Read Online 1824: The Arkansas War by Eric Flint - Free Book Online Page B

hard to resist, though. The whiskey served at Blue Spring Farm was the best Sam had had in months. And that was a lot of whiskey back.
    Once the humor of his mishap had settled, Hartfield went on with what he’d been about to say. “I don’t think it’s really fair to blame young Houston. If the general had just kept quiet about the matter, instead of…”
    He shrugged. Even more expansively than he had before, now that further damage was impossible. The button that had popped off his vest had been the last survivor.
    “That unfortunate speech.”
    That was something of a euphemism, in Sam’s opinion. As much as he admired Andy Jackson, there was no denying the man had a savage streak in his nature that was sometimes as wide as the Mississippi River. If the clash at Algiers had been between any
other
group of black men—free or slave, it mattered not—and a properly constituted white militia, Andy Jackson would have been among the first to demand loudly that the niggers be put in their place. For that matter, he’d probably have offered to lead the punitive expedition personally.
    But those hadn’t been just any black men. Those had been the men of the Iron Battalion, led by the same Patrick Driscol, who’d broken the British at the Battle of the Mississippi—the battle that had turned Jackson from a regional into a national figure. If Andy Jackson could be savage about race, he could be even more savage—a lot more savage—when it came to matters of honor, and courage, and cowardice.
    Whatever the color of their skin—and their commander’s skin was as white as Jackson’s own—Old Hickory had a genuine admiration for the Iron Battalion. And, on the reverse side, despised no group of wealthy men in the United States so much as he despised the plantation owners in and around New Orleans who had, in the main, refused to participate in the fight against the invading redcoats. And had done so—to put the icing on the cake—because they feared their own slaves more than they did a foreign enemy.
    Jackson had had choice words to say about that Louisiana gentry during the New Orleans campaign in the war against the British. His words spoken in public—and reprinted in most of the newspapers of the nation—the day after the Algiers Incident had been choicer still.
Poltroons
and
criminals
applied to rich white men, and the terms
stalwart fellows
and
yeomen defending their rights
applied to poor black ones, were all true, to be sure. But they’d caused the general’s popularity in the South and the West—theretofore almost unanimous except for Henry Clay and his coterie—to plummet like a stone.
    Only so far, of course. Soon enough, the plunging stone had reached the secure ledge of support from the poorer class of the Southwest’s voters. For the most part, they’d been no happier with the result of the clash at Algiers than any other white men of the region. On the other hand, as the saying went, it was no skin off their nose. All the more so, since the battle had been precipitated by the lascivious conduct of some of the New Orleans Creoles, whose wealth and Frenchified habits the poor Scots-Irish settlers resented—and a good percentage considered not that much better than niggers anyway.
    Still, when all the dust settled, Andy Jackson’s popularity in the South and West was no longer as overwhelming as it had been. Clay, of course, had immediately seized the opportunity to continue the Jackson-bashing he’d begun two years earlier over the general’s conduct of the Florida campaign. The Speaker of the House had had his own choice words to say on the floor of Congress. He’d even gone to the extreme of offering to lead a punitive expedition to Louisiana himself.
    The offer had been as histrionic as it was ridiculous. First, because Henry Clay had no military experience whatsoever—indeed, he routinely dismissed Jackson as a “mere military chieftain,” in no way suitable for higher positions in