America's Great Debate: Henry Clay, Stephen A. Douglas, and the Compromise That Preserved the Union

by Fergus M. Bordewich

Overview

Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, a “gripping, vigorous [history] featuring a large cast of unforgettable characters with fierce beliefs” (Publishers Weekly, starred Review).

When gold was discovered in California in the great Gold Rush of 1849, the population swelled, and settlers petitioned for admission to the Union. But the US Senate was precariously balanced with fifteen free states and fifteen slave states. Up to then states had been admitted in pairs, one free and one slave, to preserve that tenuous balance in the Senate. Would California be free or slave? So began a paralyzing crisis in American government, and the longest debate in Senate history.

Fergus Bordewich tells the epic story of the Compromise of 1850, bringing to life two generations of senators who dominated the great debate. Luminaries such as John Calhoun, Daniel Webster, and Henry Clay—who tried unsuccessfully to cobble together a compromise—were nearing the end of their long careers. Rising stars such as Jefferson Davis, William Seward, and Stephen Douglas—who ultimately succeeded where Clay failed—would shape the country’s politics as slavery gradually fractured the nation.

In America’s Great Debate Fergus Bordewich takes us back to a time when partisans on each side reached across the aisle to preserve the Union from tragedy.

“Lively. . . . Bordewich . . . is a good writer—he knows when to savor details.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Stimulating . . . richly informed.” —The Wall Street Journal

“Original in concept, stylish in execution . . . .[the] characters seem as vivid, human and understandable as those who walk the halls of Congress today.” —The Washington Post

“Perceptive and tremendously witty.” —Christian Science Monitor

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781439141687
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	02/13/2024
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	498
Sales rank:	41,716
File size:	14 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Fergus M. Bordewich is the author of several books, among them America’s Great Debate: Henry Clay, Stephen A. Douglas, and the Compromise That Preserved the Union, which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in history. His articles have appeared in many magazines and newspapers. He lives in San Francisco. Visit him at FergusBordewich.com.

Table of Contents

Preface 1

Prologue 5

Chapter 1 "A Frenzy Seized My Soul" 17

Chapter 2 One Bold Stroke 29

Chapter 3 "Order! Order! Order!" 36

Chapter 4 "That Demon Question" 48

Chapter 5 "Ultima Thule" 57

Chapter 6 Old Harry 72

Chapter 7 "We Have Another Epidemic" 85

Chapter 8 The City of Magnificent Intentions 98

Chapter 9 Deadlock 114

Chapter 10 The Godlike Daniel 123

Chapter 11 "A Great Soul on Fire" 134

Chapter 12 "Wounded Eagle" 146

Chapter 13 "Secession! Peaceable Secession!" 159

Chapter 14 "A Higher Law" 173

Chapter 15 "God Deliver Me from Such Friends" 182

Chapter 16 "He Is Not Dead, Sir" 191

Chapter 17 "Let the Assassin Fire!" 207

Chapter 18 Filibusters 223

Chapter 19 "A Legislative Saturnalia" 239

Chapter 20 A Pact with the Devil 250

Chapter 21 "War, Open War" 267

Chapter 22 "All Is Paralysis" 279

Chapter 23 The Omnibus Overturned 289

Chapter 24 "A Steam Engine in Britches" 303

Chapter 25 "Break Your Masters' Locks" 317

Chapter 26 "It Is Time We Should Act" 331

Chapter 27 Triumphs 347

Chapter 28 "A Scandalous Outrage" 358

Epilogue: The Reckoning 370

Acknowledgments 399

Notes 403

Selected Bibliography 445

Index 465

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Political history is often a hard slog, but not in Bordewich's gripping, vigorous account featuring a large cast of unforgettable characters with fierce beliefs." —-Publishers Weekly Starred Review

Editorial Reviews

Fergus M. Bordewich has written a lively, attractive book about a fearsome and almost intractable crisis: the tangle of issues involving expansion and slavery that confronted the political class of the United States in 1850…Bordewich…is a good writer—he knows when to savor details, and when to move things along—and a good quoter of others.
—Richard Brookhiser

The New York Times Book Review

Here is a pleasant surprise. This book about a little-known subject by a not-so-well-known writer is as good as almost any work of popular history about the early United States. Original in concept, stylish in execution, America's Great Debate, by Fergus Bordewich, provides everything history readers want. And what is that? Two things above all: a compelling story and a cast of characters who come convincingly to life.
—Donald E. Graham

The Washington Post

In this vivid, insightful history of the bitter controversy that led to the Compromise of 1850, journalist Bordewich (Washington: The Making of the American Capital) reminds us that Southerners dominated all branches of the federal government until 1850. Every president had owned slaves except the two Adamses, and Southern states still made up half of the Senate. The territorial bonanza after the 1845–1847 Mexican war threatened their control because California and New Mexico’s governments excluded slavery. Outraged Southern leaders refused to accept this, paralyzing Congress for months. A compromise designed by an aged Henry Clay failed, but was quickly revived and passed thanks largely to Stephen Douglas. It admitted California as a free state, put off the status of the remaining territory, and strengthened the fugitive slave law. Despite narrow passage and wildly abusive debate, it was a dazzling achievement that temporarily staved off civil war. Political history is often a hard slog, but not in Bordewich’s gripping, vigorous account featuring a large cast of unforgettable characters with fierce beliefs. 16 pages of b&w photos, 2 maps. Agent: Elyse Cheney, Elyse Cheney Literary Associates. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

