In the early 1800s, the Founders were retiring from public life, replaced by such figures as Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, a champion orator who spoke for the North and its business class; ambitious Henry Clay of Kentucky, who embodied the hopes of the rising West; and South Carolina's John Calhoun, who defended the South and slavery. For four decades, each in his own way sought to remedy the two glaring flaws in the Constitution: its refusal to specify whether the states or the nation were the highest power, and its unwillingness to address slavery. As the author of Traitor to His Class recounts, "the immortal trio" had one last chance to save the country from the real risk of civil war, but it was already too late.