Silence followed. Coffee looked around the room.
Andy was still staring out the window. Benton was giving Adams a look that was half a glare. Only half, though. Shulze was obviously trying not to look smug. Martin Van Buren, over in the corner, had an unreadable expression. But that was a given with the senator from New York. If there was any politician in the country slicker and smoother than Henry Clay, it was the Little Magician. The former Radical Republican's first and immediate reaction to anything was to start calculating the votes, once he was assured that states' rights would be respected. And no one thought Adams was challenging that principle.
Coffee then looked at Richard Johnson. The senator from Kentucky was giving Adams a look that Coffee couldn't interpret at all. Welclass="underline"
He could, actually, he thought. If you remembered that Johnson was a man as well as a politician.
Finally, he looked at the two men who, in the end, were perhaps the most important ones of all. They were sitting side by side in a divan angled to the one holding Shulze.
William Carroll, governor of Tennessee. Joseph Desha, governor of Kentucky. There was no one here representing the state government of Missouri, because the elected governor had just died a couple of months earlier and his successor wasn't known yet.
Both men looked more like rabbits paralyzed by the sight of a viper-or a dragon-than anything else he could think of. Coffee couldn't really blame them. In the United States of America, in the year 1825, the states were more often than not the battlefields upon which the political wars were fought. A proposal-not even that yet, just a question-that frightened presidents and senators and congressmen could be downright petrifying for a governor.
Jackson spoke first, still looking out the window. His tone was quite mild. "Let's start with this, John. Under no conditions will I support outright abolition. Not even on a state level, much less a national one. First, because I detest abolitionists. Second, because I don't think it would work anyway. Third, because"-he had a crooked smile, now-"fine, I'll be honest. I can't afford it myself."
"Agreed," said Adams immediately. "To make something clear, Senator Jackson-or anyone here-I have no fondness for abolitionism myself. Never have had, despite what some people insinuate." He shrugged heavily. "The truth is, being blunt, I don't care much what happens to negroes. They are not my race of men, and I've never seen much evidence that leads me to question the general assessment of their capabilities. But that's not the point. The problem with slavery, so far as I am concerned, is not its effect upon negroes. The problem is its effect upon us. It is corroding the republic, gentlemen. Like venom from a viper. Sooner or later, it will sweep the republic under, in all but name, or it will tear it apart."
Carroll started to protest. "I think that's more than a bit-"
"No, he's right," said Jackson quietly. He still hadn't taken his gaze from the countryside beyond. "I didn't use to think so, either, Bill. But John's right. Arkansas changed everything. Or maybe it's better to say that Arkansas stripped away the blinders. Where do you want to start? States' rights? Calhoun and his people are already demanding that the federal post has to be closed to abolitionist literature."
"But you said-wasn't but-"
Jackson waved his hand impatiently. "I know what I said. Didn't seem like such a bad idea to me, once. Stinking abolitionists. But haven't you been paying attention? Now they're claiming that even the reports being filed by Cullen Bryant-even Scott!-are 'abolitionist.' "
Finally, he turned away from the window. Some fury was coming into his eyes. "And don't that cap the climax? Winfield Scott, who whipped the British at the Chippewa and almost lost his life at Lundy's Lane, has to shut his mouth and not tell the country the truth about its military affairs-so that John Calhoun, who never once in his life put himself in harm's way for the sake of the republic, isn't discomfited on his plantation. No different, I tell you-no different at all!-from those damn traitors in New Orleans!"
He gave the room a sweeping gaze much like the one Adams had just given it. Allowing for a fifty-degree increase in temperature. "No, sir! Be damned if I'll support that!"
His eyes met those of John Quincy Adams, then, and the two men exchanged a quick, hard nod.
So, it was all over but the shouting.
Well, all over but the dickering. There'd be days of that, still.
John Coffee thought about his own reaction and was a bit surprised at what he found.
Simply relief. A man could live with a reptile, even place his own well-being in the creature's care. That wasn't easy, but it could be done. What was truly hard-exhausting, after a while-was the need to keep insisting the scaly damn thing was warm and furry. As if it were a pet instead of a vicious wild beast that could turn on you at any moment.
By midafternoon, two days later, they finally agreed on a modification of New York's method of gradual emancipation. Quincy Adams dragged the negotiations out for at least half a day, all but calling them a pack of cowards. New York had taken longer to free its slaves than any of the Northern states except New Jersey. In fact, they still weren't all free. There were hardly any negroes remaining who were affected by those particular curlicues in a set of laws that was riddled with curlicues, true enough. But, technically, the last slave in New York wouldn't be free until 1827.
But Coffee knew-everybody knew-that was just Quincy Adams's way of applying the goad. Fine for him to advocate the Vermont or Massachusetts approach, when slaves had never featured significantly in those colonies and states to begin with. The legislative program they were trying to develop had the border states as their principal target, and slavery was prominent in those states.
So, they felt the New York model would be more palatable, given that New York had had a large number of slaves through most of its history. In fact, until very recently, there had been more slaves in New York City than in any city in the nation, including Charleston, South Carolina. Nor was that simply a reflection of the fact that New York was by far the largest city. It was estimated that, as late as the end of the century, one out of four households in the city had owned slaves.
There was the further advantage, using the New York model, of having Martin Van Buren's expertise-no small thing, when it came to what would surely be bitter infighting in Congress.
Not that the issue would really be decided in Congress. Jackson, a firm advocate of states' rights, was adamant that no emancipation program of any kind could be applied to the nation as a whole. The new party could legitimately use Congress only as a podium from which to expound its views. The battles themselves would have to be won in the separate states, one at a time.
In practice, that meant Tennessee and Kentucky within a year or two, with Missouri to come later. The issue of slavery was still a sore point in Missouri because of the Missouri Compromise. Benton warned them that it would take, in his estimate, at least four years before any Missouri legislature would be willing to seriously contemplate the notion.
You never knew, though, he added. More and more German immigrants were coming into the state, and wherever Germans went, support for slavery was sure to drop. Drastically, at times. What was perhaps more important, however, was the uncertain variable of the Arkansas War.
Arkansas had forced the issue-and Arkansas might very well continue to set the pace and determine the parameters. If for no other reason than the simplest and crudest. The longer and more successfully a mostly black nation could defend its independence, the more difficult it became for any white man in America-even John Calhoun-to persist in the claim that black people were incapable of managing their own affairs.