Jacksonland is an American story that reads like a Greek tragedy. The expulsion of the Native American tribes living within the southern states was an inevitable fate replayed across the globe in collisions between white settlers and aboriginal peoples. What made that outcome different in the United States was that one of the doomed tribes—the Cherokee Nation—sought to persuade public opinion and the courts that they were entitled to their lands in Georgia. Jacksonland captures this failure in vivid detail, though at times Inskeep strains to fashion heroes and villains from ambiguous people.
In a nod toward Plutarch’s “Parallel Lives,” Jacksonland examines this slice of history through a profile of two charismatic leaders. Andrew Jackson was the driving force behind the acquisition and conquest of tribal lands in the South, first as a general and then as president. John Ross was the head of the Cherokees who realized that the...