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24 chapters
CHAPTER I—SALISBURY AND THE LAW
CHAPTER I—SALISBURY AND THE LAW
I N this year of our Lord's grace, 1787, the ancient town of Salisbury, seat of justice for Rowan County, and the buzzing metropolis of its region, numbers by word of a partisan citizenry eight hundred souls. Its streets are unpaved, and present an unbroken expanse of red North Carolina clay from one narrow plank sidewalk to another. In the summer, if the weather be dry, the red clay resolves itself into blinding brick-red dust. In the spring, when the rains fall, it lapses into brick-red mud, a
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CHAPTER II—THE ROWAN HOUSE SUPPER
CHAPTER II—THE ROWAN HOUSE SUPPER
T HE horse-faced Andy precedes the coming of his two friends to that supper by two hours. As he moves up the street toward the Rowan House, fair faces beam on him and fair hands wave him a salutation from certain Salisbury verandas. In return he doffs his hat with an exaggerated politeness, which becomes him as the acknowledged beau of the town. One cannot blame those beaming fair faces and those saluting hands. Slim, elegant, confident with a kind of polished cockyness that does not ill become
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CHAPTER III—THE BLOOMING RACHEL
CHAPTER III—THE BLOOMING RACHEL
N ASHVILLE is the merest scrambling huddle of log houses. The most imposing edifice is a blockhouse, built of logs squared by the broadaxe. It is the home of the widow Donelson; and, since it is all her husband left her when the Indians shot him down at the plow-stilts, and because she must live, the widow Donelson has turned the blockhouse into a boarding house. With the widow Donelson dwells her daughter Rachel, a beautiful brunette of twenty, and the belle of the Cumberland. Rachel is vivacio
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CHAPTER IV—COLONEL WAIGHTSTILL AVERY OFFENDS
CHAPTER IV—COLONEL WAIGHTSTILL AVERY OFFENDS
N OW, when the horse-faced Andy finds himself in the Cumberland country, he begins to look about him. Being a lawyer, his instinct leads him to consider those opposing ranks of commerce, the debtor and creditor classes. He finds the former composed of persons of the highest honor. Also, their honor is sensitive and easily touched, being sensitive and touchy in proportion as the bulk of their debts is increased. The debtor class, as the same finds representation about those two Cumberland forums,
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CHAPTER V—THE WINNING OF A WIFE
CHAPTER V—THE WINNING OF A WIFE
A LL these energetic matters happen at aforesaid, is dancing attendance upon the court. The fame of them travels to Nashville in advance of his return, and works a respectful change toward him in the attitude of the public. Hereafter he is to be called “Andrew” by ones who know him well; while others, less acquainted, will on military occasions hail him as “Cap'n” and on civil ones as “Square.” On every hand, reference to him as “horse-faced” is to be dropped; wherefore this history, the effort
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CHAPTER VI—DEAD-SHOT DICKINSON
CHAPTER VI—DEAD-SHOT DICKINSON
T HE sandy-haired Andrew now devotes himself to the practice of law and the domestic virtues. In exercising the latter, he has the aid of the blooming Rachel, toward whom he carries himself with a tender chivalry that would have graced a Bayard. Having little of books, he is earnest for the education of others, and becomes a trustee of the Nashville Academy. About this time the good people of the Cumberland, and of the regions round about, believing they number more than seventy thousand souls,
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CHAPTER VII—HOW THE GENERAL FOUGHT
CHAPTER VII—HOW THE GENERAL FOUGHT
T HE General seeks the taciturn Over-ton—that wordless one of the uneasy hair triggers. “It is a plot,” says the General. “And yet this man shall die.” Hair-trigger Overton bears a challenge to dead-shot Dickinson, and is referred to that marksman's second, Hanson Catlet. Hair-trigger Overton and Mr. Catlet agree on Harrison's Mills, a long Day's ride away in Kentucky. There are laws against dueling in Tennessee; wherefore her citizens, when bent on blood, repair to Kentucky. To make all equal,
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CHAPTER VIII—ENGLAND AND GRIM-VISAGED WAR
CHAPTER VIII—ENGLAND AND GRIM-VISAGED WAR
T HE saw-handles are cleaned and oiled and laid away to that repose which they have won. No more will they be summoned to defend the blooming Rachel. No one now speaks evil of her; for that tragedy which reddened a May Kentucky morning has sealed the lips of slander. The General does not speak of that battle at twelve paces in the poplar wood; and yet the blooming Rachel knows. She, like her lover-husband, never refers to it; but her worship of him finds multiplication, while he, towards her, gr
