Merrill Peterson's subject in this detailed and masterly study is the "intermediate" generation that followed the founders of the republic. Their ascendancy extended from the era of the War of 1812 to the eve of the civil war they labored in vain to prevent.

In this cohort of statesmen, three near contemporaries— Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, and Daniel Webster—stood, by common consent, preeminent. For better or worse (some of each, in fact) their thought, oratory, and political preoccupations set the tone and agenda of the age. It was a self-consciously classical age. Sculptors still dressed their eminent subjects in togas and chiseled their features after the manner of Praxiteles. Classical allusion, to Demosthenes and Pericles and countless other greats of antiquity, still embellished the periods of oratory. And oratory, as in the ancient city-states, was not merely a coin of statecraft but an afternoon's diversion.