President by Massacre pulls back the curtain of "expansionism," revealing how Andrew Jackson, William Henry Harrison, and Zachary Taylor massacred Indians to "open" land to slavery and oligarchic fortunes. President by Massacre examines the way in which presidential hopefuls through the first half of the nineteenth century parlayed militarily mounted land grabs into "Indian-hating" political capital to attain the highest office in the United States. The text zeroes in on three eras of U.S. "expansionism" as it led to the massacre of Indians to "open" land to African slavery while luring lower European classes into racism's promise to raise "white" above "red" and "black." This book inquires deeply into the existence of the affected Muskogee ("Creek"), Shawnee, Sauk, Meskwaki ("Fox"), and Seminole, before and after invasion, showing what it meant to them to have been so displaced and to have lost a large percentage of their members in the process. It additionally addresses land seizures from these and the Tecumseh, Tenskwatawa, Black Hawk, and Osceola tribes. President by Massacre is written for undergraduate and graduate readers who are interested in the Native Americans of the Eastern Woodlands, U.S. slavery, and the settler politics of U.S. expansionism.

The result of years of painstaking research, this outstanding compilation reflects the wealth of material available on the Shawnee, from contact through the 20th century. The historical introduction provides a succinct but comprehensive narrative of Shawnee history. The bibliography itself is arranged in three broad subject areas. The first covers general history and affairs, anthropology, and linguistics; the second moves through history with the Shawnee, providing easy access to materials that document and analyze each period of their history; and the third references a plethora of primary documents-judicial, administrative, and Congressional material not generally found in existing guides. This latter section lends a particular strength to the work with its annotations of the Annual Reports of the Commissioners of Indian Affairs, which give unparalleled views of Shawnee life in the 19th century. Although intended primarily as a guide to the literature, the entries are generous in scope and description and often contain quotations from the primary sources. Intended for historians, anthropologists, researchers, and students, both graduate and undergraduate.