John T. Lupton, the godfather of Coca-Cola bottling, and Harry Scott Probasco, founder of the “Coca-Cola bank,” guided Chattanoooga, Tennessee, with a quiet but powerful hand for decades. Generations later, the names Lupton and Probasco—and a handful of intermarried families—continue to form a controversial web of leadership for the city. 

This strategic crossroads through the mountains is the scene of ancient warpaths, the launching of the Trail of Tears, the greatest two-day battle in American history, and the founding of the world’s most popular product. From its religious and progressive tension to its cryptic, indigenous name, Chattanooga proves to be an enigma at every turn.

Intermarriages, assassinations, and missionary arrests threatened Andrew Jackson with Civil War thirty years before Lincoln.

Captures the dramatic events leading up to Trail of Tears, including assassinations of key leaders, arrests of missionaries, and riots stemming from mixed-race marriages. This Cherokee saga describes a people who became "civilized" by adopting commerce, trade, literacy and even the Christianity of the whites. Their plight served as the seminal case for how the United States related to all Native Americans thereafter.