Life of Daniel Webster 
 
 Edward
 
 1CSB LIBRARY 
 
 THE LIFE 
 
 OP 
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 BY 
 
 EDWARD EVERETT 
 
 FROM 
 
 The Makers of American History 
 
 PUBLISHED BY 
 
 J. A. HILL & COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK
 
 COPYRIOHT, 1904, 
 
 BY 
 THK UNIVERSITY SOCIETY, INC.
 
 EDITOR'S PREFACE 
 
 The author of this biographical memoir of Daniel 
 Webster was one of the noted men of his time. An 
 eloquent Unitarian clergyman, Edward Everett was 
 sought and served as Professor of Greek Literature 
 in Harvard College, was elected ten continuous 
 years in Congress, then four years successively as 
 Governor of Massachusetts, was United States min- 
 ister to England during Mr. Webster's secretary- 
 ship of state under Presidents Harrison and Tyler, 
 and was the successor of that great man in the State 
 Department after Webster's death. He was Presi- 
 dent of Harvard for three years, then elected United 
 State Senator from Massachusetts, but feeble health 
 compelled his resignation within a year. He was 
 a noted orator, of a polished and elaborate style, and 
 much sought after on occasions of literary or politi- 
 cal importance. From youth to death he was a 
 friend, admirer, and intimate associate of Daniel 
 Webster, and therefore his account of the public 
 services of the Massachusetts Senator are sure to 
 be authentic and to represent matters from Mr. Web- 
 ster's point of view a matter of concern, if we 
 would understand a man's words and deeds, and, 
 further still, his motives. 
 
 A. B., VOL. VI. 9 129
 
 130 EDITOR'S PREFACE 
 
 The Memoir is naturally very full in explanation 
 of certain disputed matters, which, however signifi- 
 cant in their day, have passed out of remembrance. 
 It contains many noble passages from Mr. Web- 
 ster's speeches, and correspondence throwing light 
 upon matters of discussion; it enlarges upon some 
 points of importance in solving questions yet in abey- 
 ance when the memoir was written in Mr. Web- 
 ster's lifetime, but not now; and in other ways it 
 presents matter which has been deemed unnecessary 
 to the purposes of this Series, aiming to give au- 
 thentic, readable, terse biographies of our greatest 
 Americans. Material of that nature, therefore, has 
 been eliminated; but the interest and the authority 
 of the memoir stands unquestionable, the abridg- 
 ment serving merely to relieve it of details no longer 
 of concern to the general reader of to-day.
 
 LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 Parentage and Birth. Early Education. Exeter Academy. 
 Dartmouth College. Study of the Law. Fryeburg in Maine. 
 In the Office of Hon. Christopher Gore. Admission to the 
 Bar. Commencement of Practice. Removal to Portsmouth. 
 
 THE family of Daniel Webster has been estab- 
 lished in America from a very early period. It was 
 of Scottish origin, but passed some time in England 
 before the final emigration. Thomas Webster, the 
 remotest ancestor who can be traced, was settled at 
 Hampton, on the coast of New Hampshire, as early 
 as 1636, sixteen years after the landing at Plymouth, 
 and six years from the arrival of Governor Win- 
 throp in Massachusetts Bay. The descent from 
 Thomas Webster to Daniel can be traced in the 
 church and town records of Hampton, Kingston 
 (now East Kingston), and Salisbury. These rec- 
 ords and the mouldering headstones of village grave- 
 yards are the herald's office of the fathers of New 
 England. Noah Webster, the learned author of the 
 American Dictionary of the English Language, was 
 of a collateral branch of the family. 
 
 Ebenezer Webster, the father of Daniel, is still 
 recollected in Kingston and Salisbury. His personal 
 appearance was striking. He was erect, of athletic
 
 132 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 
 
 stature, six feet high, broad and full in the chest. 
 Long service in the wars had given him a military 
 air and carriage. He belonged to that intrepid bor- 
 der race, which lined the whole frontier of the 
 Anglo-American colonies, by turns farmers, hunts- 
 men, and soldiers, and passing their lives in one 
 long struggle with the hardships of an infant settle- 
 ment, on the skirts of a primeval forest. Ebenezer 
 Webster enlisted early in life as a common soldier, 
 in one of those formidable companies of rangers, 
 which rendered such important services under Sir 
 Jeffrey Amherst and Wolfe in the Seven Years' 
 War. He followed the former distinguished leader 
 in the invasion of Canada, attracted the attention 
 and gained the good-will of his superior officers by 
 his brave and faithful conduct, and rose to the rank 
 of a captain before the end of the war. 
 
 Captain Webster was one of the settlers of the 
 newly granted township of Salisbury, and received 
 an allotment in its northerly portion. More ad- 
 venturous than others of the company, he cut his 
 way deeper into the wilderness, and made the path 
 he could not find. At this time his nearest civilized 
 neighbors on the northwest were at Montreal. 
 
 The following allusion of Mr. Webster to his 
 birthplace will be read with interest. It is from 
 a speech delivered before a great public assembly at 
 Saratoga, in the year 1840: 
 
 " It did not happen to me to be born in a log cabin ; but 
 my elder brothers and sisters were born in a log cabin, raised 
 amid the snowdrifts of New Hampshire, at a period so early 
 that, when the smoke first rose from its rude chimney, and
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER 133 
 
 curled over the frozen hills, there was no similar evidence of a 
 white man's habitation between it and the settlements on the 
 rivers of Canada. Its remains still exist. I make to it an 
 annual visit. I carry my children to it to teach them the hard- 
 ships endured by the generations which have gone before them. 
 I love to dwell on the tender recollections, the kindred ties, the 
 early affections, and the touching narratives and incidents, 
 which mingle with all I know of this primitive family abode." 
 
 Soon after his settlement in Salisbury, the first 
 wife of Ebenezer Webster having deceased, he mar- 
 ried Abigail Eastman, who became the mother of 
 Ezekiel and Daniel Webster, the only sons of the 
 second marriage. Like the mothers of so many 
 men of eminence, she was a woman of more than 
 ordinary intellect, and possessed a force of character 
 which was felt throughout the humble circle in which 
 she moved. 
 
 About the time of his second marriage, Captain 
 Ebenezer Webster erected a frame house hard by the 
 log cabin. He dug a well near it and planted an elm 
 sapling. In this house Daniel Webster was born, 
 in the last year of the Revolutionary war, on the 
 1 8th of January, 1782. 
 
 The interval between the peace of 1763 and the 
 breaking out of the war of the Revolution was one 
 of excitement and anxiety throughout the Colonies. 
 Like so many of the officers and soldiers of the 
 former war, Captain Webster obeyed the first call 
 to arms in the new struggle. He commanded a com- 
 pany, chiefly composed of his own townspeople, 
 friends, and kindred, who followed him through 
 the greater portion of the war. He was at the battle 
 of White Plains, and was at West Point when the
 
 134 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 
 
 treason of Arnold was discovered. He acted as a 
 Major under Stark at Bennington, and contributed 
 his share to the success of that eventful day. 
 
 If the character and situation of the place, and 
 the circumstances under which Daniel Webster 
 passed the first years of his life, might seem adverse 
 to the early cultivation of his extraordinary talent, 
 it still cannot be doubted that they possessed influ- 
 ences favorable to elevation and strength of char- 
 acter. The hardships of an infant settlement and 
 border life, the traditions of a long series of Indian 
 wars, and incidents of two mighty national contests, 
 in which an honored parent had borne his part, were 
 circumstances to leave an abiding impression on the 
 mind of a thoughtful child, and induce an early 
 maturity of character. 
 
 It may well be supposed that Mr. Webster's early 
 opportunities for education were very scanty. Some- 
 thing that was called a school was kept for two 
 or three months in the winter, frequently by an 
 itinerant, too often a pretender, claiming only to 
 teach a little reading, writing, and ciphering, and 
 wholly incompetent to give any valuable assistance 
 to a clever youth in learning either. 
 
 From the village library at Salisbury, also, Mr. 
 Webster was able to obtain a moderate supply of 
 good reading. 
 
 The year before Mr. Webster was born was ren- 
 dered memorable in New Hampshire by the founda- 
 tion of the Acadmey at Exeter, through the munifi- 
 cence of the Honorable John Phillips. To this 
 Academy Mr. Webster was taken by his father in
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER 135 
 
 May, 1796. He enjoyed the advantage of only a 
 few months' instruction in this excellent school; 
 but, short as the period was, his mind appears to 
 have received an impulse of a most genial and 
 quickening character. The following anecdote from 
 Mr. March's " Reminiscences of Congress " will 
 not be thought out of place in this connection : 
 
 " It may appear somewhat singular that the greatest orator of 
 modern times should have evinced in his boyhood the strongest 
 antipathy to public declamation. This fact, however, is estab- 
 lished by his own words, which have recently appeared in print. 
 ' I believe,' says Mr. Webster, ' I made tolerable progress in 
 most branches which I attended to while in this school; but 
 there was one thing I could not do. I could not make a decla- 
 mation. I could not speak before the school. The kind and 
 excellent Buckminster sought especially to persuade me to per- 
 form the exercise of declamation, like other boys, but I could 
 not do it. Many a piece did I commit to memory, and recite 
 and rehearse in my own room, over and over again ; yet when 
 the day came, when the school collected to hear declamations, 
 when my name was called, and I saw all eyes turned to my seat, 
 I could not raise myself from it. Sometimes the instructors 
 frowned, sometimes they smiled. Mr. Buckminster always 
 pressed and entreated, most winningly, that I would venture. 
 But I never could command sufficient resolution.' Such diffi- 
 dence of its own powers may be natural to genius, nervously 
 fearful of being unable to reach that ideal which it proposes as 
 the only full consummation of its wishes. It is fortunate, how- 
 ever, for the age, fortunate for all ages, that Mr. Webster by 
 determined will and frequent trial overcame this moral in- 
 capacity, as his great prototype, the Grecian orator, subdued his 
 physical defect." pp. 12, 13. 
 
 After a few months well spent at Exeter, Mr. 
 Webster returned home, and in February, 1797, was 
 placed by his father under the Rev. Samuel Wood, 
 the minister of the neighboring town of Boscawen,
 
 136 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 
 
 He lived in Mr. Wood's family, and for board and in- 
 struction the entire charge was one dollar per week. 
 
