Customer Reviews

Daniel Webster: The Man And His Time

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This is a perfect book. Remini does an excellent job on Webster's great Supreme Court cases, not from a legal standpoint but from a personal standpoint. His chapters on Webster's great orations make Webster's words come alive. Webster was a flawed man--he drank to excess and could not handle money--but he had magnificent powers and this boook tells his life as well as it could be told, IMHO. A great, great work.

The unfortunate result of the growing power and focus on the executive branch is that historians tend to focus on presidents as prime movers for american political development. Remini's biography of Daniel Webster proves paradigm deeply flawed, particularly in the early years of our nations history.

Webster, though never achieving the presidency, deserves great credit for setting the tone of american government and the supremacy of congress that survived through the 19th century. Remini does a tremendous job exploring the early 19th century and the issues this second generation of american leaders faced.

Recent great interest in the revolutionary generation hopefully will not eclipse the study of those, like Webster, who came next and solidified the nacient insitutions that the founders created. If the founders were the fathers of our government, than men like Webster was that government's teacher in primary school.

A wonderful read, if you are really interested in the topic.

Daniel Webster was a great man in every meaning of the word. He had great talents and love for his country and its constitution; and he had great flaws that were magnified by his greatness. One thing he didn't have was a great modern and objective biography. He now has one, thanks to Mr. Remini.

Along with Henry Clay, John Calhoun, Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams and other notables, Daniel Webster represented the generation of Americans to whom the Founder Fathers entrusted the nation they had fought for and created.

Webster took that responsibility very seriously and used his intellectual and oratorical powers to help shape the interpretation of our laws and constitution to the needs of our growing and expanding country. He was involved in many important Supreme Court cases, many in front of John Marshall, who is still considered by many to have been our best Chief Justice.

Webster's greatest fame is probably as an orator, mostly in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. Remini shows us that he wasn't necessarily a great legislator or floor leader in terms of moving important legislation. Henry Clay was the man to do that. However, Webster's rank as one of the country's top senators of all time is merited by the incredible ability he had to express what this nation stood for, what the constitution stood for and that the Union, above all, was what was most important. Several of his speeches, which he would edit carefully for publication, are still moving and were generally printed fully in the press and memorized by children. His "union" stance many times cost him in popularity as he had to take some stances on specific legislation that may not have been "morally" acceptable to many (like his defense of the Slave Fugitive Law), but that was necessary to uphold the law.

It is little known by many that Webster was a very able Secretary of State for three different presidents (Harrison, Tyler and Fillmore) and that he used his knowledge of the law (maritime law in particular), the constitution and America in general to develop foreign policy designed to continue gaining international rights, commerce and respect for our nation. In particular, he did much to open trade relations in Asia and Latin America.

Unfortunately, Webster's flaws (drinking heavily, money mismanagement, duplicity and abuse of friends) were also great enough to prevent his being elected president. People just did not trust him enough. He was acknowledged as perhaps the best orator of the day and "Defender of the Constitution", but he had trouble relating to the common man. He was essentially an East Coast snob and the people of the south and the expanding west could not really relate well to him, or he to them. His stubborness also caused him to commit some real blunders on the foreign policy side, but I think that on balance he had a very creditable record as Secretary of State. That stubborness probably cost him the presidency at least once (he could have acceded to have been Harrison's VP but refused to; John Tyler accepted and became president when Harrison died just a few weeks into office) and cost the Whig party the presidency in at least another ocassion when he refused to concede during the nominating conventions.

Men like Webster get lost in the popular mind between the greatness of the Founding Fathers and Abraham Lincoln. Yet, at a very crucial time in America, when the country was expanding at incredible rates, when interpretation of the constitution would define our legal framework to the present day and when the union was threatened to be torn asunder by nullifiers and abolitionists, men like Webster, Clay, Calhoun and Jackson were there to make sure the Union's survival was the primary object. In the intermediate term, they failed because the nation fell into Civil War (after they were all dead), but while they were alive, they compromised, orated and legislated to avoid that awful event. After the War, and even today, many of the things that America stands for and are taken for granted. But they were formulated and imprinted on our national character by men like the "Godlike Daniel".

Remini has written extensively on the Jacksonian period and has detailed and excellent biographies of Jackson and Clay as well. These men did not all necessarily care of each other and Remini doesn't play favorites in his biographies. He deals with Webster very fairly, granting him his well-deserved greatness, but also being very frank and objective about his shortfalls and political failings and blunders.

After reading this, I had not only a good sense of Webster, but that I had a good sense of the ante-bellum United States as it was built by the generation immediately following the revolutionary generation. The author clearly admires Webster, yet does not hide his flaws. The book takes a while to plow through, but it is a worthwhile immersion into an era in which public men could speak publicly, and move the public with -- not only the style of their oratory, but the thoughts behind it. Excellent, excellent reading, and a feast for thought.

