1824: The Arkansas War is a 2006 alternate history novel by American writer Eric Flint. Plot summary The story takes place in 1824 and 1825, ten years after 1812: The Rivers of War. The United States, under the influence of Sam Houston, a Special Commissioner for Indian Affairs, has signed a treaty with the southern Indian tribes that establishes a confederacy of chiefdoms in the territory that in our timeline is composed of the state of Arkansas west of the Red River and the state of Oklahoma without the Panhandle, roughly the boundaries of the historical Arkansas Territory. As a result, the tribes of the Southern United States, particularly the Cherokee, have willingly left the Southeastern United States with their wealth and power intact, as opposed to their eventual and devastating forced removal in 1838 in our timeline. Shortly thereafter, in Louisiana, Henry Crowell, a free black man and one of the officers of the Iron Battalion who won the Battle of the Mississippi, which in the novel was the battle that saved New Orleans from the British in January 1815, offended the local Creole leadership by courting a Creole woman. Slavecatchers waylaid Crowell and castrated him. In revenge, the Iron Battalion mobilized, destroyed the homes of the Creole leadership, and smashed the Louisiana militia who came after them to suppress "servile rebellion" that is later referred to as the "Algiers incident". Shortly afterwards, Crowell and the Iron Battalion moved to Arkansas. The easternmost chiefdom, Arkansas, is ruled by Patrick Driscol, who is nicknamed the "Laird of Arkansas" and was once the brigade master sergeant under Winfield Scott during the Niagara Campaign. Arkansas banned slavery and quickly became a magnet for freedmen throughout the United States, who are forced to leave their home states by the influence of men like Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun, who make the states pass Freedmen Exclusion Acts. As the book begins, one such family, the Parker family, leaves Baltimore, Maryland, after the head of the household is killed by a mob of whites. They are stopped on the Ohio River by slavecatchers, who plan to take them before a partial judge, have them declared runaway slaves, and sold into bondage. However, before the slavecatchers can haul the Parkers away, a party of abolitionists, led by John Brown and his brother Solomon Brown, intervenes, and the family is able to continue its journey. When