1824: The Arkansas War by Eric Flint

abolished in Kentucky and was striving to do the same thing on a national level.
    And, besides, every
other
personal habit of Johnson’s led poor settlers on the frontier to favor him. Both as a Kentucky legislator and now as a national one, Johnson had made great efforts to gain compensation for the recent war’s disabled veterans or their widows and orphans. If Blue Spring Farm was notorious as a place where a black woman presided over the dinner table and black children sat at it, it was also famous as a place of refuge for disabled veterans and their families. The two veterans on the porch—one missing an arm, the other a leg—would have half a dozen counterparts somewhere about the house or farm. Or their widows and orphans. No one in need was ever turned away from Richard M. Johnson’s estate—never mind that the aid itself was often passed over by the dark-skinned hands of his common-law wife.
    Kentucky’s gentility had been disgusted to see Johnson appointed to serve out Crittenden’s term in 1819. They’d been positively outraged to see him handily win the election for another term in the Senate in 1822.
    Sam saw that Johnson was eyeing him a bit warily. “You seen the general lately?”
    Sam shook his head. “Haven’t seen him in nigh-on seven months, Dick.” Since there was no point in letting Johnson fret on that score, when there were so many others he did need to fret about, Sam added hurriedly, “But I can assure you that the sentiments he expressed concerning you were just as warm as ever.”
    That was true, after all. Even if some of those “warm sentiments” had run along the lines of
I can’t believe he’d treat a nigger like she was an actual wife!
    It wasn’t that Andy Jackson didn’t share each and every one of the common prejudices of his day. He most certainly did—and then some, often enough. It was just that in his own rough-hewn way, the general could often look past those things to see what really mattered to him.
    Poor white men mattered to Andy Jackson. Not too many other people did, but
they
did, for sure and certain. So, if one of their undoubted political champions chose to behave badly in some aspects of his personal life, Jackson would look the other way. And if the proper folk complained, they could take their complaints to Sam Hill and see what satisfaction they’d get in those very warm quarters.
    “Just as warm as ever,” Sam repeated forcibly. “My word on it.”
    Johnson’s grunt combined relief with satisfaction. “Well, they ought to be,” the senator stated, as if to reassure himself. “Henry Clay makes a fortune suing people on behalf of land speculators and the Second Bank of the United States, and I go broke from waiving the fees for defending them.”
    That was also true…as far as it went. Johnson was indeed famous as one of the few well-connected lawyers in Kentucky that a poor man or his widow could go to for legal assistance without being charged. Unfortunately, it was only part of the truth.
    There were a lot of reasons Richard Mentor Johnson was always on the verge of being broke. His personal generosity ranked on that list, yes—and pretty high up on it. But not as high as his casual attitude toward bookkeeping, his inability to say “no” to just about every speculative scheme that came his way, and his predilection toward seeing only a blur instead of a line between his personal finances and those of the public. Not to mention his indulgence toward his brothers, who were separated by only a knife’s edge from being outright thieves.
    Sam liked Richard M. Johnson a very great deal. He’d never met a man who didn’t, no matter what their attitudes on such subjects as race, whom he didn’t think was a swine. But there was just no getting around the fact that, as often as not, both he and the general—not to mention the president of the United States—would like to take Johnson by the scruff of the neck and give him a real down-home