Record for bringing in diverse and intellectually challenging and informed speakers. Tonights is no exception, and if you havent heard bill brands before, i think youll be delighted. If you have comments, in the past as i know many of you have, youre in for another treat. Please join me in welcoming my colleague, glees whitney, to introduce our speaker. [ applause ] well, thank you very much, elaine, for that warm introduction. We really treasure our partnership with the ford. Its always a treat. We will continue to bring you excellent programs that stimulate the mind and the heart for Public Service and love of our history. Happy washingtons birthday to our cspan audience and also to the audience here at the fort. Its really neat to be here recognizing washingtons birthday. This is one of the reasons we wanted bill to be here on this special day. Its always a pleasure to host bill brands. Weve had him back to west michigan so many times, ive lost count. But its been enough that he should be awarded a lifetime tenure award at grand valley state university. Ive probably personally introduced you, bill, more than a dozen times, and each time i check his buy iography, i learn something new. Youve probably heard me say bills formal name is h. W. Brands, but did you know that the h. W. Stands for history whiz kid. You heard me say bill earned his masters in phd in history, but did you know that he also had a masters degree in mathematics . He knows something that no historians know, and thats that if you multiply two negative numbers, like a minus 3 and a minus 4, you end up with a positive. He understands things like that. Youve heard me say that bill is the author of more than two dozen books. But did you know that theyve been translated into french and german, russian and chinese, japanese, korean and haiku . Maybe hell explain. Youve heard me say that a third of bills books are devoted to the president s. Go back and look at jackson, grant, t. R. Wilson, fdr, ike and reagan. But did you know hes also dined with the president s in the white house . Youve heard me say that bill met longlived ralph halestine for the first time at one of our events back in 2004, and they got along famously, swimmingly. But did you know that ralph urged bill to revise his studies of ben franklin and Andrew Jackson since ralph knew both of them since he was a child . And speaking of childhood, youve heard me say that bill has three children. But did you know that one of them, hal, is a historian in his own right who teaches at Johns Hopkins . Finally, youve heard me say that bill has an enthusiastic fan base around the United States. Indeed, i would say around the world because of all the translations. Its no surprise because many of his books end up being Pulitzer Prize finalists. But did you know that his most diehard fans are right here in west michigan. Ladies and gentlemen, bill brands. [ applause ] it is. Thank you, gleaves, for that very animated introduction. Youve taught me things i didnt know about myself. You mentioned my son hal who is a historian. Some of you in the audience is appreciate this. There is nothing more gratifying to a parent than having a kid who goes into a field who, somehow, got a little bit of a boost and was somehow confused with me for going sbut fieinto field. Now i get a boost because i get confused for him. Its a delight to be back. I see many friends from previous years. Im thrilled that you liked it enough last time or the time before or something to come back. And i specialespecially like th that this is an audience where i can try out new things. Gleaves makes a point of anticipating everybody else. He doesnt just wait until the book is out and ive already been giving the talk for a while. He asked me to talk about the book even before its finished. I wish, actually, though, gleaves, you had asked me to give this particular talk maybe a few months ago. I just finished proofreading the gallileelo galleys of the book, so its already set in type. Its reached a point where i cant make any changes in it. One of the reasons i teach history, i teach history to 500 freshmen every semester. It requires me, encourages me, allows me to think in terms of the Big Questions of American History. Very often i find that my teaching is a real boost to my writing. Because when you try to explain something to someone who doesnt really know anything about it, and a lot of my students i certainly dont mean to disrespect the students that come from high schools in texas. Im not saying they dont know any American History. Actually, they dont know enough, but they know some. I have a whole lot of International Students who have never taken any American History at all, so i have to explain the civil war in 40 minutes. You really have to zero in on what the Big Questions are. So i like the chance to sort of work through these projects in explaining them to people who arent specialists in the subject. This is one of the reasons i insist on teaching, one of the reasons i insist on teaching introductory students, and i like speaking to groups like you because most of you are not professional historians. So if i can make something understandable for you, then maybe i can make it understandable to my readers. But ive reached the stage with this particular book, because as i said, its basically locked into type. I cant make any changes. So if, while speaking to you tonight, i come up with a brilliant insight that i could have used in the book, you will see a grimace pass across my face because ill think, dang, i could have used that. I will try not to be insightful tonight. It is entirely out of my own selfpreservation. But i am going to tell you about this project that ive been working on. And as gleaves pointed out, ive written on president s, and it is kind of ironic that here i am on the birthday of the first president speaking for one of the first times