 On their way to Mr. Wood's, Mr. Webster's 
 father first opened to his son, now fifteen years old, 
 the design of sending him to college, the thought 
 of which had never before entered his mind. " I 
 remember," says Mr. Webster, in an autobiographi- 
 cal memorandum of his boyhood, " the very hill 
 which we were ascending, through deep snows, in 
 a New England sleigh, when my father made known 
 this purpose to me. I could not speak. How could 
 he, I thought, with so large a family and in such nar- 
 row circumstances, think of incurring so great an 
 expense for me. A warm glow ran all over me, and 
 I laid my head on my father's shoulder and wept." 
 
 From February till August, 1797, Mr. Webster 
 remained under the instruction of Mr. Wood, at 
 Boscawen, and completed his preparation for col- 
 lege. It is hardly necessary to say, that the prepara- 
 tion was imperfect. Short as was his period 
 of preparation, however, it enabled Mr. Web- 
 ster to lay the foundation of a knowledge of the 
 classical writers, especially the Latin, which was 
 greatly increased in college, and which was kept 
 up by constant recurrence to the great models of 
 antiquity, during the busiest periods of active life. 
 The happiness of Mr. Webster's occasional cita- 
 tions from the Latin classics was a striking feature 
 of his oratory. 
 
 Mr. Webster entered Dartmouth College in 1797, 
 and passed the four academic years in assiduous 
 study. He was not only distinguished for his at-
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER 137 
 
 tention to the prescribed studies, but devoted him- 
 self to general reading, especially to English history 
 and literature. He took part in the publication of 
 a little weekly newspaper, furnishing selections from 
 books and magazines, with an occasional article 
 from his own pen. He delivered addresses, also, 
 before the college societies, some of which were 
 published. In the winter vacations he taught school. 
 
 Mr. Webster completed his college course in Au- 
 gust, 1 80 1, and immediately entered the office of 
 Mr. Thompson, the next-door neighbor of his father, 
 as a student of law, where he remained until appli- 
 cation was made to him to take charge of an acad- 
 emy at Fryeburg in Maine, upon a salary of about 
 one dollar per diem, being less than is now paid for 
 the coarsest kind of unskilled manual labor. As he 
 was able, besides, to earn enough to' pay for his board 
 and to defray his other expenses by acting as assist- 
 ant to the register of deeds for the county, his sal- 
 ary was all saved, a fund for his own professional 
 education and to help his brother through college. 
 
 In September, 1802, Mr. Webster returned to 
 Salisbury, and resumed his studies under Mr. 
 Thompson, in whose office he remained for eighteen 
 months. Besides his law studies, he gave a good 
 deal of time to general reading, and especially the 
 study of the Latin classics, English history, and the 
 volumes of Shakespeare. In order to obtain a 
 wider compass of knowledge, and to learn some- 
 thing of the language not to be gained from the 
 classics, he read through attentively PuffendorfFs 
 " Latin History of England,"
 
 138 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 
 
 In July, 1804, he took up his residence in Boston, 
 and enjoyed the advantage of pursuing his legal 
 studies for six or eight months in the office of the 
 Hon. Christopher Gore, afterwards Governor of 
 Massachusetts, a lawyer of eminence, a statesman 
 and a civilian, a gentleman of the old school of 
 manners, and a rare example of distinguished intel- 
 lectual qualities, united with practical good sense 
 and judgment. He had passed several years in Eng- 
 land as a commissioner, under Jay's treaty, for liqui- 
 dating the claims of citizens of the United States 
 for seizures by British cruisers in the early wars of 
 the French Revolution. His library, amply fur- 
 nished with works of professional and general lit- 
 erature, his large experience of men and things at 
 home and abroad, and his uncommon amenity of 
 temper, combined to make the period passed by Mr. 
 Webster in his office one of the pleasantest in his 
 life. These advantages, it hardly need be said, were 
 not thrown away. 
 
 Just as he was about to be admitted to practise 
 in the Suffolk Court of Common Pleas in Massa- 
 chusetts, the place of clerk in the Court of Com- 
 mon Pleas for the county of Hillsborough, in New 
 Hampshire, became vacant. Of this court Mr. Web- 
 ster's father had been made one of the judges, in 
 conformity with a very common practice at that 
 time, of placing on the side bench of the lower courts 
 men of intelligence and respectability, though not 
 lawyers. From regard to Judge Webster, the va- 
 cant clerkship was offered by his colleagues to his 
 son. The fees of the office were about fifteen hun-
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER 139 
 
 dred dollars per annum, which in those days and in 
 that region was not so much a competence as a for- 
 tune. Mr. Webster himself was disposed to accept 
 the office. It promised an immediate provision in 
 lieu of a distant and doubtful prospect. It enabled 
 him at once to bring comfort into his father's 
 family. But the earnest dissuasions of Mr. Gore, 
 who saw in this step the certain postponement, per- 
 haps the final defeat, of all hopes of professional ad- 
 vancement, prevented his accepting the office. In 
 the spring of the same year (1805) Mr. Webster 
 was admitted to the practice of the law in the Court 
 of Common Pleas for Suffolk County, Boston. 
 
 Immediately on his admission to the bar, Mr. 
 Webster went to Amherst, in New Hampshire, 
 where his father's court was in session; from that 
 place he went home with his father, who was now 
 infirm from the advance of years, and had no other 
 sop at home. Under these circumstances Mr. Web- 
 ster opened an office at Boscawen, not far from his 
 father's residence, and commenced the practice of 
 the law in this retired spot. Judge Webster lived 
 but a year ; long enough, however, to hear his son's 
 first argument in court, and to be gratified with the 
 confident predictions of his future success. 
 
 In May, 1807, Mr. Webster was admitted as an 
 attorney and counsellor of the Superior Court in 
 New Hampshire, and in September of that year, 
 relinquishing his office in Boscawen to his brother 
 Ezekiel, he removed to Portsmouth, in conformity 
 with his original intention. Here he remained in 
 the practice of his profession for nine successive
 
 140 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 
 
 years. They were years of assiduous labor, and of 
 unremitted devotion to the study and practice of the 
 law. He was associated with several persons of 
 great eminence, citizens of New Hampshire or of 
 Massachusetts occasionally practising at the Ports- 
 mouth bar. Among the latter were Samuel Dexter 
 and Joseph Story; of the residents of New Hamp- 
 shire, Jeremiah Mason was the most distinguished. 
 Often opposed to each other as lawyers, a strong 
 personal friendship grew up between them, which 
 ended only with the death of Mr. Mason. 
 
 Although dividing with Mr. Mason the best of the 
 business of Portsmouth, and indeed of all the eastern 
 portion of the State, Mr. Webster's practice was 
 mostly on the circuit. He followed the Superior 
 Court through the principal counties of the State, 
 and was retained in nearly every important cause. 
 It is a somewhat singular fact in his professional 
 life, that, with the exception of the occasions on 
 which he has been associated with the Attorney- 
 General of the United States for the time being, 
 he has hardly appeared ten times as junior counsel. 
 Within the sphere in which he was placed, he may 
 be said to have risen at once to the head of his pro- 
 fession; not, however, like Erskine and some other 
 celebrated British lawyers, by one and the same 
 bound, at once to fame and fortune. Mr. Web- 
 ster's practice in New Hampshire, though probably 
 as good as that of any of his contemporaries, was 
 never lucrative. Although exclusively devoted to his 
 profession, it afforded him no more than a bare 
 livelihood.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 Public Life. Election to Congress. Extra Session of 1813. 
 Foreign Relations. Berlin and Milan Decrees. Naval De- 
 fence. Reflected to Congress in 1814. Peace with England. 
 National Bank. Battle of New Orleans. New Questions. 
 The Tariff Policy. Specie Payments. Removal to Boston. 
 
 MR. WEBSTER had hitherto taken less interest in 
 politics than has been usual with the young men of 
 talent, at least with the young lawyers of America. 
 In fact, at the time to which the preceding narrative 
 refers, the politics of the country were in such a 
 state, that there was scarce any course which could 
 be pursued with entire satisfaction by a patriotic 
 young man sagacious enough to penetrate behind 
 mere party names, and to view public questions in 
 their true light. The United States, although not 
 actually drawn to any great depth into the vortex 
 of the French Revolution, were powerfully affected 
 by it. The deadly struggle of the two great Euro- 
 pean belligerents, in which the neutral rights of this 
 country were grossly violated by both, gave a com- 
 plexion to our domestic politics. 
 
 The aggressions of the belligerents on our neutral 
 commerce continued, and, by the joint effect of the 
 Berlin and Milan Decrees and the Orders in Council, 
 it was all but swept from the ocean. In this state 
 of things two courses were open to the United 
 
 141
 
 142 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 
 
 States, as a growing neutral power: one, that of 
 prompt resistance to the aggressive policy of the 
 belligerents ; the other, that which was called " the 
 restrictive system," which consisted in an embargo 
 on our own vessels, with a view to withdraw them 
 from the grasp of foreign cruisers, and in laws 
 inhibiting commercial intercourse with England and 
 France. There was a division of opinion in the 
 cabinet of Mr. Jefferson and in the country at large. 
 The latter policy was finally adopted. It fell in with 
 the general views of Mr. Jefferson against com- 
 mitting the country to the risks of foreign war. 
 
 Although the discipline of party was sufficiently 
 strong to cause this system of measures to be adopted 
 and pursued for years, it was never cordially ap- 
 proved by the people of the United States of any 
 party. It continued, however, to form the basis of 
 our party divisions till the war of 1812. In these 
 divisions, as has been intimated, both parties were 
 in a false position ; the one supporting and forcing 
 upon the country a system of measures not cordially 
 approved, even by themselves; the other, a power- 
 less minority, zealously opposing those measures, 
 but liable for that reason to be thought backward 
 in asserting the neutral rights of the country. A 
 few men of well-balanced minds, true patriotism, 
 and sound statesmanship, in all sections of the coun- 
 try, were able to unite fidelity to their party associa- 
 tions with a comprehensive view to the good of 
 the country. Among these, mature beyond his years, 
 was Mr. Webster. As early as 1806 he had, in a 
 public oration, presented an impartial view of the
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER 143 
 
 foreign relations of the country in reference to 
 both belligerents, of the importance of our commer- 
 cial interests and the duty of protecting them. 
 
