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America's Great Debate: Henry Clay, Stephen A. Douglas, and the Compromise That Preserved the Union
The spellbinding story behind the longest debate in US Senate the Compromise of 1850, which brought together Senate luminaries on the eve of the Civil War in a desperate effort to save the Union.
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.
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.
496 pages, Hardcover
First published April 17, 2012
About the author
Fergus M. Bordewich
15 books125 followersFERGUS M. BORDEWICH is the author of eight non-fiction books: "Congress at War: How Republican Reformers Fought the Civil War, Defied Lincoln, Ended Slavery, and Remade America"; "The First Congress: How James Madison, George Washington, and a Group of Extraordinary Men Invented the Government" (awarded the Hardeman Prize in American History, in 2019); "America's Great Debate: Henry Clay, Stephen A. Douglas and the Compromise that Preserved the Union" (winner of the Los Angeles Times award for best history book, in 2013); "Washington: The Making of the American Capital" (named by the Washington Post as one f the best books of 2008); "Bound for Canaan: The Underground Railroad and the War for the Soul of America (named by the American Booksellers' Association as one of the ten best books of 2005)"; "My Mother’s Ghost," a memoir; "Killing the White Man’s Indian: Reinventing Native Americans at the End of the Twentieth Century"; and "Cathay: A Journey in Search of Old China." He has also published an illustrated children’s book, "Peach Blossom Spring" and has written the script for a PBS documentary about Thomas Jefferson, "Mr. Jefferson’s University." He also edited an photo-illustrated book of eyewitness accounts of the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre, "Children of the Dragon." He regularly reviews books for the Wall Street Journal. His articles and essays have appeared in The New York Times, TIME Magazine, American Heritage, Smithsonian Magazine, the Civil War Monitor, and many other publications. He lives in San Francisco with his wife, Jean Parvin Bordewich.
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, poverty, 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. As a journalist, he traveled extensively in Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and Africa, writing on politics, economic issues, culture, and history, on subjects including Islamic fundamentalism, the plight of the Kurds in northern Iraq, civil war in Burma, religious repression in China, Kenya’s population crisis, German Reunification, the peace settlement in Ireland, and other issues. 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, and an advisor to the New China News Agency in Beijing, in 1982-1983, when that agency was embarking on its effort to move from a propaganda model toward a western-style journalistic one.
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, poverty, 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. As a journalist, he traveled extensively in Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and Africa, writing on politics, economic issues, culture, and history, on subjects including Islamic fundamentalism, the plight of the Kurds in northern Iraq, civil war in Burma, religious repression in China, Kenya’s population crisis, German Reunification, the peace settlement in Ireland, and other issues. 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, and an advisor to the New China News Agency in Beijing, in 1982-1983, when that agency was embarking on its effort to move from a propaganda model toward a western-style journalistic one.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 71 reviews
June 4, 2018
Most Americans seem to know little about this period let alone care to learn about it. The author argues that if Civil War had started earlier the outcome would have been far different.
Some thought-provoking facts are given in the epilogue, too, which greatly suggest an earlier Civil War would have partitioned the country into many parts and that the North would have been hard-pressed to have won.
The "Great Triumvirate" is prominent in this tale:
1. Henry Clay --- The Great Compromiser who ran for the Presidency multiple times and never quite got it. He would greatly influence Abraham Lincoln.;
2. John Calhoun --- White Supremacist to some people of the modern era he was a champion of Southern beliefs, who proposed the states had the right to nullify any federal laws they disliked. He would greatly influence Jefferson Davis and others of the future Confederacy.; and
3. Daniel Webster --- His support would push the Compromise of 1850 through but would make him unpopular afterward and remove him from office. He would be dead by the time his son, Fletcher, would fight and die in the American Civil War.
The interests of the North and South are in great conflict as illustrated by the many speeches, changing landscape and fiery speeches. Note a time or two when senators attacked one another on the Senate floor. Arguably, the South was better-prepared to go to war and ready to do it if they felt backed into a corner.
Certain speeches and discussions about slavery may be too distasteful for some readers. The topic of even broaching slavery was a tinderbox that could easily blow up in your face if you were not careful. Henry Clay, like many others in power who wanted slavery to eventually disappear, felt the best solution was to send the former slaves back to Africa as they could not thrive in America.
Norman Dietz is the narrator of this audio version and does an awesome job of displaying the powerful yet different personalities as well as acknowledging some of the topics we would find abhorrent today.
OVERALL GRADE: A.
Some thought-provoking facts are given in the epilogue, too, which greatly suggest an earlier Civil War would have partitioned the country into many parts and that the North would have been hard-pressed to have won.
The "Great Triumvirate" is prominent in this tale:
1. Henry Clay --- The Great Compromiser who ran for the Presidency multiple times and never quite got it. He would greatly influence Abraham Lincoln.;
2. John Calhoun --- White Supremacist to some people of the modern era he was a champion of Southern beliefs, who proposed the states had the right to nullify any federal laws they disliked. He would greatly influence Jefferson Davis and others of the future Confederacy.; and
3. Daniel Webster --- His support would push the Compromise of 1850 through but would make him unpopular afterward and remove him from office. He would be dead by the time his son, Fletcher, would fight and die in the American Civil War.
The interests of the North and South are in great conflict as illustrated by the many speeches, changing landscape and fiery speeches. Note a time or two when senators attacked one another on the Senate floor. Arguably, the South was better-prepared to go to war and ready to do it if they felt backed into a corner.
Certain speeches and discussions about slavery may be too distasteful for some readers. The topic of even broaching slavery was a tinderbox that could easily blow up in your face if you were not careful. Henry Clay, like many others in power who wanted slavery to eventually disappear, felt the best solution was to send the former slaves back to Africa as they could not thrive in America.
Norman Dietz is the narrator of this audio version and does an awesome job of displaying the powerful yet different personalities as well as acknowledging some of the topics we would find abhorrent today.
OVERALL GRADE: A.
May 14, 2012
I learned a lot more about the workings of the antebellum Congress, but this was a LOOOONNNNGGGG book. I also could have used a glossary with frequently-used terms. I kept forgetting what the Wilmot Proviso was.
February 28, 2019
America’s Great Debate would be a timely work in just about any period, but it is a particularly important read in 2019. The book is masterfully written and distills complicated back-and-forths into a coherent whole while creating rich portraits of a number of leaders. Focused laser-like on the Compromise of 1850, the crux of the controversy is over what to do with territories recently acquired from the Mexican-American War. The delicate slave state, free state balance that kept both sides somewhat satisfied for the first seven decades of the republic was threatened by the entry of numerous new states, many which were likely to be located north of the 36’30 Compromise line where slavery was to be banned.
Fergus M. Bordewich put together a wonderful narrative which weaved together three threads simultaneously. The first of these strands was a story about difficult compromise in the middle of the nineteenth century and the men who both opposed it and brought it about. In this respect, it pulls back the curtain on several men overlooked in many discussions of our country’s past. America’s Great Debate is also a tale of a country nearly falling apart and being pulled back from the precipice. But ultimately it is a fatalistic tale, the debate over the spread of slavery functioning as prelude to a war which would rip apart the United States a decade and a half after the book’s conclusion.
The book features few heroes; even those politicians seeking to contain slavery often do so for cynical reasons along the lines of keeping free labor from competing in the north or west.
Bordewich at first conceals his disdain for southern leaders like Jefferson Davis (a senator from Mississippi during America’s Great Debate) and John C. Calhoun (the South Carolina senator, governor, and U.S. vice-president who is more active in the book’s earlier stages) but attentive readers will be able to tell his distaste for their hypocrisy and blind spots. The southern firebrands’ willingness to tear apart the country by threatening secession if slavery was not allowed into newer territories and their insistence on turning northerners into slave catchers against their will are not looked at with much in the way of both-sides-ism by Bordewich. Instead, he makes it clear without beating readers over the head that southern complaints of being mistreated-despite being overrepresented in the Senate and Electoral College courtesy of the three-fifths compromise-were dishonest attempts to continue the Slave Power’s outsized political influence.
