At the Edge of the Precipice: Henry Clay and the Compromise That Saved the Union

By Robert V. Remini

he author of such definitive histories as Henry Clay: Statesman for the Union (1991) here turns in a case study of the Compromise of 1850. It was not the first deflection of civil war by Clay, who engineered the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and the resolution to the nullification crisis of 1832. But it may have been the Kentucky senator's most consequential compromise if, as Remini argues, it postponed for a decade a war the North could not have won in 1850. Describing Clay's view of compromise as victory for both parties and detailing the deadlock over slavery's status in the territories, which needed to be broken to quash secession, Remini recounts the strategy Clay devised to placate the South's grievances. Inaugurated with Clay's speech, soaring oratory by Daniel Webster, and a bitter rebuttal from the dying John Calhoun, the debate over Clay's compromise boiled until the death of President Taylor and the tactical talents of Stephen Douglas cooled down sectional acrimony and produced Clay's compromise. Condensed with well-dramatized brevity, Remini's account will captivate the American-history audience.

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