conquering spanish forts and the capital of west florida, pensacola which he was clearly instructed not to do. he made war on a foreign power without congressional authorization. >> can you read that speech today? >> yes. oh, yes. >> it's in the congressional regards. >> it's in the annals of congress. >> three hours. does it read well? >> yes, it does. clay's speeches are always very litera literate. but you should also note that there was some amount of editing going on. the guys were able to go back and tweak the things to make them obviously more polished than they were on the floor. it was a demanding floor, the people in the house, but the people in the gallery as well, they were incredibly astute and adept. clay cut his teeth on this kind of thing. in hanover county he watched patrick henry speak. >> down in virginia. >> yeah. and then when he was growing up. he saw what worked, what didn't.

he copied and was a good emulator and eventually developed a style of his own that was peerless. everyone who has ever heard clay remembered the first time they heard him and often they say, well, this is the best speech clay ever made, was the first speech that they heard him make. he could make women cry and men stand on their feet. >> i assume there's no voice track anywhere on him. >> no. would that there were. >> he died 1852. go back to the two of you. where did you meet? >> we met in graduate school. >> where? >> auburn university. in fact, we met in our first class together, in graduate school. we didn't necessarily hit it off right away. and began actually seeing each other, dating when we were taking a graduate seminar on the american civil war. i always tell people that, oh, that's just so romantic. >> do they mean it?

>> no, they're just joking. >> what do you remember from those early days? >> oh, it was grand times. we were care free, young, and had the whole future ahead of us. and i remember -- i remember sitting in a library and jean was workinging there and i went to the table she was and sat down across from her. and i said this -- i made some, you know, sort of dorky comment. and she agreed, you know, and got up. >> i don't remember that. >> it was almost six months to the day that i finally asked her out. we went to pizza hut. >> still there? >> i guess it. >> i know you got all of your education at auburn through a ph.d.. what was your ph.d. in? >> history. >> how about you? >> i attended mercer university

in atlanta for my bachelor's degree and went straight to graduate school from there, to auburn. >> two auburn ph.d.s in history. went to sal list busalisbury ste to teach? >> yes. >> how long were you there? >> nine or ten. i guess nine. >> how do you get something like this book? how do you divide the responsibilities? how do you write a book together? where do you do it? >> we work solely, exclusively, we're solitairy in that. as all writing is. it's not like somebody is walking around the room waxing wise while the other acts as stenographer. we actually write separately. we don't work on the same chapters at the same time but we hand them off to each other several times to adjust the tone. >> how do you divide the chapters up? >> this one was a little different.

>> i wrote from the back and she wrote from the front. >> he started at the end of clay's life and i started at the beginning and we came together. >> why did you decide to do it that particular way? >> i'm not sure. we had never done that before. we had usually just alternated chapters. and i'm not sure we'll do it again because meeting at the right place was a little difficult. we had to really tweak some things at the end before we sent it off. >> i was reminded at the closing of this process, mark twain's remark about charles dudley warner when they did the "gilded age" together and they did alternating chapters i think is the way they did it. he said it was as if two miners had been tunnelling through the mountain from within and when they got to the middle of it they figured they were about 100 yards apart and the book doesn't really work because of that. he didn't think it did. we weren't that bad, but it was hard because one of the things

that was -- as you know in a narrative which is very much a narrative, there are plot holes that develop that have to be straightened out sooner or later and you have to go back and do it. you know, the story of tolkien in "the lord of the rings" where he got to one of the things where he made a mistake, he'd throw everything away and start from the very beginning which was the reason it took him decades to write the thing. we didn't have that much of a trouble. my main trouble was killing it. i had a devil of a time getting done with that. and the chapter was much longer than it is here. >> killing him. >> yeah. >> our editor finally said, you're going to have to let him go. you're just going to have to let him go. >> but you start the book that way. i mean, you start with his end and you, of course, end -- >> that was the first thing written, the prologue. >> who wrote that? >> you wrote the first draft. >> i wrote the first draft of that. >> why did you choose henry clay

and when? when did you start the process? >> well, about three years ago. maybe a little more than that. we actually wanted to write a book on the election of 1824. and we actually did have a proposal out through our agent. and a lot of people said, well, that's just kind of narrow. i'm not sure people understood that it is a very pivotal election. and then our editor at random house suggested, well, you know, why not clay? why not -- since he is such a key figure in that election, why not do a full biography of clay. and i remember when you called me, i was at the academy. he called and said, they want us to do clay. and i said, i like henry clay. and from that point on -- >> so jean said we can do that. and that was it. >> and when did you finish it? >> finished it in march of --

