Heard bill brands before, youll be delighted. If you have come in the past, as i know many of you have, youre in for another treat. So please join me in welcoming my colleague, Greaves Whitney to introduce our speaker. [ applause ] well, thank you very much, elaine, for that warm introduction and praise of the howenstein center. We really treasure our partnership with the ford. Its always a treat. We will continue to brick you excellent programs that stimulate the heart and mind. Happy washingtons birthday to our cspan audience and also to the audience here at the ford. 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 grant valley state university. [ laughter ] now, ive probably personally introduced you, bill, more than a dozen times. And each time i go back and check his biography i learn something new. And i wanted to share some of those new things with you tonight. Youve probably heard me say that bills formal name is h. W. Brands. But did you know that the h. W. Stands for history wizz kid . Youve heard me say that bill earned his masters and ph. D. In history, but did you also know he 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. So he understands things like that. Youve heard me say that bill is the author of more than two dozen books. But did you know theyve been translated into french, german, russian, chinese, japanese, korean, and haiku . Maybe hell explain. Youve heard me say that a third of bills books are devoted to the president s. You go back and look at jackson, grant, wilson, fdr, ike and reagan. But did you know that hes also dined with the president s in the white house . Youve heard me say that bill met longlived ralph howenstein back in 2004 at one of our events, 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 when he was a child. [ laughter ] 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 hop kins . Finally, you heard me say that bill has an enthusiastic fan base around the United States and around the world because of all the translations. Its no surprise, because many of his books end up being Pulitzer Prize finalists. Did you know his most die hard fans are right here in west michigan. Ladies and gentlemen, bill brands. [ applause ] thank you for that very kind of introduction. You taught me some stuff i didnt know about myself. You mentioned my son, hal, who is a historian, and some of you in the audience perhaps can appreciate that theres nothing more gratifying for a parent who goes into a field to, well, initially hal got a little bit of boost from sometimes being confused with me, because he was doing into the field. Now i get a boost from being confused with him. And ill get questions from reporte er reporters, and i say you got me confused with my son. But its a delight to be back. I see many friends from frooef use years. Im from previous years. And i especially like the fact that this is an audience where i can try out ideas where i can tell you about new stuff. To some extent you owe this to gleaves, because 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 before its finished. I just finished proofreading the galleys of the book. So the book has been set in type. And its reached the point where i really cant make any changes in it. One of the reasons i like to teach history, i teach history to 500 freshman every semester. And it 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 know anything about it, and i certainly dont mean to disrespect my 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. But i have a whole lot of international students, and i have to explain the civil war in 40 minutes. You really have to zero in on what the Big Questions are. I like the chance to work through these projects in explaining them to people who arent specialists in the subject. This is why i insist on teaching introductory students, and i like speaking to groups like you. Most of you are not professional historians. So if i can make something understandable to you, maybe it can make it understandable to my readers. But i reached the stage with this particular book, because i said its basically locked into type, i cant make any changes. So if while speaking to you tonight i come up with brilliant insight that i could have used in the book, you will see a grimace pass across my pace. Oh, dang, i could have used that. I will try not to be insightful tonight. [ laughter ] 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 im thats going to be published in november, makes a wonderful holiday gift for all your friends who are interested in history, and even the ones that dont know theyre interested in history yet. Book 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 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 remembered not so much for his presidency, but he wrote the declaration of independence. Then you jump forward to Andrew Jackson. Well remember him and lincoln. And then who else in the 19th century . And the answer is, im a specialist in this, and i have to think carefully about, wait a minute, when was Franklin Pierce president . Millard filmore, was it Zachary Taylor . Theres a reason for this, and the reason is, 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 ii of the constitution. Article i, the most substantive, the longest article, is about congress. And the framers of the constitution assumed and intended that american politics, american the American Republic 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 policies. They were not expected to be the center piece of american politics. Thats what was fully expected and 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 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. And 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 add mitt, my continuing recovery from writing biographies. Some of you who have been here more than once will know that for a while, i was i had this longterm project of writing theis try writing the histor the United States in volumes. And the six volumes begang with Benjamin Franklin, then jackson, grant, roosevelt and reagan. If you read those biographies, they link together to form a history of the United States. And i started off thinking this was going to be a great idea. I still think it was a pretty good idea and 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, there are certain things that are hard to tell. There are certain stories important but hard to tell. I didnt intend to write primarily about president s, but i eventually did, because if youre trying to tell the story of the United States, the president is a very convenient character to hang your story on. But theres a lot going on that president s dont if the president is your focus that you cant really get at. Some of it has to do with sort of the give and take, the thrust and perry of what goes on at the other end of pennsylvania avenue. When you write a president or 