Driven West, A. J. Langguth
Driven West, A. J. Langguth
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Driven West
Andrew Jackson's Trail of Tears to the Civil War

Author: A. J. Langguth

Narrator: Mel Foster

Unabridged: 14 hr 52 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 11/24/2010


Synopsis

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 Destiny across the continent, but the forces and hostility unleashed by that expansion led inexorably to Civil War.

As president, Andrew Jackson decreed that the Indians of Georgia be forcibly removed to make way for the exploding white population. His policy set off angry debate in the Senate among such giants as Henry Clay, John Calhoun, and Daniel Webster, and protests from writers in the north like Ralph Waldo Emerson, who represented the growing abolitionist movement. Southern slave owners understood that those protests would not stop with defending a few Indian tribes.

About A. J. Langguth

A. J. Langguth is the author of almost a dozen books, including Union 1812; Patriots: The Men Who Started the American Revolution; and Our Vietnam: The War, 1954-1975. He was Saigon bureau chief for the New York Times and covered the civil rights movement. He taught at the University of Southern California for twenty-seven years and retired in 2003 as an emeritus professor in the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. He lives in Los Angeles.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Jon

The forced removal of the Cherokee from their ancestral lands is a testament to how native people were treated under the doctrine of Manifest Destiny. Jacksonian democracy is looked at in the larger context of 'nullification' - the Cherokee were caught between the state/federal arguments that were c......more

Goodreads review by Kristin

While I enjoyed reading this book, I just became more and more angry at how everything played out. I've read about the Trail of Tears before and it always makes me angry. Unfortunately, I don't see a whole lot of change in government from then to now. Elected officials promising everything and deliv......more

Goodreads review by Jared

“Driven West” is a fascinating piece of narrative history that attempts to add another layer of understanding to an appropriately thick description of the American Civil War. Though many arguments for the importance of the cause of states’ rights as a casus belli are largely viewed as racially-charg......more

Goodreads review by Joe

A very good high level overview of American history from 1825 through the Civil War ... with a particularly interesting emphasis on the relocation of the South East American Indians to "Indian Country." The "Trail of Tears" was a very embarressing event in the history of the US. I enjoy Langguth's s......more