The third volume of Presidential Chronicles tells the life stories of the following five American Presidents who emerged to power in the middle of the 19th Century:
James Polk
Zachary Taylor
Millard Fillmore
Franklin Pierce
James Buchanan
Fisher explores the nation's era of westward expansion under the guise of "Manifest Destiny," which featured a war that helped double the size of the young nation. With that growth came political peril as the northern and southern sections of the country grew increasingly divided on the topic of the expansion of slavery into these new territories. Those struggles grew violent, and the nation's leaders struggled to maintain a united collection of states. Fisher reveals the intense Constitutional challenges faced by these leaders, the government's attempt to use a vast compromise to keep the nation intact, and ultimately the collective failures that were traversed on the path to national fracture.