Eagle's Cry: A Novel of the Louisiana Purchase Read Online Free PDF Page A

the benevolent pus that Craik sought in wounds and amputations turn into cascades that overwhelmed the patient.
    Craik wiping the blade on a handkerchief, making the neat incision, blood running into his cup, ah … felt better already. Probably transitory, but welcome. He thought he was coming to the end and now, watching Jim wet his lips nervously, he thought the doctor was of the same opinion. He shut his eyes, suddenly desperately weak, felt he was whirling and whirling down into depths. He heard Martha’s tremulous voice, realized Jim had stopped the blood, started to protest and was gone.
    He’d had the key just before they’d awakened him, a grip on what it all meant. It had been oddly comforting. He’d been sitting at his camp desk with the long, white plume graceful in his hand, judgment taking hold with iron certainty.

    He dug into his mind. He’d had hold of it there … .
    Yes, yes, that was it! Alex insisting money is what powers any country; Jimmy leaping up in angry outrage. The fight wasn’t about the bank or the bonds or any of the details. It was about who we were as a people. What did we care about, believe in?
    Alex and most of his Federalist brethren wanted a tight, contained, carefully controlled government in the hands of the ruling few, everyone else taking orders. He would shape all policies to bind men of money power closer and hold little men in their places—limit their vote, reduce their capacity to rise, keep them subservient, make them glad to be of service at low wages to those who counted.
    Jimmy and Tom wanted a diffuse government in which states were strong and the common man’s voice ranked with that of the gentry. If the government were to be skewed, let it be toward the poor and the helpless.
    Alex said Great Britain’s system was the best in the world. Tom and Jimmy saw the British as oppressors and were sure Alex aimed at monarchy in America. That charge drove Alex wild. His slender face, handsome as a Greek statue, would go white and strained with ugly red blotches, all beauty vanished.
    “Do you still not understand?” he cried. “We’re bankrupt—no economy, no currency, no structure, no credit. We’re the laughingstock of the commercial world. But I can give us structure, restore our credit, control inflation. Jimmy, I can put us on a par with any nation in the world.”
    “Nor do I doubt that,” Jimmy said. “But, Alex, I think you understand finance too well and your fellow Americans too little.”
    “So you say, but what is there to understand? The common man is just that, common. He’s a boor. Knows nothing. Captive of his emotions. Prey of demagogues. As witness the ear he gives all these dirty little Democratic rags attacking our financial reality.”
    Jimmy started to speak, but Alex shouted him down. “Captive of his emotions, sir! Swung by the last shout penetrating
his piggy little brain. Of course he needs to be controlled, guided, shaped, held in line. He’s a peasant! And peasants were made to be held in line, to touch their caps to their lords and ladies. This difference you see in Americans has about the width of an eyelash.”
    “You’re wrong, Alex,” Jimmy said. His smile was supremely confident, and it subtly ridiculed Hamilton. Alex caught it too, that flush riding up his cheeks again. “In fact, the common man is a lover of freedom. He possesses an innate wisdom, rough hewn at times but entirely real. He takes care of himself, he controls himself, his sense of right and wrong rings like a bell, he’ll fight forever for his freedom. And he sees you canting government away from him—catering to the bosses, the money men, the merchants and owners. And sooner or later he’ll make you pay, Alex.”
    The general had pushed back his chair. “That’ll do, gentlemen,” he’d said. Still, it had been illuminating and he was glad he’d let the argument rage, distressing as naked anger could be. He doubted Alex and the Federalists really