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CHAPTER IX—THE GENERAL AT THE HORSESHOE
CHAPTER IX—THE GENERAL AT THE HORSESHOE
T HE General goes to Fayettesville, and orders Colonel Coffee with his eager five hundred to Huntsville, as a point nearer the heart of savage war. Volunteers, each bringing his own rifle and riding his own horse, join Colonel Coffee, who sends back inspiring word that his five hundred have grown to thirteen hundred, all thirsting for Creek blood. Meanwhile, the General, weak and worn to a shadow, can hardly keep the saddle, and must be bathed hourly in whisky to hold soul and body together. Una
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CHAPTER X—FLORIDA DELENDA EST
CHAPTER X—FLORIDA DELENDA EST
T HE General, at the behest of the blooming Rachel, rests for three round weeks, which seem to his fight-loving soul like three round years. Then the Government sends him to Fort Jackson to dictate terms of peace to the broken Creeks. The latter assemble, war paints washed off, in a deeply thoughtful, if not a peaceful, mood. The General proposes terms which well nigh amount to a wiping out of the Creek landed possessions. The Creeks go into secret council, as it were executive session, and bemo
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CHAPTER XI—THE TWO FLAGS AT PENSACOLA
CHAPTER XI—THE TWO FLAGS AT PENSACOLA
T HOSE two flags, one the red flag of England, flying at Pensacola, haunt the General night and day. His hunting-shirt men, twenty-eight hundred from his beloved Tennessee and twelve hundred from the territories of Mississippi and Alabama, are lusting for battle. He resolves to lead them into Florida, across the Spanish line. “We must rout the English out of Pensacola!” he explains to Colonel Coffee. “Pensacola!” repeats Colonel Coffee, looking thoughtful. “It is Spanish territory, General! Ther
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CHAPTER XII—THE GENERAL GOES TO NEW ORLEANS
CHAPTER XII—THE GENERAL GOES TO NEW ORLEANS
G overnor maurequez evolves into the very climax of the affable, not to say obsequious. He assures the General that he is relieved by the flight of the pig English, whom he despises as hare-hearts. Also, he is breathless to do anything that shall prove his affectionate admiration for his friend, the valorous Senor General. The General accepts the affectionate admiration of Governor Maurequez, and leaves in his care Major Laval, who has been too severely wounded to move; and Governor Maurequez su
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CHAPTER XIII—THE WATCH FIRES OF THE ENGLISH
CHAPTER XIII—THE WATCH FIRES OF THE ENGLISH
T HESE are busy times for the General. He lives on rice and coffee, and goes days and nights without sleep. He sends the tireless Coffee, with his hunting-shirt men, to take position below the city, between the morass and the river. Finally he orders all his forces below—Colonel Carroll with his new hunting-shirt men, Colonel Adair with his unarmed Kentuckians, the hard-riding Captain Hinds with his dragoons, as well as the muster of local military companies, among the rest Major Plauche's batta
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CHAPTER XIV—THE BATTLE IN THE DARK
CHAPTER XIV—THE BATTLE IN THE DARK
A S the hunting-shirt men come within sight of the blinking lights, which polka-dot the sugar stubble in front and mark the bivouac of the English, Colonel Coffee sends the whispered word along the line to halt. At this, the hunting-shirt men crouch in the lee of the cypress swamp, and wait. Colonel Coffee is lying by for the signal which shall tell him to begin. Before the movement commences, the General calls Colonel Coffee to one of their celebrated conferences. “It is my purpose, Coffee,” ex
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CHAPTER XV—COTTON BALES AND SUGAR CASKS
CHAPTER XV—COTTON BALES AND SUGAR CASKS
I T is the day before Christmas when the General lays out his line for fortifications. The Roderiquez Canal is no canal at all, but a disused mill race, which an active man can leap and any one may wade. The General will make a moat of it, and raise his breastworks along its mile-length muddy course, between the river and the cypress swamp. He keeps an army of mules and negroes, with scrapers and carts, hard at work, heaping up the earth. A boat load of cotton is lying at the levee. The cotton b
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CHAPTER XVI—THE EIGHTH OF JANUARY
CHAPTER XVI—THE EIGHTH OF JANUARY
B ACK to his negroes and mules and carts and scrapers goes the General, and sets them to renewed hard labor on those immortal mud walls which he will never get too high. Those cotton bales, so distressing to Papa Plauche and the “Fathers,” are eliminated, at which that paternal commander breathes freer. The hunting-shirt men, with each going down of the sun, resume their nighthawk parties, which swoop upon English sentinels, taking lives and guns. The English themselves are a prey to dejection.
