Dr. H.W. Brands Heirs of the Founders

The Avid Reader Show

Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of The Avid Reader. Today our guest is Dr. H.W. Brands. Dr. Brands holds the Jack S. Blanton Sr.. Chair in history at The University of Texas. An incredibly prolific author of American history and its most evocative and important periods, Dr. Brand has written 25 books, edited at least five others and has published dozens of articles and scores of reviews. He has written for the NYT, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Atlantic and many others. His latest work is Heirs Of The Founders: The Epic Rivalry of Henry Clay, John Calhoun, and Daniel Webster, The Second Generation of American Giants. published byDoubleday and just released These three men, successors of our founding fathers, each born within four or five years of The American Revolution, through their rivalry and, in some cases their similarities, helped to forge for good or bad the conditions which led to our great Civil War. Each had aspirations for the Presidency. Each failed. However, Clay served as Speaker of the House, and John Quincey Adams’ Secretary of State and forged the Missouri Compromise which indeed was that, allowing one state to remain slave free and the other to hold on to an unspeakable tradition. That alone is an issue that is brought with questions and wonder, and I will ask those questions today. Calhoun was Vice-President to both John Quincey Adams and andrew Jackson, essentially extolled slavery, the crown of the southern culture. I wonder why he didn’t become President just from sheer tenure. Just as I wonder today about Joe Biden. And Webster, my favorite, I guess because of Steven Vincent Benet’s short story The Devil and Daniel Webster, was a senator, secretary of state to three presidents and the most gifted courtroom advocates of his time and maybe of any time, save for Clarence Darrow maybe, well he abandoned his anti-slavery position in an attempt to wrest the Presidency from his erstwhile rivals. Once again much as Mitch Mcconnell and Charles Grassley have done today, in their flip-flops on the absurd Presidency of Donald Trump. In any event and to stop my railing, Dr. Brand has in an accessible and compelling narrative has woven the threads of the lives of these three men, The Great Triumvirate, and given us a good object lesson of the origins of Constitutional Cris and what it can lead to.