#ooogh...

Oooooh, I hope you have fun in your reading! It’s been a hot second since I’ve done any actual history research and there are people on here with much fresher information than I, but the triumvirs, and the way that their relationships changed over their shared 40 years in public office, is still fascinating to me! They’re all such weird, interesting, flawed men.

As for Clay and Calhoun: best brothers-in-arms in the halcyon days leading up to the war of 1812, slowly drawing apart in the ‘20s (probably as Calhoun saw which way the populist wind was blowing and Clay speedran the presidential course), their disastrous breakup while Calhoun was VP, the Jackson administration wherein Calhoun made some very bad choices and got bailed out heroically by his ex, a few years of them working together (a very zesty concept) before Calhoun turned his back on Clay AGAIN during the subtreasury debate, ostensibly due to principles but I think i large part because by that point he was willing to do anything for political power and realized that Clay was simply too brilliant an opponent within the Whig party and he’d be better off trying to outshine Van Buren. A strange interlude during the Mexican-American war where Calhoun went so far around the horshoe curve that he bumped back into the Whigs. Then Calhoun’s great descent into pre-Civil War radicalism while Clay tried frantically to hold the country together caps off a tragic final act where they part as irreconcilable enemies, embittered and unrecognizable, as individuals and as a pair, from when they were young and hopeful and had their lives before them.

Mostly I think Clay and Calhoun are examples of how otherwise well-intended, intelligent people can be really terrible for each other and everyone around them. Historically their arcs are a reflection of what was happening in the country, both sprawling outward with boundless enthusiasm despite great flaws of character (clay) and consistently self-sabotaging by being doctrinally adherent to the rotten and unsalvageable foundations of the country’s prosperity (calhoun). There are so many points where, if they combined their energy, they could have drastically changed the country’s course - but they were always doomed to fall apart, much like the country itself.