To me these two books are some of the most original AH on the market, at least in terms of US AH. Here is a brief timeline that summarizes the books:
1814: Lieutenant Samuel Houston and Sergeant Patrick Driscoll organize a ragtag assortment of military forces in a successful repulsion of British forces at the Battle of the Capitol in Washington DC. Samuel Houston becomes a hero of the War of 1812 and very influential in the backrooms of the federal government.
1815: Colonel Samuel Houston and Sergeant Patrick Driscoll, alongside a contingent of Cherokee warriors and a battalion of Freedmen artillery demolish the British flanking attack at the Battle of New Orleans, forcing the British to retreat without engaging in a full scale assault on the battlements of General Andrew Jackson.
1818: Commissioner of Indian Affairs Samuel Houston negotiates the Treaty of Oothcaloga with the nations of the Cherokee, Creek, and Choctaw. This treaty establishes the whole of Arkansas Territory as an independent and recognized country in which the main Native American tribes are to relocate with substantial government financial assistance. Though this amounts to surrendering their homelands of several centuries, the tribal leaderships understand that this is their best chance for national survival.
Patrick Driscoll, having married into a powerful Cherokee clan, is elected the Principal Chief of the new Arkansas Confederacy. The lands of the country are assigned to the various tribes, with the easternmost territory, the Arkansas Chiefdom, established as a federal territory open to all tribes and utilized as a capitol, a buffer with the United States, and a processing center for settlers.
1819: Violence erupts in Louisiana between Freedmen war veterans and slave owners, resulting in the “Algiers Massacre,” a battle in which the Louisiana militia is defeated by the war veterans. Thousands of Freedmen flee the state for the Arkansas Confederacy, where Principal Chief Driscoll allows them to settle.
1819-21: Most slave states enact Freedmen Exclusion Laws, forcing Freedmen to vacate their homes within a year. By the end of 1821 the Freedmen population of the Arkansas Confederacy numbers in the tens of thousands.
1824: The election year is particularly heated, as the previous collapse of the Federalists had left the United States as an accidental one-party state, and then a country without any unified party. Two major issues dominate the election year: the pro-industry “American System” of legislation and ideology promoted by Speaker of the House Henry Clay, and increasing agitation between the slavocrats of the southern states and the embarrassingly successful and multiracial Arkansas Confederacy.
A large filibuster, secretly funded by Henry Clay, assaults the Arkansas Confederacy, massacring and enslaving dozens of Freedmen, Native Americans, and abolitionist white settlers. The large and professional Arkansas Army led by Principal Chief Patrick Driscoll and General Charles Ball (former Freedman artillery sergeant) demolishes the filibuster army. The killing in the “Battle of Arkansas Post” of hundreds of whites by hundreds of well-armed Freedmen and Native Americans causes panic and outrage in the pro-slavery and western areas of the United States.
The Electoral College of the Presidential election splits five ways between war hero Senator Andrew Jackson, Secretary of State and son of a former president John Quincy Adams, Speaker of the House Henry Clay, Secretary of the Treasury William Crawford, and pro-slavery activist Senator John Calhoun.
1825: Henry Clay is elected the seventh President of the United States, despite his distant third-place finish in the Electoral College, by coercing a specific minority of Representatives capable of returning a majority of block-votes to vote for him. The main price for his election is to launch an invasion of the Arkansas Confederacy.
During an assassination attempt by a radically racist Georgian on Commissioner of Indian Affairs Samuel Houston, his wife, who is also the daughter of former President James Monroe, is killed. This incident provokes a major wave of anti-slavery fervor in the northeastern United States.
Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, and others found a new political party, the National Democratic Republicans. The political party promotes that each state rescind all discriminatory laws aimed at Freedmen, including laws against voting and racial intermarriage. The party also promotes a gradual manumission scheme for each state to enact individually, based on the scheme utilized by New York.
At the “Second” Battle of Arkansas Post, an army under General William Henry Harrison is mauled by the Arkansas Army, with the Georgian militia almost completely slaughtered, but the United States forces seize the fortress as their first foothold in the Arkansas War. Several thousand abolitionists supply weapons and supplies to Arkansas, with hundreds of men moving to the country to fight against “The Slave Power” that they perceive as destroying the soul of the United States from within.
