BOOKS: Heirs of the Founders: H.W. Brands

Jan. 22—Henry Clay, John Calhoun and Daniel Webster always seem to be lurking in the pages of history.

They are usually supporting characters in books about the War of 1812, the years leading up to the Civil War, the Mexican War, the annexation of Texas, in biographies of Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln, etc.

But they were major figures in that murky era of American history between the nation's founding and the Civil War. The era when, with the exception of Jackson, none of the presidents seems to be well remembered from the last of the Revolutionary War figures in the White House and Lincoln. The Era of Good Feelings, of one-term presidencies, of American expansion westward, of compromises between free and slave states.

In historian H.W. Brands' "Heirs of the Founders: The Second Generation of American Giants," Clay, Calhoun and Webster take the main stage. And while they are forever in the shadow of the Founders and failed to resolve slavery and keep the country from the Civil War, they were indeed giants of their era. For good and bad, their fingerprints are all over those decades.

They served in various roles in various presidential cabinets.

They were in and out and back in Congress.

They each had presidential aspirations, though none of them were successful in winning the presidency though all three were presidential candidates on multiple occasions.

They were rivals, allies and foes at various times.

They were consequential orators and politicians. Fellow politicians, the press and the public often took note of what they said and did.

Clay teamed with Calhoun on issues when they were younger while Webster was on the other side. Later, Clay and Webster were allies on issues that Calhoun opposed. Clay of Kentucky and Webster of Massachusetts advocated for free states and maintaining the Union; Calhoun of South Carolina became a sectionalist, pushing for more slave states and threatening secession.

Brands pulls these three men out of the shadows of American history and reveals full biographies and careers of each one. He sets the stage for the era and how each one and their relationships with one another shaped it.

Brands is the right fit for a book about Clay, Calhoun and Webster. He has written books that span American history from biographies on Benjamin Franklin, U.S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, etc., to various historical eras such as the disagreement between President Harry S Truman and Gen. Douglas MacArthur during the Korean War, the Age of Gold, etc.

"Heirs of the Founders" is eye opening, not only in the story of these men's star-crossed lives but even in their deaths. Clay, Calhoun and Webster died within months of one another, less than a decade before the start of the Civil War.