Chapter one: Horseshoe Bend

The old man was already a grandfather, but life had recently given him a new title: his youngest daughter had just graduated from high school, and his granddaughter had made him a ‘great’ grandfather. Holding his tiny great-grandson in his arms, the weight of the word settled on him. “Even this title means I have something else to earn,” he thought. “Greatness!” Looking down at the boy, he knew he had to somehow make this young child proud of where he came from, and who he was.

On a hot spring morning in Alexander City, Alabama, the old man was headed for his destiny in the exact way a blind man runs into a wall. And that is exactly how it felt.

He and his wife were riding along when they saw the brown sign for a ‘historical marker’ and decided to pull over and see it. Walking onto the grounds was free of charge, but the cost of what the old man would see here would leave a massive, permanent mark on his soul.

As he walked along the trail from the Tallapoosa River to the hilltop where Andrew Jackson had positioned his cannon, he looked out at the ground where Jackson’s troops had destroyed the defensive wall built by the Upper Creek Indians. As the history of the battle washed over him, a dark truth struck the old man hard. The Cherokee were there, too. His own ancestors were at this battle, and they were fighting on the wrong side. It was the Cherokee warriors who had swum the river to steal the canoes, sealing the trap for Jackson’s victory.

Then, he walked to the clearing where the ruins of the Creek Nation once stood. In his mind’s eye, he could see the village smoldering in smoke, shot, horror, gore, and death.

It was as if a sledgehammer had hit him directly in the chest. Breathing suddenly became an issue. The world began to spin—in the wrong direction. Standing on that dirt, he was being summoned by his ancestors to tell this story to the young people today—to his great-grandson.

But first, he had to face the brutal, calculated consequences of what this battle produced. For the Red Stick Creek Indians, it was death in all its horrid majesty—the slaughter of over 800 people in a single afternoon. But the betrayal didn’t end with the enemy. For the friendly Creeks who had fought on Jackson’s side, their reward was having their land stolen by the very general they helped protect. Through the Treaty of Fort Jackson, Andrew Jackson stripped them of 23 million acres.

The story was becoming sickeningly plain. The old man became physically sick to his stomach at the sheer hubris and betrayal he was reading.

It was at this point that two things happened to him: he was heartbroken all over again. Only this time, the confusion was gone, and he knew exactly what to do. With the wisdom of Mr. Samuel Clemens echoing in his mind—that the second most important day in a man’s life is finding out why he was born—the old man finally had his “How.” He was going to use Jackson’s own treaties, ledgers, and written words as the fuel.

The old man was going to destroy Andrew Jackson’s legacy, just as ruthlessly as Jackson had destroyed that Creek village. He was going to burn down Old Hickory.