Alabama endured warfare, slave trading, squatting, and speculating on its path to becoming America's 22nd state, and Daniel S. Dupre brings its captivating frontier history to life in Alabama's Frontiers and the Rise of the Old South. Dupre's vivid narrative begins when Hernando de Soto first led hundreds of armed Europeans into the region during the fall of 1540. Although this early invasion was defeated, Spain, France, and England would each vie for control over the area's natural resources, struggling to conquer it with the same intensity and ferocity that the Native Americans showed in defending their homeland. Although early frontiersmen and Native Americans eventually established an uneasy truce, the region spiraled back into war in the nineteenth century, as the newly formed American nation demanded more and more land for settlers. Dupre captures the riveting saga of the forgotten struggles and savagery in Alabama's—and America's—frontier days.

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In Alabama's Frontiers and the Rise of the Old South, Daniel S. Dupre offers a well-written, nicely comprehensive, and inclusive social history of Alabama before and immediately after statehood.

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Alabama's Frontiers and the Rise of the Old South is a work of synthesis backed by research in primary sources. . . . The wonderful balance Dupre strikes between big-picture interpretation and small-picture detail as well as the engaging and accessible prose make the book fit for a number of sub-field specialists and lay readers alike.

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"Dupre has written a succinct narrative that will be helpful to anyone seeking an introduction to the interaction of European powers, the United States, and Indian tribes in Alabama and the Southeast."