Jefferson and the Gun-Men
How the West Was Almost Lost
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- USD 11.99
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- USD 11.99
Descripción editorial
Contrary to popular opinion, the opening of the American frontier was not a simple land purchase; it was actually a hardscrabble fight. Even as Meriwether Lewis and William Clark set out on their legendary journey to the Pacific Ocean, other forces were taking the measure of the land with far darker ambitions.
Aaron Burr, the charming and treacherous former vice president, determined that if he could not be master of his nation, he would instead become emperor of the next best thing: the Louisiana Territory. Slyly working with the powerful and ambitious commander of the U.S. Army, General James Wilkinson, Burr instigated a plot to seize not only Louisiana, but all of Mexico as well. Told from a time when the wildest plots and the most grandiose dreams thrived, as schemers and revolutionaries conspired to create a new country, Jefferson and the Gun-Men is the riveting tale of this unlikely story
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In 1804, Lewis and Clark, at the behest of President Jefferson, made their famous western journey. But they weren't the only Americans with their eye on the West--Aaron Burr, former vice-president and senator from New York (and a failed candidate for the New York governorship), was plotting to take over the Louisiana Territory. While the exact details of Burr's vision have long been a matter of historical debate, the gist is that he envisioned a separate country, with New Orleans as capital and himself as impresario--with a few important backers, from Andrew Jackson to the Catholic bishop of New Orleans and chief of America's armed forces General James Wilkinson. It is a fascinating tale but one to which Boston journalist Montgomery fails to do justice. Montgomery's portrait of Jefferson is maddeningly inconsistent: he appears at turns indecisive, calculatingly cruel and dim-witted. The puffed-up prose and Montgomery's penchant for the present tense are distracting, and his unconcealed disdain for professional historians will strike the reader as more than a touch defensive. Finally, Montgomery's admission in the last pages of the book that the story he tells here of Burr's wild schemes--a story of something that almost happened, but did not--is "ultimately irrelevant" will leave readers who plow through the entire volume wondering why they bothered.