on a subject other than a president. Because this book that is going to be published in november, available in bookstores near you, makes a wonderful holiday gift for all your friends who are interested in history and even the ones who dont know theyre interested in history yet, bulk discounts are available. Im just kidding. But it is a book about three members of congress, three senators. And these are three senators who were the rock stars of their era. It was at a time i could ask this question to you. Gleaves doesnt count because hes a specialist in president s, but why is it of all the president s in the 19th century, nearly all of them are quite forgettable . Okay, some people will remember jefferson. But jefferson is really remembered not so much for his presidency, because he wrote the declaration of independence. Then you jump forward to Andrew Jackson. Hes a controversial figure, but well remember him, and of course lincoln. And then who else in the 19th century . And the answer is im a specialist in this and i have to think carefully, wait a minute, when was Franklin Pierce president . Fillmore and Zachary Taylor was it Zachary Taylor or Winfield Scott . Theres a reason for this, and the reason is that the american constitution was not written with the presidency at the center of american politics. If you pull out your pocket constitutions, and i assume you all have them, youll be reminded that the presidency is described only once you get to article 2 of the constitution. Article 1, the most substantive, the longest article, is about congress. And the frames of the constitution assumed and intended that american politics, american the American Republic and eventually american democracy was going to be driven by the representatives of the people, the members of the house of representatives and the senators. And the president was a chief executive. His job was to execute the will of members of congress. President s were not expected to take the initiative, they were not expected to drive policy, they were not expected to be the centerpiece of american politics. Thats what was fully expected, thats what was intended. So the fact that its hard to remember president s from the 19th century is exactly what James Madison and Alexander Hamilton and George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, all framers of the constitution, would have said thats what we were aiming for. We want these people to be unmemorable. The stars of the show are going to be members of congress. So i decided to look in on the three most noted members of congress during the first half of the 19th century. And this was part of, i will admit, my continuing recovery from writing biographiebiograph. Sof y some of you who have been here more than once will know that for a while, i had this longterm project of writing the history of the United States through biography. I eventually wrote six volumes in this collection. And the six volumes began with Benjamin Franklin and then went to Andrew Jackson, ulysses grant, theodore roosevelt, franklin roosevelt, ronald reagan. If you read those biographies, they link together to form a history of the United States from the 18th century to the 21st century. When i started off, i thought this was going to be a great idea. I still think it was a pretty good idea. Needless to say, i recommend it to all of you. Every house should have the set. But one of the things that i concluded by the time i got to the end of this was that there are certain things that are hard to tell, there are certain stories that are important but hard to tell if you can find yourself to write a biography. I didnt intend to primarily write about president s, but i eventually did because if youre trying to tell a story of the United States, the president is a very convenient character to hang your story on. But there is a lot going on if the president s are your focus that you cant really get at. And some of it has to do with sort of the give and take, the thrust and parody of what goes on at the end of pennsylvania avenue. The other thing was that when you write about a president , when you write a biography of any kind, you cannot help but give the impression that the world, or at least the world of your book, revolves around one person. And the world does not revolve around any one person. So i thought, lets broaden things out. Now, when i was here last year, some of you who were here heard me speak about my first foray in this direction where instead of writing about one person, i wrote about two people. The book is called the general versus the president about harry truman and Douglas Macarthur and the fight they got in. This time i decided to expand even more. The nice thing about writing two people is you can sort of give two sides of the argument and you dont have to focus on one side and then just bring the other one in by indirection. So i could focus on macarthur and true mman, and they had thi titanic battle, and by allowing myself both characters and bringing both characters up, i can tell the story, and i think do justice to both sides. So this time i decided if two is better than one, then three is even better than two. But there is another reason for this. And that is that these three men during their lifetime were often called the great triumphant of american politics. The term was not always intended complimentary. Remember, the various rights were in rome when members are trying to reverse the public. This is the reverse of people who called them the great triumphant. If you remember your days from junior high school, you might remember that a relationship between two people, whether its sort of friends or a romantic relationship, if there are two people involved, thats one kind of relationship, but it gets a whole lot more interesting when you add the third because there are all kinds of complications that ensue, who is up