In this illuminating history, a senatorial debate about states’ rights exemplifies the growing rift within pre-Civil War America. Two generations after the founding, Americans still disagreed on the nature of the Union. Was it a confederation of sovereign states or a nation headed by a central government? To South Carolina Senator Robert Y. Hayne, only the vigilant protection of states’ rights could hold off an attack on a southern way of life built on slavery. Meanwhile, Massachusetts Senator Daniel Webster believed that the political and economic ascendancy of New England—and the nation—required a strong, activist national government. In The Webster-Hayne Debate, historian Christopher Childers examines a sharp dispute in January 1830 that came to define the dilemma of America’s national identity. During Senate discussion of western land policy, the senators’ increasingly heated exchanges led to the question of union—its nature and its value in a federal republic. Childers argues that both Webster and Hayne, and the factions they represented, saw the West as key to the success of their political plans and sought to cultivate western support for their ideas. A short, accessible account of the conflict and the related issues it addressed, The Webster-Hayne Debate captures an important moment in the early republic.

From New York Times bestselling historian H. W. Brands comes the riveting story of how, in nineteenth-century America, a new set of political giants battled to complete the unfinished work of the Founding Fathers and decide the future of our democracy 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. 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 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. Their rise was marked by dramatic duels, fierce debates, scandal 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 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 immortal trio" had one last chance to save the country from the real risk of civil war. But, by that point, they had never been further apart. Thrillingly and authoritatively, H. W. Brands narrates an epic American rivalry and the little-known drama of the dangerous early years of our democracy.

The debates between Daniel Webster of Massachusetts and Robert Hayne of South Carolina gave fateful utterance to the differing understandings of the nature of the American Union that had come to predominate in the North and the South by 1830. To Webster, the Union was the indivisible expression of one nation of people. To Hayne, the Union was the voluntary compact among sovereign states. The Webster-Hayne Debate consists of speeches delivered in the United States Senate in January of 1830. Herman Belz is Professor of History at the University of Maryland. Please note: This title is available as an ebook for purchase on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and iTunes.

A historian and former presidential speechwriter presents an unprecedented two-volume collection of the greatest speeches in American history.