Isaac I. Stevens: Young Man in a Hurry

“Isaac Stevens was most often in the center of activity, providing leadership, spewing out orders and ideas, shaping events, or creating controversy. He was a man either loved or hated.”--Kent D. Richards.

Washington Territory's first governor remains as controversial today as he was to his frontier contemporaries during the Pacific Northwest's most turbulent era--the mid-1850s. Indian wars, martial law, and bitter political disputes, as well as the establishment of a new, sound governmenta...