The embrace of anti-democratic mechanisms seem to echo discourse today, as America’s reactionary elements continue to complain of unfairness despite the playing field being tilted toward rural, less progressive areas. This is accomplished today, like it was two centuries before, via the Senate (four Senators for the Dakotas-population 1.6 million-and just two for California-population 40 million). The absurdity that not only should this anti-democratic slant hold for the Senate, which was intended to be somewhat anti-democratic, but also for the executive branch (which given the executive’s national reach appeals more naturally to arguments of one person, one vote) via the Electoral College today is similar to the methods resorted to by increasingly alienated slaveholders two centuries ago.
If any individual could be given the label of a hero, it is William Seward. The New Yorker comes across as consistently abolitionist and willing to stand up to the South’s acolytes in his willingness to hold to this conviction. The sort of scorn heaped on him would mirror that heaped on President Lincoln a decade or two later.
Senators Henry Clay and to a lesser extent Stephen Douglas and Thomas Hart Benton are the men the narrative centers around.
As a Kentuckian, Clay has sympathies with both the north and south in the debate raging over what to do about the newly acquired territories from Mexico. The majority of the book consists of the Great Compromiser trying to push an omnibus bill through which addresses the concerns of both geographic sections. The thrice-failed Whig presidential candidate and former Speaker of the House even comes out of retirement in an effort to forge a compromise over how to organize the western lands bound to become all or parts of California, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, and Texas. But Clay is himself a slave owner, a man only marginally more forward-looking on the issue of human bondage than his true believing southern colleagues. Like many abolitionists (a label he would have loathed to be applied to himself)-William Seward and William Lloyd Garrison aside-he is shown to have little belief in racial equality, expressing this by serving as a leader in the effort to colonize Africa with eventually freed slaves.
The failure of Clay’s omnibus bill is seen as an opportunity by Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas, the man who would perhaps go on to become best known for the debates related to his 1858 campaign for the Senate in Illinois. Douglas is anxious to organize the territories into statehood. But this is revealed to not seemingly be from the goodness of his bleeding heart, but from a desire to profit from his investment in the building of a Pacific-bound railroad.
After Clay’s months of work ends in a collapsed effort at compromise, Douglas has a solution which temporarily brings peace between the southern and northern sections. By allowing for bills like statehood for California and New Mexico and a fugitive slave bill to go forward one by one as opposed to one fell swoop, he allows legislators to pick and choose over the elements they will vote for and reject. This ultimately fashions the Compromise of 1850 from much of the groundwork laid by Henry Clay’s efforts.
Thomas Hart Benton serves as a frequent foil to Clay’s omnibus plans. No apologist for slavery, he is an independent voice in the raucous legislative debate. The “amalgamation bill,” which was full of “heterogeneous elements” to hear the colorful Missouri senator tell it, was not something he wanted shoved down the country’s throat.
Seemingly even more embracing of his western bona fides than Clay, the quirky Benton desired a strategy more along the lines of the one ultimately implemented: voting on each piece of the territorial bill one by one instead of as one overarching instrument. Men like Benton and Douglas believed that only by not going too far overboard in a single bill could the Union be saved.
John C. Calhoun, as he so often does, is “credited” with moving southerners off a crouching defensive on the slavery issue into a full embrace of it. The senator’s words underscore this shift to explaining slavery as a virtue for the white and black race alike. The father of Nullification ends up being the grandfather of the Civil War which took place not twenty years after the South Carolinian’s death.
The Mississippian Henry Foote is also a believer in the slavery system, but he is a comparatively moderating voice in the legislature. Unlike Calhoun or Davis, he often comes across as willing to compromise so as to avoid a schism between the north and south. He is one of the few non-radical southerners present in America’s Great Debate, unwilling to embrace secession or war contingent on the outcome of slavery’s spread. The efforts by radicals like Mississippi governor John Quitman to equip an invasion of Cuba so as to expand the potential for new Caribbean slave states make for interesting subplots and reveal the desperate lengths the South was willing to go to avoid the extinction of their peculiar institution.
The near outbreak of war between the Texas and New Mexico territories over the former’s western boundary claims made for an interesting segment. Texas Governor Peter Hansborough Bell sends his military lieutenant Robert Neighbors to El Paso, at the time claimed by New Mexico, to essentially plant the Texan flag and claim it for the Lone Star Republic. Neighbors is dispatched with his troops on a difficult journey across Texas during the winter to intimidate New Mexicans into capitulation. The meager federal authority present in 1850 New Mexico receives the backing of then-president Zachary Taylor, a leader who bitterly disappointed southerners who expected him to carry their water upon election.
Lieutenant Colonel John Munroe, the United States military attache to Santa Fe, is placed in the position of sticking up for his territory’s sovereignty against hostile Texan forces. The conclusion of the debate over state hoods in Congress allows full scale war between the two present day neighboring states to be avoided.
Bordewich could have allowed the book to become too bogged down in the details of various amendments and parliamentary procedures, but he gives just enough information on these without taking away from the project’s forward momentum. There is a message of the importance of compromise and the flawed motives which often guide those we call public servants.
America’s Great Debate’s most valuable means for telling a relevant story for the twenty-first century lie in the picture it paints of how far human nature will go to cling to the status quo and justify the unjustifiable much longer than would seem would be the case. In this, fossil fuels could be neatly, though not perfectly, substituted for slavery and much of the story would still be recognizable.
An attachment to an economic system and way of life, and not seeing a way forward without it, can lead otherwise reasonable people to become desperate and dismissive of any inconvenient evidence. Even the willingness to create new markets for this system along the lines of the invasion of Caribbean islands and a relentless push to open the western states to slavery dovetails with fossil fuel companies’ constant push into new regions once their influence and methods become suspect domestically. (Think: you can’t regulate us too much or move away from our product too much or we will just flee to drill or addict a more hospitable host and customer). As a further corollary, much of the country-primarily areas in the north and west-had already phased out the institution or were in the process of doing so. But not coincidentally, these areas-as with fossil fuels today-were often the same ones whose economic systems were not dependent on its perpetuation.
Bordewich does away with the claim that slavery was somehow on its way out in the South and would have died an eventual peaceful death. He underscores that the domestic market for it was strong and the sale of slaves not tapering off; alongside this, the southerners' growing attachment to it as both a lifestyle and economic must-have made it unlikely it would be gone any time soon.
Americans must hope debates over environmental degradation end better than America’s Great Debate ultimately did. Despite the best efforts to compromise at the highest levels of government, it still took a highly destructive war to settle the matter for good. Such can often be the case when economic concerns lie at the heart of the matter. This truth that not all happy endings are bloodlessly purchased is a primary takeaway from Bordewich’s masterly work.
-Andrew Canfield Denver, Colorado
Fergus M. Bordewich put together a wonderful narrative which weaved together three threads simultaneously. The first of these strands was a story about difficult compromise in the middle of the nineteenth century and the men who both opposed it and brought it about. In this respect, it pulls back the curtain on several men overlooked in many discussions of our country’s past. America’s Great Debate is also a tale of a country nearly falling apart and being pulled back from the precipice. But ultimately it is a fatalistic tale, the debate over the spread of slavery functioning as prelude to a war which would rip apart the United States a decade and a half after the book’s conclusion.
The book features few heroes; even those politicians seeking to contain slavery often do so for cynical reasons along the lines of keeping free labor from competing in the north or west.
Bordewich at first conceals his disdain for southern leaders like Jefferson Davis (a senator from Mississippi during America’s Great Debate) and John C. Calhoun (the South Carolina senator, governor, and U.S. vice-president who is more active in the book’s earlier stages) but attentive readers will be able to tell his distaste for their hypocrisy and blind spots. The southern firebrands’ willingness to tear apart the country by threatening secession if slavery was not allowed into newer territories and their insistence on turning northerners into slave catchers against their will are not looked at with much in the way of both-sides-ism by Bordewich. Instead, he makes it clear without beating readers over the head that southern complaints of being mistreated-despite being overrepresented in the Senate and Electoral College courtesy of the three-fifths compromise-were dishonest attempts to continue the Slave Power’s outsized political influence.
