Eagle's Cry: A Novel of the Louisiana Purchase (47 page)

Read Eagle's Cry: A Novel of the Louisiana Purchase Online

Authors: David Nevin

Tags: #Fiction, #Historical

BOOK: Eagle's Cry: A Novel of the Louisiana Purchase
11.31Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
“Still,” Dolley said, “at least he conveys the facts. Maybe they’ll penetrate …”
Jimmy looked exhausted. “Maybe …”
“
Mon
Dieu,
Thomas! You can’t mean this!” Pierre Du Pont looked up from the letter. “Tom—that is, Mr. Jeff—Mr. President—this is terrible. It insults the first consul, it challenges the French government, it denigrates French honor, it will make everything worse. Why, it could force war!”
Well, well, well. Madison could see that the letter was
having the desired effect. They were in the oval sitting room, Madison, the president and Du Pont, whose long delayed return to France was at hand. He would sail within the fortnight, leaving his son to nurture the chemical company at Wilmington, and he had come to say good-bye. It was a golden opportunity, given Pierre’s connections in French ruling circles.
“Ah, Pierre,” Tom said, in his blandest tone, “it’s hardly an attack. We seek only peace with France. Why, if anything, the shoe is on the other foot. This General Leclerc is saying the most awful things about us. But we tumeth the other cheek, as men of peace must always do—until, I suppose, they are given no alternative but to slap back.” He was smiling. “Even Jesus, you know, in the midst of turning the cheek was willing to lay about him with mighty arm when his cause was right.”
“Yes, but still …” Du Pont shook his head, not at all convinced. In short, exactly as planned. They needed something pungent enough to get past that touch of arrogance in Du Pont, forceful enough to focus what he would say of the United States and revealing enough to persuade him that he stood at the center of national affairs, there and here. Nothing like giving a man a chance to preen to turn him into an ardent messenger.
Madison and the president had laid it out, working in their usual easy tandem. It should be on paper for clarity and to avoid misunderstanding, but should not be written to Pierre. Don’t leave it in his hands to return someday to haunt you. Address it to Mr. Livingston, let Pierre see it, then seal it and ask Pierre to carry it to Livingston. Make the letter personal, informal, friend to friend, and only incidentally president to ambassador, and hence no part of the record unless one chose to place it there. The result would be to allow Pierre to speak powerfully but unofficially on the American mind, with nothing that others could turn to their own manipulating ends.
They’d worked it out together in the president’s big corner office, Tom on his feet and pacing, Madison bunched motionless
in a chair, his mind churning. Tom paced and talked, trying and discarding words, scrawling now and again on foolscap at his tall reading desk. His capacity for words was just one of his marks of genius, but he needed Madison’s level, steady, analytical mind as rudder while his more untethered mind rode the wind of ideas. Madison never doubted his own crucial value in the shared partnership of ideas that held them together.
The letter must say clearly that France, until now a natural friend, would reposition itself as enemy when it stood astride the Mississippi. “Yes,” Tom said, “exactly.” Then, pencil scrawling swiftly as he said the words, “There is on the globe one single spot, the possessor of which is our natural and habitual enemy. It is New Orleans, through which the produce of three-eighths of our territory must pass to market, and from its fertility it will ere long yield more than half of our whole produce and contain more than half of our inhabitants … .”
Then, a few minutes later, murmuring the coalescing words as he wrote, “The day that France takes possession of New Orleans fixes the sentence which is to restrain her forever within her low-water mark.”
He threw down the pencil. “There! Say it square, by the good Lord, no hesitation!”
“And what we’ll do,” Madison said, “explicitly.”
“Yes, you’re right—” Writing swiftly, “It seals the union of two nations who, in conjunction, can maintain exclusive possession of the ocean. From that moment we must join—no, wait, we must
marry
ourselves—that’s it, marry ourselves to the British fleet and nation.”
Madison felt like applauding. “Marry” the British fleet. The perfect term—there was the genius of words and the way they impacted on the mind. Madison would have said “ally with” or any of a half-dozen pedestrian phrases. Tom chose the single word that slapped the reader’s face with its meaning.
And now, in the quiet oval room with its pale walls and blue furniture, the tall windows open to the lowering sun,
Madison watched those words impact on Du Pont. As their impromptu emissary raised his voice in angry protest, Madison saw that his sense of French patriotism had been affronted. Good; exactly what they wanted. He said the first consul was no man to be intimidated by threats; that they would only make things worse.
