A Brutal Reckoning

November 1, 2022

A retired U.S. Foreign Service officer and prolific author of books about the wars between Indigenous peoples and the U.S. government, Cozzens recounts the early 1800s fighting between the Creek Nation and U.S. government forces (led by first-time combat leader Andrew Jackson)-- A Brutal Reckoning that ended with the infamous Trail of Tears. Egan, a New York Times best-selling author, National Book Award winner, and Pulitzer Prize--winning journalist, examines the terrifying 1920s rise of the Ku Klux Klan, spearheaded by Indiana Grand Dragon D.C. Stephenson, and the bravery of Madge Oberholtzer, who countered the Klan at great personal cost in A Fever in the Heartland (75,000-copy first printing). In A Madman's Will, lawyer/author May (Jefferson's Treasure) tells the story of Virginia senator John Randolph's manumission in his will of all 383 people enslaved to him, revealing the senator's ever-changing attitudes toward slavery and how prejudice from the North blocked freedmen from possessing the land Randolph had promised them. Marrell McCollough, the Black man seen in photographs kneeling next to Martin Luther King Jr. when he was assassinated at Memphis's Lorraine Motel in 1968, was a member of an activist group in discussion with King--and, as daughter Seletzky painfully reveals in The Kneeling Man, an undercover Memphis police officer reporting on the group's activities (50,000-copy first printing).

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March 13, 2023
Cozzens (Tecumseh and the Prophet) concludes his trilogy on the dispossession of Native American lands with a fine-grained and often gruesome account of the 1813–1814 Creek War in present-day Alabama. After a vivid opening scene introducing Andrew Jackson as he recovered from his duel with Thomas Hart Benton, Cozzens details the historical and cultural context for the war, which pitted Jackson and other U.S. military leaders against the Upper Creeks. Sometime in the 18th century, Cozzens explains, the Creeks split into two affiliated but nearly autonomous groups: the Upper Creeks, who were further from Europeans in distance and culture, and the Lower Creeks, who were nearer to and partook more heavily of European trade. Tracing the origins of the conflict to a brutal raid on a white homestead near the Tennessee border in 1812, Cozzens details how it grew to involve England, France, Spain, and the Choctaw and Cherokee tribes. Recounting minor skirmishes and major battles, he viscerally describes the miserable conditions and lack of supplies that led to mutinous behavior among U.S. soldiers and draws conclusive links between Jackson’s pivotal victory at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend and his signing of the 1830 Indian Removal Act that inaugurated the Trail of Tears. It’s a gut-wrenching account of a tragic chapter in American history.

Starred review from March 15, 2023
The author of Tecumseh and the Prophet and The Earth Is Weeping returns with a new history of the Creek Indians' war with U.S. settlers, focusing on the role of Andrew Jackson. Based largely in present-day Georgia, South Carolina, Florida, and Alabama, the Creeks were descended from the Native peoples who lived in the area before Hernando de Soto's Spanish conquistadors plundered it. Nonetheless, by the end of the 1700s, despite being divided into small towns with no central authority, the Creeks were "the dominant Indian power in the Deep South." Cozzens shows how this way of life came under pressure from White settlers eager to exploit the rich farmland inhabited by the Natives. The Creeks' response was inspired by a group of prophets who preached war against the White men, beginning around 1812. Their followers--called Red Sticks after the wooden war clubs favored by the Creeks--at first attacked isolated White settlers and tribe members who had abandoned traditional ways. The August 1813 attack on Fort Mims, a White stronghold in southwestern Alabama, ended in a brutal massacre, with more than 250 dead, including women and children. That battle ignited a determination among Whites in the region--especially Jackson, who was from Tennessee--to end the uprising by whatever means necessary. Cozzens gives detailed, diligently researched descriptions of the subsequent battles, which culminated in early 1814 at Horseshoe Bend in Alabama, where Jackson's forces annihilated a Red Stick stronghold, killing some 850 Creeks and allied tribesmen. Jackson parlayed this victory into command of the armies that defeated the British in New Orleans early the next year. A seasoned historical storyteller, Cozzens portrays both Jackson and his Creek adversaries without minimizing their flaws, though he is clearly appalled by Jackson's later treatment of the Indians during the Trail of Tears. The author includes 10 maps to keep readers oriented. An authoritative account of a disturbing chapter in the relations between the U.S. military and Indigenous peoples.

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Starred review from April 15, 2023
Creek Indians--Indigenous Americans who lived in the southeast of what was to become the United States--had a history and a distinctive culture of their own before the European settlers' westward expansion. Prolific historian Cozzens (Tecumseh and the Prophet, 2020) looks closely at the conflicts between Native peoples and settlers from the colonial period through Andrew Jackson's presidency, and at the ultimate displacement of the tribes to the west of the Mississippi River. Cozzens vividly describes the Creek Indians' advanced society and clashes with other tribes, giving a grand sense of their civilization. Gradual assimilation of European ideas of property, along with prosperity from trade in deerskin, quickly transformed the Creeks into a society of haves and have-nots. The Creeks' role in both sheltering and turning in escaped enslaved people encapsulates the moral ambiguities of the preCivil War era. Equally well brought to life, Cozzens' dramatic, often gory descriptions of armed conflicts among the Creeks and white settlers put flesh to myth-encased events. Battle maps are helpful, and an appendix guides readers through the names of Creeks in both their native and Anglicized versions. A valuable addition to the history of Native Americans and the early years of the American republic.

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