THE STORY: Jabez Stone, young farmer, has just been married, and the guests are dancing at his wedding. But Jabez carries a burden, for he knows that, having sold his soul to the Devil, he must, on the stroke of midnight, deliver it up to him. Shortly before twelve Mr. Scratch, lawyer, enters and the company is thunderstruck. Jabez bids his guests begone; he has made his bargain and will pay the price. His bride, however, stands by him, and so will Daniel Webster, who has come for the festivities. Webster takes the case. But Scratch is a lawyer himself and out-argues the statesman. Webster demands a jury of real Americans, living or dead. Very well, agrees the Devil, he shall have them, and ghosts appear. Webster thunders, but to no avail, and at last realizing Scratch can better him on technical grounds, he changes his tactics and appeals to the ghostly jury, men who have retained some love of country. Rising to the height of his powers, Webster performs the miracle of winning a verdict of Not Guilty.

In this monumental new biography, Robert V. Remini gives us a full life of Webster from his birth, early schooling, and rapid rise as a lawyer and politician in New Hampshire to his equally successful career in Massachusetts where he moved in 1816. Remini treats both the man and his time as they tangle in issues such as westward expansion, growth of democracy, market revolution, slavery and abolitionism, the National Bank, and tariff issues. Webster's famous speeches are fully discussed as are his relations with the other two of the "great triumvirate", Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun. Throughout, Remini pays close attention to Webster's personal life - perhaps more than Webster would have liked - his relationships with family and friends, and his murky financial dealings with men of wealth and influence.

From New York Times bestselling historian H. W. Brands comes the riveting story of how, in nineteenth-century America, a new set of political giants battled to complete the unfinished work of the Founding Fathers and decide the future of our democracy In the early 1800s, three young men strode onto the national stage, elected to Congress at a moment when the Founding Fathers were beginning to retire to their farms. Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, a champion orator known for his eloquence, spoke for the North and its business class. Henry Clay of Kentucky, as dashing as he was ambitious, embodied the hopes of the rising West. South Carolina's John Calhoun, with piercing eyes and an even more piercing intellect, defended the South and slavery. Together these heirs of Washington, Jefferson and Adams took the country to war, battled one another for the presidency and set themselves the task of finishing the work the Founders had left undone. Their rise was marked by dramatic duels, fierce debates, scandal and political betrayal. Yet each in his own way sought to remedy the two glaring flaws in the Constitution: its refusal to specify where authority ultimately rested, with the states or the nation, and its unwillingness to address the essential incompatibility of republicanism and slavery. They wrestled with these issues for four decades, arguing bitterly and hammering out political compromises that held the Union together, but only just. Then, in 1850, when California moved to join the Union as a free state, "the immortal trio" had one last chance to save the country from the real risk of civil war. But, by that point, they had never been further apart. Thrillingly and authoritatively, H. W. Brands narrates an epic American rivalry and the little-known drama of the dangerous early years of our democracy.

Enormously powerful, intensely ambitious, the very personifications of their respective regions--Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, and John C. Calhoun represented the foremost statemen of their age. In the decades preceding the Civil War, they dominated American congressional politics as no other figures have. Now Merrill D. Peterson, one of our most gifted historians, brilliantly re-creates the lives and times of these great men in this monumental collective biography. Arriving on the national scene at the onset of the War of 1812 and departing political life during the ordeal of the Union in 1850-52, Webster, Clay, and Calhoun opened--and closed--a new era in American politics. In outlook and style, they represented startling contrasts: Webster, the Federalist and staunch New England defender of the Union; Clay, the "war hawk" and National Rebublican leader from the West; Calhoun, the youthful nationalist who became the foremost spokesman of the South and slavery. They came together in the Senate for the first time in 1832, united in their opposition of Andrew Jackson, and thus gave birth to the idea of the "Great Triumvirate." Entering the history books, this idea survived the test of time because these men divided so much of American politics between them for so long. Peterson brings to life the great events in which the Triumvirate figured so prominently, including the debates on Clay's American System, the Missouri Compromise, the Webster-Hayne debate, the Bank War, the Webster-Ashburton Treaty, the annexation of Texas, and the Compromise of 1850. At once a sweeping narrative and a penetrating study of non-presidential leadership, this book offers an indelible picture of this conservative era in which statesmen viewed the preservation of the legacy of free government inherited from the Founding Fathers as their principal mission. In fascinating detail, Peterson demonstrates how precisely Webster, Clay, and Calhoun exemplify three facets of this national mind.

Originally published in 1973. Professor Nathans illuminates the changes wrought by Jacksonian democracy on the career of Daniel Webster, a major political figure, and on the destiny of a major political party, the Whigs. Daniel Webster was a creative anachronism in the Jacksonian era. His career illustrates the fate of a generation of American politicians, reared to rule in a traditional world of defined social classes where gentlemen led and the masses followed. With extensive research into primary sources, Nathans interprets Webster as a leader in the older political tradition, hostile to permanent organized political parties and fearful of social strife that party conflict seemed to promote. He focuses on Webster's response to the rise of entrenchment of voter-oriented partisan politics. He analyzes Webster's struggle to survive, comprehend, and finally manipulate the new politics during his early opposition to Jackson; his roles in the Bank War and the nullification crisis; and the contest for leadership within the Whig Party from 1828 to 1844. Webster and the Whigs resisted and then belatedly attempted to answer the demands of the new egalitarian mass politics. When Webster failed as an apologist for government by the elite, he became a rhapsodist of American commercial enterprise. Seeking a new power base, he adapted his public style to the standards of simplicity and humility that the voters seemed to reward. Nathans shows, however, that Webster developed a realistic vision of the common bonds of Jacksonian society—of the basis for community—that would warrant anew the trust needed for the kind of leadership he offered. The meaning of Webster's career lies in these attempts to bridge the old and new politics, but his attempt was doomed to ironic and revealing failure. Nathans studies Webster's impact on the Whig party, showing that his influence was strong enough to thwart the ambitions of his rivals Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun but not strong enough to achieve his own aspirations. Nathans argues that Webster, through his efforts to increase his authority within the party, merely revealed his true weakness as a sectional leader. His successful blocking of Clay and Calhoun brought about a deadlock that significantly hastened the transfer of power to men more committed to strong party organization and more talented at voter manipulation. Webster's dilemma was the crisis of an entire political generation reared for a traditional world and forced to function in a modern one.