The embrace of anti-democratic mechanisms seem to echo discourse today, as America’s reactionary elements continue to complain of unfairness despite the playing field being tilted toward rural, less progressive areas. This is accomplished today, like it was two centuries before, via the Senate (four Senators for the Dakotas-population 1.6 million-and just two for California-population 40 million). The absurdity that not only should this anti-democratic slant hold for the Senate, which was intended to be somewhat anti-democratic, but also for the executive branch (which given the executive’s national reach appeals more naturally to arguments of one person, one vote) via the Electoral College today is similar to the methods resorted to by increasingly alienated slaveholders two centuries ago.
If any individual could be given the label of a hero, it is William Seward. The New Yorker comes across as consistently abolitionist and willing to stand up to the South’s acolytes in his willingness to hold to this conviction. The sort of scorn heaped on him would mirror that heaped on President Lincoln a decade or two later.
Senators Henry Clay and to a lesser extent Stephen Douglas and Thomas Hart Benton are the men the narrative centers around.
As a Kentuckian, Clay has sympathies with both the north and south in the debate raging over what to do about the newly acquired territories from Mexico. The majority of the book consists of the Great Compromiser trying to push an omnibus bill through which addresses the concerns of both geographic sections. The thrice-failed Whig presidential candidate and former Speaker of the House even comes out of retirement in an effort to forge a compromise over how to organize the western lands bound to become all or parts of California, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, and Texas. But Clay is himself a slave owner, a man only marginally more forward-looking on the issue of human bondage than his true believing southern colleagues. Like many abolitionists (a label he would have loathed to be applied to himself)-William Seward and William Lloyd Garrison aside-he is shown to have little belief in racial equality, expressing this by serving as a leader in the effort to colonize Africa with eventually freed slaves.
The failure of Clay’s omnibus bill is seen as an opportunity by Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas, the man who would perhaps go on to become best known for the debates related to his 1858 campaign for the Senate in Illinois. Douglas is anxious to organize the territories into statehood. But this is revealed to not seemingly be from the goodness of his bleeding heart, but from a desire to profit from his investment in the building of a Pacific-bound railroad.
After Clay’s months of work ends in a collapsed effort at compromise, Douglas has a solution which temporarily brings peace between the southern and northern sections. By allowing for bills like statehood for California and New Mexico and a fugitive slave bill to go forward one by one as opposed to one fell swoop, he allows legislators to pick and choose over the elements they will vote for and reject. This ultimately fashions the Compromise of 1850 from much of the groundwork laid by Henry Clay’s efforts.
Thomas Hart Benton serves as a frequent foil to Clay’s omnibus plans. No apologist for slavery, he is an independent voice in the raucous legislative debate. The “amalgamation bill,” which was full of “heterogeneous elements” to hear the colorful Missouri senator tell it, was not something he wanted shoved down the country’s throat.
Seemingly even more embracing of his western bona fides than Clay, the quirky Benton desired a strategy more along the lines of the one ultimately implemented: voting on each piece of the territorial bill one by one instead of as one overarching instrument. Men like Benton and Douglas believed that only by not going too far overboard in a single bill could the Union be saved.
John C. Calhoun, as he so often does, is “credited” with moving southerners off a crouching defensive on the slavery issue into a full embrace of it. The senator’s words underscore this shift to explaining slavery as a virtue for the white and black race alike. The father of Nullification ends up being the grandfather of the Civil War which took place not twenty years after the South Carolinian’s death.
The Mississippian Henry Foote is also a believer in the slavery system, but he is a comparatively moderating voice in the legislature. Unlike Calhoun or Davis, he often comes across as willing to compromise so as to avoid a schism between the north and south. He is one of the few non-radical southerners present in America’s Great Debate, unwilling to embrace secession or war contingent on the outcome of slavery’s spread. The efforts by radicals like Mississippi governor John Quitman to equip an invasion of Cuba so as to expand the potential for new Caribbean slave states make for interesting subplots and reveal the desperate lengths the South was willing to go to avoid the extinction of their peculiar institution.
The near outbreak of war between the Texas and New Mexico territories over the former’s western boundary claims made for an interesting segment. Texas Governor Peter Hansborough Bell sends his military lieutenant Robert Neighbors to El Paso, at the time claimed by New Mexico, to essentially plant the Texan flag and claim it for the Lone Star Republic. Neighbors is dispatched with his troops on a difficult journey across Texas during the winter to intimidate New Mexicans into capitulation. The meager federal authority present in 1850 New Mexico receives the backing of then-president Zachary Taylor, a leader who bitterly disappointed southerners who expected him to carry their water upon election.
Lieutenant Colonel John Munroe, the United States military attache to Santa Fe, is placed in the position of sticking up for his territory’s sovereignty against hostile Texan forces. The conclusion of the debate over state hoods in Congress allows full scale war between the two present day neighboring states to be avoided.
Bordewich could have allowed the book to become too bogged down in the details of various amendments and parliamentary procedures, but he gives just enough information on these without taking away from the project’s forward momentum. There is a message of the importance of compromise and the flawed motives which often guide those we call public servants.
America’s Great Debate’s most valuable means for telling a relevant story for the twenty-first century lie in the picture it paints of how far human nature will go to cling to the status quo and justify the unjustifiable much longer than would seem would be the case. In this, fossil fuels could be neatly, though not perfectly, substituted for slavery and much of the story would still be recognizable.
An attachment to an economic system and way of life, and not seeing a way forward without it, can lead otherwise reasonable people to become desperate and dismissive of any inconvenient evidence. Even the willingness to create new markets for this system along the lines of the invasion of Caribbean islands and a relentless push to open the western states to slavery dovetails with fossil fuel companies’ constant push into new regions once their influence and methods become suspect domestically. (Think: you can’t regulate us too much or move away from our product too much or we will just flee to drill or addict a more hospitable host and customer). As a further corollary, much of the country-primarily areas in the north and west-had already phased out the institution or were in the process of doing so. But not coincidentally, these areas-as with fossil fuels today-were often the same ones whose economic systems were not dependent on its perpetuation.
Bordewich does away with the claim that slavery was somehow on its way out in the South and would have died an eventual peaceful death. He underscores that the domestic market for it was strong and the sale of slaves not tapering off; alongside this, the southerners' growing attachment to it as both a lifestyle and economic must-have made it unlikely it would be gone any time soon.
Americans must hope debates over environmental degradation end better than America’s Great Debate ultimately did. Despite the best efforts to compromise at the highest levels of government, it still took a highly destructive war to settle the matter for good. Such can often be the case when economic concerns lie at the heart of the matter. This truth that not all happy endings are bloodlessly purchased is a primary takeaway from Bordewich’s masterly work.
-Andrew Canfield Denver, Colorado
January 4, 2012
This book covers a crucial span in American history, but one which is barely covered in a paragraph in textbooks today. This debate postponed--and probably precipitated--the Civil War a decade later.
The readable and credible story unfolds as did the Senate debate: in a long, complex, and uncertain manner. Sometimes my contemporary impatience for the outcome would get the better of me. But as I read it I felt it was important to appreciate the protracted experience. And afterwards you realize the details mattered for a full understanding of how it played out, and what would come later beyond this book.
Followed by the abrupt House proceedings that was a bit disorienting, yet also seemed a reasonable way to consider what it was like then.
Not only was it informative of the time, but it was such an interesting parallel to a time when Congressional paralysis by partisanship and region affects us in similar ways on some fronts. And the unsettling similarities of the 1850 discussion to civil rights issues today such as marriage equality and immigration are a bit haunting.
Definitely worth the read, and filled gaps in my understanding of American history.
The readable and credible story unfolds as did the Senate debate: in a long, complex, and uncertain manner. Sometimes my contemporary impatience for the outcome would get the better of me. But as I read it I felt it was important to appreciate the protracted experience. And afterwards you realize the details mattered for a full understanding of how it played out, and what would come later beyond this book.
Followed by the abrupt House proceedings that was a bit disorienting, yet also seemed a reasonable way to consider what it was like then.
Not only was it informative of the time, but it was such an interesting parallel to a time when Congressional paralysis by partisanship and region affects us in similar ways on some fronts. And the unsettling similarities of the 1850 discussion to civil rights issues today such as marriage equality and immigration are a bit haunting.
