Henry Clay of Kentucky, as dashing as he was ambitious, embodied the hopes of the rising West. Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, a champion orator known for his eloquence, spoke for the North and its business class. Brands narrates an epic American rivalry and the little-known drama of the dangerous early years of our democracy.In the early days of the nineteenth century, three young men strode onto the national stage, elected to Congress at a moment when the Founding Fathers were beginning to retire to their farms. But, by that point, they had never been further apart. Then, in 1850, when California moved to join the Union as a free state, 'the immortal trio' had one last chance to save the country from the real risk of civil war.

They wrestled with these issues for four decades, arguing bitterly and hammering out political compromises that held the Union together, but only just. Yet each in his own way sought to remedy the two glaring flaws in the Constitution: its refusal to specify where authority ultimately rested, with the states or the nation, and its unwillingness to address the essential incompatibility of republicanism and slavery. Their rise was marked by dramatic duels, fierce debates, scandal and political betrayal. Together these heirs of Washington, Jefferson and Adams took the country to war, battled one another for the presidency and set themselves the task of finishing the work the Founders had left undone. South Carolina's John Calhoun, with piercing eyes and an even more piercing intellect, defended the South and slavery.

In the early 1800s, three young men strode onto the national stage, elected to Congress at a moment when the Founding Fathers were beginning to retire to their farms. From the two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, bestselling historian, and author of Our First Civil War comes “a historical spellbinder” ( The Christian Science Monitor) about a trio of political giants in nineteenth-century America-and their battle to complete the unfinished work of the Founding Fathers and decide the future of our democracy.

Heirs of the Founders by H.W. Brands