Heirs of the Founders by H.W. Brands
H.W. Brands explores the rivalry between three second generation American giants--Henry Clay, John Calhoun, and Daniel Webster--in Heirs of the Founders.
H.W. Brands examines the Great Triumvirate in his 2018 book, Heirs of the Founders: The Epic Rivalry of Henry Clay, John Calhoun and Daniel Webster, the Second Generation of American Giants.
I’ve been on something of a Brands kick of late. Even as I publish this review on a Friday morning, I’m making my way through reading my third consecutive book written by the historian.
Being a Kentucky native and an U.S. history buff, it’s hard to grow up and not learn about Henry Clay. Along with Webster and Calhoun, Clay was a force in American politics during the first half of the 19th century. He was a principal author of both the 1820 and 1850 compromises. The latter of which is singlehandedly responsible for delaying the Civil War by ten years. Of course, they did the very thing that America’s founders did by not choosing to confront slavery. Clay and Webster knew that it would come down to war but neither were alive to see it.
Interspersed in the book are chapters that focus on John Quincy Adams, Sam Houston, Solomon Northup, and Harriet Martineau. The chapters on Northup describe his experiences of being a freeman that was kidnapped and sold into slavery. By the time his story became public in 1853, neither Clay, Calhoun, or Webster were alive to see it.
There are some chapters where Brands looks at how the trio worked with whoever was president while they were in office, especially James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, John Tyler, James K. Polk, Zachary Taylor, and Millard Fillmore. All of them ran for president but none of them ended up landing the job.
Excluding periods where he was not in office, Clay served as a U.S. Senator, Congressman, or Secretary of State between 1806-1852. The same went for Webster during 1813-1852. Except for when he wasn’t in office, Calhoun’s served as a Congressman, Senator, Secretary of War, Secretary of State, or Vice President during 1811-1850.
Both Clay and Calhoun were war hawks as they hoped for another war with England, which would become the War of 1812. Webster’s opposition to the war is what propelled him into Congress. Two key issues for debate in their early years were the Second Bank of the United States and the Tariff of 1816.
The 1820s were a time for party realignment with the Second Party System with the Democratic Party (a successor of Jefferson’s Democratic-Republicans) and the Whig Party (a merger of the National Republicans and Anti-Masonic Party). The National Republicans splintered from the Democratic-Republicans and Federalists to form an Anti-Jacksonian Party. The Whigs are the predecessors of today’s Republican Party.
Things got interesting in the 1820s if you want to use that word. Clay ran for president this ended up in the “corrupt bargain” that saw John Quincy Adams elected by the Electoral College in 1824 and Clay landing a spot in his cabinet as Secretary of State and Calhoun as VP. Adams only served one term after being defeated by Andrew Jackson in 1828. Surprisingly, the book doesn’t discuss the Indian Removal Act of 1830.
What the book does discuss in detail is the Tariff of 1828, which is also known as the Tariff of Abominations. It’s shockingly relevant today because the convicted felon in the White House clearly never studied US history. If he did, he would know that the tariffs are really just another sales tax that gets passed down to importers and then the consumer. In any event, this tariff led to another one in 1832. Southern states, especially South Carolina, viewed them as unconstitutional—thus we have the Nullification Crisis. Jackson ultimately compromised with the Tariff of 1833.
Things were really changing in America between the War of 1812 and the late 1820s. New England shifted away from trade and shipping while building up industrial manufacturing. Western states (what we know as the Midwest today) were looking to build transportation routes for shipping goods. As for the South, the Deep South was focused on cotton. Rather than actually pay people to pick cotton, they depended on slaves and didn’t want this to change. Throw the tariffs into the mix and Britain wasn’t going to buy cotton from Southern plantation owners. Northern industries would only prosper. The difference in the sectional economies would only continue to grow in the decades to come.
As we move into the early 1830s, all three were back in the Senate again. This would more or less be their home until their deaths. Clay pursued the Whig nomination for presidency in 1844 and retired to his Ashland estate shortly thereafter. There were many pertinent issues being tackled during this time: the aforementioned Nullification Crisis, Texas annexation, the Mexican-American War, and the Compromise of 1850, etc.
The U.S. Constitution is a living document, but even during their time, much was still up for debate. Where did the ultimate power of authority rest? Was it with the states or the federal government. This was especially tested with the tariffs and the Nullification Crisis. Even before the Civil War, South Carolina was threatening secession!