Definitely worth the read, and filled gaps in my understanding of American history.
May 30, 2018
This is an academic work that discusses the problems facing the United States in regards to free state versus slave state prior to the American Civil War and follows the path leading to the Compromise of 1850.
September 20, 2022
In 1850 the United States was in a weird unsettled state, ready to break apart, and difficult to recognize from the vantage point of the 21st century. “… its ultimate shape and extent unformed and unpredictable.” President Zachary Taylor suggested that the land taken from Mexico in the Mexican-American war be returned to Mexico; Texas was ready to invade New Mexico; California had just been taken over by newly arrived gold-hungry adventurers and had petitioned to join the Union; and the Southern states were on the verge of secession over the issue of slavery.
Congress enacted the Compromise of 1850 to keep these problems from exploding: California was admitted as a Free State, Texas gave up claims in New Mexico, and the Fugitive Slave Act was passed. But the Compromise only kept the peace for ten years until the Civil War started, so one might think that the Compromise was little better than an ineffectual parliamentary exercise. However, Fergus Bordewich, the author of “America’s Great Debate” thinks this is completely wrong.
Bordewich, who has studied this era extensively, is of the opinion that whereas in 1861 the North was willing to go to war to stop the Southern states from leaving the Union, in 1850 the North did not have the stomach for a war to stop Southern secession. This is important. The mood of the North and its feelings for slavery changed from 1850 to1861, in good part because of the dreadful scenes that took place as the new Fugitive Slave Act was enforced.
Bordewich, looking into the shadows of alternative history, assuming there was no Compromise of 1850, sees a political map of North America that is wildly different from the map in our branch of the multiverse. In the alternative history Bordewich sees there is the Confederacy, of course, in the South, a grim apartheid regime that has annexed Cuba. The rest of the United States has also split up: a New England Republic, and a Midwest Republic. Off on the west coast a Pacific Republic. All of these smaller countries, which are at times at war with each other, are second-tier players. There is no American hyper-power.
This speculation about alternative history is intriguing, but the real value of the book is in its powerful near-life depiction of the Great 1850 Debate inside the Senate chamber.
The Senate chamber: Washington DC is a bit of a dump, with a fence around the Capitol to keep the cows out. There is little order inside the Senate chamber – visitors can come and go as they please, and they sometimes sit on the senators’ chairs if they are unoccupied. The senators have no offices or staffs. They keep all their papers inside their desks, and do all their work there. Senators spit, snuffle, eat sandwiches, smoke cigars. The carpet is filled with mud, tobacco juice, and God only knows what else.
The Great Debate went on for nearly a year, and there is no way to repeat here all of the speeches, alliances, amendments, squabbles over rules of order, etc. that make up the drama in the book. All we can say here is that the senators were passionate men that Bordewich says were the best orators ever in the Senate, able to speak eloquently and floridly for hours without notes. Some readers will find the transactions fascinating.
Many of the senators were also no strangers to violence, and some despised each other. There were some scuffles, and drawn weapons. There are vintage photos of some of the senators, and you can tell these are not men to be trifled with.
It is worthwhile to describe some of the senators (whose names are now mostly forgotten), to give an idea of the severely conflicting views in the Great Debate.
(First, get this out of the way: Abraham Lincoln was not involved at all. He was an ex-congressman, completely out of the picture.)
John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, who had been around forever, was a well-educated “genuine intellectual” zealot for slavery, and a leader of the South. He regarded slavery as divinely inspired.
Jefferson Davis of Mississippi, a Mexican war hero, said that slavery was justified by the Bible, and was a blessing for the slaves.
Henry Foote from Mississippi was a bald irritating elf who once got into a tavern brawl with Jefferson Davis. Foote pulled a gun at one point in the Debate.
“The Godlike” Daniel Webster from Massachusetts was at first an abolitionist, but then strongly supported the Fugitive Slave Law in order to preserve the Union. To the great disgust of his previous supporters in the North.
Sam Houston (“barely civilized”) was pro-Union, called abolitionists “bastards”, and was all for Texas claims to New Mexico. He spent most of his time whittling spoons and knick-knacks.
William Seward of New York (who later bought Alaska) was an abolitionist who said there was a “higher law” that negated any human laws allowing slavery.
Stephen Douglas of Illinois (who debated Lincoln years later) was the Senate’s greatest strategist. He eventually put the Compromise over the top.
Vice-President Millard Fillmore presided over the Senate and tried to keep some sort of order, until Zachary Taylor died and Fillmore became President.
But by far the most prominent senator in the Great Debate and the architect of the Compromise was Henry Clay of Kentucky. He had also been around forever, and was regarded as the greatest statesman of the era. Henry Clay was Abraham Lincoln’s role model. Clay was quite popular – a rock star. Once when he entered the Senate chamber he was smothered with kisses by the women visitors.
Clay exhibited the era’s ambivalence about slavery. He sympathized with slaves’ plight, but he owned slaves and bought and sold them “like farm equipment”. Yet, compared with Calhoun, he was a liberal.
Henry Clay worked for months to push the Compromise through the Senate. At one time he begged his fellow senators, those from both North and South, to “pause at the edge of the precipice, before the fearful and disastrous leap is taken into the yawning abyss below.” But in the end he failed.
Stephen Douglas took over the cause, and remarkably, was able to get the Compromise passed in a few days. Henry Clay had packed all the elements of the Compromise into one package, and failed, whereas Douglas broke the package into separate bills which were passed.
After the Compromise was passed, senators who had been bitter enemies were festive and congratulated each other on averting disaster. Alas, in a few years, the Bowie knives came out, and then the cannons.
Congress enacted the Compromise of 1850 to keep these problems from exploding: California was admitted as a Free State, Texas gave up claims in New Mexico, and the Fugitive Slave Act was passed. But the Compromise only kept the peace for ten years until the Civil War started, so one might think that the Compromise was little better than an ineffectual parliamentary exercise. However, Fergus Bordewich, the author of “America’s Great Debate” thinks this is completely wrong.
Bordewich, who has studied this era extensively, is of the opinion that whereas in 1861 the North was willing to go to war to stop the Southern states from leaving the Union, in 1850 the North did not have the stomach for a war to stop Southern secession. This is important. The mood of the North and its feelings for slavery changed from 1850 to1861, in good part because of the dreadful scenes that took place as the new Fugitive Slave Act was enforced.
Bordewich, looking into the shadows of alternative history, assuming there was no Compromise of 1850, sees a political map of North America that is wildly different from the map in our branch of the multiverse. In the alternative history Bordewich sees there is the Confederacy, of course, in the South, a grim apartheid regime that has annexed Cuba. The rest of the United States has also split up: a New England Republic, and a Midwest Republic. Off on the west coast a Pacific Republic. All of these smaller countries, which are at times at war with each other, are second-tier players. There is no American hyper-power.
This speculation about alternative history is intriguing, but the real value of the book is in its powerful near-life depiction of the Great 1850 Debate inside the Senate chamber.
The Senate chamber: Washington DC is a bit of a dump, with a fence around the Capitol to keep the cows out. There is little order inside the Senate chamber – visitors can come and go as they please, and they sometimes sit on the senators’ chairs if they are unoccupied. The senators have no offices or staffs. They keep all their papers inside their desks, and do all their work there. Senators spit, snuffle, eat sandwiches, smoke cigars. The carpet is filled with mud, tobacco juice, and God only knows what else.
The Great Debate went on for nearly a year, and there is no way to repeat here all of the speeches, alliances, amendments, squabbles over rules of order, etc. that make up the drama in the book. All we can say here is that the senators were passionate men that Bordewich says were the best orators ever in the Senate, able to speak eloquently and floridly for hours without notes. Some readers will find the transactions fascinating.
Many of the senators were also no strangers to violence, and some despised each other. There were some scuffles, and drawn weapons. There are vintage photos of some of the senators, and you can tell these are not men to be trifled with.
It is worthwhile to describe some of the senators (whose names are now mostly forgotten), to give an idea of the severely conflicting views in the Great Debate.
(First, get this out of the way: Abraham Lincoln was not involved at all. He was an ex-congressman, completely out of the picture.)