“Oh, Pierre, my friend,” Tom now said, “nothing in the least unfriendly is intended.” Madison wondered if the Frenchman would swallow that, but it passed unchallenged as Tom added, “It is as if I foresaw a storm tomorrow and advised my friend not to embark on the ocean today. My foreseeing it does not make me the cause of it, nor can my admonition be a threat. It is, in truth, our friendship for France which renders us so uneasy at seeing her take a position which must bring us into collision.”
Oh, well done!
“Still,” Du Pont said, “it alarms me that you would seem to coerce a man so powerful and so proud as the first consul. Much better, I think, to offer to buy the island of New Orleans.”
River, lakes, bayous, swamps surrounded the city; it was literally an island and it did control the river.
“We have raised that thought,” Madison said. “Authorized a million—”
“Faugh! A million. What is a million dollars when you talk of empire! Offer five, six, ten! They may listen to that.”
Jefferson closed the letter with binding of red ribbon held in place with gobs of red wax deeply impressed with the seal of the United States. He stressed to Du Pont the importance of putting this directly and only into Robert Livingston’s hand. The emissary must instruct his wife to carry out this duty should anything happen to him. The solemn tone, the envelope festooned in red, the knowledge that he was privy to the president’s most closely held thinking had the desired effect. Monsieur Du Pont assured them that he would carry his new understanding of the American position to the highest quarters.
After he left they sat down to another glass of Madeira, and at last Madison said, “Five million, ten million—it would bankrupt us. Break Albert Gallatin’s thrifty heart. But you know, it’s an interesting idea.”
NASHVILLE, FALL 1802
Andrew Jackson was attending a flogging on the square at Nashville when Ed Duggan rode in from the south, blew a great blast on the ferry horn to summon the craft, crossed the river, and led an exhausted horse ashore. The day was bright and fresh, the heat gone, real cold not yet come, brisk and lively; doubtless you could hear birds if this miscreant weren’t screaming so loudly. Jackson took no pleasure in seeing a flogging, though a good number of people always gathered to watch, fewer than you’d find at a hanging, but still a good crowd. He was here because he was a judge and he ordered floggings, including this one, and a man who ordered them ought to witness one occasionally.
So here was this burly scoundrel who’d sliced off his wife’s ear in a drunken rage lashed to the flogging post, which was next to the pillory in front of the little log jail that itself was tucked around behind the one-room courthouse, which also was of logs but much grander. Back east they had prisons, but here on the frontier, well, you couldn’t keep a man for a year or two in that little jail, the sheriff’s wife having to cook his meals. Hang him or flog him or brand a big T for thief in his cheek, or maybe give him a couple of hours to get out before the tar and feather crowd got hold of him … . The sheriff was swinging the cat right fiercely, each blow
now bringing blood, making a solid
thwack
that the crowd echoed with a sort of collective grunt, the fellow screaming and blubbering and calling his
wife’s
name.
Imagine … he’d accused her of infidelity, she not yet thirty and the mother of seven, poor woman barely able to keep her children fed what with her husband mostly drunk and rarely working, said he’d slice her up so no man would look at her again. She’d come to the courtroom holding a cloth to the wound, likely it would run serum and pus for the rest of her life. Well, Jackson would have hung him if he could, this was a gallows bird for sure, but mutilation wasn’t a hanging offense. Too bad, too—would’ve rid the world of someone the world didn’t need. And here he was blubbering and howling, typical coward, what you’d expect, a man beat his wife—
“General, this here’s important, I believe you’ll want to attend to this—”
Jackson spun about. Colonel Hays was there with a chunky little fellow whom it took Jackson a moment to recognize as Ed Duggan, looking trail whipped to a fare-thee-well. Ed was a riverman—flatboats running downstream all season. On his last run he’d had twenty bales of Jackson’s cotton.
“They’ve closed the river, General. Say we can’t trade out of New Orleans no more.”
“Who has? What are you talking about?”
“French, I reckon. Spanish’d never have the nerve to do it on their own. There were fifty flatboats moored to the bank when I left and more coming. Spanish say they ain’t going to let us land a single pound. Taking their orders from the Frenchies, don’t you see. So anyway, I figured I’d better get on up the Trace and see what we’re going to do about it.”
Do? Jackson’s mind was churning. Somehow, he’d expected this—known in some way that sooner or later it all would boil over, the Spanish overstepping, French moving in—why, it was certain. And he realized he welcomed it. This meant war and it was high time Americans went down and made New Orleans their own. He didn’t know a lot
about international doings, but he knew there was a time in any set of affairs, man’s life, his courtship, the deals he strikes, the growth of his state—well, the moment comes when you’re on the flood and it’s time to storm ahead, time to act, seize the high ground, win your woman or your plan or your state. He reckoned it couldn’t be so different when nations tangled.
