The Heidlers can speak about a variety of subjects relating to society, culture, war, and politics in early 19th century America.
For information, events, and bookings associated with Henry Clay: The Essential American please contact London King by email at loking@randomhouse.com,
or by telephone at 212-572-2693
For all other bookings, please contact: bookings@djheidler.com
- Henry Clay
We call Henry Clay the "essential American." To be sure, without him, the great moments of American history would have been different, and the great hazards that menaced the country would have had less happy conclusions. Take him out of the picture in this crucial period of American history and you remove George Bailey from Bedford Falls. The many small contributions he made in sum could be said to have overshadowed the large ones historians most remember, the small achievements that sent ripples across the country's surface as from a pebble in a pond with results unforeseen but remarkable. America without Henry Clay could have become Pottersville writ large, a place where Abraham Lincoln never aspired to the law or was never inspired to seek public office and was therefore not there at the crucial American moment to save his country.
- Civil War – Military, Political, and Social topics
The worst episode in America history cost the nation more than six hundred thousand dead and countless others maimed, but it established what Lincoln called “a new birth of freedom.” The war as a defining moment in American history, the great and bloody dividing line between Then and Now, forms the basis for focused discussions of its military, economic, and social impact. The Heidlers are editors of the definitive and award-winning Encyclopedia of the American Civil War.
- Southern Secession
Before there was the Civil War there was the dire political crisis over slavery. The Heidlers explain how sectionalism became so unruly that it ultimately divided the nation and plunged it into catastrophic violence. David is the author of a book on this subject.
- First Seminole War
In 1818, Andrew Jackson invaded Spanish Florida to chastise Indians there who had been raiding across the Georgia border. Instead of fulfilling that mission, he seized the province from Spain and set up a provisional American government, all in direct disobedience to his orders. Basing the talk on their book Old Hickory’s War, the Heidlers examine both the campaign and the constitutional implications it raised regarding civil control of the military.
- Indian Removal
This sad and shameful chapter in American history receives a thorough treatment in a talk that traces the origins of the policy as well as the consequences of its implementation, especially for the southeastern Indians who were moved, sometimes forcibly, west of the Mississippi River. The Heidlers are the authors of a book on this subject.
- Manifest Destiny
The term was coined in the 1840s to describe what seemed to be America’s ordained fate to control the continent, but drawing on the research for their book about this subject, the Heidlers show how the forces that apparently culminated in the conquest of Mexico were part of the American experience from the earliest days of colonization.
- Lincoln as War Leader
The Heidlers examine Lincoln through the lens of military and political necessity to explain how his background and temperament as a war leader were formed by his training and experience as a lawyer.
- Mexican War
The Heidlers explain the causes and trace the progress of the war that won for the United States the Southwest and California. Heroes and villains populate a talk that includes, like their book on the war, an unblinking analysis of both American and Mexican motives in this pivotal event.
- Presidential Elections
Each of the quadrennial contests has its own story. The Heidlers tell those stories by bringing to life the vibrant personalities and unique issues that drove the various candidates and the way the art of campaigning has changed to include the thoughtful contemplation of issues as well as the foolish employment of hoopla.
- Slavery Controversy
Slavery posed a thorny problem for Americans who saw it as a constitutional quandary relating to property rights, as an economic necessity dictated by labor intensive cotton agriculture in the South, as a social issue caused by the need to control large populations of incipiently rebellious helots, and as a moral imperative that required emancipation to square American reality with the American promise of liberty. The Heidlers explain all these aspects and show how ultimately the political failure to reconcile these varied perspectives led to war.
- The Burr Conspiracy
- A multimedia presentation that places Aaron Burr’s shadowy plans to establish a separate American nation into the framework of national politics and continental exploration.
- War of 1812
Possibly the least understood war in American history is explained in a comprehensive examination of its causes, course, and conclusion. The Heidlers are editors of an encyclopedia of the war as well as authors of a book that examines its causes and consequences.
