Heirs of the Founders

Heirs of the Founders: The Epic Rivalry of Henry Clay, John Calhoun, and Daniel Webster, the Second Generation of American Giants- H.M. Brands
Doubleday/Random House
Release Date: November 13, 2018

Rating:
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Synopsis: 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.

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The debate over what  certain aspects of the Constitution: who has what authority, and how amendments should be interpreted, are not new debates.  The "second generation" of American politicians, including Daniel Webster, John Calhoun, and Henry Clay, were fiercely arguing over how aspects of the Constitution should be applied before the War of 1812.  What rights did the Constitution grant states versus the federal government? How were new states to be brought into the Union?  Tariffs, taxes, and infrastructure were debated in Congress then as they are now.  Through the early 1800s Congress struggled with the idea of states rights, and what was due to individual states and different geographic sections of the country were often even more bitterly divisive than political parties are today.  Clay, Calhoun, and Webster spent forty years fighting to iron out what they saw as flaws or glaring omissions in the Constitution.  Each had personal ambitions that included the White House, each wanted to make lasting impressions on history, and each wanted to ensure the best for their region.  

A well-researched book, Heirs of the Founders works to help readers understand the battles the so-called "second generation" of American politicians fought in an effort to define the new United States of America.  Brands does a good job of leading readers through the different sides and their thinking, as well as emphasizing that then, as now, there were moderates who were willing to compromise to get things done and the more hard line groups who refused any hint of compromise.  The difference being that men like Clay often succeeded in bringing both sides to accept compromises that today rarely happen.  Brands quotes extensively from speeches each of these well-known orators gave but helps us dig deeper behind the scenes to understand what was going on.  I thought he did a particularly excellent job in exploring the complicated, nuanced, and sensitive aspects of national and individual opinions on the issue of slavery.  

Like Joanne Freeman's The Field of Blood, readers know where the country is headed.  Many contemporary Americans were surprised less by the fact that the Civil War happened and more by the fact that it didn't occur at least a decade earlier.  In Heirs we see the men who fought to hold off the break of the Union, but we also see, as they saw, that the extreme regional sectionalism of the first half of the 19th century made it inevitable.

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

Evolution's Captain

Evolution's Captain: The Story of the Kidnapping That Led to Charles Darwin's Voyage Aboard the Beagle- Peter Nichols
HarperCollins
Release Date: June 29, 2004

Rating:
📚📚📚📚

Synopsis: One of the great ironies of history is that the famous journey—wherein Charles Darwin consolidated the earth-rattling ‘origin of the species’ discoveries—was conceived by another man: Robert FitzRoy. It was FitzRoy who chose Darwin for the journey—not because of Darwin’s scientific expertise, but because he seemed a suitable companion to help FitzRoy fight back the mental illness that had plagued his family for generations. Darwin did not give FitzRoy solace; indeed, the clash between the two men’s opposing views, together with the ramifications of Darwin’s revelations, provided FitzRoy with the final unendurable torment that forced him to end his own life.

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Evolution's Captain is a fascinating book following Robert Fitzroy, captain of the HMS Beagle and brilliant surveyor.  The book chronicles Fitzroy's two trips on the Beagle and his adventures surveying South America and Tierra del Fuego for the British admiralty.  Along the way Fitzroy becomes fascinated by the native Fuegians and ends up kidnapping three of them and bringing them back to England. His intention is typical of a man of his time: to educate the Fuegians in British manners, 'civilize' them as proper Englishmen (and one woman), convert them to Christianity and then return them to Tierra del Fuego to spread English Christian Civilization through the islands.  

As much as a modern reader cringes at the concept and thoughts expressed in many of the journals and diaries left by Fitzroy, Darwin, and others of the time period, there is no escaping that for a large part of the 1800s this was how England viewed the world and tried to change it in its image.  The trick for any historian is to try and explain to modern readers the culture of the time period- religious, political, and social- that led to this attitude and life approach.  In this Nichols does an excellent job.  The cultural background he explains makes for fascinating reading and helps us gain something of the perspective that Fitzroy was using during his exploits.  While you don't agree with him, at least you come to understand where he was coming from.  

The great temptation for a book like this would be to have all of the first expedition and Fitzroy's life leading up to Darwin's arrival on the Beagle for the second voyage be merely setting the stage for Darwin and allowing him to take over the rest of the book.  I liked that Nichols resists that temptation and makes Darwin another way for us to follow and understand Fitzroy instead of becoming the centerpiece himself. Darwin is also a symbol (or a symptom) of Fitzroy's thinking later in life.  The Victorian era was one of the greatest and fastest changing eras in terms of social and scientific thought until the creation of the internet.  Babbage's analytic machine, the steam engine, developments in geology and biology brought huge changes with them.  Fitzroy, originally something of an amateur scientist himself, becomes one of the reactionaries who take up the religious mania of the times and attempts to use literal readings of the Bible to argue against growing ideas of evolution and scientific change. The great irony of his life becomes his friendship with Darwin and his decision to bring Darwin on the second expedition as a companion, only to be haunted in later life by Darwin's ideas and the feeling that he was personally to blame for their development.  While Nichols ably proves that this was not the case, it haunted Fitzroy for the rest of his life.

My only complaint is one I often have with histories or biographies- Nichols tends to allow foreshadowing to creep into his writing (especially at the end of chapters). The common "if only they knew", "this would change everything" type of remarks always annoy me, although Nichols does it less than some biographies I've read.

A fascinating book, and a must read for people interested in Victorian England and its cultural/scientific/religious developments , sea exploration and adventure , and South America.