and down and who is in line with whom. Thats what i was looking for. Thats the way it turned out in these guys lives. From the standpoint of me as the author, they were very thoughtful in the timing of their lives. So ill tell you a little bit about them because i realize that my three characters, although household names during their lifetimes, more famous than most of the president s of their life timtimes, theyre no exactly household characters these days. The three men are henry clay, john calhoun and Daniel Webster. They all began in the house of representatives. Henry clay accomplished the feat never accomplished before and never repeated. He became speaker of the house, the most powerful individual in the house of representatives, on his very first day in the house of representatives. He was that impressive. And he was he essentially created the role of speaker of the house, a role thats very important to this day. Henry clay was from kentucky. He was born in virginia, but as a young, aspiring lawyer, after getting his training in virginia, he decided to he would have better prospects as a lawyer by moving west to kentucky, which originally had been the Western Province of virginia. And he set up shop in lexington, and he went into politics at a fairly young age. This is also what ambitious young men did. And there was an attraction of doing it in a place like kentucky because kentucky was a new state, it was writing a new constitution, it was electing new members to congress, electing new senators. One of the main reasons that people went west was the professions they were interested in was crowded in the east. It would have been hard to break into politics in boston or new york. But you go out to kentucky and everybody else is new, so you can get a start as well. So this is henry clay. John calhoun was from South Carolina. John calhoun, like clay, was a lawyer. He was born in South Carolina. He was educated at yale. He went to law school but he returned to South Carolina. South Carol Carolinians did tha those days. In the early 1800s, it wasnt unusual for a southerner to go north for education, but they rarely stayed in the north. Usually they came back home. South carolinians are very proud of their South Carolina roots and calhoun was one. Calhoun, like clay, began by being a lawyer, but being a lawyer often involves people, it certainly did involve people in matters of public concern. So the connection between law and politics was well established in those days. And calhoun decided to go into politics. He married well. Married well usually meant that you married somebody with some money. So he didnt really need to make much of an income, and he could indulge his political interests. And he, like henry clay, was elected to the house of representatives. This is pretty much where everybody got started, and he was distinguished from early on by his very incisive mind. He was a member of Thomas Jeffersons party, the republicans. These days theyre often called the democratic republicans to distinguish them from the republicans from the 1850s we have until today, but in those days they simply called themselves republicans. Henry clay was a republican, john calhoun was a republican. The third member of my trio was Daniel Webster. Daniel webster was born in New Hampshire. He was he became a lawyer. And he was probably the most gifted of the three. Daniel webster is probably the greatest orator in american political history. One of the things that drew me to these three guys, all three of them, were very powerful speakers, very persuasive speakers. One of the things that drew me to write about them was im kind of a sucker for people who know how to use the language. Now, im a writer, so that makes me interested in that stuff, but also one of the things that i constantly tell my writing students is, there are sort of styles of language, there are ways of writing depending on who youre writing for, what your audience is, what youre trying to accomplish. When i chose to write about the three guys, i knew that i was going to be transported back to a time when political rhetoric was really important. Now, this because well, to put it very bluntly, there wasnt a lot else going on at the time, and so when Daniel Webster was going to give a speech, this was high entertainment. This is why, for example, some of you will know or know of the lincolndouglas debates of 1858. This was a big deal in the summer of 1858. Now, how many of you have read any of the lincolndouglas debates . A few. And those of you who have read will know, boy, its a tough slog. Because they would get up and speak for so one of them, depending on who went first. If douglas went first, he would speak for an hour. Then lincoln would respond for an hour and a half, and douglas would get 30 minutes to finish up. It would take all afternoon. It was like going to a double feature of the movies. Back in the 1930s when people went to double features, nothing else to do so you might as well spend all afternoon in the movie theater. The same was true with political debate. But the lincolndouglas debates, after a while they get kind of tedious. Do you know why they get tedious . Because they repeat themselves from one debate to the next. Why did they repeat themselves . Because they werent recorded. The audience hadnt heard it before, so it was new, which meant that by the time you got to the seventh debate, you could really have this thing down. But the other thing was, and this is one of the reasons that i was so intrigued by my three characters, this was a time when political speech mattered. I dont know if any of you were on cspan, so i should say all of you are fans of cspan, and you are glued to cspan when theyre covering congress. You know you can turn on cspan pat a given time. We of the week and see they are covering congress. When they pan around, there is no one in there. They ar