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 evolve around any one person. So i thought lets broaden things out. When i was here last year, some of you who were here heard me speak about my sort of first foreray into this direction. The book is called the general versus the president about truman and macarthur and the fight they got in. This time i decided to expand it more. One of the nice things about writing about two people is, you can give sort of 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 both, and they had this titanic battle. And by allowing myself both characters and bringing both characters up, i can tell this story and do justice to both sides. So this time i decided if two is better than one, then three is better than two. But theres another reason for this, and that is that these three men during their lifetime, were often called the great of american politics. The term was not always intended complimentary. In rome, members were trying to subvert the republic. So in fact this was the intention of being called that. So also because, 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 more interesting when you add the third, because there are all sorts of complications that ensued. And thats exactly what i was looking for. In fact, thats exactly the way it turned out in these guys lives. From the stand point of me as the author, they were very thoughtful in the timing of their lives. So ill tell you a little about them, because i realized my three characters, although household names during their lifetime, more famous than most of the president s of their lifetimes, theyre not household characters these days. The three men are henry clay, john calhoun and Daniel Webster. They all begin in the house of representatives. Henry clay accomplished a feat never accomplished before and they have repeated. He became speaker of the house 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 that he would have better prospects as a lawyer by moving west to kentucky, which had originally been the Western Province of virginia. And he set up shop in lexington, and he went into politics at a fairly young age. This also is 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 and senators. One of the main reasons that people went west was the professions they were interested in were crowded in the east. 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 carolinians did that in those days. In the early 1800s and the 1790s and early 1800s, it wasnt out of the question. It wasnt that unusual for a southerner to go north for education. But they really stayed north. Usually they came back home. South carolinians are very proud of their South Carolina roots, and calhoun was one. Calhoun began by being a lawyer. So the connection between law and politics was well established in those days. And calhoun decided to go into politics. He married well, which usually meant you married somebody with 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, his ability to make forceful arguments. He was a strong partisan. 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 that we have until today. So henry clay was a republican. John calhoun was a republican. The third member of my trio is 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, very powerful speakers. Very persuasive speakers. One of the things that drew me to write about them was that im kind of a sucker for people who know how to use the language. Now, im a writer so that makes me interested. But one of the things i tell my writing students is, there are sort of styles of language. There are ways of writing, depending on who youre writing for and what youre trying to accomplish. When i chose to write about the three guys, i knew tifs going to be transported back to a time when political rhetoric was really important. Now, this because, to put it bluntly, there wasnt a lot else going on at the time. 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 Lincoln Douglas debates. This was the big deal in american political life in the summer of 1858. Now, how many of you have read any of the debates . Okay, a few. And those of you will know that boy, its a tough slog. Because they would get up and speak for one of them, if douglas went first, he would speak for an hour. Lincoln would respond for hour and a half and douglas would get 30 minutes to finish up. It was like going to a double feature of the movies. Well, back in the 1930s when people went to double features, nothing else to do. Same thing was true with political debate. Although the Lincoln Douglas debates, they get kind tedious. You read all seven of them. You know why . They repeated themselves. From one to the next. Why did they repeat themselves . Because they werent recorded. The audience hadnt heard it before. So it was new. By the time you got to the seventh debate, you could really have this down. This is one of the reasons i was intrigued by my three characters. This is a time when political speech mattered. I dont know if any of you well were on cspan. Youre all fans of cspan. Im sure youre glued to the cameras when cspan is covering congress. Youll know that you can turn on cspan most of the time during the week and you can see people giving speeches in congress. Now, im probably not giving away any state secrets to tell you that if they pan the camera, youd realize nobody is in there, theyre speaking simply to the camera because we live in a time when american Political Institutions have sufficiently matured, one could say theyve grown so rigid, theyve evolved in a way so that political decisions are not made on the basis of decisions given in the senate or the house of representatives. Political decisions are made for other reasons, sometimes because of effect of lobbyists, but theyre not made there in the house and in the senate. On the basis of who said what. We live in a very mature, again, maybe ossified system. But in the days of henry clay and john calhoun and Daniel Webster, this was not so. We had immature institutions and when institutions are immature, then the role for individuals is much greater. And when henry clay gave a speech, he really did change minds. When henry clay would debate john calhoun and then Daniel Webster would rebut the both of them, people listened and they listened carefully. As a sideline, the speakers would write out their remarks after they had given them and put them into print and tell them as pamphlets and they had a side income in doing this. So this was a time when, if you listened to henry clay talk about the need for a protective tariff, he was pro tariff, he thought american industry needed to be protected from foreign manufacturers and then you listened to Daniel Webster oppose it, one of the striking things to me is how sophisticated these arguments were. In fact, i probably would give more time to these speeches, to these argu