Jefferson and the Gun-Men: How the West Was Almost Lost - Hardcover

A history of the presidency of Thomas Jefferson and the Lewis and Clark expedition focuses on the machinations of Aaron Burr, who was plotting with a top military commander to make a secret alliance with Spain, raise an army, and invade the new U.S. territory.

mas Jefferson made a visionary purchase that opened an American frontier so vast as to defy the imagination -- nearly all the land from the Mississippi to the Rockies. Few know, however, that the intrigue behind the exploration and opening of the Louisiana Territory was almost as vast as the land itself. 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.

Just three decades after the revolution that gave birth to the United States, another insurgency was already brewing, this time led by a charming -- and treacherous -- Aaron Burr. The former vice president had determined that if he could not be master of his nation, he would instead become emperor of the Louisiana Territory. Working with the powerful commander of the U.S. Army, General James Wilkinson, Burr instigated a plot to seize not only Louisiana, but all of Mexico. This nefarious plot even included the haples