Free 1824: The Arkansas War by Eric Flint Page A

hand. “Sure he did. John Quincy Adams is the best secretary of state the United States has ever had, if you ask me. Andy Jackson got us Florida, so Adams backed him. But that doesn’t mean he much likes the general. Face it, gentlemen.” Jones leaned forward in his seat and tapped the table with his forefinger. “First, they disagree over most issues that concern the internal affairs of the nation. Adams is still half a Federalist, when you come down to it. Half an abolitionist, too, if I’m not mistaken.”
    He tapped the table again, more forcibly. “Second, political affairs are determined more by matters of blood and attitude than they are by cold intellect. I don’t think you could find two prominent men in the country more unlike than Andy Jackson and John Quincy Adams. They’re as different as the Kentucky whiskey and French wine they each prefer to drink.”
    That was true enough, of course. Best of all, it was salient.
    Sam rose to his feet. “A toast, then, gentlemen! To unlikely alliances!” The men at the table began to rise, all except the two veterans who were missing a leg. But their smiles were enough to indicate their full agreement with the toast.
    Sam reached down for his tumbler. Then, his mouth widened as if he’d just noticed the glass was empty.
    “Ah. How awkward.”
    “Grover!” Johnson barked at one of the slaves standing by the sideboard. “What are you daydreaming about? See to it that Sam’s whiskey is refilled!”

CHAPTER 5

    The next morning, at breakfast, Johnson waited until the girls were finished and had excused themselves from the table before returning to the subject of the new school.
    More precisely, to where the new school might lead them.
    “Tarnation, Sam—I’ll make this as plain as I can—I want them to marry white men. Even if they have to move to Vermont or Massachusetts in order to do it. And how many white men are they going to run into, over there in Black Arkansas?”
    “They’re only twelve years old, Dick,” Sam pointed out mildly. “Hardly something you’ve got to worry about right now.”
    The senator wasn’t mollified. “They’ll grow up fast enough. Faster than you expect. If there’s any sure and certain law about kids, that’s it. They
always
grow up faster than you expect.”
    Sam glanced at Julia. Her expression was unreadable: just a blank face that might simply be contemplating clouds in the sky. He wondered how she felt about the matter.
    But since there was no point in asking, he decided bluntness was the only tactic suitable.
    “They’ll marry whoever they marry, Dick. If you think you can stop them—here any more than in Arkansas—you’re dreaming. You heard about the ruckus with Major Ridge’s son? Over in Connecticut?”
    Johnson chuckled. “Who didn’t? I heard the girl even went on a hunger strike.”
    “Yep, she did. Stuck to it, too, until her parents got so worried they caved in and let her marry John Ridge after all. Cherokee or not. But here’s really the point I was making. Did you hear what happened to her family afterward?”
    The senator shook his head.
    “Well, after the wedding they wound up moving to New Antrim also. I guess, after visiting the town to make sure their daughter wasn’t winding up in some Indian lean-to—” He grinned widely. “Which Patrick Driscol’s Wolfe Tone Hotel most certainly isn’t, not with Tiana running the place. Anyway, it seems they found New Antrim most congenial. Especially since it was maybe the only town in the continent, outside of Fort of 98, where their daughter wouldn’t be hounded every day. Neither would they, for that matter. It got pretty rough on them, too, you know. One newspaper article even called for drowning the girl’s mother along with whipping the girl herself. John Ridge himself, of course, was for hanging.”
    “I heard.” Johnson’s lip curled. “So much for that snooty New England so-called upper crust. You can say what you like about the