JEFFERSON AND THE GUN-MEN In 1803, Thomas Jefferson made a visionary purchase that opened an American frontier so vast as to defy the imagination -- nearly all the land from the Mississippi to the Rockies. Few know, however, that the intrigue behind the exploration and opening of the Louisiana Territory was almost as vast as the land itself. Even as Meriwether Lewis and William Clark set out on their legendary journey to the Pacific Ocean, other forces were taking the measure of the land with far darker ambitions.Just three decades after the revolution that gave birth to the United States, another insurgency was already brewing, this time led by a charming -- and treacherous -- Aaron Burr. The former vice president had determined that if he could not be master of his nation, he would instead become emperor of the Louisiana Territory. Working with the powerful commander of the U.S. Army, General James Wilkinson, Burr instigated a plot to seize not only Louisiana, but all of Mexico. This nefarious plot even included the hapless Zebulon M. Pike.Jefferson and the Gun-Men is the riveting story of this ambitious and unlikely scheme. In its pages, critically acclaimed author M.R. Montgomery vividly portrays a time when the wildest plots and the most grandiose dreams thrived as schemers, revolutionaries, blackguards, and braggarts conspired to create a new country. In this race to capture the heart of a new frontier, Montgomery finds a young nation just beginning to imagine itself and understand its destiny.