Long before the crisis of 1860 there was the crisis of 1850. With page-turning narrative skill, Fergus Bordewich re-imagines this threat to the Union not only in terms of Northerners and Southerners, slavery advocates and freedom champions, but as a rite of passage between the old lions of the Senate and Young America—a transformation that would at least postpone secession and civil war. Few writers have ever brought this neglected moment to life more vividly.”
—Harold Holzer, author of Lincoln: President-Elect


“Anyone whose eyes have glazed over at the numbing details of the Compromise of 1850 should read this compelling narrative of that famous event. Focusing on the colorful personalities who fought out the issue of slavery on the floor of the Senate in 1850, Fergus Bordewich shows how they forged a settlement that avoided war but laid the groundwork for the Civil War that came a decade later.”
—James M. McPherson, author of Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era


“In this exhaustively researched and brilliantly constructed work, Fergus Bordewich offers a spellbinding account of a nation teetering on disintegration, as its lawmakers, gripped by suspicion, anger, and hatred, ultimately mustered a grudging agreement—an act of ‘collaborative statecraft’—to sacrifice parochial interests for national survival. In Bordewich’s skillful telling, Congress at its inherent worst, in response to the volcanic stresses of that era, for the moment, became Congress at its potential best.”
—Richard A. Baker, U.S. Senate Historian Emeritus

"[A] vivid, insightful history of the bitter controversy that led to the Compromise of 1850 . . . Political history is often a hard slog, but not in Bordewich's gripping, vigorous acount featuring a large cast of unforgettable characters with fierce beliefs."
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“A peerless narrative of one of the most momentous—and ambiguous—episodes in American history: the compromise that both saved the Union and, ultimately, destroyed it.”
—Adam Goodheart, author of 1861: The Civil War Awakening

"Today's political differences pale in significance when compared with those that confronted Congress in the mid-19th century. What was at stake—as Fergus Bordewich reminds us in his stimulating, richly informed America's Great Debate—was nothing less than the survival of the nation."
—David S. Reynolds, The Wall Street Journal


"Original in concept, stylish in execution, America's Great Debate, by Fergus Bordewich, provides everything history readers want. . . .[the] characters seem as vivid, human and understandable as those who walk the halls of Congress today."
—Donald E. Graham, The Washington Post


"A perceptive and tremendously witty book about the compromise that held the US together in the decade before the Civil War."
—Randy Dotinga, Christian Science Monitor


"A lively, attractive book about a fearsome and almost intractable crisis: the tangle of issues involving expansion and slavery that confronted the political class of the United States in 1850. . . . Bordewich, the author of several books on American history, is a good writer—he knows when to savor details, and when to move things along."
—Richard Brookhiser, The New York Times Book Review

From the Publisher

Wholly enjoyable study of an earlier era of intense political partisanship. Historian Bordewich (Washington: The Making of an American Capital, 2008, etc.) recounts the amazing story of the cliffhanging compromise hammered out in both houses of Congress in 1850 that pitted the rival pro- and antislavery factions against each other and saved the country, temporarily, from dissolution. The war with Mexico four years before had added 1.2 million square miles to the western United States, while slavery, thanks to the cotton gin, had exploded exponentially. Would the new territories comprise slave states or free states? How to maintain the balance in the Senate and House of Representatives between them? Bordewich portrays a colorful cast of characters--Democrats, Whigs, Free Soilers and abolitionists--whose passionate rhetoric attained lyrical heights and brought the debate about America's very identity to the forefront. Chief architect Henry Clay, in ill health and at the end of an eminent career, brandished a fragment of George Washington's coffin and warned his colleagues of the dire consequences of disunion. Urging forbearance on both sides, Clay laid out the components of a plan accounting for the admission of California and New Mexico without restrictions (meaning they would decide themselves about slavery), resolving the disputed borders with Texas, abolishing the slave trade in Washington, D.C., and soothing Southerners' concerns over fugitive slaves. Warring factions--on the South, led by senators John Calhoun and Jefferson Davis, and on the North, led by Daniel Webster and William Seward--threatened to defeat the omnibus bill, until the rhetorical arm-wringing by the "steam engine in britches" Stephen A. Douglas squeezed a compromise and the necessary passage. Acquiescence to the Fugitive Slave Law, however, would henceforth haunt the lawmakers. A thrilling history lesson filled with pistol waving in the Senate, "backroom confabulations," the death of a president and old-fashioned oratorical efflorescence.

Kirkus Reviews