Some newspapers emphasized one thing; others something else. U.S. DEFEATS ARKANSAS in one paper might be MONSTER CASUALTIES IN ARKANSAS in another. But there was enough commonality for one thing to be clear to everyone.
The Arkansas War was just starting, and it wouldn't be over any time soon.
In Washington, D.C., the president and the war secretary announced that they'd be presenting to the next Congress, convening over the winter, a plan for the drastic expansion of the American military in response to the threat posed by the Confederacy. Or Black Arkansas, as Calhoun referred to it, not being a man given to euphemisms.
In response, Senator Andrew Jackson called for the formation of a new political party, since there was clearly no longer room in the existing Republican Party for both him and-"the rascals" was the mildest term he used-Clay and Calhoun. And he invited several key political figures in the nation to meet with him in advance of the convening of Congress, so that a common platform for the new party could be forged.
And that's where Governor Shulze of Pennsylvania had been headed when he passed through Uniontown and, by pure accident, happened to be there at the right time to save Andrew Clark from a lynching.
At the Hermitage, in Nashville, another declaration of war was being prepared. A war, in this case, that nobody in the United States with any political sense at all thought would be over any sooner than the other one-and a goodly number thought would continue long after peace came to Arkansas.
Clark did eventually make it to Washington. The trial that followed was brief, as was the sentencing. Several congressmen from Georgia, at the last minute, made a somewhat bizarre attempt to persuade the president to commute Clark's sentence to life imprisonment. Bizarre, at least, in its contorted logic.
But other than a few Georgians, only John Randolph rose in the House to defend the proposal, and his logic couldn't be followed by anyone.
President Henry Clay turned them down flatly, even-very unusual for him-in a curt and almost uncivil manner. First, he said, because he had no proper jurisdiction over the matter. Granted that the District of Columbia was under federal authority, not being part of any state, murder was a local crime. So why didn't Congress act directly instead of trying to shuffle the matter off on the president? And what exactly had happened to John Randolph's principles concerning states' rights and the ever-present danger of an overweening executive branch, by the way?
That last, with a sneer, which Clay did very well also.
Beyond that, he told them, even if the courts ruled that he could intervene, he would under no circumstances do so anyway.
"The bastard murdered an innocent young woman! Who might very well have been pregnant with child. Right there-not a mile away-on the steps of the Capitol! What in the name of God is wrong with-"
He broke off abruptly and resumed the seat behind his desk. "No, gentlemen," he said. "The answer is no. Let the murderer hang by the neck until dead, and good riddance. And now, I'm sure you have other business to attend to. If not, I do."
The murderer did hang, on January 23, 1826. But by the time the noose finally took his life, Congress had convened, and no one was paying much attention any longer.
No politician, at any rate. One observer at the hanging was a visiting plantation owner from South Carolina. When it was all over, he was heard by some of the guards to curse Andrew Clark with vehement bitterness, ending with "You dang fool! Why did you have to miss? "
1824: TheArkansasWar
1824: TheArkansasWar
CHAPTER 40
The Hermitage Nashville, Tennessee
"-not budging an inch on the subject of the Bank! No, sir, Mr. John Quincy Adams. Not-one-inch." Andrew Jackson broke off his angry stalking back and forth in the living room of the Hermitage. Planting his bony hands on his hips, he leaned over and, from a distance of not more than two feet, bestowed his patented Andy Jackson glare on the short, chunky man sitting in the chair in front of him.
Who, for his part, was glaring right back. Watching the two of them from the far side of the room, Jackson's old friend and confidant John Coffee didn't even try to hide his grin.
You had to tip your hat to Quincy Adams. The whole Jackson style just plain aggravated him, but he'd soon learned how to deal with it. The man might have the mind of a scholar, but he could be just as pugnacious as anyone in Jackson's camp, including Andy himself.
"-don't care about all that fancy economics prattle," Jackson was continuing. "The issue's not finances in the first place. It's politics! A national bank with the authority of the federal government behind it is a mortal threat to the republic. You might as well put a viper in a baby's crib."
Standing by a window not far away, Thomas Hart Benton cleared his throat noisily. Noisily enough, in fact, to break off Andy in mid-tirade and intercept the harsh riposte that Quincy Adams was obviously about to launch.
"Got to say I agree with Andy here, John," the senator from Missouri said, in a mild tone of voice. He then gave the Tennessee senator a look of deep reproach. "Though I can't see where there's any call for him to get so rambunctious about it."
Thomas Hart Benton! Complaining that someone else was being "too rambunctious." Coffee still had vivid memories of the gunfight in the City Hotel, not more than a few miles away though a considerable number of years back in time. It'd been a fistfight and knife fight, too, no holds or weapons barred.
"But he does cut to the heart of it, I think." Benton took a few steps forward, placing himself in front of most of the men gathered in the room. The senator was a natural orator of the rip-roaring school, and he began lapsing into the sort of speech he might give on the Senate floor.
"I plain can't see why, in a confederacy of such vast extent, so many independent states, so many rival commercial cities, there should be but one moneyed tribunal, before which all the rival and contending elements must appear."
Sure enough, his left hand was slipping into his waist, and the right was beginning to wave about. "What a condition for a confederacy of states! But one single dispenser of money, to which every citizen, every trader, every merchant, every manufacturer, every planter, every corporation, every city, every state, and the federal government itself must apply, in every emergency, for the most indispensable loan!"
He was in full roar, now, the right hand no longer waving about but pointing-no, thrusting-the forefinger of denunciation from a mighty thick fist of righteousness. Fortunately, at a blank spot on a wall, beyond which lay defenseless farmland, rather than at John Quincy Adams.
Though, to be sure, Adams was not far from the line of fire. Benton had only to lower the hand perhaps a foot and shift it three inches to the left to bring the man from Massachusetts directly into the accusatory finger's aim.
"And this!-in the face of the fact that in every contest for human rights, the great moneyed institutions of the world have uniformly been found on the side of kings and nobles, against the lives and liberties of the people!"
Adams clapped his hands together. Once, twice, thrice.
"Splendidly said, Thomas! And I can assure you that should I ever choose to forgo the barren soil of New England for the fertile vistas of Missouri, I shall certainly cast my vote for you upon every possible occasion."