 At length the foreign belligerents themselves per- 
 ceived the folly and injustice of their measures. In 
 the strife which should inflict the greatest injury 
 on the other, they had paralyzed the commerce of 
 the world and embittered the minds of all the neu- 
 tral powers. The Berlin and Milan Decrees were 
 revoked, but in a manner so unsatisfactory as in a 
 great degree to impair the pacific tendency of the 
 measure. The Orders in Council were also re- 
 scinded in the summer of 1812. War, however, 
 justly provoked by each and both of the parties, 
 had meantime been declared by Congress against 
 England, and active hostilities had been commenced 
 on the frontier. At the elections next ensuing, Mr. 
 Webster was brought forward as a candidate for 
 Congress of the Federal party of that day, and, hav- 
 ing been chosen in the month of November, 1812. 
 he took his seat at the first session of the Thirteenth 
 Congress, which was an extra session called in May, 
 1813. Although his course of life hitherto had been 
 in what may be called a provincial sphere, and he had 
 never been a member even of the legislature of his 
 native State, a presentiment of his ability seems to 
 have gone before him to Washington. He was, in 
 the organization of the House, placed by Mr. Clay, 
 its Speaker, upon the Committee of Foreign Affairs, 
 a select committee at that time, and of necessity 
 the leading committee in a state of war. 
 
 There were many men of uncommon ability in the
 
 144 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 
 
 Thirteenth Congress. Rarely has so much talent 
 been found at any one time in the House of Repre- 
 sentatives. Although among the youngest and least 
 experienced members of the body, Mr. Webster rose, 
 from the first, to a position of undisputed equality 
 with the most distinguished. The times were criti- 
 cal. The immediate business to be attended to was 
 the financial and military conduct of the war, a sub- 
 ject of difficulty and importance. The position of 
 Mr. Webster was not such as to require or permit 
 him to take a lead ; but it was his steady aim, with- 
 out the sacrifice of his principles, to pursue such a 
 course as would tend most effectually to extricate 
 the country from the embarrassments of her present 
 position, and to lead to peace upon honorable terms. 
 
 Mr. Webster was not a member of Congress when 
 war was declared, nor in any other public station. 
 He was too deeply read in the law of nations, and 
 regarded that august code with too much respect, 
 not to contemplate with indignation its infraction 
 by both the belligerents. 
 
 Early in the session, he moved a series of resolu- 
 tions of inquiry, relative to the repeal of the Berlin 
 and Milan Decrees. The object of these resolutions 
 was to elicit a communication on this subject from 
 the executive, which would unfold the proximate 
 causes of the war, as far as they were to be sought 
 in those famous Decrees, and in the Orders in Coun- 
 cil. On the loth of June, 1813, Mr. Webster deliv- 
 ered his maiden speech on these resolutions. No 
 full report of this speech has been preserved. It is 
 known only from extremely imperfect sketches, con-
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER 145 
 
 tained in the contemporaneous newspaper accounts 
 of the proceedings of Congress, from the recollec- 
 tion of those who heard it, and from the general tra- 
 dition. It was marked by all the characteristics 
 of Mr. Webster's maturest parliamentary efforts, 
 moderation of tone, precision of statement, force of 
 reasoning, absence of ambitious rhetoric and high- 
 flown language, occasional bursts of true eloquence, 
 and, pervading the whole, a genuine and fervid 
 patriotism. We have reason to believe that its effect 
 upon the House is accurately described in the follow- 
 ing extract from Mr. March's work : 
 
 " The speech took the House by surprise, not so much from 
 its eloquence as from the vast amount of historical knowledge 
 and illustrative ability displayed in it. How a person, un- 
 trained to forensic contests and unused to public affairs, could 
 exhibit so much parliamentary tact, such nice appreciation of 
 the difficulties of a difficult question, and such quiet facility in 
 surmounting them, puzzled the mind. The age and inexperience 
 of the speaker had prepared the House for no such display, and 
 astonishment for a time subdued the expression of its 
 admiration." pp. 35, 36. 
 
 The resolutions moved by Mr. Webster prevailed 
 by a large majority, and drew forth from Mr. Mon- 
 roe, then Secretary of State, an elaborate and in- 
 structive report upon the subject to which they 
 referred. 
 
 We have already observed, that, as early as 1806, 
 Mr. Webster had expressed himself in favor of 
 the protection of our commerce against the aggres- 
 sions of both the belligerents. Some years later, 
 before the war was declared, but when it was visibly 
 
 A. B., VOL. VI. 10
 
 146 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 
 
 impending, he had put forth some vigorous articles 
 to the same effect. In an oration delivered in 1812, 
 he had said : " A navy sufficient for the defence 
 of our coasts and harbors, for the convoy of impor- 
 tant branches of our trade, and sufficient also to 
 give our enemies to understand, when they injure 
 us, that they too are vulnerable, and that we have 
 the power of retaliation as well as of defence, seems 
 to be the plain, necessary, indispensable policy of 
 the nation. It is the dictate of nature and common 
 sense, that means of defence shall have relation to 
 the danger." 
 
 The principal subjects on which Mr. Webster 
 addressed the House during the Thirteenth Congress 
 were his own resolutions, the increase of the navy, 
 the repeal of the embargo, and an appeal from the de- 
 cision of the chair on a motion for the previous 
 question. His speeches on those questions raised 
 him to the front rank of debaters. He manifested 
 upon his entrance into public life that variety of 
 knowledge, familiarity with the history and tradi- 
 tions of the government, and self-possession on the 
 floor, which in most cases are acquired by time and 
 long experience. They gained for him the reputa- 
 tion indicated by the well-known remark of Mr. 
 Lowndes, that " the North had not his equal, nor 
 the South his superior." It was not the least con- 
 spicuous of the strongly marked qualities of his 
 character as a public man, disclosed at this early 
 period, and uniformly preserved throughout his 
 career, that, at a time when party spirit went to great 
 lengths, he never permitted himself to be infected
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER 147 
 
 with its contagion. His opinions were firmly main- 
 tained and boldy expressed; but without bitterness 
 toward those who differed from him. He cultivated 
 friendly relations on both sides of the House, and 
 gained the personal respect even of those with whom 
 he most differed. 
 
 In August, 1814, Mr. Webster was reflected to 
 Congress. The treaty of Ghent was signed in De- 
 cember, 1814, and the prospect of peace, universally 
 welcomed by the country, opened on the Thirteenth 
 Congress toward the close of its third session. Ear- 
 lier in the session a project for a Bank of the United 
 States was introduced into the House of Representa- 
 tives on the recommendation of Mr. Dallas, Secre- 
 tary of the Treasury. The charter of the first in- 
 corporated bank of the United States had expired 
 in 1811. No general complaints of mismanage- 
 ment or abuse had been raised against this institu- 
 tion ; but the opinions entertained by what has been 
 called the " Virginia School " of politicians, against 
 the constitutionality of a national bank, prevented 
 the renewal of the charter. The want of such an 
 institution was severely felt in the war of 1812, al- 
 though it is probable that the amount of assistance 
 which it could have afforded the financial opera- 
 tions of the government was greatly overrated. 
 Be this as it may, both the Treasury Department and 
 Congress were now strongly disposed to create a 
 bank. Its capital was to consist of forty-five mil- 
 lions of the public stocks and five millions of specie, 
 and it was to be under obligation to lend the gov- 
 ernment thirty millions of dollars on demand. To
 
 148 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 
 
 enable it to exist under these conditions, it was re- 
 lieved from the necessity of redeeming its notes in 
 specie. In other words, it was an arrangement for 
 the issue of an irredeemable paper currency. It was 
 opposed mainly on this ground by Mr. Calhoun, 
 Mr. Webster, Mr. Lowndes, and others of the ablest 
 men on both sides of the House, as a project 
 not only unsound in its principles, but sure to in- 
 crease the derangement of the currency already 
 existing. The project was supported as an admin- 
 istration measure, but the leading members from 
 South Carolina and their friends united with the 
 regular opposition against it, and it was lost by 
 the casting vote of the Speaker, Mr. Cheves. It 
 was revived by reconsideration, on motion of Mr. 
 Webster, and such amendments introduced that 
 it passed the House by a large majority. It was 
 carried through the Senate in this amended form 
 with difficulty, but it was negatived by Mr. Madi- 
 son, being one of the two cases in which he exer- 
 cised the veto power during his eight years' admin- 
 istration. 
 
 On the 8th of January of the year 1815, the vic- 
 tory at New Orleans was gained by General Jack- 
 son. No occurrence on land, in the course of the 
 war, was of equal immediate interest, or destined 
 to have so abiding an influence on the future. Be- 
 sides averting the indescribable calamity of the sack 
 of a populous and flourishing city, it showed the 
 immense military power of the volunteer force of 
 the country, when commanded with energy and 
 skill. The praises of General Jackson were on every
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER 149 
 
 tongue throughout the land, and Congress responded 
 to the grateful feelings of the country. A vote of 
 thanks was unanimously passed by the Senate and 
 House of Representatives. 
 
 In the interval between the Thirteenth and Four- 
 teenth Congresses (March-December, 1815), Mr. 
 Webster was busily engaged at home in the practice 
 of the law. He had begun at this time to consider 
 the expediency of removing his residence to a wider 
 professional field. Though receiving a full share 
 of the best business of New Hampshire, it ceased 
 to yield an adequate support for his increasing fam- 
 ily, and still more failed to afford any thing like 
 the just reward of his legal attainment and labors. 
 The destruction of his house, furniture, library, and 
 many important manuscript collections, in " the 
 great fire" at Portsmouth, in December, 1813. had 
 entailed upon him the loss of the entire fruits of his 
 professional industry up to that time, and made it 
 necessary for him to look around him for the means 
 of a considerably increased income. He hesitated 
 between Albany and Boston ; and, in consequence 
 of this indecision, the execution of his purpose was 
 for the present postponed. 
 
