1824: The Arkansas War by Eric Flint Page B

finished. “He’s even got a schoolmaster lined up. Fellow name of Beriah Green. Also a New Yorker.”
    Also an abolitionist,
he could have added, but didn’t. Whatever Johnson’s relationship to Julia Chinn, the man was also a major slave-owner, with all the attitudes toward abolition that that entailed. If that seemed contradictory…
    Well, it was. But it was a contradictory matter that Sam knew backwards and forwards. He’d owned slaves himself for years, despite having had reservations about slavery even as a teenager. By now, at the age of thirty, those misgivings had turned into a genuine detestation for the institution.
    Sam had owned only a few slaves at any one time, true—sometimes not more than one. And he didn’t depend on their labor for his sustenance the way Johnson did. Mostly, he maintained his status as a slave-owner simply out of ambition. Sam still had hopes for a political career after Monroe left office and Sam lost—as he almost certainly would—his position as special commissioner on Indian affairs. That career would have to be in the South somewhere, probably his native state of Tennessee. Sam was already notorious enough among many influential circles in that area. Owning slaves served to keep that notoriety within limits. A southern gentleman was expected to own slaves, and so he did.
    Sam didn’t have the same pecuniary attachment to slaveholding that a great landowner like the Kentucky senator did. Still and all, he understood the contradiction. Better than he wished he did, even leaving aside the caustic comments that his friend Patrick Driscol made whenever he visited the Confederacy.
    Johnson finally found his voice. A blasphemous one, too. “I’ll be damned if I will!”
    “You’ll be damned if you don’t,” Julia hissed. She leaned over and laced her fingers together. “Exactly how much of our debts will this New York fellow assume, Sam?” she asked.
    Good news, finally. “Every penny, Julia. Dick, you hear that?
And
he’ll assume the financial burden of any further lawsuits arising from the—ah—”
    How to put it?
    Julia did it for him. “None-too-detailed nature of the books.” She gave her more-or-less-husband a sharp glance. “Such as they are.”
    Johnson flushed. “Hey, look…”
    “Dick, the school would have lost you money anyway,” Sam said forcibly. “
Did
lose you money, even before you had a chance to open the doors. So be done with it. At least this way, you walk out free and clear. You have enough other debts to worry about.”
    Johnson just stared at him. Julia took advantage of the silence to speak again.
    “One condition, Sam. This New York rich man has to agree to it, or we won’t.”
    “What’s that?”
    She looked through the open window. Outside, the sound of girls playing in the yard carried easily. “Imogene and Adaline get to attend the school. All expenses paid. If we decide to send them.”
    Sam couldn’t help but laugh. “Well,
that
won’t be a problem. Mr. Smith asked me to pass on to you that he’d especially like your children to attend. And he offered to pay for it himself. That’s because—ah—”
    To Sam’s relief, that stirred up Johnson’s combative instincts. “Because they’re famous,” he growled. Again, he blasphemed. “God damn all rich men.”
    The senator’s curse could have been leveled on himself and his New York benefactor, of course, as much as on the southern gentry who vilified him.
    We are sinners all,
Sam thought to himself. It was a rueful thought, as it so often was for him these days.
    The senator looked to Julia, now. “Are you sure about that, dearest? I don’t like the idea of our kids being that far away.”
    Her face got tight. “You know any other school will take them, outside of New England—where they’d be just as far away? And even if there was one…”
    She took a deep breath. When she spoke again, her voice started rising.
    “What happens if you
die,
Dick Johnson? It