John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, who had been around forever, was a well-educated “genuine intellectual” zealot for slavery, and a leader of the South. He regarded slavery as divinely inspired.
Jefferson Davis of Mississippi, a Mexican war hero, said that slavery was justified by the Bible, and was a blessing for the slaves.
Henry Foote from Mississippi was a bald irritating elf who once got into a tavern brawl with Jefferson Davis. Foote pulled a gun at one point in the Debate.
“The Godlike” Daniel Webster from Massachusetts was at first an abolitionist, but then strongly supported the Fugitive Slave Law in order to preserve the Union. To the great disgust of his previous supporters in the North.
Sam Houston (“barely civilized”) was pro-Union, called abolitionists “bastards”, and was all for Texas claims to New Mexico. He spent most of his time whittling spoons and knick-knacks.
William Seward of New York (who later bought Alaska) was an abolitionist who said there was a “higher law” that negated any human laws allowing slavery.
Stephen Douglas of Illinois (who debated Lincoln years later) was the Senate’s greatest strategist. He eventually put the Compromise over the top.
Vice-President Millard Fillmore presided over the Senate and tried to keep some sort of order, until Zachary Taylor died and Fillmore became President.
But by far the most prominent senator in the Great Debate and the architect of the Compromise was Henry Clay of Kentucky. He had also been around forever, and was regarded as the greatest statesman of the era. Henry Clay was Abraham Lincoln’s role model. Clay was quite popular – a rock star. Once when he entered the Senate chamber he was smothered with kisses by the women visitors.
Clay exhibited the era’s ambivalence about slavery. He sympathized with slaves’ plight, but he owned slaves and bought and sold them “like farm equipment”. Yet, compared with Calhoun, he was a liberal.
Henry Clay worked for months to push the Compromise through the Senate. At one time he begged his fellow senators, those from both North and South, to “pause at the edge of the precipice, before the fearful and disastrous leap is taken into the yawning abyss below.” But in the end he failed.
Stephen Douglas took over the cause, and remarkably, was able to get the Compromise passed in a few days. Henry Clay had packed all the elements of the Compromise into one package, and failed, whereas Douglas broke the package into separate bills which were passed.
After the Compromise was passed, senators who had been bitter enemies were festive and congratulated each other on averting disaster. Alas, in a few years, the Bowie knives came out, and then the cannons.
September 27, 2012
Has a book ever jumped off a library shelf and into your arms, as if to scream: "Read me now, you fool!" It happened to me Monday, and I am so glad it did. AMERICA'S GREAT DEBATE by Fergus M. Bordewich (a name only his mother could like) is absolutely flat-out terrific. Published a few months ago, it brings history to life just as David McCullough's books do. Who would'a thunk a book about the Compromise of 1850 could be interesting, let alone fascinating? Well, in Bordewich's hands, it is. He paints vivid portraits of California during the Gold Rush, of stentorian U.S. senators giving hour-long orations from memory, of frontier Texas where gunslingers shoot first and ask questions later, of legends like Henry Clay, Stephen Douglas, Daniel Webster, John Calhoun, Jefferson Davis, and, certainly not most, Zachary Taylor, a country bumpkin in the White House. If you like history, I'm betting you will love this book. Do, do, do check it out.
January 9, 2013
Excellent on a period of Amer. history that falls through the cracks. A mass of information on personalities, Congressional maneuvering, political shenanigans, wars we've forgotten about all clearly explained. I had no idea the admission of California, Texas, and New Mexico were such bloody and protracted precursors to the Civil War. I had no conception of the debt we 21st century Americans owe to Seward, Stephen A. Douglas, Sam Houston, and, who would have thought it, Millard Fillmore, the forgotten President. Thanks to the Compromise of 1850, the Civil War didn't start in Texas in 1850, the South didn't get a slave-owning corridor to the Pacific, and Lincoln and Grant were there when we needed them.
April 14, 2013
While at the Northshire Bookstore for Booktopia 2013 Manchester I asked the resident history book expert for recommendations on a book about the history of Congress (having read several presidential biographies and just seen Lincoln) and this was the closest he could recommend.
The book definitely delivered - it not only gave me a great picture of a year of Congressional history (at year that rivals the last few for partisan conflict and lack of a accomplishment) as well as new a appreciation for the scope of the Compromise of 1850.
The book definitely delivered - it not only gave me a great picture of a year of Congressional history (at year that rivals the last few for partisan conflict and lack of a accomplishment) as well as new a appreciation for the scope of the Compromise of 1850.
June 1, 2012
This book is a detailed but lively narrative of one of the least understood events in antebellum history. Most of us know some of the outcomes of the Compromise-California admitted as a free state, stronger Fugitive Slave Law-but not the torturous processes nor the complex players involved. The book makes it easier to understand why antebellum Americans grew tired of debating slavery and its expansion westward and why, a decade after the Compromise, further debate resulted in war.
September 1, 2012
This book was LOADED with detail. I have read well over 100 books on this period of time in our history. I am now starting with books leading up to the Civil War and I count this as one of the tops. Just a note though...this book is a slower read. Because of the detail and trying to keep information straight, I was only able to read about 20 pages per day.
July 20, 2012
I highly recommend this book. I've read tons of books on the civil war, but none on the key period leading up to it. The 1850 debate is fascinating and Bordewich does a tremendous job making the story come alive. It's terrific.
June 30, 2012
Knife-edge history:
Compromise of '50 saved
Us just long enough.
Compromise of '50 saved
Us just long enough.
July 1, 2012
I didn't care for the topic, but the writing is excellent so made it enjoyable anyway.
July 8, 2012
A lively political history of the Compromise of 1850 and the roles of race and slavery in shaping its outcome.
July 13, 2012
A great book about one of my favorite topics. It was great to spend the last week with my old friends Daniel Webster, John Calhoun, Sam Houston, and the incredible Henry Clay.
May 12, 2018
In the years prior to the American Civil War, there are periods where the US government seemed to be as indecisive as ever with no real idea as to how to handle a lot of the issues facing a nation still at times trying to gain an identity. By 1850, the country was on the verge of Civil War & via collection of bills though passed by the country somehow managed to buy itself a little more time under what would eventually become known as the Compromise of 1850. In "America's Great Debate: Henry Clay, Stephen A. Douglas, and the Compromise That Preserved the Union", Fergus Bordewich takes an in-depth look at the makings of this landmark piece of legislation & the political & personal risks taken on by the members of the 31st Congress which by the time it was passed would see the death of American political icon in John C. Calhoun as well as the death of President Zachary Taylor. The book itself is a fascinating read which shows just how dysfunctional Congress could be from the process of selecting a Speaker of the House (which took over 60 ballots to do) to trying to debate their way out of issues like the admission of California, the actual size of Texas along w/ the boundaries of future territories of New Mexico and Utah, and the issue of what to do with slavery.
The compromise itself honestly shows how the legislative giants of the day (Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, John C. Calhoun) & newcomers (Stephen Douglas, William Seward, Sam Houston, Jefferson Davis) among others played their own role in getting what they could out of this omnibus bill which tried as best it could to keep the nation from coming apart at the seams as well & trying to keep the peace even with the transition from the Taylor to Fillmore administrations. Bordewich's book takes we the reader through every painstaking part of the process as if we the reader were alive in 1850 & being witness to this extraordinary time in history. As a reader, I also appreciate the final chapter which summarizes just how far things in America would go downhill throughout the 1850s leading up to the shots fired at Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861. Overall, this book is one I highly recommend for anyone with not only an interest in Civil War or the period leading up to it but with an interest in American history in general.
The compromise itself honestly shows how the legislative giants of the day (Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, John C. Calhoun) & newcomers (Stephen Douglas, William Seward, Sam Houston, Jefferson Davis) among others played their own role in getting what they could out of this omnibus bill which tried as best it could to keep the nation from coming apart at the seams as well & trying to keep the peace even with the transition from the Taylor to Fillmore administrations. Bordewich's book takes we the reader through every painstaking part of the process as if we the reader were alive in 1850 & being witness to this extraordinary time in history. As a reader, I also appreciate the final chapter which summarizes just how far things in America would go downhill throughout the 1850s leading up to the shots fired at Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861. Overall, this book is one I highly recommend for anyone with not only an interest in Civil War or the period leading up to it but with an interest in American history in general.
