Daniel Webster (January 18, 1782 – October 24, 1852), was a leading American statesman during the nation's antebellum era. Webster first rose to regional prominence through his defense of New England shipping interests. His increasingly nationalistic views and the effectiveness with which he articulated them led Webster to become one of the
most famous orators and influential Whig leaders of the Second Party System.
As an attorney, Webster served as legal counsel in several cases that established
important constitutional precedents that bolstered the authority of the Federal government. As Secretary of State, he negotiated the Webster-Ashburton Treaty that established the definitive eastern border between the United States and Canada.
Primarily recognized for his Senate tenure, Webster was a key figure in the
institution's "Golden Age." So well-known was his skill as a Senator throughout this period that Webster became a third and
northern counterpart of what was and still is known today as the "Great Triumvirate,"
with his colleagues Henry Clay from the west and John C.
Calhoun from the south. His "Reply to Hayne" in 1830 was generally regarded
as "the most eloquent speech ever delivered in Congress."[1]
Similar to Henry Clay, Webster's desire to see the Union preserved and conflict averted led him to search out compromises
designed to stave off the sectionalism that threatened war between the North
and South. Webster tried three times to achieve the Presidency; all three bids failed, the final one in part because of his compromises.
Similarly Webster's efforts to steer the nation away from civil war toward a definite peace ultimately proved futile. Despite
this, Webster came to be esteemed for these efforts and was officially named by the Senate in 1957 as one of its five most
outstanding members.
Early life
Webster was born January 18 1782 to Ebenezer and Abigail
Webster (née Eastman) in Salisbury, New
Hampshire, which was later incorporated as a part of the present town of Franklin in 1828. There he and his nine siblings were raised on his parents' farm, a small parcel of land granted to his father in recognition of his service
in the French and Indian War. As Daniel was a “sickly” child, his family indulged
him, exempting him from the harsh rigors of 18th-century New England
farm life.[2]
Webster Hall at Dartmouth College houses the Rauner Special Collections Library in which some of Webster's personal belongings
and writings are held
Webster attended Phillips Exeter Academy, a preparatory school in Exeter, New
Hampshire, before attending Dartmouth College. After he graduated from Dartmouth (Phi
Beta Kappa), Webster was apprenticed to the lawyer Thomas W. Thompson. Webster was
forced to resign and become a schoolmaster (as young men often did then, when public education consisted largely of subsidies to local schoolmasters), when his older
brother's own quest for education put a financial strain on the family that consequently required Webster's support. In 1802 he
served as the headmaster of the Fryeburg Academy, Maine, for the period of one
year.[3] When his brother's education could no longer be
sustained, Webster returned to his apprenticeship. Webster left New Hampshire and got employment in Boston under the prominent attorney Christopher Gore in
1804. Clerking for Gore—who was involved in international, national, and state politics—Webster educated himself on various
political subjects and met New England politicians.[4]
In 1805 Webster was accepted into the bar and returned to
New Hampshire to set up a practice in Boscawen, in part to be near his ailing
father. During this time, Webster took a more active interest in politics. Raised by an ardently Federalist father and taught by a predominantly Federalist-leaning faculty at
Dartmouth, Webster, like many New Englanders, supported Federalism. Accordingly, he
accepted a number of minor local speaking engagements in support of Federalist causes and candidates.[5]
After his father's death in 1806, Webster handed over his practice to his older brother Ezekiel, who had by this time finished
his schooling and been admitted to the bar. Webster then moved to the larger town of Portsmouth in 1807, and opened a practice there.[6] During this time the Napoleonic
Wars began to affect Americans as Britain, short of
sailors, strengthened its navy through the impressment of American sailors thought to be
British deserters. President Thomas Jefferson retaliated with the Embargo Act of 1807, ceasing all trade to both Britain and France. As New England was heavily reliant upon commerce with the two nations, the region vehemently
opposed Jefferson's attempt at "peaceable coercion," including Webster, who wrote an anonymous pamphlet attacking it.[7]
Eventually the trouble with England escalated into the War of 1812. That same year,
Daniel Webster gave an address to the Washington Benevolent Society, an oration that proved critical to his career. The speech
decried the war and the violation of New England's shipping rights that preceded it, but it also strongly denounced the extremism
of those more radical among the unhappy New Englanders who were beginning to call for the region's secession from the Union.
