A. J. Langguth

By the acclaimed author of the classic, Patriots, and Union 1812, this major work of narrative history portrays four of the most turbulent decades in the growth of the American nation. After the War of 1812, Presidents Monroe, Jackson, Van Buren, and Polk led the country to its manifest ... (more)destiny across the continent, but the forces and hostility unleashed by that expansion led inexorably to Civil War. Langguth tells the story of the desperate fate of the Cherokees driven out of Georgia and of their leaders who tried in vain to save them: Major Ridge and his son, John Ross, Elias Boudinot. He presents vivid firsthand witnesses of their march West at bayonet point—the infamous Trail of Tears—and the tragedy that awaited them across the Mississippi.The broiling national collision would lead to the Mexican War, to bloody frontier wars over whether territories were to be slave states or free, to the doctrines of nullification and secession and, finally, to Civil War. In his masterly narrative of this saga, Langguth captures the misery and betrayals, the energy and exuberance of a young nation as it rushes to its destiny.