America's Great Debate

Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, a “gripping, vigorous [history] featuring a large cast of unforgettable characters with fierce beliefs” (Publishers Weekly, starred Review).

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 US 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, 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—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.

In America’s Great Debate Fergus Bordewich takes us back to a time when partisans on each side reached across the aisle to preserve the Union from tragedy.

“Lively. . . . Bordewich . . . is a good writer—he knows when to savor details.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Stimulating . . . richly informed.” —The Wall Street Journal

“Original in concept, stylish in execution . . . .[the] characters seem as vivid, human and understandable as those who walk the halls of Congress today.” —The Washington Post

“Perceptive and tremendously witty.” —Christian Science Monitor