The American Revolution may have been a fundamental
break – one setting not only the infant nation, but indeed the entire global dialogue
concerning democracy along a new path. The founding fathers were a generation which
hewed and built a government unlike any of its age. Their works and deeds
resound through the ages, as do their names. Jefferson, Washington, Madison,
Franklin; for most Americans these require no introduction. Through the years
of that first generation the country’s laws and government would take shape.
Before the court of Marshall, in the doctrine of Monroe, along the journey of
Lewis and Clark, the country as a land and an idea would emerge. Yet it was only
with the passing-away of this first generation that the first few staggering
steps of the country could be transformed into the assured pace of a certain
nation. If America was to be a grand republic, and not simply the bright flash
of a single generation, then it would be the free-born sons of the revolution
who would make it so. The country could only be truly forged once it dealt with
the business, less of creation, and more of persistence.
From the presidency of John Quincy Adams, to the
years of the Fillmore administration, three men would do more to shape and
define the country’s ideals, values, and extent than any others. Daniel Webster
of Massachusetts, Henry Clay of Kentucky, and John C. Calhoun of South Carolina
represented not only the three regions composing the young states (New England,
the West, and the South, respectively) but also three ideals of the republic
which would be contested in front of the courts and underneath the Capitol
dome. While Webster embodied the Federalists’ call for a stronger union,
Calhoun’s states’ rights southerners fought for the preservation of their own
way of life. In-between was the star of the West, the voice of union and
compromise, Henry Clay. Each, in his own way, would take up his own banner, and
the banner of diverse causes; each with one foot planted firmly in the
foundations of the past, while simultaneously striving towards what they
believed was both a proper and necessary future. Both the originality and the
difficulty of the American Constitution can be understood through the differing
interpretations these three gave to it. While their conclusions and moralities may
occasionally seem outmoded – perhaps even quaint to the modern ear – we cannot
disagree that each latched upon a crucial strain of thought in the nation’s
founding documents. Their status as great minds is assured. That the words and ideas
which founded the republic can be so diversely meaningful and open to
interpretation may do more to support the continuation of the American republic
than the work of any person, or the protection of any force. Through their
struggles, Webster, Clay, and Calhoun not only helped to forge the nation, they
served as exemplars for how the country might be continually renewed.
While the evolving political climates of their
time would variously place each at odds with the other, these climates would
also create strange bedfellows and unlikely alliances. The capriciousness of
changing parties, and the turbulence of the era, may have led the country to
select more belligerent or politically-minded executives. It was, through no
small fault of the mansion’s tenants, the era of a diminished White House.
While each of the triumvirate would repeatedly try for the country’s top post,
and variously be humbled, humiliated, debased, and denied in their attempts,
this was not the era of the powerful presidency. It was within the Capitol that
the great debates would take place; from which the edicts shaping the coming
generation would issue. At no other time has America more closely embodied a
true republic. At the height of congressional influence three men stood head-and-shoulders
above the rest. Webster, Clay, and Calhoun: each is celebrated and lauded,
denigrated and excoriated. Each similarly provides a multitude of
interpretations down through the ages. Thus we may say that they have truly
joined the American pantheon. Together they support our own continual
re-founding of the nation.