The Washington oration was widely circulated and read throughout New Hampshire, and it led to Webster's 1812 selection to the
Rockingham Convention, an assembly that sought to formally declare the state's grievances with
President James Madison and the federal government. There, he was a member of the drafting committee and was
chosen to compose the Rockingham Memorial to be sent to Madison. The report included much of the same tone and opinions
held in the Washington Society address, except that it, uncharacteristically of its chief architect, alluded to the threat of
secession saying, "If a separation of the states shall ever take place, it will be, on some
occasion, when one portion of the country undertakes to control, to regulate, and to sacrifice the interest of another."[6]
| "The Administration asserts the right to fill the ranks of the regular army by compulsion...Is
this, sir, consistent with the character of a free government? Is this civil liberty? Is this the real character of our
Constitution? No sire, indeed it is not....Where is it written in the
Constitution, in what article or section is it contained, that you may take children from their parents, and compel them to fight
the battles of any war in which the folly or the wickedness of government may engage it? Under what concealment has this power
lain hidden which now for the first time comes forth, with a tremendous and bailful aspect, to trample down and destroy the
dearest rights of personal liberty? |
| Daniel Webster (December 9, 1814 House of Representatives Address) |
Webster's efforts on behalf of New England Federalism, shipping interests, and war opposition resulted in his election to the
House of Representatives in 1812, where he served two terms ending March 1817. He was an outspoken critic of the
Madison administration and its wartime policies, denouncing its efforts at financing the war through paper money and opposing
Secretary of War James Monroe's
conscription proposal. Notable in his second term was his support of
the reestablishment of a stable specie-based national
bank; but he opposed the tariff of 1816 (which sought to protect the nation's
manufacturing interests) and House Speaker Henry
Clay's American System.
This opposition was in accordance with a number of his professed beliefs (and the majority of his constituents') including
free trade, that the tariff's "great object was to raise revenue, not to foster manufacture,"
and that it was against "the true spirit of the Constitution" to give "excessive bounties or encouragements to one [industry]
over another."[8][9]
After his second term, Webster did not seek a third, choosing his law practice instead. In an attempt to secure greater
financial success for himself and his family (he had married Grace Fletcher in 1808, with whom he had four children), he moved
his practice from Portsmouth to Boston.[10]
Notable Supreme Court Cases
Webster pleads Dartmouth's case before the Court.
Webster had been highly regarded in New Hampshire since his days in Boscawen, and had been respected throughout the House
during his service there. He came to national prominence, however, as counsel in a number of important Supreme Court cases.[2] These cases remain major precedents in the
Constitutional jurisprudence of the United States.
In 1816, Webster was retained by the Federalist trustees of his alma mater, Dartmouth
College, to represent them in their case against the newly elected New Hampshire Republican state legislature. The
legislature had passed new laws converting Dartmouth into a state institution, by changing the size of the college's trustee body
and adding a further board of overseers, which they put into the hands of the state senate.[11] New Hampshire argued that they, as successor in sovereignty to George III, who had chartered Dartmouth, had the right to revise the charter.
|
"This, sir, is my case. It is the case not merely of that humble institution, it is the case of every college in our land...
