Lust for conquest and wealth — behind the enslavement of Africans and the Native American genocide — is sidelined to tell the story of the valiant struggle by European pioneers to build the greatest nation on earth.
Few contemporary novelists have explored the undercurrents of American society with more insight and pathos than Russell Banks, who died earlier this month.
For some American abolitionists, President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of Jan. 1, 1863, was a long time coming, but it was a moment for rejoicing among a racially mixed force in Kansas that included veterans of John Brown’s anti-slavery uprisings, writes…