Robert Remini brings us Daniel Webster as no one else can.... In order to paint such a perfect picture of a man that is as complex as Webster requires the knowledge of a true expert.

Remini gives us a very fair and well balanced portait of a man who was a contemporary of Henry Clay, Andrew Jackson, and John Calhoun (all of whom Remini has written authorative biographies on).

Make no mistake, Daniel Webster was a very complex man. One who was capable of pure genious but could also be unbelievably ignorant. His feud with Henry Clay probably cost both men the oppurtunity to be president. His ability to amass ungodly debts and then refuse to pay them is equally bizaar. However, this is the same man who argued many of the ground breaking case before the Supreme Court. He helped to stall the Civil War for 20 years by showing unflinching support to Andrew Jackson (Who was in the opposite political party) handling of the nullification crisis.

Remini shows us all of these sides with the rare ability to help us get into the mind of Webster. Remini understands the age and the politics of this era like no other... therefore, if you are interested in learning about the great Daniel Webster.... look no further!

However, as much as I enjoyed learning about Webster I admit you have to be motivated to read the entire book. While the politics of Webster's time were undoubtley the biggest of the time - it is hard for to finish all 800 pages when living in 2004. Make no mistake this is a great book... but even great books can be a bit dull.

This is a great read, organized in the way one wants biographies to be organized. Its format is superlative. There is chronology in the front to guide one to the life, and the footnotes are where they belong--on the bottom of the page, so one does not have to go to the back of the book, only to find that footnote is just a page citation. Remini makes Webster's famous orations come alive, and I thrilled anew to words long famous, expertly guided by the author of this fantastically good biography.

Absolutely the definitive biography of Daniel Webster. He, along with Henry Clay (2/3 of the the 'Great Triumvirate' with John C. Calhoun) remain the 2 greatest men not elected to be President of the United States. And they were not for 2 reasons: they lived and thrived during almost the exact same decades, after the Founding Fathers, prior to the Civil War, and both had such over-weening ambition that they committed mutual suicide on each other; and 2) both were too closely attached to the more aristocratic, federalist period, and could not catch onto the more democratic, post Jacksonian era of popular politics.

For me, the best thread throughout the book was the 'Godlike Daniel, Black Dan' reprise. That is, like the girl with the curl, when he was great, Webster was very very great, and when he was bad, he was rotten. His major speeches, at Plymouth, Bunker Hill, Webster-Hayne, Webster-Ashburton Treaty, at the Supreme Court, etc., can hardly be surpassed; his perpetual indebtedness, his elitism, and his unrealistic presidential ambitions, among other qualities, are not attractive.

Although obviously this was a very long book, i wish the author had left out many chapters, and concluded more with a consideration of the effects, positive and negative, of the life and career of Webster on his nation. I'm sure it would have been overwhelmingly positive.

Unlike Remini's three volume biography of Andrew Jackson this work shows a real person not a god idolized by the biographer. Webster was a talented, ambitious and complex man. He played a heroic role as Secretary of state, he defended the Union against the South Carolinian secesssionists, he solicited money from many people including N. Biddle in support of the Bank of the United States. He illustrates the difference in what we consider unethical acts among politicians. He was cursed by the radical abolitionists because he refused to put the Union in jeopardy to stop the spread of slavery.

It could be said that Remini redeemed his reputation as an impartial historian with this work.

I purchased this book for a friend who said he had been looking for it for along time. He hasn't read it yet. The book was used book but was in good condition and came right away after ordered.

Almost 800 pages, a little too vast for the subject -even if Daniel Webster, but written with the craftsmanship and love-of subject typical of this masterful historian. The man, Webster, indeed had a long and busy life, personally and professionally, his impact on the nation as a leader, his voice epitomizing the American soul, of an America still a teen, so to speak, made him one of those few American personages deserving of a place on the top, right there with te Founding Fathers themselves.

Calhoun, Clay, and Webster, as the author well puts it, are the three last great men, after the miraculous coexistence of the founding generation. The three men together took on the job of sending off the USA to work, just as young people leave school or college and meet the real world with all the responsibilities attached to their own actions.

Little or nothing did I know about the man. I deeply appreciate this effort to bring to life this great figure, with all his weaknesses as a man, and not as a myth, and letting us readers really see those times (from the Revolution to almost the Civil War) as clearly as through a clean glass, with no fog of ages in between.

The writer of this biography, again, is truly the right person to take on a life of such a great American figure as Daniel Webster. Alas, America, how much your soul has been soiled, how much like Europe you are again. Full circle.