From New York Times bestselling historian H. W. Brands comes the riveting story of how America's second generation of political giants--Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and John Calhoun--battled to complete the unfinished work of the Founding Fathers and decide the shape 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. Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, a champion orator known for his eloquence, spoke for the North and its business class. Henry Clay of Kentucky, as dashing as he was ambitious, embodied the hopes of the rising West. South Carolina's John Calhoun, with piercing eyes and an even more piercing intellect, defended the South and slavery. Together this second generation of American founders took the country to war, battled one another for the presidency, and tasked themselves with finishing the work the Founders had left undone. Above all, they sought to remedy the two glaring flaws in the Constitution: its fudge on where authority ultimately rested, with the states or the nation; and its unwillingness to address the essential incompatibility of republicanism and slavery. They wrestled with these issues for four decades, arguing bitterly and hammering out political compromises that held the union together, but only just. Then, in 1850, when California moved to join the union as a free state, "the three great men of America" had one last chance to save the country from the real risk of civil war. But by then they were never further apart. Thrillingly and authoritatively, H. W. Brands narrates the little-known drama of the dangerous early years of our democracy.
Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David McCullough rediscovers an important and dramatic chapter in the American story—the settling of the Northwest Territory by dauntless pioneers who overcame incredible hardships to build a community based on...
Narrator: John Bedford Lloyd Published: 05/07/2019
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In The Devil in the White City, the smoke, romance, and mystery of the Gilded Age come alive as never before.Two men, each handsome and unusually adept at his chosen work, embodied an element of the great dynamic that characterized America&rs...
Narrator: Scott Brick,Tony Goldwyn Published: 10/17/2002
Now in paperback, the New York Times bestseller from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author David McCullough—the inspiring, enthralling story of the American painters, writers, sculptors, and doctors who journeyed to Paris between 1830 ...
From Alexander von Humboldt to Charles and Anne Lindbergh, these are stories of people of great vision and daring whose achievements continue to inspire us today, brilliantly told by master historian David McCullough, who narrates his beloved classi...
Now in paperback, the New York Times bestseller from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author David McCullough—the inspiring, enthralling story of the American painters, writers, sculptors, and doctors who journeyed to Paris between 1830 ...
In The Devil in the White City, the smoke, romance, and mystery of the Gilded Age come alive as never before.Two men, each handsome and unusually adept at his chosen work, embodied an element of the great dynamic that characterized America&rs...
Narrator: Scott Brick,Tony Goldwyn Published: 02/11/2003
Another history pageturner from the authors of the #1 bestsellers George Washington's Secret Six and Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates.The War of 1812 saw America threatened on every side. Encouraged by the British, Indian trib...
FROM THE #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF JOHN ADAMS At the end of the last century, Johnstown, Pennsylvania was a booming coal-and-steel town filled with hardworking families striving for a piece of the nation's burgeoning industrial prospe...
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