Heirs of the Founders

From the two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist,bestselling historianand author of Our First Civil War comes ΓÇ£a historical spellbinderΓÇ¥ (The Christian Science Monitor) about a trio of political giants in nineteenth-century AmericaΓÇöand their battle to complete the unfinished work of the Founding Fathers and decide the future of our democracy. In the early 1800sthree young men strode onto the national stageelected to Congress at a moment when the Founding Fathers were beginning to retire to their farms. Daniel Webster of Massachusettsa champion orator known for his eloquencespoke for the North and its business class. Henry Clay of Kentuckyas dashing as he was ambitiousembodied the hopes of the rising West. South Carolina’s John Calhounwith piercing eyes and an even more piercing intellectdefended the South and slavery. Together these heirs of WashingtonJefferson and Adams took the country to warbattled one another for the presidency and set themselves the task of finishing the work the Founders had left undone. Their rise was marked by dramatic duelsfierce debatesscandal and political betrayal. Yet each in his own way sought to remedy the two glaring flaws in the Constitution: its refusal to specify where authority ultimately restedwith the states or the nationand its unwillingness to address the essential incompatibility of republicanism and slavery. They wrestled with these issues for four decadesarguing bitterly and hammering out political compromises that held the Union togetherbut only just. Thenin 1850when California moved to join the Union as a free state\