Sir, you may destroy this little institution; it is weak; it is in your hands! I know it is one of the lesser lights in the
literary horizon of our country. You may put it out. But if you do so you must carry through your work! You must extinguish, one
after another, all those greater lights of science which for more than a century have thrown their radiance over our land. It
is, sir, as I have said, a small college. And yet there are those who love it!"
|
| Daniel Webster (Dartmouth College v. Woodward) |
Webster argued Dartmouth College v. Woodward to the Supreme
Court (with significant aid from Jeremiah Mason and Jeremiah Smith), invoking Article I,
section 10 of the Constitution (the Contract Clause) against the State. The Marshall court,
continuing with its history of limiting states' rights and reaffirming the supremacy of
the Constitutional protection of contract, ruled in favor of Webster and Dartmouth 3–1. This decided that corporations did not, as many then held, have to justify their privileges by acting in the public
interest, but were independent of the states.[12]
Other notable appearances by Webster before the Supreme Court include his representation of James McCulloch in
McCulloch v. Maryland (1819), the Cohens in Cohens v. Virginia, and Thomas Gibbons in Gibbons v.
Ogden (1824), cases similar to Dartmouth in the court's application of a broad interpretation of the
Constitution and strengthening of the federal courts' power to constrain the states, which have since been used to justify wide
powers for the federal government. Webster's handling of these cases made him one of the era's foremost constitutional lawyers,
as well as one of the most highly paid.[13]
Return to politics
Webster's growing prominence as a constitutional lawyer led to his election as a delegate to the 1820 Massachusetts Constitutional
Convention. There he spoke in opposition to universal suffrage (for men), on
the Federalist grounds that power naturally follows property, and the vote should be limited
accordingly; but the constitution was amended against his advice.[14] He also supported the (existing) districting of the
State Senate so that each seat represented an equal amount of property.[15]
Webster's performance at the convention furthered his reputation. Joseph Story (also a
delegate at the convention) wrote to Jeremiah Mason following the convention saying "Our friend Webster has gained a noble
reputation. He was before known as a lawyer; but he has now secured the title of an eminent and enlightened statesman."[16] Webster also spoke at Plymouth commemorating the landing of the
Pilgrims in 1620; his oration was widely circulated and read
throughout New England. He was elected to the Eighteenth Congress in
1822, from Boston.
In his second term, Webster found himself a leader of the fragmented House Federalists who had split following the failure of
the secessionist-minded 1814 Hartford Convention that he avoided. Speaker Henry Clay made
Webster chairman of the Judiciary Committee in an attempt
to win his and the Federalists' support. His term of service in the House between 1822 and 1828 was marked by his legislative
success at reforming the United States criminal code, and his failure at expanding the size of the Supreme Court. He largely
supported the National Republican administration of
John Quincy Adams, including Adams' candidacy in the highly contested election of 1824 and the administration's defense of treaty-sanctioned
Creek Indian land rights against Georgia's
expansionist claims.[17]
While a Representative, Webster continued accepting speaking engagements in New England, most notably his oration on the
fiftieth anniversary of Bunker Hill (1825) and his eulogy on
Adams and Jefferson (1826). With the support
of a coalition of both Federalists and Republicans, Webster's record in the House and his celebrity as an orator led to his June
1827 election to the Senate from Massachusetts. His first wife, Grace, died in January 1828, and he married Caroline LeRoy in
December 1829.
Senate
Webster Replying to Hayne by George P.A. Healy
When Webster returned to the Senate from his wife's funeral in March 1828, he found the body considering a new tariff bill that sought to increase the duties on foreign
manufactured goods on top of the increases of 1824 and 1816, both of which Webster had opposed. Now, however, Webster changed his
position to support a protective tariff. Explaining the change, Webster stated that after the failure of the rest of the nation
to heed New England's objections in 1816 and 1824, "nothing was left to New England but to conform herself to the will of
others," and now consequently being heavily invested in manufacturing, he would not now do them injury. It is the more blunt
opinion of Justus D. Doenecke that Webster's support of the 1828 tariff was a result of "his new closeness to the rising
mill-owning families of the region, the Lawrences and the Lowells."[6]
Webster also gave greater approval to Clay's American System, a change that along with his modified view of the tariff brought
him closer to Henry Clay.
The passage of the tariff brought increased sectional tensions to the U.S., tensions that were agitated by then
Vice President John C.