The other issue is how the idea of slavery goes against the values of republicanism. Sectionalism was pretty huge and abolitionists were growing. Every time the US grew, it meant negotiating which state would be free and which would have slaves. It’s one of the reasons why annexing Texas was a big debate. Texas made up of what is now multiple states and their borders were one of many things factoring into the 1850 Compromise. All they could do was compromise for the sake of the Union and buy some time—not the 30 years that Clay predicted—without actually resolving the issue of slavery. No, that would have to wait until after the election of 1860 as the country would shortly erupt into a Civil War.
Clay is one of the greatest American politicians to never serve as president. He ran three times. Would a Clay presidency have made much of a difference in American history? I don’t know. Brands doesn’t get into the speculation but it’s certainly a what-if scenario. He would have probably governed differently than James K. Polk had he won. In any event, he took a middle-of-the-road approach to slavery as he wrote to a friend in 1838.
“The abolitionists are denouncing me as a slaveholder, and slaveholders as an abolitionist,” he remarked wryly to a friend.
Clay thought this approach would win him the Whig nomination in 1840. Sure, he had the qualifications but the party didn’t want a candidate with any controversy. They went with William Henry Harrison. Harrison’s presidency lasted about a month and probably less so since he fell ill on March 26. It didn’t change the fact that Clay viewed radical abolitionists as being a threat to the Union in the late 1830s. It’s ironic that Clay held slaves and held anti-slavery views, opting for gradual emancipation. When Kentucky held a convention to amend the state constitution, Clay “worked to write an end to slavery in the state’s charter.” As we know, his efforts failed but he was branded as “an enemy of slavery” heading into the Compromise of 1850.
Clay’s views couldn’t be starkly different from that of former president John Quincy Adams. Slavery was among a key reason that Adams ran for Congress, where he was elected in 1831 and stayed until his death in 1848. He wrote in his diary as early as March 1920:
“The Declaration of Independence not only asserts the natural equality of all men, and their inalienable right to liberty, but that the only just powers of government are derived from the consent of the governed. A power for one part of the people to make slaves of the other can never be derived from consent, and is, therefore, not a just power.”
Meanwhile, Webster was one of the greatest orators in American history. If he delivered a speech in the House or Senate, one had to be there in person if they wanted to hear it. One such speech was his reply to Robert Hayne. He later risked it all to defend the Compromise of 1850, even if it meant alienating his supporters in the North. He viewed the Union and liberty as being inseparable from each other and it showed in his March 7, 1850 speech. But aside from his oratorial skills, he finished his career as Secretary of State, if only because Massachusetts constituents were unhappy with his speech and vote on the Compromise of 1850.
Calhoun’s legacy has not withstood the test of time. A defender of states’ rights, he was also defensive of slavery as a way of life in the American South. He didn’t live long enough to vote against the 1850 compromise but he let his views be known, even as he was dying. His views were so abhorrent that Clemson University removed his name from their Honors College. A statue in Charleston, S.C. was removed in 2020.
Calhoun’s speech on February 6, 1837 speaks for itself. Anyone that referred to slavery as a “positive good” deserves to be eviscerated for holding those views. If that’s not enough, Calhoun remarked that “abolition and the union cannot coexist.” His speech is the type of speech where you just gradually watch someone digging their own grave:
“We of the South will not, cannot, surrender our institutions. To maintain the existing relations between the two races, inhabiting that section of the Union, is indispensable to the peace and happiness of both. It cannot be subverted without drenching the country or the other of the races.[…]
“In the present state of civilization, where two races of different origin, and distinguished by color, and other physical differences, as well as intellectual, are brought together, the relation now existing in the slaveholding States between the two, is, instead of an evil, a good—a positive good.”
The Whig Party fell apart after their deaths. Northern Whigs and free-soil Democrats joined together to form the Republican Party, an explicitly anti-slavery and anti-Southern party. Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas betrayed them when he sought to repeal the Missouri Compromise through the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. It would get rather bloody in the years that followed—I’ll have more soon when I cover The Zealot and the Emanicipator. When Abraham Lincoln was elected president in 1860, he looked to the legacy of Clay and Webster and what they stood for.
In 1957, the trio were among five senators whose portraits were selected to be hung up in the Senate Reception Room. In Heirs of the Founders, H.W. Brands walks us through not only the rivalry of Clay, Calhoun, and Webster, but how the Great Triumvirate—representing three different areas of the young nation—served as the bridge between the founders and the Civil War. Their work lives on today as we battle over values such as diversity, equity, and inclusion.