Jackson McMartin

Jackson McMartin is the main antagonist of the civil war thriller novel Cold Glory by B. Kent Anderson. He is a former army officer, congressman, and deputy Secretary of Defense, and during the events of the book, he is a reclusive media mogul, being the founder and owner of the fictional Heritage News Channel (HNC). For most of the book he is simply known as "The Judge".

McMartin is the leader of the Glory Warriors, a secret military organization that has existed since the end of the Civil War. McMartin and the Glory Warriors see the current U.S. Government as weak and old, and believe that a more Fascist government was needed. So McMartin began putting the organization's master plan into action, using an ancient document signed by Generals Robert Lee and Ulysses Grant at the end of the civil war as basis for legitimizing their actions. This document stated that, in the event of the deaths of the three heads of the American Federal Government (The President, the Chief Justice, and the Speaker of the House) by "conspiratorial means", the Glory Warriors would assume control of the Government, with the leader of the Glory Warriors - in this case, McMartin, serving as Commander-in-Chief. This document also had the weight of the law in accordance with General Order Number 100 (better known as the Lieber Code), which stated that martial law would go immediately into effect in a "hostile country".

Using a well placed network of agents, several of them high-ranking government officials, McMartin orders his field agents to locate the pages of the document, while he orders his inner circle (the government officials on his side) to begin preparations to take over. McMartin is successful in obtaining two pages of the document after his field agents obtain them from Dr. Nick Journey, the novel's main protagonist, and has agents continue following Journey to find the last page, containing the signitures of Generals Lee and Grant.

Meanwhile, McMartin's government agents succeed in killing Speaker of the House Jefferson "Jeff" Vandermeer and Chief Justice Nan Darlington. On the day that they planned to kill President James Harwell, McMartin ordered another one of his associates - who happened to be the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff - to marshall the Glory Warriors' invasion forces from secret staging areas surrounding Washington DC - the towns of Rockville, Silver Spring, Arlington, and Alexandria - to occupy Capitol Hill once the President was dead. He would then fly in himself and reveal the document legitimizing their claim to the nation.

However, Nick Journey and Meg Tolman - the book's other protagonist - discover the full extent of the plan (and learn that Rusty Hudson, Tolman's boss within the Research and Investigation Office, was a member of McMartin's inner circle) and demand that they confront them at Fort Washita in Oklahoma. After revealing to McMartin that the Glory Warriors were never meant to be a permanent solution, McMartin becomes angry and attempts to take the last document page by force, but Journey claims that he doesn't have it. In the chaos, two more Glory Warriors arrive on the scene and one accidently shoots McMartin in the head after attempting to shoot Journey. However, police soon arrive on the scene and arrest Hudson and the others, and in Washington, the President's life is saved when Ray Tolman, Meg's father and a director within the U.S. Secret Service exposes Timothy Delham, a member of the Secret Service and the President's would-be murderer, as a Glory Warrior. The invasion never happens, and the Glory Warriors collapse.

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