1824: The Arkansas War

CHAPTER 33

The Arkansas River

Three miles downstream from Arkansas Post

Gloomily, Major General William Henry Harrison watched men from one of the batteries of the 1st Artillery struggling with a six-pounder whose carriage had gotten stuck in the mud by the riverbank. They were having to manhandle the thing up onto dry land-drier land, rather-because the footing was so bad that trying to use horses for the purpose would have been more trouble than it was worth.

"Wish we had some oxen." That came from Stephen Fleming, one of the young lieutenants who served as an aide to the general.

"And what good would that do?" Harrison almost snarled the words. He pointed a finger at the battery, whose three other guns and two howitzers had finally been dragged clear of the muck on the riverbank. "That's supposed to be field artillery, you-"

He bit off the rest. Then, after a moment to steady his temper, continued in a more even tone. "The whole point of light artillery, Lieutenant Fleming, is to be able to maneuver with it on a battlefield. Maneuver-with oxen! Do you know how fast a team of oxen can pull a cannon? Any cannon, whether it's a four-pounder or a siege gun?"

Abashed, the young lieutenant avoided his commanding general's gaze. "Uh. No, sir. I don't."

"One. Mile. An. Hour." Harrison shifted his glare from the hapless officer to the battery crew still struggling with the six-pounder. "Which is just about what we're managing as it is."

He looked up at the sun to gauge the time, rather than taking the trouble to pull out his watch. It was already at least an hour past noon. No way to begin the assault on Arkansas Post until the morrow, at the earliest. They'd lost another day.

The whole campaign, thus far, seemed to be nothing more than one lost day after another. Silently, Harrison spent the next few seconds cursing Thomas Jesup and the Arkansas Delta in about equal proportions.

That done, he spent considerably more time cursing militiamen in general and the Georgia militia in particular. Their slack habits, near-constant drunkenness, and indiscipline had cost him at least as much in the way of lost days as fouled-up logistics and soggy terrain.

He'd been warned about them by Andrew Jackson himself, when he'd paid the Tennessee senator a visit at the Hermitage in mid-April. Harrison had decided he could afford to take the time to do so, since his supplies were so badly snarled it would be at least two weeks before anything got moving again.

Jackson had been cordial, and the visit had gone smoothly. There was no love lost between the two men, to be sure-never had been-but Jackson was being careful. The running stream of caustic and excoriating comments he was having published in the nation's newspapers concerning "Clay's War" were always aimed entirely at Henry Clay and John Calhoun and the politicians around them. Toward the U.S. Army itself, Jackson's stance was friendly and supportive. In public, at least-and in private as well, if the tenor of Harrison's visit with him was any gauge.

"No militia's worth much, of course, unless you've got time to train them thoroughly-which you usually don't, because their terms of enlistment are so short. But the Georgians are the worst of all."

They'd been standing in the front yard of the Hermitage when Jackson made the comment. He pointed to an aged hound lying in the shade by the wall of the house. "Old Hussar, over there, is no lazier. The difference is, he don't drink, he don't gamble, he don't steal-well, not much; nothing compared to what a Georgian will-he don't rape all the womenfolk he can get his paws on, he don't sass you, he don't argue every blasted thing under the sun"-Jackson took time for a breath-"and he don't run off in a panic if a rooster crows or a cat hisses at him."

"That bad?"

Jackson nodded. "That bad. The worst of it is they're also the biggest braggarts in the country. If you didn't know better, just listening to 'em, you'd swear that their forefathers whupped Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar, and their own martial accomplishments put those to shame."

Jackson barked a sarcastic laugh. "Southron valor, they call it. Bah. I wouldn't trade a whole company of Georgia militia for one Tennessean or two Kentuckians. Well. Three Kentuckians. You always got to subtract one Kentuckian on account of the whiskey consumption."

At the time, Harrison had thought Jackson was exaggerating. The man was notorious for his vindictive temper and his unrelenting feuds, after all. The stories of his clashes with Georgia militiamen during the war with the Creeks were well known.

Now, three months later, Harrison was more inclined to think Jackson had been light-handed in his condemnation. Evenhanded, for sure. The bastards were that bad.

He'd had the unit that committed the outrages on the Quapaws put under arrest as soon as he heard about the incident. But he was sure there'd still be Sam Hill to pay when the newspapers got hold of the story. Which they surely would, as many pestiferous reporters as the army had hanging around it, like flies on a horse.

Harrison took a few more seconds to silently curse newspapers and newspapermen. And the abolitionist maniacs and bedlamites who were egging them on. What had the world come to, when a military campaign against Indians and rebellious negroes had to worry about maintaining a so-called good press?

To be sure, any competent commander would punish soldiers who committed flagrant atrocities, even against savages. But that was simply for the purpose of maintaining discipline. Nobody actually cared that much about the incidents themselves. It wasn't as if any treatment was being visited on the savages that they didn't commit themselves, after all.

But:Harrison did have to concern himself over the business. He'd been given explicit instructions by the president. By the secretary of war, also, but for Calhoun that was obviously just a formality. Henry Clay, on the other hand, had been quite serious about it-and, for once, Harrison didn't think that had been purely a matter of maintaining his political reputation. The newly elected chief executive had seemed genuinely concerned that the conflict with Arkansas be waged according to civilized rules of war.

The idiot. Only a man who'd never gotten any closer to a battlefield than Harrison broke off his sour train of thought. The battery had finally gotten the last of the six-pounders clear of the mud. Thank the heavens. Now, maybe they could A different young officer was at his elbow, looking fidgety. John Riehl, his name was, if Harrison remembered correctly.

"What is it, Lieutenant?"

"Ah, sir, the commander of the Louisiana militia is complaining that his men aren't being fed properly. Well. The food's all right, I guess, but he's real peeved that the regulars and the Georgia-"

"Tell that fucking-! No. Never mind. I'll tell him myself. Where is he?"

Riehl looked more fidgety than ever. "Ah. Well, that's the other thing. He and the rest of the Louisiana officers went off afterward-after he chewed on me, I mean-to have lunch on the Chesapeake to get some relief from the heat, and:well."

"Don't tell me," Harrison said through gritted teeth.

"Yes, sir. She ran aground on a sandbar."

Lieutenant Riehl cleared his throat. "Again."

The Arkansas River

Missouri Territory