 The Fourteenth Congress assembled in December, 
 1815. An order of things in a great degree new 
 presented itself. After a momentary pause, the 
 country rose with an elastic bound from the pressure 
 of the war. Old party dissensions had lost much 
 of their interest. The condition of Europe had 
 undergone a great change. The power of the French 
 emperor was annihilated; and with the return of
 
 150 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 
 
 general peace, all occasions for belligerent encroach- 
 ments on neutral rights had ceased. Two-thirds of 
 our domestic feuds had turned on foreign questions, 
 and there was a spontaneous feeling throughout 
 the country in favor of healing the wounds which 
 these feuds had inflicted upon its social and political 
 harmony. Nor was this all. New relations and in- 
 terests had arisen. The public debt had been swelled 
 by the war expenditure to a large amount, and its 
 interest was to be paid. Domestic manufactures 
 had, in some of the States, grown up into import- 
 ance through the operation of the restrictive system 
 and the war, and asked for protection. The West 
 began to fill up with unexampled rapidity, and re- 
 quired new facilities of communication with the 
 Atlantic coast. The navy had fought itself into 
 favor, and the war with Algiers, in 1816, forbade 
 its reduction below the recent war establishment. 
 The necessity of a system of coast defences had 
 made itself felt. With all these loud calls for in- 
 creased expenditure, the public finances were em- 
 barrassed and the currency was in extreme disorder. 
 In a word, there were new and great wants and in- 
 terests at home and abroad, throwing former topics 
 of dissension into the shade, and calling for the high- 
 est efforts of statesmanship and a patriotism embrac- 
 ing the whole country. 
 
 Among those who responded with the greatest 
 cordiality and promptness to the new demand were 
 the distinguished statesmen of the preceding Con- 
 gress, and conspicuous among them Clay, Calhoun, 
 Webster, Lowndes, and Cheves. It will excite some
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER l$l 
 
 surprise at the present day, in consideration of the 
 political history of the last thirty years, to find how 
 little difference as to leading measures existed in 
 1816 between these distinguished statesmen. No line 
 of general party difference separated the members 
 of the first Congress after the peace. The great 
 measures brought forward were a national bank, 
 internal improvement, and a protective tariff. On 
 these various subjects members divided, not in ac- 
 cordance with any party organization, but from in- 
 dividual convictions, supposed sectional interests, 
 and general public grounds. On the two first-named 
 subjects no systematic difference of views disclosed 
 itself between the great Northern and Southern 
 leaders; on the third alone there was diversity of 
 opinion. In the Northern States considerable ad- 
 vances had been made in manufacturing industry, 
 in different places, especially at Waltham (Mass.) : 
 but a great manufacturing interest had not yet 
 grown up. The strength of this interest as yet lay 
 mainly in Pennsylvania. Navigation and foreign 
 trade were the leading pursuits of the North; and 
 these interests, it was feared, would suffer from 
 the attempt to build up manufactures by a protective 
 tariff. It is accordingly a well-known fact, which 
 may teach all to entertain opinions on public ques- 
 tions with some distrust of their own judgment, 
 that the tariff of 1816, containing the minimum duty 
 on coarse cotton fabrics, the corner-stone of the pro- 
 tective system, was supported by Mr. Calhoun and 
 a few other Southern members, and carried by their 
 influence against the opposition of the New Eng-
 
 152 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 
 
 land members generally, including Mr. Webster. It 
 has been stated, that, during the pendency of this 
 law before Congress, he denied the constitution- 
 ality of the tariff for protection. This statement is 
 inaccurate ; although, had it been true, it would have 
 placed him only in the sam& relation to the question 
 with Mr. Calhoun and other Southern members, who 
 at that time admitted the principle of protection, but 
 lived to reject it as the grossest and most pernicious 
 constitutional heresy. It would have shown only 
 that, in a long political career, he had, on the first 
 discussion of a new question, expressed an opinion 
 which, in the lapse of time and under a change of 
 circumstances, he had seen occasion to alter. This 
 is no ground of just reproach. It has happened to 
 every public man in every free country, who has been 
 of importance enough to have his early opinions 
 remembered. 
 
 At a later period, and after it had been confidently 
 stated, and satisfactorily shown by Mr. Madison, 
 that the Federal Convention that framed the Con- 
 stitution intended, under the provision for regulating 
 commerce, to clothe Congress with the power of 
 laying duties for the protection of manufactures, 
 and after Congress had, by repeated laws passed 
 against the wishes of the navigating and strictly 
 commercial interests practically settled this consti- 
 tutional question, and turned a vast amount of the 
 capital of the country into the channel of manufac- 
 tures, Mr. Webster considered a moderate degree 
 of protection as the established policy of the United 
 States and he accordingly supported it. It is un-
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER 153 
 
 necessary to state, that this course was pursued with 
 the approbation of his constituents, and to the mani- 
 fest good of the country. No change took place 
 in Mr. Webster's opinions on the subject of protec- 
 tion which was not generally shared and sanctioned 
 by the intelligence of the manufacturing States. 
 
 Mr. Webster took an active and efficient part, at 
 the first session of the Fourteenth Congress, in the 
 debates on the charter of the Bank of the United 
 States, which passed Congress in April, 1816. But 
 the great service rendered by him to the currency 
 of the country in the Fourteenth Congress was in 
 procuring the adoption of the specie resolution, in 
 virtue of which, from and after the 2Oth of Febru- 
 ary, 1817, all debts due to the treasury were required 
 to be paid in the legal currency of the country (gold 
 or silver), in treasury notes, or the notes of the 
 Bank of the United States, or in notes of banks 
 which are payable and paid on demand in the same 
 legal currency. This resolution passed the two 
 houses, and was approved by the President on the 
 3<Dth of April, 1816. It completely accomplished its 
 object; and that object was to restore to a sound 
 basis the currency of the country, and to give the 
 people a uniform circulating medium. Of this they 
 were destitute at the close of the war. All the banks, 
 except those of the New England States, had sus- 
 pended specie payments: but their depreciated bills 
 were permitted by general consent, and within cer- 
 tain limits, to circulate as money. They were re- 
 ceived of each other by the different banks ; they 
 passed from hand to hand ; and even the public rev-
 
 154 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 
 
 enue was collected at par in this degraded paper: 
 The rate of depreciation was different in different 
 States, and with different banks in the same States, 
 according as greater or less advantage had been 
 taken of the suspension of the specie obligation. 
 
 What was not less harassing than this diversity 
 was the uncertainty everywhere prevailing, how far 
 the reputed rate of depreciation in any particular 
 case might represent justly the real condition of a 
 bank or set of banks. In other words, men were 
 obliged to make and receive payments in a currency 
 of which, at the time, the value was not certainly 
 known to them, and which might vary as it was 
 passing through their hands. The enormous injus- 
 tice suffered by the citizens of different States, in 
 being obliged to pay their dues at the custom-houses 
 in as many different currencies as there were States, 
 varying at least twenty-five per cent, between Boston 
 and Richmond, need not be pointed out. For all 
 these mischiefs the resolution of Mr. Webster af- 
 forded a remedy as efficient as simple; and what 
 chiefly moves our astonishment at the present day is, 
 that a measure of this kind, demanded by the first 
 principles of finance, overlooked by the executive 
 and its leading friends in Congress, should be left 
 to be brought forward by one of its youngest mem- 
 bers, and he not belonging to the supporters of the 
 administration. 
 
 In all the other public measures brought forward 
 in this Congress for meeting the new conditions of 
 the country, Mr. Webster bore an active part, but 
 they furnish no topic requiring illustration. At the
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER 1 55 
 
 close of the first session, in August, 1816, he re- 
 moved his domestic and professional headquarters 
 to Boston. He had established friendly relations 
 here at an early period of life. In no part of the 
 Union was his national reputation more cordially 
 recognized than in the metropolis of New England. 
 He took at once the place in his profession which 
 belonged to his commanding talent and legal emi- 
 nence, and was welcomed into every circle of social 
 life.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 Constitutional Law. Dartmouth College Case. Case Oi Gib- 
 bons and Ogden The Case of Rhode Island. Mr. Web- 
 ster's Practice in the U. S. Supreme Court and the State 
 Courts. Criminal Cases. 
 
 WITH Mr. Webster's removal to Boston com- 
 menced a period of five or six years' retirement 
 from active political life, during which time, with 
 a single exception which will be hereafter alluded 
 to, he filled no public office, and devoted himself 
 exclusively to the duties -of his profession. It was 
 accordingly within this period that his reputation as 
 a lawyer was fixed and established. The promise 
 of his youth, and the expectations of those who had 
 known him as a student, were more than fulfilled. 
 He took a position as a counsellor and an advocate, 
 above which no one has ever risen in the country. 
 A large share of the best business of New England 
 passed into his hands ; and the veterans of the Boston 
 bar admitted him to an entire equality of standing, 
 repute, and influence. 
 
 Besides the reputation which he acquired in the or- 
 dinary routine of practice, Mr. Webster, shortly after 
 his removal to Boston, took the lead in establishing 
 what might almost be called a new school of consti- 
 tutional law. It fell to his lot to perform a prom- 
 inent part in unfolding a most important class of 
 
 '56
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER 157 
 
 constitutional doctrines, which, either because occa- 
 sion had not drawn them forth, or the jurists of a 
 former period had failed to deduce and apply them, 
 had not yet grown into a system. 
 
 In the months of June and December, 1816, the 
 legislature of New Hampshire passed acts altering 
 the charter of Dartmouth College (of which the 
 name was changed to Dartmouth University), en- 
 larging the number of trustees, and generally reor- 
 ganizing the corporation. These acts, although 
 passed without the consent and against the protests 
 of the Trustees of the College, went into operation. 
 The newly created body took possession of the cor- 
 porate property, and assumed the administration of 
 the institution. The old board were all named as 
 members of the new corporation, but declined act- 
 ing as such, and brought an action against the treas- 
 urer of the new board for the books of record, the 
 original charter, the common seal, and other corpor- 
 ate property of the College. 
 
 The action was commenced in the Court of Com- 
 mon Pleas for Graf ton County, in February, 1817, 
 and carried immediately to the Superior Court, in 
 May of the same year. At the November term it 
 was decided by the Superior Court of New Hamp- 
 shire, in an opinion delivered by Chief Justice Rich- 
 ardson, that the acts of the New Hampshire legisla- 
 ture were valid and constitutional. 
 
 The case thus decided in the Superior Court of 
 New Hampshire in favor of the validity of the State 
 laws, was carried by writ of error to the Supreme 
 Court of the United States, where, on the loth of
 
 158 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 
 
 March, 1818, it came on for argument before all 
 the judges, Mr. Webster and Mr. (afterwards 
 Judge) Hopkinson for the plaintiffs, and Mr. J. 
 Holmes of Maine and the Attorney-General, Wirt, 
 for the defendants in error. 
 