>> '9. >> -- 2009. >> i got to know, who got to the middle first? >> i did. she writes faster than i do. >> he writes better than i do. >> she's got the full-time job. >> but i fall into the trap of perfection is the enemy of good. and so i thinker. >> so, what did you each find along the way that you didn't know about henry clay that surprised you, that interested you, that you wanted to know more about? >> i think his family life, because you never read about his family life. and we're political historians, so we've read a good bit about his political life and never knew anything about his family life, even other biographers have not written a great deal about his family. >> how'd you find it? >> through voluminous correspondence in a number of places, library of congress, manuscripts. >> you say there's only one

remaining letter that lucretia wrote. >> but his letter to her -- his letters to her are very illuminating. they had a very warm relationship. the children's letters to her and about her are also very illuminating, so the family correspondence which no one had really ever bothered to dip into. we finally had to just call it quits. there's so many that i'd like to get back into one day. >> where did you find it? >> most of the family letters are in the library of congress. there are also some at the university of kentucky, special collections as well. >> can you read them online or did you -- >> no, we had to come. >> you read the physical, actual letters? >> yes, the actual letters. so we got to see the handwriting. one of the things, a little bit of trivia that we discovered is i saw the one surviving letter from clay's mother to him not too long before she died in the late 1820s.

and her handwriting was very similar to his. and so that was a clue that she was probably responsible for his beautiful handwriting. >> how many kids did she have? >> oh, goodness. she had -- she had a number who died in child, as children. she had four children who survived to adulthood, one of them a daughter. that daughter died very young. she was in her 20s. >> 21, yeah. >> and then she had three other children, i think three -- >> watkins. >> four other children with her second husband. >> and your big find in this process? >> well, i agree, this family stuff is fascinating, because i think it gives an element of clay's personality, features of it that have been missing. there is a -- there is the idea that clay is an aloof figure in american history, but very strange that that would be the

case. because we found him to be an extremely warm person especially with his family. but otherwise, i think the "corrupt bargain" charges ultimately the investigation into those revealed him to be truly a smear campaign that was mounted by his enemies. >> who in particular? >> jackson and his people. jackson -- jackson lied about this. he lied saying that james buchanan who at the time was a pennsylvania congressman had acted as the go-between for clay and his camp. that's the jacksonian camp but clay came out and said, no, i didn't, publicly said, i did not do this for henry clay and it didn't matter. >> if you two were going to have a dinner and invite historical guests, would you rather have andrew jackson at your table or henry clay? >> henry clay. he was a fun man at a party.

>> he'd stand for the drinks. >> what would you get if you had andrew jackson at your table? >> a courtly, withdrawn, and possibly sour person. jackson was very polite. chivalrious with women. after the 1829 speech he called on jackson to show that it wasn't anything personal and this was the way the game was played, like professional wrestling, you know, where they go out and have a drink after the bout and was somewhat surprised that jackson was so chilly and aloof. adam, john quincy adams, had the same impression. he and jackson were looking over a map about something and jackson just exploded about william h. crawford who was the secretary of the treasury in the monroe administration in georgia

and jackson himself was his biggest rival. just exploded and went on in a raving rant about it how despicable crawford was and adams was dumbdumbfounded. this is a man that doesn't understand the game. >> repeating what we said earlier. henry clay ran in '24, '32, '40, '44, and '48, you really want to say why didn't he give it up? wasn't there a message there after a while? he was the actual nominee of his party three times and the other two didn't make it to the nomination. do you have any sense of why he didn't give it up? he'd been speaker of the house. he'd been in the united states senate for a long time, he was there while he was running. >> well, he came very close in '44, there's some evidence he should have won that election. >> that was the polk election? >> yes. new york state had a great deal of voter fraud in that election.

a large number of newly arrived immigrants voted as well as a large number of deceased people voted in new york in that election. and if he'd taken new york he would have won the election and it was very, very close in new york. so, i think he thought that for '48 that the whig party had a very good chance and that's why he sought the nomination, and he was right because the person who did win the nomination did win the election. >> and a whig goes on to be a republican eventually? >> well, in the north generally speaking people like william henry seward, abraham lincoln were whigs, so when the whig party disintegrated after clay's death, most northern whigs eventually made their way into the republican party. >> henry clay comes into politics at 29 -- actually, he was in the states earlier than that and is a politician until

basically he dies at 75. ran for president five times. roughly the house looks like on the list about four -- i've got it four times. but the senate four times. and the one thing that i kept reading in your book is that he would be a friend with somebody and then over jackson they would be -- they would lose the friendship. and one of the examples i want to bring up and have you explain is john crittenden. who was he and why were they friends and the story all it weaves through the book until the end. they don't quite ever get back together. >> no. crittenden was not over jackson. it was a -- it was a case of simple politics. your question, your earlier question of why doesn't he just stop running for president, is essentially the one that crittenden finally asked. and said enough. >> who was he? >> he was -- he was a kentuckian.