Calhoun's promulgation of his South Carolina Exposition and
Protest. The exposition espoused the idea of nullification, a doctrine first
articulated in the U.S. by Madison and Jefferson
that held that states were sovereign entities and held ultimate authority over the limits of
the power of the federal government, and could thus "nullify" any act of the central government it deemed unconstitutional. While
for a time the tensions increased by Calhoun's exposition lay beneath the surface, they burst forth when South Carolina Senator Robert Young Hayne opened the 1830
Webster-Hayne debate.
By 1830, Federal land policy had long been an issue. The National Republican administration had held land prices high.
According to Adams' Secretary of the Treasury Richard Rush, this served to provide the federal government with an additional source of revenue, but also
to discourage westward migration that tended to increase
wages through the increased scarcity of labor.[18]
Senator Hayne, in an effort to sway the west against the north and the tariff, seized upon a minor point in the land debate and
accused the north of attempting to limit western expansion for their own benefit. As Vice President Calhoun was presiding officer over the Senate but could not address the Senate in business, James Schouler
contended that Hayne was doing what Calhoun could not.[19]
The next day, Webster, feeling compelled to respond on New England's behalf, gave his first rebuttal to Hayne, highlighting
what he saw as the virtues of the North's policies toward the west and claiming that restrictions on western expansion and growth
were primarily the responsibility of southerners. Hayne in turn responded the
following day, denouncing Webster's inconsistencies with regards to the American system and personally attacking Webster for his
role in the so called "corrupt bargain" of 1824. The course of the debate strayed even
further away from the initial matter of land sales with Hayne openly defending the "Carolina Doctrine" of nullification as being
the doctrine of Jefferson and Madison.
|
When my eyes shall be turned to behold for the last time the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and
dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or
drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood! Let their last feeble and lingering glance rather behold the gorgeous ensign of the
republic... not a stripe erased or polluted, nor a single star obscured, bearing for its motto, no such miserable interrogatory
as "What is all this worth?" nor those other words of delusion and folly, "Liberty first and Union afterwards"; but everywhere,
spread all over in characters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, and
in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every true American heart,— Liberty and Union, now and for
ever, one and inseparable!
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| Daniel Webster (Second Reply to Hayne) |
On January 26, Webster gave his Second Reply to Hayne, in which Webster openly
attacked Nullification, negatively contrasted South Carolina's response to the tariff with that of his native New England's
response to the Embargo of 1807, rebutted Hayne's personal attacks against him, and famously concluded in defiance of
nullification (which was later embodied in John C. Calhoun's declaration of "The Union; second to our liberty most
dear!"), "Liberty and Union, now and for ever, one and inseparable!"
The so-called "Black Dan" Portrait
While the debate's philosophical presentation of nullification and Webster's abstract fears of rebellion were brought into
reality in 1832 when Calhoun's native South Carolina passed its Ordinance of
Nullification, Webster supported President Andrew Jackson's sending of U.S. troops
to the borders of South Carolina and the Force Bill, not Henry Clay's 1833 compromise that
eventually defused the crisis. Webster thought Clay's concessions were dangerous and would only further embolden the south and
legitimize its tactics. Especially unsettling was the resolution affirming that "the people of the several States composing these
United States are united as parties to a constitutional compact, to which the people of each State acceded as a separate
sovereign community." The usage of the word accede would, in his opinion, lead to the logical end of those states' right
to secede.
|
Since I have arrived here [in Washington], I have had an application to be
concerned, professionally, against the bank, which I have declined, of course, although I believe my retainer has not been
renewed or refreshed as usual. If it be wished that my relation to the Bank should be continued, it may be well to send me the
usual retainers.
