President by Massacre

Book excerpt: President by Massacre pulls back the curtain of "expansionism," revealing how Andrew Jackson, William Henry Harrison, and Zachary Taylor massacred Indians to "open" land to slavery and oligarchic fortunes. President by Massacre examines the way in which presidential hopefuls through the first half of the nineteenth century parlayed militarily mounted land grabs into "Indian-hating" political capital to attain the highest office in the United States. The text zeroes in on three eras of U.S. "expansionism" as it led to the massacre of Indians to "open" land to African slavery while luring lower European classes into racism's promise to raise "white" above "red" and "black." This book inquires deeply into the existence of the affected Muskogee ("Creek"), Shawnee, Sauk, Meskwaki ("Fox"), and Seminole, before and after invasion, showing what it meant to them to have been so displaced and to have lost a large percentage of their members in the process. It additionally addresses land seizures from these and the Tecumseh, Tenskwatawa, Black Hawk, and Osceola tribes. President by Massacre is written for undergraduate and graduate readers who are interested in the Native Americans of the Eastern Woodlands, U.S. slavery, and the settler politics of U.S. expansionism.