>> a protege of clay. >> yes. and it was a -- probably at the end in the '40s clay's closest friend. he took clay's place in the senate when clay resigned. almost a handpicked successor in the early '40s to run for president in '44. and he was sort of the unofficial campaign manager in '44. he was that close. they were tireless correspondents and social friends. when the '48 election loomed, clay had retired after '44 and said this is enough. i'm going to live out my years here as the sage of ashland and be done with it. but as we say in the book, he's sort of like a dray horse that's been on a milk run, you can't put a guy like that out to passure. so, when the '48 bell rings, his

ears perk up and he's in the hunt ultimately. crittenden had taken him at his word and had really become rather intimately involved in the zachary taylor boom that was -- it was the result of taylor's success in the mexican war. >> and taylor and clay in the same party. >> yes, they were both whigs. >> this is the '48 election. >> and taylor is a whig primarily not because he believes what the whigs do, most apolitical, he's a whig because he hates james polk who wasn't running. polk had tried to ruin taylor's career, reputation, because he saw him as a political rival. and polk becomes a whig by default as a reflex -- >> you mean taylor. >> taylor becomes a whig as a reflex. >> he's buried in louisville? and clay is in lexington. >> it's a strange thing. at the time he was living in louisiana. >> yeah. >> he was a louisiana citizen.

when he came back in he wanted to be president as a vindication, taylor did. clay didn't quite understand. in fact, in november of '47 taylor virtually foreswore and said if clay wants this, i'll step aside. that wasn't true. as time wore on, that became less true. and crittenden found himself pretty -- between a rock and a hard place on this because he had thrown in with taylor and taylor's compatriots and handlers and operators as sort of the kentucky point man but he kept that secret from clay. >> at the end of his life you say that they tried to get back together or they did get back together but in a meeting? >> there's a different -- there are different accounts of this. the idea that clay and crittenden reconciled largely derives from thomas who was actually there in washington with clay at the national hotel. he'd been summoned on bring clay

home. clay had sent him a telegram to come get him, he was dying, he knew it. and by the time thomas got there, it was too late. clay couldn't be moved. he was bedridden and sinking. clay came to the first week of june to visit him. whether he was summoned or whether he was -- it was of his own volition, we don't know. but thomas says that they met and that his father told him after the meeting that critten -- crittenden had done no wrong. he had never done anything wrong and that the family should forgive all of the other rancor and forget it. james disagreed. james never thought -- james the other son, never thought that they reconciled. he found a letter that clay had written quite bitter after the 1848 truth came out that was a recrimination of crittenden. he found that letter on clay's desk while he was waiting for the funeral train to come home and read it and thought, well, this serves no purpose and he

burned it. >> one of the things we haven't talked much about and, goodness, we can't get to all of this. there's a lot in here. how important was the senate in his life? >> it was very important. in fact, as i think we mentioned somewhere in there, the united states senate at the end of the 1950s appointed a committee of the senate to rank senators, and they ranked clay as the number one senator in u.s. history. >> that was the john f. kennedy committee? >> exactly, the committee. >> to pick the best? >> uh-huh. >> yeah. >> and he was the best according to that body. >> and as i read it, he was about 57 when he was re-elected to senate years later by the legislature and not by the people and stayed until he was roughly almost -- the whole time of 75. >> no. he retired in '42, so he was there about ten years. and then he retired during the tyler administration, because partly because he simply

couldn't get anything done but also to run for president. >> what were the high points, though, when he was in the senate? what was the biggest thing he did? >> well, i think the compromise of 1833 where he solved the nullification crisis which prevented jackson from invading south carolina and then when he went back into the senate at the end of 1849 and was the architect of the compromise of 1850. >> what was more powerful back then, the presidency or the congress? >> congress. >> and why has it all changeded? >> andrew jackson. he is the exception to the rule of executive passivity had was the ideal. after the revolution the notion of an active executive was regarded as too monarchial and in a democratic republican as washington said the first wheel of government is congress, the voice of the people. clay believed that, so did mose presidents which is one of the

reasons we see a fairly passive executive role in most cases. the exceptions to that are andrew jackson and jackson's protege james polk and quite frankly it didn't work out very well. the active executive tended to trammell liberty and overreach. >> does it still? >> i don't know. i don't think -- i think -- obviously the founders had a vision for the country that is somewhat radically different than what's evolved especially in the 20th century and 21st century. war has a lot to do with it. and this is one of the reasons chai oppose clay opposed the mexican war. he saw it as an enormously corrosive influence on the -- on government. because it gave government a pile of money. it tended to make the executive much more -- much more aggressive in framing policy. and the result almost always was

irreversible to some degree. you never went quite back to where you were before. >> by the way, have you figured out any other characters that you would want -- i'm not sure you would call henry clay a character. but any other people in history that you would write a book about in this time? >> well, we're starting right now a book on the washington administration, the presidency of george washington. it's a much narrower focus, but perhaps one of the most influential eight years in our history as far as setting precedent. so, that didn't exactly come out of this project, but there are a number -- i've said repeatedly when we were at ashland just over the weekend, that i want to come back to mr. clay someday to take some other aspects of his life. particularly the election of 1824. >> i think 1824 deserves a thorough telling. >> it does.