 It devolved upon Mr. Webster, as junior counsel, 
 to open the case. The ground was broadly taken, 
 that the acts in question were not only against com- 
 mon right and the constitution of New Hampshire, 
 but also, and this was the leading principle, against 
 the provision of the Constitution of the United 
 States which forbids the individual States from pass- 
 ing laws that impair the obligation of contracts. 
 Under the first head, the entire English law relative 
 to educational foundations was unfolded by Mr. 
 Webster, and it was shown that colleges, unless 
 otherwise specifically constituted by their charters, 
 were private eleemosynary corporations, over whose 
 property, members, and franchises the crown has 
 no control, except by due process of law, for acts 
 inconsistent with their charters. The whole learn- 
 ing of the subject was brought to bear with over- 
 whelming weight on this point. 
 
 The second main point required to be less elabor- 
 ately argued; namely, that such a charter is a con- 
 tract which it is not competent for a State to annul. 
 The argument throughout was pursued with a close- 
 ness and vigor which have been rarely witnessed 
 in our courts. The topics were beyond the usual 
 range of forensic investigation in this country. The 
 constitutional principles sought to be applied were 
 of commanding importance. The personal connec-
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER 159 
 
 tion of Mr. Webster with Dartmouth College as the 
 place of his education gave a fervor to his manner, 
 which added, no doubt, to the effect of the reason- 
 ing. On this point Mr. Ticknor expresses himself 
 as follows: 
 
 " Mr. Webster's argument is given in this volume [the first 
 collection of his works], that is, we have there the technical 
 outline ; the dry skeleton of it. But those who heard him when 
 it was originally delivered still wonder how such dry bones 
 could ever have lived with the power they there witnessed and 
 felt. He opened his cause, as he always does, with perfect sim- 
 plicity in the general statement of its facts, and then went on to 
 unfold the topics of his argument in a lucid order, which made 
 each position sustain every other. The logic and the law were 
 rendered irresistible. But as he advanced, his heart warmed to 
 the subject and the occasion. Thoughts and feelings that had 
 grown old with his best affections rose unbidden to his lips. 
 He remembered that the institution he was defending was the 
 one where his own youth had been nurtured ; and the moral 
 tenderness and beauty this gave to the grandeur of his thoughts, 
 the sort of religious sensibility it imparted to his urgent appeals 
 and demands for the stern fulfilment of what law and justice 
 required, wrought up the whole audience to an extraordinary 
 state of excitement. Many betrayed strong agitation, many 
 were dissolved in tears. Prominent among them was that 
 eminent lawyer and statesman, Robert Goodloe Harper, who 
 came to him when he resumed his seat, evincing emotions of 
 the highest gratification. When he ceased to speak, there was 
 a perceptible interval before any one was willing to break the 
 silence; and \vhen that vast crowd separated, not one person of 
 the whole number doubted that the man who had that day 
 so moved, astonished, and controlled them, had vindicated for 
 himself a place at the side of the first jurists of the country." * 
 
 The opinion of the court, unanimous, with the 
 exception of Justice Duvall, was pronounced by Chief 
 
 * " American Review," vol. ix. p. 434.
 
 160 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 
 
 Justice Marshall in the term for 1819, declaring the 
 acts of the legislature of New Hampshire to be un- 
 constitutional and invalid, and reversing the opinion 
 of the court below. By this opinion the law of the 
 land in reference to collegiate charters was firmly 
 established. Henceforward our colleges and uni- 
 versities and their trustees, unless provision to the 
 contrary is made in their acts of incorporation, stand 
 upon the broad basis of common right and justice; 
 holding in like manner as individuals their property 
 and franchises by a firm legal tenure, and not subject 
 to control or interference on the part of the local 
 legislatures on the vague ground that public institu- 
 tions are at the mercy of the government. That 
 such is the recognized law of the land is owing in 
 no small degree to the ability with which the Dart- 
 mouth College case was argued by Mr. Webster. 
 The battle fought and the victory gained in this case 
 were fought and gained for every college and uni- 
 versity, for every academy and school, in the United 
 States, endowed with property or possessed of chart- 
 ered rights. It ought to be mentioned, to the credit 
 of the State of New Hampshire, that she readily ac- 
 quiesced in the decision of the Supreme Court of 
 the United States, and made no attempt to sustain 
 her recent legislation. 
 
 This celebrated cause, argued with such success 
 before the highest tribunal in the country, established 
 Mr. Webster's position in the profession. It placed 
 him at once with Emmett and Pirikney and Wirt, 
 in the front rank of the American bar, and, though 
 considerably the youngest of this illustrious group,
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER l6l 
 
 on an equality with the most distinguished of them. 
 He was henceforward retained in almost every con- 
 siderable cause argued at Washington. No counsel 
 in the United States has probably been engaged in 
 a larger portion of the business brought before that 
 tribunal. While Mr. Webster as a politician and a 
 statesman performed an amount of intellectual labor 
 sufficient to form the sole occupation of an active 
 life, there is no doubt that his arguments to the 
 court and his addresses to the jury in important 
 suits at law would, if they had been reported like 
 his political speeches, have filled a much greater 
 space. 
 
 It would exceed the limits of this sketch to allude 
 in detail to all the cases argued by Mr. Webster in 
 the Supreme Court of the United States; still less 
 would it be practicable to trace him through his 
 labors in the State courts. We can barely mention 
 a few of the more considerable causes. The case of 
 Gibbons and Ogden, in 1824, is one of great celeb- 
 rity. In this case the grant by the State of New 
 York to the assignees of Fulton, of an exclusive 
 right to navigate the rivers, harbors, and bays of 
 New York by steam, was called in question, and was 
 decided to be unconstitutional, after having been 
 maintained by all the tribunals of that great State. 
 The decision turned upon the principle, that the 
 grant of such a monopoly of the right to enter a 
 portion of the navigable waters of the Union was 
 an encroachment, by the State, upon the power " to 
 regulate commerce," a power reserved by the Con- 
 stitution to Congress, and in its nature exclusive. 
 
 A. B., VOL. VI. II
 
 l62 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 
 
 The decision of the court was against the monopoly. 
 Few cases in the annals of federal jurisprudence are 
 of equal importance; none, perhaps, was ever ar- 
 gued with greater ability. In the course of his dis- 
 cussion, Mr. Webster said, with great felicity of 
 illustration, that, by the establishment of the Con- 
 stitution, the commerce of this whole country had 
 become a unit, a form of expression used with ap- 
 probation by Chief Justice Marshall in delivering 
 the opinion of the court. 
 
 A very distinguished compliment was paid to Mr. 
 Webster's argument in this case, a quarter of a cen- 
 tury after its delivery, by Mr. Justice Wayne of the 
 Supreme Court of the United States, who in a pub- 
 lic address of welcome to Savannah, Ga., said to 
 Mr. Webster: 
 
 " From one of your constitutional suggestions, every man in 
 the land has been more or less benefited. We allude to it with 
 the greater pleasure, because it was in a controversy begun by a 
 Georgian in behalf of the constitutional rights of the citizen. 
 When the late Mr. Thomas Gibbons determined to put to 
 hazard a large part of his fortune in testing the constitutionality 
 of the laws of New York limiting the navigation of the waters 
 of that State to steamers belonging to a company, his own in- 
 terest was not so much concerned as the right of every citizen 
 to use a coasting license upon the waters of the United States, 
 in whatever way their vessels might be propelled. It was a 
 sound view of the law, but not broad enough for the occasion. 
 It is not unlikely that the case would have been decided upon 
 it, if you had not insisted that it should be put upon the broader 
 constitutional ground of commerce and navigation. The court 
 felt the application and force of your reasoning, and it made a 
 decision releasing every creek, and river, lake, bay, and har- 
 bor in our country from the interference of monopolies, which 
 had already provoked unfriendly legislation between some of the
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER 163 
 
 States, and which would have been as little favorable to the 
 interest of Fulton, as they were unworthy his genius." 
 
 The case of Ogden and Saunders, in 1827, 
 brought in question the right of a State to pass an 
 insolvent law. It was of course a case of high con- 
 stitutional law, belonging to the same general class 
 with those just mentioned, and relating to the limit 
 of the powers of the several States, in reference to 
 matters confided by the Constkution to the General 
 Government. In his argument in this case, Mr. Web- 
 ster maintained the entire unconstitutionality of 
 State bankrupt laws. The court was divided in 
 opinion, but a majority of the judges held, that, al- 
 though it was not competent to a State to pass a law 
 discharging a debtor from the obligation of pay- 
 ment, they might pass a law to discharge him from 
 imprisonment on personal execution. The Chief 
 Justice and Judge Story were the minority of the 
 court, and the opinion of the Chief Justice sustained 
 the principle of Mr. Webster's argument, which is, 
 in fact, usually regarded as not falling below his 
 most successful forensic efforts. 
 
 In the month of January, 1848, the great Rhode 
 Island case was brought before the Supreme Court 
 of the United States, and argued by Mr. Webster 
 for the chartered government of the State, and 
 against the insurrectionary government, to which 
 an abortive attempt had been made to give the form 
 of a constitution, by a pretended act of the popular 
 will. The true principles of popular and constitu- 
 tional government are explored with unsurpassed 
 sagacity in this argument.
 
 164 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 
 
 A large portion of the causes argued by Mr. Web- 
 ster belong to the province of constitutional law, 
 and have their origin in that partition of powers 
 which exists between the State governments and the 
 government of the United States, each clothed with 
 sovereignty in its appropriate sphere, each subject 
 to limitations resulting from its relations to the 
 other, each possessing its legislative bodies, its judi- 
 cial tribunals, its executive authorities, and conse- 
 quently armed with the means of asserting its rights, 
 and both combined into one great political system. 
 In such a system it cannot but happen that ques- 
 tions of conflicting jurisdiction should arise, and 
 no small portion of Mr. Webster's forensic life 
 was devoted to their investigation. It is un- 
 necessary to state that they are questions of an ele- 
 vated character. They often involve the validity of 
 the legislative acts and judicial decisions of govern- 
 ments substantially independent, as they may in fact 
 the constitutionality of the acts of Congress itself. 
 No court in England will allow any thing, not even 
 a treaty with a foreign government, or the most un- 
 doubted principles of the law of nations, to be 
 pleaded against an act of Parliament. The Supreme 
 Court of the United States entertains the question 
 not only of the constitutionality of the acts of the 
 legislatures of States possessing most of the attri- 
 butes of sovereignty, but also of the constitutionality 
 of the acts of the national legislature, which pos- 
 sesses those attributes of sovereignty which are de- 
 nied to the States. These circumstances give great 
 dignity to its deliberations, and tend materially to
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER 165 
 
 elevate the character of a constitutional lawyer in 
 the United States. Professional training in Eng- 
 land has not been deemed the best school of states- 
 manship ; but it will be readily perceived, that in this 
 country a great class of questions, and those of the 
 highest importance, belong alike to the senate and 
 the court. Every one must feel that, in the case of 
 Mr. Webster, the lawyer and the statesman have 
 contributed materially to form each other. 
 
