Category:

There was blame to go around—the loose credit in England, Andrew Jackson dissolving the Bank of the United States, bad weather—and the depression proved deep and lasting. Southern states suffered worse. The entire nation spoke of a malaise, but Kentuckians dubbed the era between 1834 and 1844 the "crisis decade."

Given the resurgent cholera and sputtering economy, this generation of Beans never had much of a chance in Kentucky. Roy has watched his community, state, and nation cracking apart. Who could blame him for cutting out?

Hell, Uncle Ben didn't stick around to watch the world collapse around him any further. He left Kentucky in 1837, leaving an imploded economy and family graves behind for the promise of a place called Missouri. Benjamin Bean, from all reports, has settled on his own land near a lake outside the town of Independence, when it was just an obscure furtrade village on the edge of the settled United States. Since then, the hamlet has become the premier jumping-off point for settlers, traders, and explorers heading to the foreign lands of New Mexico, Oregon, and California.

Roy is natural at justifying actions he clearly wants to take for his own gratification, and he applies this skill to abandoning his family in Kentucky. With him gone, his brothers will have one less thing to worry about. Strapping horseman Joshua is ready to head off on his own, not to start a family per se but to escape the laborious monotony of homesteading.

Everyone knows that community-minded James will snare a wife as soon as he's able, but if Roy knows his brother at all, he expects him to go to Missouri. The eldest Bean tends to pander to and emulate his elders, and he'll float to his uncle in Missouri like a leaf pulled behind the wake of a barge. If Uncle Ben continues to find success out there, Roy bets James'll make the leap, whether he's married or not.

If the family doesn't move west, Sam might just go renegade, like Roy is now doing. The pair are in many ways opposites—Sam with blond hair, Roy with dark; Sam slow-spoken and Roy quick-tongued; Sam largely abstaining from drink, Roy happily indulging—but they share a streak of adventurism. The two indulged this trait as young squires roaming the hills and fields of Kentucky. Roy hopes his departure will ignite Sam's spirit of adventure, even if running off to New Orleans is too extreme an act. In any case, his brother is far too soft on slaves to consider working on a flatboat to New Orleans.

Roy has grown wilder than his elder siblings, having lived without a father for more of his childhood than the others. He's clever and observant, but frustrated and rootless. And there's no reason to stay put. Not while there's a sprawling trade network running along the nation's great rivers. So as soon as he's old enough to be hired, Roy heads to nearby Louisville to find a flatboat. From there, on a rudderless barge carrying forlorn slaves, he can take the Ohio River to where it meets the Mississippi and head straight south for New Orleans and whatever the future holds.