From Robert Remini's Preface to Daniel Webster: The Man and His Time

I identified with what he wrote in the Preface to his massive Daniel Webster: The Man and His Time (1997).  Before this work Remini had published three large volumes of the life and times of Andrew Jackson,

a biography of John Quincy Adams, a biography of Henry Clay, and many other works.  There are so many that any bibliography is merely a "selected" bibliography.  Even from these works an outsider can surmise that Remini as historian owned the Jacksonian era.

Professor Remini also served as the Historian of the House of  Representatives (2005), held several distinguished university positions, and received many awards and honors.  He deserved all of them. The amount of work he did, the value of his work to the historical record of this nation cannot be overstated.

During the years I spent researching and writing my biography of Henry Clay I was constantly amazed to discover how few Americans knew who Clay was.

"The greatest Speaker in the history of he United States House of Representatives," I ventured in an effort to help.

"Really," came the reply.

"The Great Compromiser," I continued, hoping it would stir a memory of something learned years ago.

"Is that so."

"The Missouri Compromise," I offered in desperation.

"Sorry."

After I completed my Clay biography and decided to attempt the life of Daniel Webster, I was delighted to get a better response from friends and acquaintances when they asked about my next project.

"Daniel Webster! Oh yes I know him."

"You do.  That's great."

Yes, he wrote the dictionary!"

Alas. Noah Webster is someone vastly different from Daniel Webster, although they were contemporaries [but 24 years older than Daniel, to whom he was not related].

So few Americans really know the history of this nation and the men and women who figured prominently in its development -- except for Presidents [a few of them] notorious criminals, and other exotics [and most of what most Americans think they know about those figures is wrong -- see Jesse James as one example].  Such important individuals of the early nineteeth century as Clay, Webster, John C. Calhoun, Thomas Hart Benton (not the artist), and others are slowly disappearing from the country's collective memory, and it's a great pity.

However intensely I identify with these words, I also recognize how difficult it is to be familiar with these giants who dominated the national stage during their whole lives.  Ten years ago I didn't know any of them the way I know them know, not even Andrew Jackson about whom I knew the most.  It took more than ten years of constant, systematic study to feel as comfortable with them and their circles as I do now.  We aren't taught about these fellows in grade school, high school or college, even as history majors.  There is so much to know. When I was a child, even Eisenhower was unimaginably distant from me in time.  So I cannot blame people for not knowing who these fellows were, what they did -- and they did so much.  I can only feel unspeakably humble and grateful that I got the opportunity for this extended, extensive, vast in scope study into the history of this nation.

These are some of the best stories you will ever find, in fact or fiction. Calhoun, Clay and Webster were known as the Great Triumvirate. When comes to enduring fascination and national effect they are not in the backseat to the First Triumvirate of Ceasar, Pompey and Crassus.  What men this nation produced.  Moreover, Calhoun, Clay and Webster were born in the same year -- along with many other wildly talented, wildly ambitious, wildly brilliant men, who, mostly, rose from far more modest circumstances than Ceasar, Pompey (even though Pompey was despised as being low caste -- i.e. his family was not Roman) or Crassus. The difference is that in the U.S. Webster -- who could lord it over others like nobody's business -- was never looked down upon by his peers from coming out of genuinely modest background.