Jacksonland is the thrilling narrative history of two
men—President Andrew Jackson and Cherokee chief John
Ross—who led their respective nations at a crossroads of
American history. Five decades after the Revolutionary
War, the United States approached a constitutional crisis.
At its center stood two former military comrades locked in a
struggle that tested the boundaries of our fledgling
democracy. Jacksonland is their
story.
One man we recognize: Andrew Jackson—war
hero, populist, and exemplar of the expanding South—whose
first major initiative as president instigated the massive
expulsion of Native Americans known as the Trail of Tears.
The other is a half-forgotten figure: John Ross—a mixed-race
Cherokee politician and diplomat—who used the United States’
own legal system and democratic ideals to oppose
Jackson. Representing one of the Five Civilized Tribes
who had adopted the ways of white settlers—cultivating
farms, publishing a newspaper in their own language, and
sending children to school—Ross championed the tribes’ cause
all the way to the Supreme Court. He gained allies like
Senator Henry Clay, Chief Justice John Marshall, and even
Davy Crockett. In a fight that seems at once distant and
familiar, Ross and his allies made their case in the media,
committed civil disobedience, and benefited from the
first mass political action by American women. Their
struggle contained ominous overtures of later events like
the Civil War and set the pattern for modern-day
politics.
At stake in this struggle was the
land of the Five Civilized Tribes. In shocking
detail, Jacksonland reveals how Jackson, as a
general, extracted immense wealth from his own armies’
conquest of native lands. Later, as president, Jackson set
in motion the seizure of tens of millions of
acres—“Jacksonland”—in today’s Deep
South.
Jacksonland is the work of
renowned journalist Steve Inskeep, cohost of NPR’s
Morning Edition, who offers here a heart-stopping
narrative masterpiece, a tragedy of American history that
feels ripped from the headlines in its immediacy, drama, and
relevance to our lives.
Harrowing, inspiring,
and deeply moving, Inskeep’s Jacksonland is the story
of America at a moment of transition, when the fate of
states and nations was decided by the actions of two heroic
yet tragically opposed men.
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