenians suffered in the Peloponnesian War when they followed the advice of Alcibiades and invaded Sicily.”

“Oh.”

Later that day, after he returned from the War Department, a message was delivered to Zack at his lodgings. From Thomas Hart Benton, inviting him to dinner at the Washington home of the senator from Missouri.

Taylor had never had more than the most casual encounters with Benton, but the senator greeted him as if they were old friends. Which was perhaps not that surprising, since, just before dinner began…

Andrew Jackson arrived. Ushered in through the rear entrance—to avoid being spotted, Zack assumed—but otherwise treated by Benton as if he were a long-lost brother.

The only term Zack could think of was “bizarre.” To the best of his knowledge, the last time Andrew Jackson and Thomas Hart Benton had met in person was on the front porch—later spilling into the lobby—of the City Hotel in Nashville. Being as it was one of the more legendary affrays of the frontier, Zack even knew the details. That encounter had begun with Jackson threatening Benton with a pistol, then being shot in the shoulder by Benton’s brother Jesse, then exchanging shots—all of which missed—with Benton himself, who, for his part, was then assailed by Jackson’s friend John Coffee, whose first shot missed and whose subsequent attempt at pistol whipping Benton was thwarted by the now-senator’s fall down a flight of stairs in the hotel.

Meanwhile, Jackson’s nephew Stockley Hays had wrestled Jesse Benton to the floor of the hotel, stabbing him repeatedly in the arm with a knife. Fortunately for Hays, when Jesse shot him at point-blank range with his second pistol, the gun misfired.

Half raw violence, half comic opera. And here they were, twelve years later, the two principals in the brawl—acting as if nothing untoward had ever happened between them!