August 25, 2020
The word COMPROMISE is fading from the political lexicon of the United States. The nation seems just as divided, violently divided, in 2020 as it was 170 years ago. The combination of a pandemic, systemic racism, and an irresponsible and incompetent President and the conflicting responses to both have sparked conflagrations, real and symbolic, that have torn this nation apart. The upcoming elections may help extinguish the flames or pour gasoline on them.
All of this is to say that what we are seeing now is not unique to this country as Fergus Bordewich so eloquently chronicles for us. The United States was “a house divided,” free and slave, with passionate supporters on both sides. If ever compromise seemed impossible, 1850 Washington symbolized it. The cast of characters who occupied the Capitol represented all sides of this Great Debate and their efforts, as the author points out in the final chapter, may have saved the Union.
This is history worth learning. The issues get a little complicated but stay with it. These are lessons vital to the survival of the United States today.
One of the beautiful features of this book is its eloquence. The author prepares us for the prose and poetry of the Senators engaged in this verbal conflict:
never did American politicians speak to the nation more honestly, more persuasively, more provocatively, and more passionately, in language that was often so splendid that it nearly reached the level of poetry. The poll-tested, spin-doctored, shoddily argued, and grammatically challenged “messaging” that today passes for political communication is pathetic and often incoherent by comparison. It can be no surprise that many Americans have lost interest in politicians who have forgotten how much can be accomplished by the persuasive power of well-crafted English. In 1850, senators and congressmen who more often than not lacked college educations spoke from the barest of notes (or none at all) for hours on end, and were confident that their colleagues and the public would understand them, in speeches that were peppered with allusions to Shakespeare, the Bible, American history, British common law, and classical literature.
What a treat to read those speeches. I must hasten to add as a conclusion to this review: Fergus Bordewich does not need to take a back seat to any of them. His writing is exquisite.
Five stars
All of this is to say that what we are seeing now is not unique to this country as Fergus Bordewich so eloquently chronicles for us. The United States was “a house divided,” free and slave, with passionate supporters on both sides. If ever compromise seemed impossible, 1850 Washington symbolized it. The cast of characters who occupied the Capitol represented all sides of this Great Debate and their efforts, as the author points out in the final chapter, may have saved the Union.
This is history worth learning. The issues get a little complicated but stay with it. These are lessons vital to the survival of the United States today.
One of the beautiful features of this book is its eloquence. The author prepares us for the prose and poetry of the Senators engaged in this verbal conflict:
never did American politicians speak to the nation more honestly, more persuasively, more provocatively, and more passionately, in language that was often so splendid that it nearly reached the level of poetry. The poll-tested, spin-doctored, shoddily argued, and grammatically challenged “messaging” that today passes for political communication is pathetic and often incoherent by comparison. It can be no surprise that many Americans have lost interest in politicians who have forgotten how much can be accomplished by the persuasive power of well-crafted English. In 1850, senators and congressmen who more often than not lacked college educations spoke from the barest of notes (or none at all) for hours on end, and were confident that their colleagues and the public would understand them, in speeches that were peppered with allusions to Shakespeare, the Bible, American history, British common law, and classical literature.
What a treat to read those speeches. I must hasten to add as a conclusion to this review: Fergus Bordewich does not need to take a back seat to any of them. His writing is exquisite.
Five stars
January 18, 2024
This is a well written and comprehensive history of the compromise of 1850. It includes the background of the previous compromises of Missouri and the Tariff. It highlights the hero of the Great Triumvirate (Clay, Webster and Calhoun), Stephen Douglass, Zachary Taylor, Fillmore and many others. Henry Clay tried to pack 5 bills into an omnibus to make it palatable to the different sections.
1. California's admission as a free state.
2. Fugitive slave Act as a sop to the slave south.
3. Banning the slave trade in DC
4. Defining the borders of Texas and absorbing state debts in exchange for abandoning Texas's claims to NM
5. Establishing Utah and NM territories with no restriction that they be slave or free.
It is easy to read about the dry legislative achievement, but Bordewich brings to life how even one word changes and amendments easily derailed the bill for months because it would upset one section of the country. I was surprised how close Texas was to war over New Mexico and how aggressive the negotiations were to preserve the union. To me it is safe to say that these negotiations eventually killed all 3 of the great Triumvirate. Henry Clay is an American hero for preserving the union for a decade, and prioritizing compromise. He returned to politics to help save the country after the infighting over the spoils of the Mexican war. He thought the compromise would pass in weeks in January. Finally Stephen Douglass pushed the bill over the finish line in September after breaking the bills into pieces.
It is easy to judge these men as racist by our standards. Bordewich borders on this and that is why I knock him one star. In his conclusion he is more fair in admitting that these men were forward thinking in their time and were stuck at the verge of war. They definitely misunderstood how durable the consequences of the compromise would last. They underestimated how poorly received the fugitive slave law and popular sovereignty in Kansas would be received. But they also laid the foundation for the Union that would be called for during the Civil war. This is a great history.
1. California's admission as a free state.
2. Fugitive slave Act as a sop to the slave south.
3. Banning the slave trade in DC
4. Defining the borders of Texas and absorbing state debts in exchange for abandoning Texas's claims to NM
5. Establishing Utah and NM territories with no restriction that they be slave or free.
It is easy to read about the dry legislative achievement, but Bordewich brings to life how even one word changes and amendments easily derailed the bill for months because it would upset one section of the country. I was surprised how close Texas was to war over New Mexico and how aggressive the negotiations were to preserve the union. To me it is safe to say that these negotiations eventually killed all 3 of the great Triumvirate. Henry Clay is an American hero for preserving the union for a decade, and prioritizing compromise. He returned to politics to help save the country after the infighting over the spoils of the Mexican war. He thought the compromise would pass in weeks in January. Finally Stephen Douglass pushed the bill over the finish line in September after breaking the bills into pieces.
It is easy to judge these men as racist by our standards. Bordewich borders on this and that is why I knock him one star. In his conclusion he is more fair in admitting that these men were forward thinking in their time and were stuck at the verge of war. They definitely misunderstood how durable the consequences of the compromise would last. They underestimated how poorly received the fugitive slave law and popular sovereignty in Kansas would be received. But they also laid the foundation for the Union that would be called for during the Civil war. This is a great history.
July 10, 2012
In 1850, the U.S. Congress met for 301 days. A record then and probably still a record. Rapid transportation was not so rapid then as it is now, so the congressmen couldn't jet back to their districts every weekend. They were pretty much stuck there when they were in session. Tempers flared, all were totally exhausted and sick to death of one another and of the issue that kept them there. On one occasion one of the senators threatened another with a pistol, one or two were forced to be away from the debate for some weeks because of illness and exhaustion, and one of the leading senators died, as well as the President. Fergus Bordewich's exhaustive account of the debate of 1850 is often entertaining, sometimes a tad confusing, almost always informative and, it must be admitted, quite exhausting.
The issue, of course, was slavery or, more precisely, the expansion of slavery. Slavery had infected the nation like a virus and there was no getting on to other matters in 1850 until the issue was settled, either by compromise or by secession. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 was supposed to have settled the issue, preserving the numerical balance of slave states and free states. But quite suddenly the U.S. gained a big chunk of new territory in the easily won war with Mexico (1846-48)and, in 1849, when gold was discovered in the California territory and its population swelled, it wanted to change its status from a territory to a state. The southern slave states were determined that no law be passed prohibiting them from taking their property (slaves) into the new territories, who were petitioning to be admitted to the Union as states; and the northern free states were determined that slavery should not be permitted to expand. Very few saw any hope of abolishing slavery outright and few, aside from the ardent abolitionists, even thought such a fight was worthwhile. When Bordewich describes the congressmen (Senate and House) and also lets their speeches speak for themselves, we see that even the northerners were white supremacists (with a few exceptions)and the southerners were out and out racists. Their language is shocking. More so in our day quite evidently than in theirs. It's difficult not to judge them by today's standards.
