Henry Clay, John Calhoun and Daniel Webster were sufficiently celebrated in their day that people flocked to hear them speak; those who lacked the proximity or pull to get into the Capitol contented themselves purchasing printed versions of the speeches, often readied for sale within days of the delivery. Periodically the speeches were collected and published in book form. As time passed, new editions supplanted the old ones and often included correspondence. Eventually, long after the deaths of the three, each became the subject of a sustained, scholarly editing project that gathered, annotated and published a comprehensive and authoritative collection of speeches, correspondence and other papers.
For Henry Clay, the definitive collection is The Papers of Henry Clay, edited by James F. Hopkins and Mary W. M. Hargreaves, 11 vols. (University of Kentucky Press, 1959–92). For John Calhoun, it is The Papers of John C. Calhoun, edited by Robert L. Meriwether et al., 28 vols. (University of South Carolina Press, 1959–2003). And for Daniel Webster, it is The Papers of Daniel Webster, edited by Charles M. Wiltse and Harold D. Moser, 14 vols. (University Press of New England for Dartmouth College, 1974–89). These collections form the primary-source backbone of the present work. Occasionally letters and speeches are drawn from other collections; these are identified in the notes.
Much as Congress was taking shape during the four decades of service of the three men, so were the legislature’s record-keeping practices. Addresses and remarks by members were reported sketchily at first, then more fully, in a series of published sets. The Annals of Congress covered the early years of Clay, Webster and Calhoun; it was followed by the Register of Debates and then the Congressional Globe (and ultimately by the Congressional Record). The editing in the collections was occasionally haphazard; for the present book, errors have been corrected without comment. Sometimes speeches were recorded indirectly (“Mr. Calhoun said that the senator from Kentucky was grievously mistaken”); these have been rendered directly (Calhoun said, “The senator from Kentucky is grievously mistaken”).
The best source for presidential speeches and messages is The Public Papers of the Presidents, compiled by the online American Presidency Project.
Published memoirs and secondary sources are identified in full in the notes. A few secondary works deserve special mention: Charles M. Wiltse, John C. Calhoun, 3 vols. (1944–51); Irving H. Bartlett, Daniel Webster (1978) and John C. Calhoun (1993); Merrill D. Peterson, The Great Triumvirate: Webster, Clay and Calhoun (1987); and Robert V. Remini, Henry Clay (1991) and Daniel Webster (1997).