|
| Daniel Webster (A letter to officials at the bank) |
At the same time however, Webster, like Clay, opposed the economic policies of Andrew Jackson, the most famous of those being
Jackson's campaign against the Second Bank of the United States in
1832, an institution that held Webster on retainer as legal counsel and of whose Boston Branch he was the director. Clay,
Webster, and a number of other former Federalists and National Republicans united as the Whig Party, in defense of the Bank against Jackson's intention to replace it. There was an
economic panic in 1837, which converted Webster's heavy speculation in midwestern property into a personal debt from which Webster never recovered. His debt was
exacerbated by his propensity for living "habitually beyond his means", lavishly furnishing his estate and giving away money with
"reckless generosity and heedless profusion", in addition to indulging the smaller-scale "passions and appetites" of gambling and
alcohol.[20]
In 1836, Webster was one of three Whig Party candidates to
run for the office of President, but he only managed to gain the support
of Massachusetts. This was the first of three unsuccessful attempts at gaining the presidency. In 1839, the Whig Party nominated William Henry
Harrison for president. Webster was offered the vice presidency, but he declined.
As Secretary of State
Following his victory in 1840, President Harrison appointed Webster to the post of Secretary of State in 1841, a post he retained under President John Tyler after the death of Harrison a month after his inauguration. In September 1841, an internal
division amongst the Whigs over the question of the National Bank caused all the Whigs (except Webster who was in Europe at the
time) to resign from Tyler's cabinet. In 1842, he was the architect of the
Webster-Ashburton Treaty, which resolved the Caroline Affair, established the definitive Eastern
border between the United States and Canada (Maine and
New Brunswick), and signaled a definite and lasting peace between the United States and
Britain. Webster succumbed to Whig pressure in May 1842 and finally left the cabinet.
Later career and death
In 1845 he was re-elected to the Senate, where he opposed both the annexation of
Texas and the resulting Mexican-American War for
fear of its upsetting the delicate balance of slave and non-slave states.
In 1848, he sought the Whig Party's nomination for President
but was beaten by military hero Zachary Taylor. Webster was once again offered the vice
presidency, but he declined saying, "I do not propose to be buried until I am dead." The Whig ticket won the election; Taylor
died 16 months later.
The Compromise of 1850 was the Congressional effort led by Clay and
Stephen Douglas to compromise the sectional disputes that seemed to be headed toward
civil war. On March 7 1850, Webster gave one of his most famous
speeches, characterizing himself "not as a Massachusetts man, nor as a Northern man but as an American..." In it he gave his
support to the compromise, which included the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 that
required federal officials to recapture and return runaway slaves.
Webster was bitterly attacked by abolitionists in New England who felt betrayed by his
compromises. Rev. Theodore Parker complained, "No living man has done so much to debauch
the conscience of the nation." Horace Mann described him as being "a fallen star!
Lucifer descending from Heaven!" James
Russell Lowell called Webster "the most meanly and foolishly treacherous man I ever heard of."[21] Webster never recovered the popularity he lost in the aftermath of the
Seventh of March speech.
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I shall stand by the Union...with absolute disregard of personal consequences. What are personal consequences...in comparison
with the good or evil which may befall a great country in a crisis like this?...Let the consequences be what they will.... No man
can suffer too much, and no man can fall too soon, if he suffer or if he fall in defense of the liberties and constitution of his
country.
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| Daniel Webster (July 17, 1850 address to the Senate) |
Resigning the Senate under a cloud in 1850, he resumed his former position as Secretary of State in the cabinet of Whig
President Millard Fillmore. Notable in this second tenure was the increasingly strained
relationship between the United States and Austria in the aftermath of what was seen by
Austria as American interference in its rebellious Kingdom of Hungary. As chief
American diplomat, Webster authored the Hülsemann Letter, in which he defended what he believed to be America's right to take an
active interest in the internal politics of Hungary, while still maintaining its neutrality. He also advocated for the
establishment of commercial relations with Japan, going so far as to draft the letter that
was to be presented to the Emperor Kōmei on President Fillmore's behalf by Commodore
Matthew Perry on his 1852 voyage to Asia.
In 1852 he made his final campaign for th