 Before quite quitting this subject, it may be proper 
 to allude to Mr. Webster's professional labors of an- 
 other class, in the ordinary State tribunals. Em- 
 ployed as counsel in all the most important cases 
 during a long professional life, it is hardly neces- 
 sary to say, that his investigations extended to every 
 department of the law, and that his speeches to the 
 jury and arguments to the court evinced a mastery 
 of the learning and a control of the logic belonging 
 to it, which are in most cases to be attained only by 
 the exclusive study and practice of a life. The jurist 
 and the advocate were so mingled in Mr. Webster's 
 professional character that it is not easy to say which 
 predominated. His fervid spirit and glowing imagi- 
 nation placed at his control all the resource of an 
 overwhelming rhetoric, and made him all-powerful 
 with a jury ; while the ablest court was guided by his 
 severe logic, and instructed by the choice which he 
 laid before them of the most appropriate learning 
 of the cases which he argued. It happens, unfortu- 
 nately, that forensic efforts of this kind are rarely 
 reported at length. A brief sketch of an important 
 law argument finds a place in the history of the case,
 
 1 66 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 
 
 but distinguished counsel rarely have time or be- 
 stow the labor required to reproduce in writing an 
 elaborate address either to court or jury. There 
 is probably no species of intellectual labor of the 
 highest order which perishes for want of a contem- 
 porary record to the same extent as that which is 
 daily exerted in the courts of law. 
 
 Two speeches addressed to the jury by Mr. 
 Webster in criminal trials have remained famous. 
 One was delivered in the case of Goodridge, 
 and in defence of the persons whom he accused 
 of having robbed him on the highway. This 
 cause was tried in 1817, shortly after the estab- 
 lishment of Mr. Webster at Boston. Rarely has 
 a case, in itself of no greater importance, pro- 
 duced a stronger impression of the ability of the 
 counsel. The cross-examination of Goodridge, who 
 pretended to have been robbed, and who had pre- 
 viously been considered a person of some degree of 
 respectability, is still remembered at the bar of Mas- 
 sachusetts as terrific beyond example, and the speech 
 to the jury in which his artfully contrived tale was 
 stripped of its disguises may be studied as a model 
 of this species of exposition. 
 
 Mr. Webster's speech to the jury in the memor- 
 able murder case of John F. Knapp is of a higher 
 interest. The great importance of this case, as well 
 on account of the legal principles involved, as of the 
 depth of the tragedy in real life with which it was 
 connected, gave it a painful celebrity. The record of 
 the causes celebres of no country or age will furnish 
 either a more thrilling narrative, or a forensic effort
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER 1 67 
 
 of greater ability. A passage on the power of con- 
 science will arrest the attention of the reader. There 
 is nothing in our language superior to it. It was 
 unquestionably owing to the legal skill and moral 
 courage with which the case was conducted by Mr. 
 Webster, that one of the foulest crimes ever com- 
 mitted was brought to condign punishment ; and the 
 nicest refinements of the law of evidence were made 
 the means of working out the most important prac- 
 tical results. But it is time to return to the chrono- 
 logical series of events.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 The Convention to revise the Constitution of Massachusetts. 
 Centennial Anniversary at Plymouth, December 22d, 1820. 
 Bunker Hill Monument. Addresses. Simultaneous Decease 
 of Adams and Jefferson. Eulogy by Mr. Webster. Laying 
 of the Corner-Stone of the New Wing of the Capitol. Re- 
 marks on the Patriotic Discourses of Mr. Webster. 
 
 IN 1820, on the separation of Maine from Massa- 
 chusetts, a convention became necessary in the latter 
 State to readjust the Senate; and the occasion was 
 deemed a favorable one for a general revision of the 
 Constitution. The various towns in the Common- 
 wealth were authorized by law to choose as many 
 delegates as they were entitled to elect members to 
 the House of Representatives ; and a body was con- 
 stituted containing much of the talent, political ex- 
 perience, and weight of character of the State. Mr. 
 Webster was chosen one of the delegates from 
 Boston; and, with the exception of a few days' ser- 
 vice, two or three years afterward, in the Massachu- 
 setts House of Representatives,* this is the only oc- 
 
 * Mr. Webster makes the following playful allusion to this 
 circumstance in a speech at a public dinner in Syracuse (New 
 York): 
 
 " It has so happened that all the public services which I have 
 rendered in the world, in my day and generation, have been con- 
 nected with the General Government. I think I ought to make 
 an exception. I was ten days a member of the Massachusetts 
 legislature, and I turned my thoughts to the search for some 
 
 168
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER 169 
 
 casion on which he ever filled any political office 
 under the State government either of Massachu- 
 setts or New Hampshire. 
 
 The convention of 1820 was no doubt as respect- 
 able a political body as ever assembled in Massachu- 
 setts ; and it is no more than justice to Mr. Webster 
 to say, that although he had been but a few years 
 a citizen of the Commonwealth, and was personally 
 a stranger to most of his associates, he was among 
 the most efficient members of the body. He was 
 named chairman of the committee to whom the im- 
 portant subject of oaths and qualifications for office 
 was referred, and of the special committee on that 
 chapter of the constitution which relates to the 
 " University of Cambridge." Besides taking a lead- 
 ing part in the discussion of most of the important 
 subjects which were agitated in the convention, he 
 was the authority most deferred to on questions of 
 order, and in that way exercised a steady and power- 
 ful influence over the general course of its pro- 
 ceedings. 
 
 In the speech on the basis of the Senate. Mr. Web- 
 ster defended the principle, which was incorporated 
 into the original constitution, and is recognized by 
 the liberal writers of greatest authority on govern- 
 ment, that due regard should be had to property in 
 establishing a basis of representation. He showed 
 
 good object in which I could be useful in that position; and, 
 after much reflection, I introduced a bill which, with the gen- 
 eral consent of both houses of the Massachusetts legislature, 
 passed into a law, and is now a law of the State, which enacts 
 that no man in the State shall catch trout in any other manner 
 than in the old way, with an ordinary hook and line,"
 
 1 70 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 
 
 the connection between the security of republican 
 liberty and this principle. He first called attention 
 in this country to the fact, that this important prin- 
 ciple was originally developed in Harrington's 
 " Oceana," a work much studied by our Revolution- 
 ary fathers. The practical consequence which Mr. 
 Webster deduced from the principle was, that consti- 
 tutional and legal provision ought to be made to pro- 
 duce the utmost possible diffusion and equality of 
 property. 
 
 While the Massachusetts convention was in ses- 
 sion, Mr. Webster appeared before the public in 
 another department of intellectual effort, and with 
 the most distinguished success. In 1820, Mr. Web- 
 ster was invited by the Pilgrim Society at Plymouth 
 to deliver a discourse on the great anniversary of 
 New England, the ever memorable 22d of Decem- 
 ber. Several circumstances contributed on this oc- 
 casion to the interest of the day. The peaceful 
 surrender by Massachusetts of a portion of her 
 territory, greatly exceeding in magnitude that 
 which she retained, in order to form the new State 
 of Maine, was a pleasing exemplification of that 
 prosperous multiplication of independent common- 
 wealths within the limits of the Union, which forms 
 one of the most distinctive features in our history. 
 It was as much an alienation of territory from the 
 local jurisdiction of Massachusetts, as if it had been 
 ceded to Great Britain, and yet the alienation was 
 cordially made. At this very time a controversy 
 existed between the United States and England, 
 relative to the conflicting title of the two govern-
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER 1?I 
 
 ments to a very small portion, and that the least 
 valuable part, of the same territory, which, after 
 the aggravations and irritations of forty years of 
 controversy, was in 1842 adjusted by Mr. Webster 
 and Lord Ashburton, at a moment when war seemed 
 all but inevitable. In any other country or age of the 
 world, Maine could have been severed from Massa- 
 chusetts only by a bloody revolution. Their amicable 
 separation by mutual consent, although neither the 
 first nor the second similar event in the United 
 States, was still an occurrence which carried back 
 the reflections of thoughtful men to the cradle of 
 New England. 
 
 These reflections gathered interest from the con- 
 vention then in session. Several of the topics which 
 presented themselves to Mr. Webster's mind, and 
 were discussed by him at Plymouth, had entered 
 into the debates of the convention a few days before. 
 Still more, the close of the second century from 
 the landing of the Fathers, with all its migfaty 
 series of events in the social, political, and moral 
 world, gave the highest interest to the occasion. Six 
 New England generations were to pass in review. It 
 was an anniversary which could be celebrated no- 
 where else as it could be at Plymouth. It was such 
 an anniversary, with its store of traditions, com- 
 parisons, and anticipations, as none then living could 
 witness again. 
 
 The discourse delivered by him in pursuance of 
 their invitation was in some respects the most re- 
 markable of his performances. The felicity and 
 spirit with which its descriptive portions are exe-
 
 1 72 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 
 
 cuted ; the affecting tribute which it pays to the mem- 
 ory of the Pilgrims; the moving picture of their 
 sufferings on both sides of the water; the masterly 
 exposition and analysis of those institutions to which 
 the prosperity of New England under Providence 
 is owing; the eloquent inculcation of those great 
 principles of republicanism on which our American 
 commonwealths are founded; the instructive survey 
 of the past, the sublime anticipations of the future 
 of America, have long since given this discourse a 
 classical celebrity. Several of its soul-stirring pas- 
 sages have become as household words throughout 
 the country. They are among the most favorite 
 of the extracts contained in the school-books. An 
 entire generation of young men have derived from 
 this noble performance some of their first lessons 
 in the true principles of American republicanism. 
 