War … and overdue at that, way overdue. The damned dons had been lording it over us for years, stifling our trade, claiming the river because they controlled its mouth when everyone knew it was
ours!
And the French would be a hundred times worse, and this was just the action to prove it. Spanish knew better than to go too far. This was a French trick, them pushing the dirty work off on the Spanish. Close the river, then when we take over we can claim we’re just holding the status quo. Well, by God, we’ll see about that!
“Bob,” he said to Colonel Hays, “better start getting your regiment ready. Get hold of Brigadier Scorsby—he should be alerting all the regiments. Send word to the eastern regiments too. We need to be moving. We’ll need Kentucky and Ohio in on this. I’ll see the governor in the morning, then head right on up north, start lining it all up. Tell everyone you talk to, we ain’t going to stand for this.”
“Yes, sir! General, you talking full mobilization?”
Jackson hesitated. It would take awhile to put everything together. “I want ’em to know likely there’ll be fighting before long. They want to put their affairs in order where they can go off and leave ’em, families and everything. On a week’s notice, say—weapons, powder and lead, blankets, set to go. Talk to Nat Fosby—let’s see about flatboats to float us downstream. Better set up some drills, too, firing practice, moving through woods, taking cover. Remind ’em they’re soldiers … .”
Rachel Jackson knew there was trouble the moment she saw him coming up the column of yellow poplar saplings he’d planted, saw it in the set of his carriage, the rigidity of his
shoulders, that brush of hair now so gray standing up flaglike …
She put the kettle on as he waved and passed on to the barn, and when he came in the tea was ready. Of course he tried to soften it, he always did, but the evidence was stark. The French had closed New Orleans, it was the first step to conquering the West, of course we’d have to fight, he was leaving in the morning—
Leaving! Not next month or even next week, tomorrow at dawn! She saw his hand shake when he lifted his teacup. He was drawn up like a fiddle string, and all at once she forgot her own dismay and the agonies of loneliness that lay ahead and was seized by a boundless dread. That fire always in him, always ready to erupt, was burning brighter than ever.
“Andrew,” she said, but she stopped, swallowing.
“No cause for worry,” he said, watching her. “Governor’s over to Gallatin, by chance. I’ll ride over and see him and then get on up to Lexington and talk to General Sanford about coordinating with Kentucky militia, and then—well, I don’t know, but I’ll be back before you hardly can miss me … .”
But that wasn’t it at all, and she said so. It was his temper, always ready to boil. Sooner or later it would pull him into terrible trouble. His frown grew deeper as he listened to her tremulous expressions of her fears. He said it was his temper, his speed of reaction, his refusal to let a single jackanapes scoundrel traduce him or, God forbid, his wife,
that
was what had saved them.
“Wasn’t our fault we had a scandal, but we had it. You can’t live with scandal, not in this country. You can’t bow down to it. You have to fight and fight,
defy
them. They have to know when they go to smirking that you’ll
punish
’em … .”
He went on in this vein for some time, growing hotter by the minute. She didn’t answer. At last he ran down, breathing hard.
“We’re beyond that,” she said, keeping her voice a bare whisper so he leaned forward to hear her. “Hasn’t anybody
raised that in the longest time. But I’m afraid you’re so ready to fight—well, General Sevier, they’re saying—”
“Who’s saying?”
It was a shout and he leaped up. The idea of anyone talking about him drove him into a frenzy, but she didn’t intend to have him shouting at her and she told him so. Who had mentioned Sevier? She hadn’t the slightest intention of telling him. In fact, as he well knew, the old general had been in a loose-tongued fury ever since Andrew had, as Sevier saw it, stolen the command of Tennessee militia from under his nose.
All at once Andrew’s anger collapsed. He sat down and waved a hand. “Oh, Sevier. Forget Sevier. Old fool. I’ll deal with him one of these days. I’ll pinch his nose.”
He would, too, that was what she feared; it could lead to pistols. And now he was going off to Kentucky and, knowing him, to points way beyond, he’d be meeting all sorts of folks and they wouldn’t all be full of respect … .
“Oh, darling,” she said, “please, please keep a rein. Up yonder, they don’t know anything about our affairs; maybe they’ll cross you but it won’t be because of us—”
“Well, I know that, but—”
“You’ve grown beyond that; judge, major general, whole community looking up to you. You don’t let a horse run wild. Rein yourself, Andrew. Rein yourself.”
And he came over and drew the pipe from her mouth and lifted her and held her hard to his chest and kissed her—and with that she had to be content.