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CHAPTER XVII—THE SLAUGHTER AMONG THE STUBBLE
CHAPTER XVII—THE SLAUGHTER AMONG THE STUBBLE
W HEN the main advance begins, Sir Edward is in the center with the Highlanders. The latter are not to move until he has word of their success from General Keane with Rennie's rifle corps, and General Gibbs with the main column—the one by the river and the other by the cypress swamp. He has not long to wait; a courier dashes up from the river—eye haggard, disorder in his look! “General Keane?” cries Sir Edward, his apprehension on edge. “Fallen!” returns the courier hoarsely. “And Rennie?” “Dead
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CHAPTER XVIII—ODDS AND ENDS OF TIME
CHAPTER XVIII—ODDS AND ENDS OF TIME
T HE General, the blooming Rachel by his side, takes up his homeward journey. Now when they are on their way and a world has time to observe them, it is to be noted that changes have befallen with the lengthened flight of time. The eye of the blooming Rachel is as liquidly black and deep, her hair as raven-blue, her cheek as round as on a rearward day when she won the heart of that bottle-green beau from old Salisbury. The alteration is in her form, which has grown plump and full and stout in th
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CHAPTER XIX—THE KILLING EDGE OF SLANDER
CHAPTER XIX—THE KILLING EDGE OF SLANDER
W IZARD LEWIS boldly re-begins his work of White House capturing. He becomes busy to the elbows in the General's destinies before Statesman Adams is inaugurated. When the latter names Statesman Clay to be his Secretary of State, Wizard Lewis lays bare the deal which thus exalts the Kentuckian. He raises the cry of “Bargain and Corruption!” and the public takes it up. Statesman Adams and Statesman Clay are pilloried as conspirators who have wronged the General of a Presidency, and the State portf
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CHAPTER XX—THE GENERAL GOES TO THE WHITE HOUSE
CHAPTER XX—THE GENERAL GOES TO THE WHITE HOUSE
T HIS is of a steamboat day, and keel boats are but a memory. The General makes his tedious eight-weeks' way to Washington via the Cumberland, the Ohio, the mountains, and the Potomac valley. It is like the progress of a conqueror. The people throng about him until Wizard Lewis, remembering his broken state, fears for his life. The fears are without grounds to stand on. Applause never kills, and the General finds in it the milk of lions. He enters Washington renewed, and was never so fit for har
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CHAPTER XXI—WIZARD LEWIS URGES A CHANGE IN FRONT
CHAPTER XXI—WIZARD LEWIS URGES A CHANGE IN FRONT
W IZARD LEWIS, bending his brows to the situation, now counsels an extreme step. “Then you will make Van Buren Minister to England, and give Major Eaton the governorship of Florida. Little Peg should look well in the palace at St. Augustine.” “By the Eternal!” cries the General, as he hurls his clay pipe into the fireplace where hundreds of its brittle predecessors have gone crashing—“by the Eternal, we'll do it! The last vestige of a Calhoun cabinet influence shall be wiped out!” It comes to pa
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CHAPTER XII—THE DOWNFALL OF MACHIAVELLI CLAY
CHAPTER XII—THE DOWNFALL OF MACHIAVELLI CLAY
M ACHIAVELLI CLAY is one who looks seldom from the window and often in the glass. No man carries himself more upon the back of his own regard than does Machiavelli Clay. He believes in the wisdom of the classes, the ignorance of the masses, and thinks that government should be of people, by statesmen, for statesmen. Also he has a profound respect for Money, and little for perishing flesh and blood. As to each of these thought-conditions he lives in head-on collision with the General, who in all
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CHAPTER XXIII—THE FEDERAL UNION: IT MUST BE PRESERVED
CHAPTER XXIII—THE FEDERAL UNION: IT MUST BE PRESERVED
T HE General is reading his book, when in walks Wizard Lewis. The latter necromancer casually alludes to Statesman Calhoun, and his pet infamy of “Nullification.” At this the General's honest rage begins to mount. “You bear witness, Major,” he cries—“you bear witness how Calhoun is trying me! But by the living heavens, I'll uphold the law!” Then, shaking the ponderous tome at Wizard Lewis, his finger marking the place—“Here! I've been reading what old John Marshall said in the case of Aaron Burr
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CHAPTER XXIV—THE ROUT OF TREASON
CHAPTER XXIV—THE ROUT OF TREASON
D EMOCRACY goes not without its defects, and there be times when that very freedom wherewith it invests the citizen spreads a snare to his feet. For a chief fault, Democracy is apt to mislead ambitious ones, dominated of ego and a want of patriotism in even parts. Such are prone to run liberty into license in following forth the appetites of their own selfishness, and forget where the frontiers of loyalty leave off and those of black treason begin. In a democracy, for your clambering narrowist t
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