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1824: The Arkansas War

The Arkansas War

#2 in series

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

In the newest volume of this exhilarating series, Eric Flint continues to reshape American history, imagining how a continent and its people might have taken a different path to its future. With 1824: The Arkansas War, he spins an astounding and provocative saga of heroism, battlefield action, racial conflict, and rebellion as a nation recovering from war is plunged into a dangerous era of secession.

Buffered by Spanish possessions to the south and by free states and two rivers to the north, Arkansas has become a country of its own: a hybrid confederation of former slaves, Native American Cherokee and Creek clans, and white abolitionists--including one charismatic warrior who has gone from American hero to bête noire. Irish-born Patrick Driscol is building a fortune and a powerful army in the Arkansas Confederacy, inflaming pro-slavers in Washington and terrifying moderates as well. Caught in the middle is President James Monroe, the gentlemanly Virginian entering his final year in office with a demagogic House Speaker, Henry Clay, nipping at his heels and fanning the fires of war. But Driscol, whose black artillerymen smashed both the Louisiana militia in 1820 and the British in New Orleans, remains a magnet for revolution. And fault lines are erupting throughout the young republic--so that every state, every elected official, and every citizen will soon be forced to choose a side.

For a country whose lifeblood is infected with the slave trade, the war of 1824 will be a bloody crisis of conscience, politics, economics, and military maneuvering that will draw in players from as far away as England. For such men as Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, Commissioner of Indian Affairs Sam Houston, charismatic war hero Andrew Jackson, and the violent abolitionist John Brown, it is a time to change history itself.

Filled with fascinating insights into some of America's most intriguing historical figures, 1824: The Arkansas War confirms Eric Flint as a true master of alternate history, a novelist who brings to bear exhaustive research, remarkable intuition, and a great storyteller's natural gifts to chronicle the making of our nation as it might have been.

From the Hardcover edition.

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    • Publisher's Weekly

      October 9, 2006
      In Flint's skillful, provocative sequel to his alternative history, 1812: The Rivers of War
      (2005), the "Confederacy of the Arkansas" is thriving on the alliance of its Native American and African-American citizens. The independent nation puzzles Northerners but affronts slavery-bound Southerners, who are determined to put these inferior races in their place. Having finagled his way into the White House, a cynical, self-assured Henry Clay launches an invasion of the upstart country, while brawling frontiersman Andrew Jackson and New England intellectual John Quincy Adams become unlikely allies in a new political party based on individual rights. Flint deftly juggles historical details and asks important questions: if America had confronted its institutionalized racism earlier, could our Civil War have been prevented? And can enlightening firsthand experience overcome prejudice?

    • Library Journal

      November 15, 2006
      This work of alternative history is a sequel to Flint's "1812: The Rivers of War" (published in hardcover as "The Rivers of War") and continues the story of the new nation founded by New Orleans Creoles, runaway slaves, and the Native Americans "removed" from the Southeastern United States. Crucial to the fate of Arkansas is the attitude of its bigger neighbor to the east. Speaker of the House Henry Clay and most Southerners are outraged by the presumption of their inferiors (and the loss of revenue they represent), while more pragmatic politicians, such as Andrew Jackson and John Quincy Adams, are much less hostile. A young John Brown is an early immigrant to Arkansas. Flint is equally adept handling political machinations and large battle scenes. The historical characters about whom he writes behave in believable ways, and the created ones are equally true to their time and place. Most works of alternative history take as their point of departure the Civil War or World War II, but Flint has shown here that other eras are equally fertile soil for a writer with the imagination and skill to tackle them. Recommended for public libraries. ["The Rivers of War" included a sample chapter of this book.Ed.]Dan Forrest, Western Kentucky Univ. Libs., Bowling Green

      Copyright 2006 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

    • Booklist

      Starred review from November 1, 2006
      The sequel to " 1812: The Rivers of War" (2005) is Flint's finest and may become his most controversial book. Ten years after " 1812" 's events, the Cherokees and Patrick Driscoll in Arkansas are attracting a steady stream of African Americans, both fugitive slaves and freedmen, fleeing a deteriorating racial climate. When a filibustering expedition runs into the well-drilled Arkansas army and its Indian allies, it gets a bloody nose. To cement the southern bloc that won him the presidency in the House of Representatives, Henry Clay launches a formal invasion of Arkansas. But rivals Andrew Jackson and John Quincy Adams form a new party to oppose the war and improve the condition of freedmen, while Arkansas, with the aid of superbly drawn historical figures, such as Sam Houston, and equally compelling fictional ones, such as teenaged African American captain Sheffield Parker, holds its own. Add tragedy in the murder of Houston's wife and comedy in Parker's gentlemanly crush on the daughter of a Kentucky senator and his mulatto common-law wife, and it is hard to think of a more powerful alternate-history novel since Harry Turtledove's " The Guns of the South " (1992). If Flint skates along the thin edge of plausibility, he credibly depicts a U.S. in which, given something like the war of " 1824" , nationalism might indeed have triumphed over sectionalist defense of slavery. A winner from start to finish. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2006, American Library Association.)

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