At Gallatin the next day the governor was a mass of nerves. His very voice shook. “I don’t know, Andrew. We’d have to hear something from Washington, wouldn’t we? We couldn’t just go off and attack France all on our own, could we?”
“Archie,” Jackson said, “it’ll be all right. Thing now is to get ready. Then when the word comes, we’ll be all set. We don’t want Tennessee to be caught short, comes the call, do we?”
“No, you’re right about that.”
“I’ll just ride on up and take some soundings. Get things lined up. I come back, we’ll sit down together, you’ll see what needs to be done. It’ll all be clear then.”
He rode off thinking that Archie Roane was almost too easy. Sevier, now, when he’d been governor and when he’d commanded militia, he was a much tougher nut. Jackson had heard he’d been mouthing, pretty much the talk of a man disappointed and offended, but staying away from the personal. Still, one of these days Archie would use the information on Sevier that Jackson had given him and it would go off like a charge of black powder in the old man’s face. Then, Jackson figured, he would have to deal with Sevier. But he’d known that when he gave Archie the information.
He swung north out of Tennessee toward bluegrass country, making good time, a valise lashed behind his saddle with his blanket roll. He remembered the road when it was just a hard-beaten path through the forests; now it was twenty-odd feet wide, brush chopped away, trees felled to eighteen-inch stumps that wagons could clear, only the largest trees left standing in the roadway and them easy enough to step around. He’d picked up a small group, of course, all heavily armed—nobody traveled alone in country where you might go most of the day and hardly see a soul, where those you met probably were salt of the earth but could just turn out to be thieving scum who should be stretching rope. To say nothing of the occasional band of warriors who still roved this country.
There were a lot of folks up in the bluegrass country, where most of Kentucky’s population was concentrated, but southern Kentucky was still pretty much forest, though more and more farms were being chopped out. Before dark they would stop at a farm and contract for supper and a night in the barn rolled in a blanket on a bed of hay and up before dawn.
He made constant notes with a stub pencil as he rode, laying
out a campaign and drafting orders to send back to Brigadier Scorsby. Figuring the numbers he could raise, the supplies they would need, the boats to haul them downriver to Fort Adams just below Natchez. It was coming on winter and he knew from experience that New Orleans could be damp and cold, so every man should have a good coat, a change of clothes, a blanket roll. Gourd canteens too, powder horn, bullet pouch. They could run ball from bar lead on the way down, make paper cartridges, deck over part of the flatboat, and hold drill on the deck. Then medicines, ample viands, chaplains and doctors … .
He rode into Lexington somewhat trail whipped, awed despite himself at its size and extent. Nashville, Louisville, even Knoxville would have trouble mustering up five hundred souls, but they said Lexington was already over two thousand and sprouting up like a weed. Courthouse of brick and frame houses all neatly planked with iron fences and gates, half a dozen churches, worship any old way you wanted, sheds with cotton bales stacked and squared, wagons loaded with bar iron, distilleries and breweries, gristmills and potash yards. He saw a tailor’s shop, a cobbler, even a cabinetmaker—high cotton indeed! Still, you were looking at Nashville; give it another few years.
It seemed the news had just hit. Boys were hawking three different sheets. He bought one of each and scanned them—essentially what he already knew. Clumps of men stood talking in loud voices that said rage on the surface, fear underneath. When he dismounted at the hotel, a crone with a huge wad of snuff bulging her lip glared as if it was all his fault and shouted, “My man and my three boys are down the river with everything we own. I’ll tell you, Mister, we ought to go down and clean them dirty devils out like we’d sweep out a barn!” No answer seemed needed, and in a moment she shot a burst of brown spittle into the dirt at his feet and stormed away, shouting at someone else.
He had a bath at the hotel, ordered his trail clothes washed, brushed out a fresh suit, and made for General Sanford’s store, marching along dirt streets where that same
mixture of rage and fear rang in passing voices. He found the commandant of Kentucky militia leaning against his counter in earnest talk with several men. Sanford proved to be a bear of a man, sixty or so, who moved in a shambling walk that bespoke power and authority.
He ignored Jackson till he finished his conversation and the men left. Then he looked him up and down and said, “Doubtless you want to know, will we fight over this? The answer is hell, yes. I’ve already ordered all regiments to muster. Governor wants every man on standby. What’s your regiment?”

Other books

The Dragon Knight Order by Vicioso, Gabriel
Tony and Susan by Austin Wright
Keeper by Mal Peet
Killing Reagan by Bill O'Reilly
When Summer Ends by Rae, Isabelle
A Full Churchyard by Nicholas Rhea