1824: The Arkansas War
Eric Flint
 The story, takes place in 1824–25, ten years after 1812: The Rivers of War. The United States, under the influence of Sam Houston, a Special Commissioner for Indian Affairs, has signed a treaty with the southern Indian tribes, establishing a Confederacy of chiefdoms in the territory that in our time line is composed of the State of Arkansas west of the Red River, and the State of Oklahoma without the Panhandle, roughly the boundaries of the historical Arkansas Territory. As a result, the tribes of the southern US, particularly the Cherokee, have willingly left the southeastern U.S. with their wealth and power intact (as opposed to their eventual and devastating forced removal in 1838 in actual history). Shortly thereafter, in Louisiana, Henry Crowell, a free black man and one of the officers of the Iron Battalion who won the Battle of the Mississippi (which in this time line was the battle that saved New Orleans from the British in January 1815), offended the local Creole leadership by courting a Creole woman. Slave-catchers waylaid Crowell and castrated him. In revenge, the Iron Battalion mobilized and destroyed the homes of the Creole leadership, then smashed the Louisiana militia who came after them to suppress "servile rebellion". (This is referred to later as the "Algiers incident".) Shortly afterwards, Crowell and the Iron Battalion moved to Arkansas. The easternmost chiefdom, Arkansas, is ruled by Patrick Driscol, nicknamed the "Laird of Arkansas" who was formerly the brigade master sergeant under Winfield Scott during the Niagara Campaign. Arkansas banned slavery and quickly became a magnet for freedmen throughout the United States, who are forced to leave their home states when, under the influence of men like Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun, the states pass Freedmen Exclusion Acts. As the book begins, one such family, the Parker family, leaves Baltimore, Maryland, after the head of the household is killed by a mob of whites. They are stopped on the Ohio River by slave-catchers, who plan to take them before a partial judge, have them declared runaway slaves, and sold into bondage. However, before the slave-catchers can haul the Parkers away, a party of abolitionists led by John Brown and his brother Solomon Brown intervenes and the family is able to continue their journey. When the Parkers arrive in New Antrim, the capital of Arkansas, they learn that Crowell's bank will loan the family money to start again if the men join the Arkansas Army. Sheffield Parker and his uncle Jem enlist and undergo a rigorous training regimen. Meanwhile, Henry Clay secretly finances an expedition led by Robert Crittenden to attack Arkansas. The expedition fails, but Clay uses this failure as a lever to become the new president of the USA following James Monroe. Shortly thereafter, Sam Houston's wife Maria gets accidentally shot by an assassin from Georgia who was aiming for Houston himself in retaliation for his liberal views on race, and he and his son Andrew Jackson Houston leave for Arkansas to aid Driscol and Ross in coming war with the USA. The novel ends in 1825, with the USA going to war with Arkansas (as an AU of the real history American Civil War). At the same time, a varied group of politicians led by the losers in the election of 1824, John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson, meet to create a new political party that will both oppose and defeat Henry Clay and work for an eventual end to slavery in all states when Clay's presidential term is finished.