1824: The Arkansas War

O CTOBER 1, 1824

"Perhaps you should remain here, Julia," Colonel Taylor suggested. He looked around the inn. "It seems comfortable enough, and the senator left you with plenty of money."

Julia Chinn was having none of it, as Taylor had feared. "Colonel, meaning no offense, but that's crazy. You going to leave a black woman and two black children alone-with money, which just makes it worse-in this town? Leavin' aside that Memphis got a reputation that's of practically biblical proportions, I remind you that Tennessee's a slave state. Give it two days, and we'd be vanished somewhere."

"I could:" But the sentence trailed off.

"Don't be silly. You got only twelve men to begin with. If you insist on going south into what looks like a war starting, you'll need all of them."

He couldn't argue the point. "Well. I'm sure the boat captain would agree-"

"He's going back up to St. Louis," Julia interrupted. "St. Louis is a frontier town, which means the only reason it ain't looking at Bible rank is just 'cause it ain't well enough knowed yet. And Missouri's another slave state."

"Surely there's some boat that'll be heading for Ohio."

She shrugged. "Prob'bly. And the captain might even be a Northerner. But most of the crew will be Southern. And as excited as they all are, since the news came:"

She shrugged again. The fact that the shoulders which made the gesture were still those of a fairly young and very attractive woman simply drove home her point. Being a mulatto, Julia was light-skinned compared with the average negro, but there was no chance at all she could pass for a white woman. Not even Imogene and Adaline could, for that matter. In truth, the girls' skin color wasn't really any darker than that of many white people. Italians or Spaniards or Louisiana Creoles, at any rate. But their features had a distinctly African cast.

A subtle one, perhaps-but Zachary Taylor was a Southerner himself. He knew full well that any Southerner could distinguish racial origins at a glance unless they'd been almost completely submerged. Why else the fine and precise distinctions between such terms as "mulatto," "quadroon," "octoroon"?

Silently, he leveled a curse on his native land. He understood his fellow Southerners and even liked them most of the time. But there was something ultimately savage and obsessive about his folk when it came to race.

Not all Southerners shared that obsession, of course. He didn't. Senator Johnson didn't. Sam Houston didn't. Even Andrew Jackson didn't, really, once you cut beneath the surface. At least, Old Hickory would make some personal distinctions, even if he agreed with the general attitude.

For a moment, the colonel found himself wishing desperately that Jackson were on the scene. Of course, that would mean a relentless, all-out sort of war, if it came to that. But Jackson would also keep his men in line. Whereas Crittenden's army, from all accounts they'd been getting, had been moving north like so many Huns.

True, the atrocities had been practiced on Choctaws, which meant that from the standpoint of most white Southerners in the area it was all to the good. Leaving aside their own land hunger, there had been plenty of instances in the past of Choctaw outrages against white settlers.

And vice versa, of course. It was a land that sometimes seemed to Taylor to be drenched in blood. He was an experienced and capable Indian fighter himself. But he'd never really shared the common attitude toward the natives. He'd encountered many he'd respected, even admired; and, if nothing else, he liked to think he was too fair-minded. It was their land, after all. And if his loyalties were to the American republic, and he didn't have any qualms about driving Indians off the land to allow that republic to swell in greatness, he wasn't going to besmirch himself by adding hypocrisy to the mix either.

"Damnation," he muttered.

"You shouldn't blaspheme, Colonel, you know that." But Julia was almost grinning as she said it. Over the weeks of their journey, she and Taylor had gotten along quite well.

He sighed and leaned back in his chair at the table in the tavern's dining room. Remembering, as he did so, how he'd had to browbeat the innkeeper's wife into serving Julia and the girls at all.

Damnation.

A bit desperately: "Julia, I have got to keep going. Leaving aside the fact that I'm supposed to be reporting back for duty at my post in Baton Rouge, the War Department will want a full report on what's happening in Arkansas."

She shrugged. "So, fine. I can ride, and so can the girls. Just take us with you."

"We're going into a war. "

The gaze she gave him was level, and rather cold. "Colonel Taylor, I been in a war zone my whole life. So's every colored person in this country. We goin' with you, and that's that."

"All right," he said, giving in to the inevitable. He could hardly refuse, after all, unless he intended to avoid Senator Johnson the rest of his life. He consoled himself with the thought that Dick Johnson served the best and most expensive whiskey in Kentucky at Blue Spring Farm-and made a silent vow, right then and there, to drink the amalgamating bastard dry the next time he visited.

"Just give me the time to write some dispatches," he added, wincing a little. Of all the duties of an officer, writing dispatches was the one he detested the most. He wasn't really that well educated.

Julia smiled. "Tell you what, Zack. I do all the paperwork at home. You tell me what you want, and I'll write 'em for you. My written English is a lot more proper than the way I talk, too."

The temptation was well-nigh irresistible. "It'll look peculiar," he half argued. "You not having what anyone would likely call a masculine hand."

"Tell 'em you sprained your wrist."

Resistance was futile. "Deal."

Natchez, Mississippi