In Alabama, support for Donald Trump followed an ancient pattern

“IMAGINE,” says Glenn Drummond, gesturing at the farmland beyond the window of his pick-up truck, “this was all pine forest.” Early 19th-century travellers on this part of the old federal road in Macon County, Alabama, “didn’t know what was behind the next tree.” There were bears, rattlesnakes and defiant Native Americans, on whose trading path the road was built. Today there is an archaeological dig at Warrior Stand, where a Creek Indian chieftain ran a hostelry, which has unearthed English pipes and French gunflints; at Creek Stand, a few miles along, is a quaint Methodist church. Then the modern road turns away from the old route, which is traced by a dirt track before disappearing into fields and copses.

Running from Washington to New Orleans, briefly known as the “Appian way of the South”, the federal road was soon made redundant by steamboats, railways and the telegraph. But during its brief heyday it sparked a war with the Creek, then helped to vanquish them. After conquest came migration: “Once the Indians were whipped,” says Mr Drummond, an expert on the road, “a flood of settlers came down it.” Some of the earliest took the fertile...