1814: Lieutenant Samuel Houston and Sergeant Patrick Driscoll organize a ragtag assortment of military forces in a successful repulsion of British forces at the Battle of the Capitol in Washington DC. Samuel Houston becomes a hero of the War of 1812 and very influential in the backrooms of the federal government.
1815: Colonel Samuel Houston and Sergeant Patrick Driscoll, alongside a contingent of Cherokee warriors and a battalion of Freedmen artillery demolish the British flanking attack at the Battle of New Orleans, forcing the British to retreat without engaging in a full scale assault on the battlements of General Andrew Jackson.
1818: Commissioner of Indian Affairs Samuel Houston negotiates the Treaty of Oothcaloga with the nations of the Cherokee, Creek, and Choctaw. This treaty establishes the whole of Arkansas Territory as an independent and recognized country in which the main Native American tribes are to relocate with substantial government financial assistance. Though this amounts to surrendering their homelands of several centuries, the tribal leaderships understand that this is their best chance for national survival.
Patrick Driscoll, having married into a powerful Cherokee clan, is elected the Principal Chief of the new Arkansas Confederacy. The lands of the country are assigned to the various tribes, with the easternmost territory, the Arkansas Chiefdom, established as a federal territory open to all tribes and utilized as a capitol, a buffer with the United States, and a processing center for settlers.
1819: Violence erupts in Louisiana between Freedmen war veterans and slave owners, resulting in the “Algiers Massacre,” a battle in which the Louisiana militia is defeated by the war veterans. Thousands of Freedmen flee the state for the Arkansas Confederacy, where Principal Chief Driscoll allows them to settle.
1819-21: Most slave states enact Freedmen Exclusion Laws, forcing Freedmen to vacate their homes within a year. By the end of 1821 the Freedmen population of the Arkansas Confederacy numbers in the tens of thousands.
1824: The election year is particularly heated, as the previous collapse of the Federalists had left the United States as an accidental one-party state, and then a country without any unified party. Two major issues dominate the election year: the pro-industry “American System” of legislation and ideology promoted by Speaker of the House Henry Clay, and increasing agitation between the slavocrats of the southern states and the embarrassingly successful and multiracial Arkansas Confederacy.
A large filibuster, secretly funded by Henry Clay, assaults the Arkansas Confederacy, massacring and enslaving dozens of Freedmen, Native Americans, and abolitionist white settlers. The large and professional Arkansas Army led by Principal Chief Patrick Driscoll and General Charles Ball (former Freedman artillery sergeant) demolishes the filibuster army. The killing in the “Battle of Arkansas Post” of hundreds of whites by hundreds of well-armed Freedmen and Native Americans causes panic and outrage in the pro-slavery and western areas of the United States.
The Electoral College of the Presidential election splits five ways between war hero Senator Andrew Jackson, Secretary of State and son of a former president John Quincy Adams, Speaker of the House Henry Clay, Secretary of the Treasury William Crawford, and pro-slavery activist Senator John Calhoun.
1825: Henry Clay is elected the seventh President of the United States, despite his distant third-place finish in the Electoral College, by coercing a specific minority of Representatives capable of returning a majority of block-votes to vote for him. The main price for his election is to launch an invasion of the Arkansas Confederacy.
During an assassination attempt by a radically racist Georgian on Commissioner of Indian Affairs Samuel Houston, his wife, who is also the daughter of former President James Monroe, is killed. This incident provokes a major wave of anti-slavery fervor in the northeastern United States.
Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, and others found a new political party, the National Democratic Republicans. The political party promotes that each state rescind all discriminatory laws aimed at Freedmen, including laws against voting and racial intermarriage. The party also promotes a gradual manumission scheme for each state to enact individually, based on the scheme utilized by New York.
At the “Second” Battle of Arkansas Post, an army under General William Henry Harrison is mauled by the Arkansas Army, with the Georgian militia almost completely slaughtered, but the United States forces seize the fortress as their first foothold in the Arkansas War. Several thousand abolitionists supply weapons and supplies to Arkansas, with hundreds of men moving to the country to fight against “The Slave Power” that they perceive as destroying the soul of the United States from within.