Bordewich quotes the South's argument from the "Congressional Record." In essence: God made the white man superior to the black man and meant white to rule black; furthermore the Constitution gave the white man the right to control his own property, buy and sell it, and move freely with it. With God and the Constitution on their side, many in the South were willing to secede from the Union rather than have the Federal Government curtail their rights. Just to hedge their bets that they'd lose the fight to take slavery into the new states and territories, they thought they could make Cuba into a slave state and launched an invasion, confident that they would be welcomed (I think we've replayed this scene a couple of times), but lost quickly and badly.
Bordewich gives us a great feel for the leading senators in the 301-day debate. Among the old guard, most of them masters of debate and having their last hurrah, were the great compromiser and silver-tongued Henry Clay and the "god-like" Daniel Webster. For both, one a southern and one a northerner, preserving the Union was what mattered most. In the compromise, which Clay carefully crafted, he attempted to give something to each side, pleasing, of course, neither. In supporting Clay's omnibus bill, Daniel Webster, once the inspiration of the anti-slavery North, betrayed those who most believed in him. He supported Clay's draconian Fugitive Slave Bill, making aiding in any way an escaped slave a punishable crime. Clay's bill would also outlaw the slave trade in Washington D.C. Not slavery, mind you, just the buying and selling of slaves. Apparently visitors to the nation's capital were appalled to see people in cages waiting to be traded or sold. Slave traders just had to go south to Virginia to continue their trade in slaves. Other provisions, meant to appease the North, had to do with limiting the expansion of slavery westward. Interestingly enough, Zachery Taylor the President at the time, and a slave-owner himself, surprised his southern colleagues by opposing slavery's expansion westward. Calhoun, of South Carolina, described as a near cadaver by this time but still capable of intense debate, essentially invented the doctrine of "state's rights" as a firewall to protect slavery.
Among the younger generation about to make their mark, were Seward, an ardent abolitionist, smart, and full of conviction but incapable of compromise so not very effective during this period. Also Stephen Douglas, tireless and a master tactician, who was finally able to get Clay's provisions passed by dealing with each separately. Bordewich praises his energy and his legislative smarts but puts him in the out-and-out racist camp. And then there was Jefferson Davis. Of course I knew he became the President of the Confederacy but I was totally, and I mean totally, shocked to read his awful racist speeches.
And there were many other players as well. Southerns willing to buck their home state's sentiments to keep the Union in tact, but it's hard not to see them all very flawed men. We see them very differently in hindsight than they were seen in their day. But Bordewich points out "within the cramped orbit of the possible, there were many displays of remarkable political courage: Clay's unflagging struggle to seek out common ground, Seward's lonely stand against slavery, President Taylor's clumsy but stalwart opposition to slavery's expansion" and so on. The Union could have come apart then. Compromise was not a foregone conclusion. So what did this long debate and eventual compromise accomplish? Well, it gave the country a decade of uneasy peace before the Civil War. Bordewich thinks that was important.
In that decade the North got stronger. Bordewich thinks that if the threatened secession had occurred in 1850 and civil war had broken out then, the South might have won. Further the long debate and some of the measures passed (but mostly ignored)gave the idea and reality of slavery a stronger moral dimension than it had had previously. And in that decade between 1850 and 1860, the old Whig Party died and the Republican Party emerged in its place, formed from former Whigs, anti-slavery Democrats, abolitionists, Free Soilers, and various other reform groups. And the country got Abraham Lincoln as the new party's first standard bearer. One further detail that Bordewich makes a point of is worth noting. As the Compromise enabled new states and territories to be admitted and western expansion to accelerate, for Indian peoples who had never asked to be ruled by the United States, the Compromise was an unmitigated disaster.
There is much to be learned about American history from this book.
The issue, of course, was slavery or, more precisely, the expansion of slavery. Slavery had infected the nation like a virus and there was no getting on to other matters in 1850 until the issue was settled, either by compromise or by secession. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 was supposed to have settled the issue, preserving the numerical balance of slave states and free states. But quite suddenly the U.S. gained a big chunk of new territory in the easily won war with Mexico (1846-48)and, in 1849, when gold was discovered in the California territory and its population swelled, it wanted to change its status from a territory to a state. The southern slave states were determined that no law be passed prohibiting them from taking their property (slaves) into the new territories, who were petitioning to be admitted to the Union as states; and the northern free states were determined that slavery should not be permitted to expand. Very few saw any hope of abolishing slavery outright and few, aside from the ardent abolitionists, even thought such a fight was worthwhile. When Bordewich describes the congressmen (Senate and House) and also lets their speeches speak for themselves, we see that even the northerners were white supremacists (with a few exceptions)and the southerners were out and out racists. Their language is shocking. More so in our day quite evidently than in theirs. It's difficult not to judge them by today's standards.
Bordewich quotes the South's argument from the "Congressional Record." In essence: God made the white man superior to the black man and meant white to rule black; furthermore the Constitution gave the white man the right to control his own property, buy and sell it, and move freely with it. With God and the Constitution on their side, many in the South were willing to secede from the Union rather than have the Federal Government curtail their rights. Just to hedge their bets that they'd lose the fight to take slavery into the new states and territories, they thought they could make Cuba into a slave state and launched an invasion, confident that they would be welcomed (I think we've replayed this scene a couple of times), but lost quickly and badly.
Bordewich gives us a great feel for the leading senators in the 301-day debate. Among the old guard, most of them masters of debate and having their last hurrah, were the great compromiser and silver-tongued Henry Clay and the "god-like" Daniel Webster. For both, one a southern and one a northerner, preserving the Union was what mattered most. In the compromise, which Clay carefully crafted, he attempted to give something to each side, pleasing, of course, neither. In supporting Clay's omnibus bill, Daniel Webster, once the inspiration of the anti-slavery North, betrayed those who most believed in him. He supported Clay's draconian Fugitive Slave Bill, making aiding in any way an escaped slave a punishable crime. Clay's bill would also outlaw the slave trade in Washington D.C. Not slavery, mind you, just the buying and selling of slaves. Apparently visitors to the nation's capital were appalled to see people in cages waiting to be traded or sold. Slave traders just had to go south to Virginia to continue their trade in slaves. Other provisions, meant to appease the North, had to do with limiting the expansion of slavery westward. Interestingly enough, Zachery Taylor the President at the time, and a slave-owner himself, surprised his southern colleagues by opposing slavery's expansion westward. Calhoun, of South Carolina, described as a near cadaver by this time but still capable of intense debate, essentially invented the doctrine of "state's rights" as a firewall to protect slavery.
Among the younger generation about to make their mark, were Seward, an ardent abolitionist, smart, and full of conviction but incapable of compromise so not very effective during this period. Also Stephen Douglas, tireless and a master tactician, who was finally able to get Clay's provisions passed by dealing with each separately. Bordewich praises his energy and his legislative smarts but puts him in the out-and-out racist camp. And then there was Jefferson Davis. Of course I knew he became the President of the Confederacy but I was totally, and I mean totally, shocked to read his awful racist speeches.
And there were many other players as well. Southerns willing to buck their home state's sentiments to keep the Union in tact, but it's hard not to see them all very flawed men. We see them very differently in hindsight than they were seen in their day. But Bordewich points out "within the cramped orbit of the possible, there were many displays of remarkable political courage: Clay's unflagging struggle to seek out common ground, Seward's lonely stand against slavery, President Taylor's clumsy but stalwart opposition to slavery's expansion" and so on. The Union could have come apart then. Compromise was not a foregone conclusion. So what did this long debate and eventual compromise accomplish? Well, it gave the country a decade of uneasy peace before the Civil War. Bordewich thinks that was important.
In that decade the North got stronger. Bordewich thinks that if the threatened secession had occurred in 1850 and civil war had broken out then, the South might have won. Further the long debate and some of the measures passed (but mostly ignored)gave the idea and reality of slavery a stronger moral dimension than it had had previously. And in that decade between 1850 and 1860, the old Whig Party died and the Republican Party emerged in its place, formed from former Whigs, anti-slavery Democrats, abolitionists, Free Soilers, and various other reform groups. And the country got Abraham Lincoln as the new party's first standard bearer. One further detail that Bordewich makes a point of is worth noting. As the Compromise enabled new states and territories to be admitted and western expansion to accelerate, for Indian peoples who had never asked to be ruled by the United States, the Compromise was an unmitigated disaster.
