The Young Republic of USA

The founders are dead or dying. The republic they built is a generation old, and it's beginning to show its contradictions. Andrew Jackson — war hero, duelist, slave owner — becomes president and rewrites the rules of American democracy with a sledgehammer, expanding the franchise for white men while signing the Indian Removal Act. He is simultaneously the most popular president America has ever had and a catastrophe for everyone outside his coalition.

Henry Clay spends his career trying to hold the Union together with compromise after compromise, earning the title "The Great Compromiser" and losing three presidential bids. Martin Van Buren invents the modern political party. Sam Houston goes rogue, marries a Cherokee woman, becomes President of the Republic of Texas, and opposes secession. The question hanging over all of it: can a republic born half-slave hold together as it grows?