 In the course of a few years, when the corner- 
 stone of the Bunker Hill Monument was to be laid. 
 on the fiftieth anniversary of the battle, the general 
 expectation again pointed to Mr. Webster ar the 
 orator of the day. This, too, was a great national 
 and patriotic anniversary. For the first time, and 
 after the lapse of a half-century, the commencement 
 of the war of the American Revolution was to be 
 publicly celebrated under novel, significant, and 
 highly affecting circumstances. Fifty years had 
 extinguished all the unkindly associations of the day, 
 and raised it from the narrow sphere of local history 
 to a high place in the annals of the world. A great 
 confederacy had sprung from the blood of Bunker 
 Hill. This was too important an event in the history
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER 1 73 
 
 of the world to be surrendered to hostile and party 
 feeling. No friend of representative government in 
 England had reason to deplore the foundation of the 
 American republics. No one can doubt that the de- 
 velopment of the representative principle in this 
 country has contributed greatly to promote the cause 
 of Parliamentary reform in Great Britain. Other 
 considerations gave great interest to the festival of 
 the 1 7th of June, 1825. Fifty years of national 
 life, fortune, and experience, not exhibiting in their 
 detail an unvarying series of prosperity (for it was 
 fifty years in the history, not of angels, but of men), 
 but assuredly not surpassed in the grand aggregate 
 by any half-century in the annals of the world, were 
 now brought to a close. Vast as the contrast was in 
 the condition of the country at the beginning and 
 close of the period, there were still living venerable 
 men who had acted prominent and efficient parts 
 in the opening scenes of the drama. Men who had 
 shared the perils of 1775 shared the triumph of the 
 jubilee. More than a hundred of the heroes of the 
 battle were among the joyous participators in this 
 great festival. Not the least affecting incident of 
 the celebration was the presence of Lafayette, who 
 had hastened from his more than royal progress 
 through the Union to take a part in the ceremonial. 
 It is unnecessary to say, that on such an occasion, 
 with all these circumstances addressed to the im- 
 aginations and the thoughts of men, in the presence 
 of a vast multitude of the intelligent population of 
 Massachusetts and the other New England States, 
 with no inconsiderable attendance of kindred and
 
 174 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 
 
 descendants from every part of the Union, an ad- 
 dress from such an orator as Mr. Webster, on such 
 a platform, on such a theme, in the flower of his age 
 and the maturity of his faculties, discoursing upon 
 an occasion of transcendent interest, and kindling 
 with the enthusiasm of the day and the spot, may 
 well be regarded as an intellectual treat of the high- 
 est order. 
 
 Scarcely inferior in interest was the anniversary 
 celebration, when the Bunker Hill Monument was 
 finally completed, in 1843, an d Mr. Webster again 
 censented to address the immense multitude which 
 the ceremonial could not fail to bring together. The 
 great work was now finished; and the most impor- 
 tant event in the history of New England was hence- 
 forward commemorated by a monument destined, in 
 all human probability, to last as long as any work 
 erected by the hands of man. The thrill of admira- 
 tion which ran through the assembled thousands, 
 when, at the commencement of his discourse on that 
 occasion, Mr. Webster apostrophized the monument 
 itself as the mute orator of the day, has been spoken 
 of by those who had the good fortune to be present 
 as an emotion beyond the power of language to de- 
 scribe. The gesture, the look, the tone of the 
 speaker, as he turned to the majestic shaft, seemed 
 to invest it with a mysterious life; and men held 
 their breath as if a solemn voice was about to come 
 down from its towering summit. 
 
 On the 4th of July, 1826, occurred the extraor- 
 dinary coincidence of the deaths of Adams and Jef- 
 ferson, within a few hours of each other, on the
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER 175 
 
 fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independ- 
 ence ; an event with which they were both so closely 
 connected, as members of the committee by which 
 the ever-memorable state paper was prepared and 
 brought into the Continental Congress. The public 
 mind was already predisposed for patriotic emotions 
 and sentiments of every kind by many conspiring 
 causes. The recency of the Revolutionary contest, 
 sufficiently illustrated by the fact that many of those 
 engaged in it were still alive and had been the sub- 
 jects of liberal provision by Congress ; the complete, 
 though temporary, fusion of parties, producing for 
 a few years a political lull, never witnessed to the 
 same extent before or since; the close of the half- 
 century from the commencement of the Revolution- 
 ary War, and the commemoration of its early con- 
 flicts on many of the spots where they occurred ; the 
 foundation of the Bunker Hill Monument, and of a 
 similar work on a smaller scale at Concord ; the visit 
 of Lafayette ; abroad, the varying scenes of the Greek 
 revolution and the popular movement in many other 
 parts of Europe, united in exciting the public mind 
 in this country. They kindled to new fervor the 
 susceptible and impulsive American temperament. 
 The simultaneous decease of the illustrious patri- 
 archs of the Revolution, under these circumstances 
 of coincidence, fell upon a community already pre- 
 pared to be deeply affected. It touched a tender 
 chord, which vibrated from one end of the Union 
 to the other. 
 
 It has, perhaps, never been the fortune of an 
 orator to treat a subject in all respects so extraordi-
 
 1 76 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 
 
 nary as that which called forth the eulogy on Adams 
 and Jefferson; a subject which the characters com- 
 memorated, the field of action, the magnitude of the 
 events, and the peculiar personal relations, were 
 so important and unusual. Certainly it is not ex- 
 travagant to add, that no similar effort of oratory 
 was ever more completely successful than Mr. 
 Webster's address at the funeral services in Fan- 
 euil Hall. The speech ascribed to John Adams 
 in the Continental Congress, on the subject of 
 declaring the independence of the Colonies, 
 a speech of which the topics of course present 
 themselves on the most superficial consideration 
 what was actually said are supplied by the letters 
 and diaries of Mr. Adams, is not excelled by any 
 thing of the kind in our language. Few things have 
 taken so strong a hold of the public mind. It 
 thrills and delights alike the student of history, who 
 recognizes it at once as the creation of the orator, 
 and the common reader, who takes it to be the com- 
 position, not of Mr. Webster, but of Mr. Adams. 
 From the time the eulogy was delivered, the inquiry 
 was often made and repeated, sometimes even in 
 letters addressed to Mr. Webster himself, whether 
 this exquisite appeal was his or Mr. Adams's. 
 
 These discourses, with the exception of the second 
 Bunker Hill Address, were delivered within about 
 five years of each other ; the first on the 22d of De- 
 cember, 1820, the last on the 2d of August, 1826. 
 In later years he again addressed his fellow-citizens 
 on several occasions not immediately connected with 
 senatorial or professional duty, and with the power
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER 1 77 
 
 and felicity which mark his earlier efforts. The 
 most remarkable of these recent addresses is his 
 speech delivered at Washington on the 4th of July, 
 1851, at the ceremonial of the laying of the corner- 
 stone of the addition to the Capitol. This ceremo- 
 nial, itself of no ordinary interest, and the aspect of 
 public affairs under which it was performed, gave 
 a peculiar fervor and solemnity to Mr. Webster's 
 treatment of the subject. 
 
 This great oration, perhaps not premeditated so 
 carefully, as far as the mere language is concerned, 
 as those of an earlier date with which we have 
 classed it, is not inferior to either of them in the 
 essentials of patriotic eloquence. It belongs, in 
 common with them, to a species of oratory neither 
 forensic nor parliamentary nor academical; and 
 which might perhaps conveniently enough be de- 
 scribed by the epithet which we have just applied 
 to it, the patriotic. These addresses are strongly 
 discriminated from the forensic and the parliamen- 
 tary class of speeches, in being from the nature of 
 the case more elaborately prepared. The public 
 taste in a highly cultivated community would not 
 admit, in a performance of this kind, those marks 
 of extemporaneous execution, which it not only tol- 
 erates, but admires, in the unpremeditated efforts of 
 the senate and the bar. The latter shines to greatest 
 advantage in happy impromptu strokes, whether of 
 illustration or argument; the former admits, and 
 therefore demands, the graceful finish of a mature 
 preparation. 
 
 It is not, indeed, to be supposed, that an orator 
 
 A. B., VOL. VI. 12
 
 178 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 
 
 like Mr. Webster is slavishly tied down, on any occa- 
 sion, to his manuscript notes, or to a memoriter repe- 
 tition of their contents. It may be presumed that 
 in many cases the noblest and the boldest flights, the 
 last and warmest tints thrown upon the canvas, in 
 discourses of this kind, were the unpremeditated in- 
 spiration of the moment of delivery. The opposite 
 view would be absurd, because it would imply that 
 the mind, under the high excitement of delivery, was 
 less fertile and creative than in the repose of the 
 closet. A speaker could not, if he attempted it, anti- 
 cipate in his study the earnestness and fervor of 
 spirit induced by actual contact with the audience; 
 he could not by any possibility forestall the sympa- 
 thetic influence upon his imagination and intellect 
 of the listening and applauding throng. However 
 severe the method required by the nature of the occa- 
 sion, or dictated by his own taste, a speaker like Mr. 
 Webster will not often confine himself " to pouring 
 out fervors a week old." 
 
 The orator who would do justice to a great theme 
 or a great occasion must thoroughly study and 
 understand the subject; he must accurately, and if 
 possible minutely, digest in writing beforehand the 
 substance, and even the form, of his address ; other- 
 wise, though he may speak ably, he will be apt not to 
 make in all respects an able speech. He must en- 
 tirely possess himself beforehand of the main things 
 which he wishes to say, and then throw himself upon 
 the excitement of the moment and the sympathy of 
 the audience. In those portions of his discourse 
 which are didactic or narrative, he will not be likely
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER 179 
 
 to wander, in any direction, far from his notes; al- 
 though even in those portions new facts, illustra- 
 tions, and suggestions will be apt to spring up before 
 him as he proceeds. But when the topic rises, when 
 the mind kindles from within, and the strain becomes 
 loftier, or bolder, or more pathetic, when the sacred 
 fountain of tears is ready to overflow, and audience 
 and speaker are moved by one kindred sympathetic 
 passion, then the thick-coming fancies cannot be kept 
 down, the storehouse of the memory is unlocked, 
 images start up from the slumber of years, and all 
 that the orator has seen, read, heard, or felt returns 
 in distinct shape and vivid colors. The cold and 
 premeditated text will no longer suffice for the glow- 
 ing thought. The stately, balanced phrase gives 
 place to some abrupt, graphic expression, that rushes 
 unbidden to his lips. The unforeseen incident or 
 locality furnishes an apt and speaking image; and 
 the discourse instinctively transposes itself into a 
 higher key. 
 