There is much to be learned about American history from this book.
March 5, 2026
The Compromise of 1850 is one of those pivotal moments in American history that seems, at first glance, to have postponed disaster. Without it, there is a strong argument that the United States might have stumbled into civil war nearly a decade earlier than it ultimately did. Yet the irony of the compromise is that the very measures designed to preserve the Union also hardened the divisions that would eventually tear it apart. In attempting to bind the nation together, the compromise may well have set the final course toward the conflict that arrived in 1861.
This book does an excellent job bringing that complicated moment to life. The political figures who dominated the debate emerge as vivid and fully realized characters, rather than distant historical names. The rivalries, ambitions, and anxieties that defined the era feel immediate and human, reminding the reader that the fate of the nation often hinged on the personalities and decisions of a handful of men.
What I appreciated most was the author’s ability to keep the narrative moving while still providing the necessary historical context. The politics of the late 1840s and early 1850s can easily become tangled and dense, but the book presents the story in a clear, straightforward way that makes the stakes understandable. The legislative maneuvering, sectional tensions, and moral conflicts surrounding slavery are explained in a way that illuminates how fragile the Union had already become.
For anyone interested in the political history of the United States in the years leading up to the American Civil War, this is a rewarding read. It captures a moment when the country tried desperately to hold itself together—and in doing so may have only delayed the inevitable. I highly recommend it to readers who enjoy exploring the personalities, debates, and turning points that shaped America on the eve of war.
This book does an excellent job bringing that complicated moment to life. The political figures who dominated the debate emerge as vivid and fully realized characters, rather than distant historical names. The rivalries, ambitions, and anxieties that defined the era feel immediate and human, reminding the reader that the fate of the nation often hinged on the personalities and decisions of a handful of men.
What I appreciated most was the author’s ability to keep the narrative moving while still providing the necessary historical context. The politics of the late 1840s and early 1850s can easily become tangled and dense, but the book presents the story in a clear, straightforward way that makes the stakes understandable. The legislative maneuvering, sectional tensions, and moral conflicts surrounding slavery are explained in a way that illuminates how fragile the Union had already become.
For anyone interested in the political history of the United States in the years leading up to the American Civil War, this is a rewarding read. It captures a moment when the country tried desperately to hold itself together—and in doing so may have only delayed the inevitable. I highly recommend it to readers who enjoy exploring the personalities, debates, and turning points that shaped America on the eve of war.
February 9, 2018
Fascinating book about the history of antebellum America and the debate to try to preserve the Union. The Compromise of 1850 was probably more important in the long term history of the United States than most people realize. Even though it only staved off the Civil War for 11 years, that 11 years proved to be critical to the survival of the Union. The Civil War came close to beginning in 1850, and interestingly almost started as a war between Texas and New Mexico. Had the Compromise of 1850 failed, and the Civil War actually started in 1850 instead of 1861, the South may very well have won, and who knows what the result would have been as far as the development of the United States is concerned. But during the years from 1850 to 1861, the North became more and more committed to the elimination of slavery, their population grew, and they became more and more industrialized, all of which allowed them to be able to eventually defeat the South when war finally came. There has been much debate about what the main reason was for the Civil War being fought. I have read quite a bit about the Civil War and have always felt that the main reason was the issue of slavery. This book makes it abundantly clear that the main reason for the Civi War was over the existence and expansion of the institution of slavery. This was a definite good read for those interested in American History.
September 18, 2020
4.5 stars
A couple of months ago I read a very good book about the Mexican-American war. Then, not really thinking about it, I called in this book from the library. Well, it ended up being the "sequel" to the war book!
The Compromise of 1850 was necessary because of the territory and questions that came up with the war. It was so interesting. It was amazing to read the debate that went on in the senate. It was so fortunate that we didn't get drawn into a civil war then. Not in South Carolina but in New Mexico. And although many years later the South reframed the Civil War to be about Northern aggression and the lost cause, in 1850 everyone knew it was about slavery and they openly said so.
We may have a contentious congress now but at least it hasn't come to fights and guns being drawn. (At least not yet!) Although it didn't solve the problem, at least it put it off long enough to ensure that the North could win. One quote at the end seemed so applicable to today. "It (the compromise) overcame the crippling paralysis that had gripped Congress, and showed that even in a fiercely partisan climate compromise and collaboration were possible." What we need now is a statesman/woman to help that to happen, because history shows that it can!
A couple of months ago I read a very good book about the Mexican-American war. Then, not really thinking about it, I called in this book from the library. Well, it ended up being the "sequel" to the war book!
The Compromise of 1850 was necessary because of the territory and questions that came up with the war. It was so interesting. It was amazing to read the debate that went on in the senate. It was so fortunate that we didn't get drawn into a civil war then. Not in South Carolina but in New Mexico. And although many years later the South reframed the Civil War to be about Northern aggression and the lost cause, in 1850 everyone knew it was about slavery and they openly said so.
We may have a contentious congress now but at least it hasn't come to fights and guns being drawn. (At least not yet!) Although it didn't solve the problem, at least it put it off long enough to ensure that the North could win. One quote at the end seemed so applicable to today. "It (the compromise) overcame the crippling paralysis that had gripped Congress, and showed that even in a fiercely partisan climate compromise and collaboration were possible." What we need now is a statesman/woman to help that to happen, because history shows that it can!
August 13, 2020
A fascinating, blow-by-blow account of the fiery and fiercely partisan debates of the 31st Congress that emerged from the conquest of the Mexican War and the deeply divisive question of the expansion of slavery into the Western territories. The product of the great lions of the U.S. Senate of the times, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, Thomas Hart Benton, Jefferson Davis, William Seward, Stephen Douglas and others, the "Compromise of 1850" admitted California as a new free state, settled slaveholding Texas's bellicose border dispute with New Mexico, terminated the slave trade in Washington, D.C. and, much to this Congress's shame, passed the ugly Fugitive Slave Act. The Compromise of 1850, in essence, bought the Union another decade of uneasy peace until (inevitably) the cannons of South Carolina fired on Fort Sumter in 1861.
March 15, 2024
This book is very, very good. It tells the tale of how the Union was saved in 1850 through a compromise driven by Henry Clay and Stephen A. Douglas. It goes into great detail without becoming boring and you see all the key Senators and Congressmen and what they thought about so many issues. Of course, the biggest problem was slavery and whether it could be expanded into the areas that became part of the US during the Mexican War. There was also a major border dispute between Texas and the area of New Mexico and war almost broke out between Texas and the Federal troops in Santa Fe. The compromise was finally passed and it kept the South from leave the Union at the time. I especially enjoyed seeing all the procedural tricks employed by both sides during the debates.
February 4, 2019
Good Read
If you're from flyover land like I am I wouldn't hold it against Fergus that the award the book won is from la-la land. On the PCscale I'd give it a 7. It's a good read, learned quite a bit. I hope he writes another like it for the Lincoln- Douglas Debates. I'd pre-order it.
If you're from flyover land like I am I wouldn't hold it against Fergus that the award the book won is from la-la land. On the PCscale I'd give it a 7. It's a good read, learned quite a bit. I hope he writes another like it for the Lincoln- Douglas Debates. I'd pre-order it.
May 28, 2018
These was a really good book. The author clearly did immense research into the Compromise of 1850. He did a good job of bringing those participants in the debate to life. Well-written and full of detail.
February 17, 2022
Well researched story of the Compromise of 1850 and the debate in Congress. The American Civil War very easily could have occurred ten years earlier if not for the Giants of the senate -Clay, Webster and Calhoun.
November 6, 2024
America's Great Debate is relevate today as a small minority had control of the government and they were not willing to give up their slaves which eventually blew up and created our Civil War.
It features the Debate over how to deal with the issue of slavery and how to keep our union together.
It features the Debate over how to deal with the issue of slavery and how to keep our union together.
August 19, 2026
If you are interested in congressional debates and machinations of this very specific time period you will find this fascinating. I imagine if you are not extremely interested in this topic it would be a tough read.
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