Themes
- As in other Flint's novels, 1824: The Arkansas War is heavily centred around American democracy and equality for all men. In this particular novel, Eric Flint is attacking the historical event of American exploitation of Blacks, as well as Native Americans. He also describes Southern slave owners such as Henry Clay and John Calhoun's historical opposition to states rights where slavery was concerned.
- Flint is also showing a possible historical alternative to the "Trail of Tears," in which the Southern Indian tribes, in particular the Cherokees, were forced to give up their land and move to Indian Territory with little more than the clothes on their backs. Flint believes a conflict between these tribes and white Southerners was unavoidable, so he's created a logical scenario in which the tribes move willingly with their wealth and strength intact. In this scenario, the enslavement and oppression of African and Native Americans may end decades before the American Civil War and the wars with the West's Indian tribes. Flint presumably will explore this theme in further detail in sequel(s) to this book.
Read more about this topic: 1824: The Arkansas War
Famous quotes containing the word themes:
“In economics, we borrowed from the Bourbons; in foreign policy, we drew on themes fashioned by the nomad warriors of the Eurasian steppes. In spiritual matters, we emulated the braying intolerance of our archenemies, the Shi’ite fundamentalists.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)
“I suppose you think that persons who are as old as your father and myself are always thinking about very grave things, but I know that we are meditating the same old themes that we did when we were ten years old, only we go more gravely about it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)