Print edition: 
“Lions of the West: Heroes and Villains of the Westward Expansion” by Robert Morgan (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 497 pages, $29.95)
Americans are in love with the idea of Johnny Appleseed, whose legend runs counter to the guns-and-glory strain of westward expansion story that always ends in war, smallpox and slavery. Thank goodness there was a real man behind the legend, one whose capsule biography — one of 10 — is brought entertainingly to life by Robert Morgan in “Lions of the West.”
Morgan, whose book “Boone: A Biography” is the definitive work about Kentucky's undaunted explorer and surveyor, writes in his new book not only about oddly charming people like John Chapman, the real Appleseed, but also about others whose status of lion is uncompromising — men like Kit Carson, Davy Crockett, Winfield Scott (Old Fuss and Feathers) and Zachary Taylor, who won the shameful Mexican War and expanded America almost as much as the Louisiana Purchase; presidents Jefferson, Jackson and Polk (two of three were villains); and the strangely incongruous Sam Houston, whose reputation as a drunken wife-abuser chased him out of Kentucky to the more wide-open spaces of Arkansas and then Texas, where he won fame as the father of the Texas Republic.
Morgan also traces the career of John Quincy Adams, son of the second president, who early in his political life supported Jefferson's purchase of Louisiana, but later turned against western expansion, which he saw as a naked power play by slave interests to expand the institution itself and congruently, the power of slave states.
The most charming story in the book is that of John Chapman, an "orchardist" who, during the early 1800s, wandered much of the hills and dales of Ohio, then around the wilds of Indiana and up to Lake Erie, trading apple seeds, planting orchards, spreading the gospel of the apple to anyone who would listen, including Indians who considered him a "holy fool,” not the least because he tended to dress in mismatched shoes, coats made from coffee sacks, tin pot hats. Later in life, Chapman tended his nursery in Ohio, still preaching apples.
The oddest story is that of Nicholas Trist, a Virginian who served as secretary to presidents Jefferson and Jackson, and who as a state department diplomat negotiated the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo to end the Mexican War in 1848. He was, strangely, a puny man of extremely unhealthy prejudices, violent reactions, and strong dislikes who was, finally, impugned by James K. Polk, though Polk was seen as a hero to a war-mongering, Mexican-hating public.
Morgan's book contributes only a little that's new and there are some small but annoying repetitions. But it is an interesting and lively work, with a fine bibliography for those who would dig deeper.
If you go
Robert Morgan book-signing
What: Reading and book-signing by Robert Morgan, author of “Lions of the West” and “Boone: A Biography”
Where: Watermark Books, 4701 E. Douglas
When: 7 p.m. Friday11-4
How much: Free
For more information, call 316-682-1181.
