America's Great Debate: Henry Clay, Stephen A. Douglas, and the Compromise That Preserved the Union [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

Fergus M. Bordewich (Author)

Book Description

Release date: April 17, 2012

The Mexican War introduced vast new territories into the United States, among them California and the present-day Southwest. 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 U.S. 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 with skill and vigor, 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 that would allow for California’s admission and simultaneously put an end to the nation’s agony over slavery—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.

The Compromise saved the Union from collapse, but it did so at a great cost. The gulf between North and South over slavery widened with the strengthened Fugitive Slave Law that was part of the complex Compromise. In America’s Great Debate Fergus Bordewich takes us back to a time when compromise

was imperative, when men swayed one another in Congress with the power of their ideas and their rhetoric, when partisans on each side reached across the aisle to preserve the Union from tragedy.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“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

About the Author

Fergus M. Bordewich is the author of several books, among them Washington: The Making of the American Capital and Bound for Canaan, a national history of the Underground Railroad. As a journalist he has written widely on political and cultural subjects in Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia. His articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Smithsonian, American Heritage, The Atlantic, and many other publications. He lives in Washington, D.C.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 496 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; Book Club Edition edition (April 17, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1439124604
• ISBN-13: 978-1439124604
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (31 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #406,847 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

FERGUS M. BORDEWICH is the author of six non-fiction books: America's Great Debate: Henry Clay, Stephen A. Douglas, and the Compromise that Preserved the Union (Simon & Schuster, 2012); Washington: The Making of the American Capital (Amistad/HarperCollins, 2008); Bound for Canaan: The Underground Railroad and the War for the Soul of America (Amistad/HarperCollins, 2005); My Mother's Ghost, a memoir (Doubleday, 2001); Killing the White Man's Indian: Reinventing Native Americans at the End of the Twentieth Century (Doubleday, 1996); and Cathay: A Journey in Search of Old China (Prentice Hall Press, 1991).

In his newest book, America's Great Debate, Bordewich tells an epic story of the nation's westward expansion, slavery and the Compromise of 1850, centering on the dramatic congressional debate of 1849-1850 - the longest in American history - when a gallery of extraordinary men including Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, John C. Calhoun, Stephen A. Douglas, Jefferson Davis, William H. Seward, and others, fought to shape, and in the case of some to undermine, the future course of the Union.

He has also published an illustrated children's book, Peach Blossom Spring (Simon & Schuster, 1994), and wrote the script for a PBS documentary about Thomas Jefferson, Mr. Jefferson's University. He also edited an illustrated book of eyewitness accounts of the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre, Children of the Dragon (Macmillan, 1990). He is a regular contributor to Smithsonian magazine, mainly on subjects in nineteenth century American history. He lives in Washington, DC with his wife and daughter.

Bound for Canaan was selected as one of the American Booksellers Association's "ten best nonfiction books" in 2005; as the Great Lakes Booksellers' Association's "best non-fiction book" of 2005; as one of the Austin Public Library's Best Non-Fiction books of 2005; and as one of the New York Public Library's "ten books to remember" in 2005.

Washington was named by Jonathan Yardley of the Washington Post as one of his "Best Books of 2008."

Bordewich was born in New York City in 1947, and grew up in Yonkers, New York. While growing up, he often traveled to Indian reservations around the United States with his mother, LaVerne Madigan Bordewich, the executive director of the Association on American Indian Affairs, then the only independent advocacy organization for Native Americans. This early experience helped to shape his lifelong preoccupation with American history, the settlement of the continent, and issues of race, and political power. He holds degrees from the City College of New York and Columbia University. In the late 1960s, he did voter registration for the NAACP in the still-segregated South; he also worked as a roustabout in Alaska's Arctic oil fields, a taxi driver in New York City, and a deckhand on a Norwegian freighter.

He has been an independent writer and historian since the early 1970s. His articles have appeared in many magazines and newspapers, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Smithsonian, American Heritage, Atlantic, Harper's, New York Magazine, GEO, Reader's Digest, and others. As a journalist, he traveled extensively in Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and Africa, writing on politics, economic issues, culture, and history, on subjects ranging from the civil war in Burma, religious repression in China, Islamic fundamentalism, German reunification, the Irish economy, Kenya's population crisis, among many others. He also served for brief periods as an editor and writer for the Tehran Journal in Iran, in 1972-1973, a press officer for the United Nations, in 1980-1982, and an advisor to the New China News Agency in Beijing, in 1982-1983, when that agency was embarking on its effort to switch from a propaganda model to a western-style journalistic one.

America's Great Debate joins Bordewich's two previous books in exploring from a new angle the ways in which slavery and sectional conflict distorted American democracy in the years before the Civil War. In the aftermath of the Mexican War, new conquests carried the United States from the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean. How would the newly acquired empire be governed? Could it even be governed? Would that empire be slave or free? California's request to join the Union as a free state in 1850 pushed slavery's defenders to the brink of armed conflict. Many Americans expected secession and civil war to begin within months, if not weeks. The prevention of war through ten months of fierce debate was one of the greatest political achievements in American history. The compromise that resulted preserved the Union for another decade, ultimately enabling the North to ready itself for a war that it could win. America's Great Debate vividly recounts that story.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 29 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Illuminating, page turning historic work of the first order! May 4, 2012

By Steve Crawford

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Believe me, I hadn't been thinking a whole lot about the Compromise of 1850 lately but an excellent review of this book in the Wall Street Journal piqued my interest -making me realize how little I actually knew about that crucial time, less yet how pivotal the events were in American History and how integral they were to the Civil War 10 years later. Not only does this book read like a gripping novel, but it provided me with a truly new and genuinely expanded understanding of how the US arrived at the War Between the States! 1850 was just the first skirmish, so to speak, a first spark that was extinguished, unlike the next spark that would engulf the nation. But yet more enlightening for me was the concept that had the war actually begun in 1850 there is a strong likelihood that the Confederates could have emerged victorious!

The insights into the workings of Congress alone are worth the price of admission. And, oh, what a cast of characters that jump from the pages full of life: Stephen A.Douglas, Jefferson Davis, Millard Fillmore, Henry Clay, John C Calhoun, Daniel Webster, Sam Houston. I have to quote a line here from the dust jacket that says it all: "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."

Now, lately, I'm thinking about the Compromise of 1850 a lot thanks to this marvelous historical tome. Highly recommended.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The Great Debate is A Great Read May 22, 2012

By avidreader

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

I have read short chapters or paragraphs in other books about this period of history and I have read many biographies of Clay and Douglas but here th author gives us an exciting detailed presentation of what went on. And the little details are what make the story even more interesting. If you are intersted in the Civil War era then you have to read this book to see what delayed the war for a few years and it gives you more of an insight as to what really was the cause f the war.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Consensus wanting September 6, 2012

By Stephen Brown

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

Reading Brodewitch's account of the debate over the Compromise of 1850 was like reading the New York Times today. A country bitterly divided, no middle political ground, and issues so serious it would change if not destroy the nation. Brodewitch makes Clay, Webser, Calhoun, and even Stephen Douglas come alive as we watch them struggle to cobble together the compromise that saved the Union, if only for a short time. Their courage to put country over party was the key to their success.

I agree with Brodewitch's conclusion that the Compeomise of 1850 gave the North a precious 10 years it needed to get ready for the war that came. The North became radicalized over the Fugitive Slave Law and began to muster the will and the means to fight and win the war with the South. I am left to wonder if a Clay or Douglas will emerge today to forge an economic compromise we so desperately need today?

Great history well told.