>> when there was a book written by henry clay years ago, it was the first book in nearly 50 years. and if you go down the list of everything he did, the speaker of the house and elected to the senate four times and ran for president five times and the treaty of ghent and the secretary of state, why not? why not more? >> i think because he didn't win the presidency. the historical trade has gone in for more of the glamour of the presidency, which is another consequence of the growth of the executive authority and prestige. presidents were, you know, in many ways, you know, glorified clerks during clay's time. they glad-handed and toured the country as symbols of unity. the real political power was in the house and the senate where policy was formed, appropriations were made. the veto is very rarely used. and jackson is, again, the

exception in the veto. >> people probably wonder why i haven't talked about the compromise of 1850 because it's talked about so much and written about, it's in the book. i want to go to our remaining time one other thing. sickness is another thing that's a thread in your book. it seems like more i've read before. who was sick and what were they sick with? >> clay was never healthy. even as a young man. he always had various respiratory problems. and digestive problems. lucretia tended to be healthier though she went through some bad health problems as well. then, of course, there are the children. again, respiratory being oftentimes -- >> caused by what? >> well, in clay's case it was probably just something that he was congenitally was a problem. he always had bad colds and bronchitis and then, of course,

he contracted tuberculosis which ultimately killed him. perhaps the cause of his respiratory problems. he was more susceptible to that because this was a disease that was the number one killer of adults during this time period. >> and you were doing the last part of the book and all and the very early part, when he died, he had the full treatment. laid in state up there in the capitol and six white horses pulling the casket. how did he do that? what was the -- that doesn't happen very often. >> no. and it is an indication -- what we wanted to do in the prologue because clay has retreated into the shadows of american memory so much is we wanted to show in the prologue how important he was. we wanted to show rather than just say he was important. and we thought the best way to do that was to take this funeral which was unprecedented, the

lying in state in the capitol, the subsequent journey across upstate new york, down lake erie through the central part of the country to lexington where hundreds of thousands, almost maybe a million people turned out in the course of that journey to pay tribute to him. and the sense of loss that they had when he was gone. clay was -- clay was in the parlance of today a rock star. he was the star player among a lot of stock players. >> anything you didn't like about him? >> his inconsistency on the issue of slavery. i think was one of the hardest things for us to actually come to grips with because he was opposed to slavery and yet he owned slaves. and he never, until his death, took that final step to be an example to others to end the institution. >> and what did you like best

about him? >> i think his ability to leaven issues with humor, something that lincoln found admirable enough to emulate. that there is a lot of lincoln foreshadowed in clay's addresses and speeches, the way he used words and the way he approached issues, so there is a kind of anticipation of a great event about to happen. clay as scott fitzgerald said about daisy buchanan in "the great gatsby." there was nothing about the face there was a notion that exciting things had happened and exciting things were about to happen. >> this is the cover of the book "henry clay the essential american" our guests have been david and jean heidheidler, 29 s married, both ph.d. from auburn, live in colorado springs and have done at least ten books.

thank you both very much for joining us. >> thank you. thanks for having us. >> thank you. >> for a dvd copy of this program, call 1-877-662-7726. for free transcripts or to give us your comments about this program, visit us at qanda.org. "q and a" programs are also available as c-span podcasts. it's a safe bet few of those that navigate the traffic around today's logan circle in northwest washington know much about the man on horsebacks who commanding figure has been there since 1901. at the start of the civil war, john a. roggen was a democratic congressman from southern

illinois, resigning his seat he entered the union army as a colonel. his distinguished service in such western campaigns as ft. dona donald'sburg and vicksburg earned him brief command of the army of tennessee. few of the wars political journals contributed as much to northern victory. after the war logan organized the grand army of the republic and helped promote the first memorial day in 1868. he returned to congress serving three terms in the senate. in 1884 he narrowly lost the vice presidency as james g. blaine's running mate. 15 years after his death in 1886, this impressive tribute joined washington's growing company of civil war generals. in life, no stranger to controversy, some thought him too political a general. the bronze roggen appears characteristically in the thick of battle. 12 feet in height, logan and his mount shared the memorial