 Many illustrations of these remarks may be found 
 in Mr. Webster's speeches. We may refer particular- 
 ly to the address to the survivors of the Revolution 
 and the apostrophe to Warren in the first discourse 
 on Bunker Hill. These were topics too obvious 
 and essential, in an address on laying the corner- 
 stone of the monument, to have been omitted in the 
 orator's notes prepared beforehand. But no one will 
 think that the entire apostrophe to Warren, as it 
 stands in the reported speech, was elaborated in the 
 closet and committed to memory. After speaking 
 of the hero he breaks into an impassioned address to
 
 180 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 
 
 him, and passing, after a few intervening clauses, 
 from the third person to the second, he exclaims, 
 " How shall I struggle with the emotions that stifle 
 the utterance of thy name! Our poor work may 
 perish, but thine shall endure ! This monument may 
 moulder away; the solid ground it rests upon may 
 sink down to a level with the sea; but thy memory 
 shall not fail!"
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 Election to Congress from Boston. The Eighteenth Congress. 
 Resolution and Speech in favor of the Greeks. The Tariff 
 Law of 1824. Law for the Punishment of Crimes against 
 the United States. The Election of Mr. Adams as Presi- 
 dent. Meeting of the Nineteenth Congress. Congress of 
 Panama. Election as U. S. Senator. Revision of the Tariff 
 Law. 
 
 IN the autumn of 1822, Mr. Webster consented 
 to be a candidate for Congress for the city (then 
 town) of Boston, and was chosen by a very large 
 majority over his opponent, Mr. Jesse Putnam. The 
 former party distinctions, as has been already ob- 
 served, had nearly lost their significance in Massa- 
 chusetts, as in some other parts of the country. As 
 a necessary, or at least a natural consequence of this 
 state of things, four candidates had already been 
 brought forward for the Presidential election of 
 November, 1824; namely, Mr. John Quincy Adams 
 of Massachusetts, Mr. Clay of Kentucky, General 
 Jackson of Tennessee, and Mr. Crawford of 
 Georgia. Mr. Calhoun of South Carolina and Mr. 
 Lowndes of the same State had also both been nom- 
 inated by their friends at an early period of the can- 
 vass, but the latter was soon removed by death, and 
 Mr. Calhoun withdrew his pretensions in favor of 
 General Jackson. All the candidates named had 
 either originally belonged to the old Democratic, 
 
 181
 
 1 82 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 
 
 party (or Republican party as it was then more usu- 
 ally called), or had for many years attached them- 
 selves to it; but no one of them was' supported on 
 that ground. 
 
 The Congressional elections in Massachusetts are 
 held a year in advance. It was not till December, 
 1823, that Mr. Webster took his seat as a member 
 of the Eighteenth Congress. It has rarely happened 
 to an individual, by engaging in public life, to make 
 an equal sacrifice of personal interest. Born to an 
 inheritance of poverty, struggling through youth 
 and early manhood against all the difficulties of 
 straitened means and a narrow sphere, he had risen 
 above them all, and was now in an advantageous 
 position, at the height of his reputation, receiving 
 as great a professional income as any lawyer in the 
 United States, and rapidly laying the foundation of 
 an ample independence. All this was to be put at 
 risk for the hazardous uncertainty, and the scarcely 
 less hazardous certainties, of public life. It was 
 not till after repeated refusals of a nomination to 
 both houses of Congress, that Mr. Webster was at 
 last called upon, in a manner which seemed to him 
 imperative, to make the great sacrifice. In fact, 
 it may truly be said, that, to an individual of his 
 commanding talent and familiarity with political 
 affairs, and consequent ability to take a lead in the 
 public business, the question whether he shall do so 
 is hardly submitted to his option. It is one of the 
 great privileges of second-rate men, that they are 
 permitted in some degree to follow the bent of their 
 inclinations. It was the main inducement of Mr.
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER 183 
 
 Webster in returning to political life, that the cessa- 
 tion of the coarse conflicts of party warfare seemed 
 to hold out some hope that statesmanship of a higher 
 order, an impartial study of the great interests of 
 the country, ,and a policy aiming to promote the 
 development of its vast natural resources, might 
 be called into action. 
 
 Although the domestic politics of the United 
 States were in a condition of repose, the politics of 
 Europe at this time were disturbed and anxious. 
 Revolutions had within a few years broken out in 
 Naples, Piedmont, and Spain; while in Greece a 
 highly interesting struggle was in progress, between 
 the Christian population of that country and the 
 government of their Ottoman oppressors. At an 
 early period of this contest, it had attracted much 
 notice in the United States. President Monroe, both 
 in his annual message of December, 1822, and in 
 that of 1823, had expressed respect and sympathy 
 for their cause. The attention of Congress being 
 thus called to the subject, Mr. Webster thought it 
 a favorable opportunity to speak an emphatic word, 
 from a quarter whence it would be respected, in 
 favor of those principles of rational liberty and en- 
 lightened progress which were seeking to extend 
 themselves in Europe. As the great strength of the 
 Grecian patriots was to be derived, not from the 
 aid of the governments of Christendom, but from 
 the public opinion and the sympathy of the civilized 
 world, he felt that they had a peculiar right to expect 
 some demonstration of friendly feeling from the 
 only powerful republican state. He was also evi-
 
 1 84 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 
 
 dently willing to embrace the opportunity of enter- 
 ing an American protest against the doctrines which 
 had been promulgated in the manifestoes of the 
 recent congresses of the European sovereigns. 
 
 Till the administration of Mr. Jefferson, it had 
 been the custom of the two houses to return answers 
 to the annual messages of the President. These 
 answers furnished Congress with the means of re- 
 sponding to the executive suggestions. As much 
 time was often consumed in debating these answers 
 (a consumption of time not directly leading to any 
 legislative result), and as differences in opinion be- 
 tween Congress and the Executive, if they existed, 
 were thus prematurely developed, it was thought a 
 matter of convenience, when Mr. Jefferson came 
 into power, to depart from the usage. But though 
 attended with evils, it had its advantages. The op- 
 portunity of general political debate, under a gov- 
 ernment like ours, if not furnished, will be taken. 
 The constituencies look to their representatives to 
 discuss public questions. It will perhaps be found, 
 on comparing the proceedings of Congress at the 
 present day with what they were fifty years ago, that, 
 although the general debate on the answer to the 
 President's message has been retrenched, there is in 
 the course of the session quite as much discussion 
 of topics incidentally brought in, and often to the 
 serious obstruction of the public business, at the 
 advanced stages of the session. 
 
 Whatever may be thought of this as a general 
 principle, President Monroe, as we have seen, hav- 
 ing in two successive annual messages called the
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER 1 8$ 
 
 attention of Congress to this subject, Mr. Webster, 
 by way of response to these allusions, at an early 
 period of the session offered the following resolution 
 in the House of Representatives : 
 
 " Resolved, That provision ought to be made by law for de- 
 fraying the expense incident to the appointment of an agent or 
 commissioner to Greece, whenever the President shall deem it 
 expedient to make such appointment." 
 
 His speech in support of this resolution was de- 
 livered on the 1 9th of January, 1824, in the presence 
 of an immense audience. To a subject on which 
 it was almost impossible to avoid a certain strain 
 of classical sentiment, Mr. Webster brought a chast- 
 ened taste and a severe logic. He indulged in no 
 ad captandum reference to the topics which lay most 
 obviously in his way. A single allusion to Greece, 
 as the mistress of the world in letters and arts, found 
 an appropriate place in the exordium. But he neither 
 rhapsodized about the ancients, nor denounced the 
 Turks, nor overflowed with Americanism. He 
 treated, in a statesmanlike manner, what he justly 
 called " the great political question of the age," the 
 question " between absolute and regulated govern- 
 ments," and the duty of the United States on fitting 
 occasions to let their voice be heard on this ques- 
 tion. He concisely reviewed the doctrines of the 
 Continental sovereigns, as set forth in what has 
 been called " the Holy Alliance," and in the mani- 
 festoes of several successive congresses. He pointed 
 out the inconsistency of these principles with those 
 of self-government and national independence, and
 
 1 86 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 
 
 the duty of the United States to declare their senti- 
 ments in support of the latter. He showed that such 
 a declaration was inconsistent with no principle of 
 public law, and forbidden by no prudential consid- 
 eration. He briefly sketched the history of the Greek 
 revolution ; and having shown that his proposal was 
 a pacific measure, both as regards the Turkish gov- 
 ernment and the European allies, he took leave of the 
 subject with a few manly words of sympathy for 
 the Greeks. 
 
 He was supported by several leading members 
 of the House, by Mr. Clay, Mr. Stevenson of 
 Virginia, afterward Speaker of the House and Min- 
 ister of England, and by General Houston of Ten- 
 nessee; but the subject lay too far beyond the ordi- 
 nary range of legislation ; it gained no strength from 
 the calculations of any of the Presidential candi- 
 dates ; it enlisted none of the great local interests of 
 the country ; and it was not of a nature to be pushed 
 against opposition or indifference. It was probably 
 with little or no expectation of carrying it, that the 
 resolution was moved by Mr. Webster. His object 
 was gained in the opportunity of expressing himself 
 upon the great political question of the day. His 
 words of encouragement were soon read in every 
 capital and at every court of Europe, and in every 
 Continental language; they were received with grate- 
 ful emotion in Greece. 
 
 It was during this session that Mr. Webster made 
 his great argument in the Supreme Court of the 
 United States in the case of Gibbons and Ogden, to 
 which we have already alluded. It must increase
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER I $7 
 
 the admiration with which this great constitutional 
 effort is read, to know that the case came on in court 
 a week or ten days earlier than Mr. Webster ex- 
 pected, and that it was late in the afternoon, after 
 a severe debate in the House of Representatives on 
 some of the details of the tariff bill, that he received 
 the intimation that he must be ready to go into court 
 and argue the cause the next morning. At this time 
 his brief was not drawn out; and the statement of 
 the argument, the selecting of the authorities, and 
 the final digest of his materials, whether of reason- 
 ing or fact, were to be the work of the few interven- 
 ing hours. It is superfluous to say that there was 
 no long space for rest or sleep; though it seems 
 hardly credible that the only specific premeditation 
 of such an argument before such a tribunal should 
 have been in the stolen watches of one night. 
 
 In the course of this session Mr. Webster, besides 
 taking a leading part in the discussion of the details 
 of the tariff law of 1824, made a carefully prepared 
 speech, in reply to Mr. Clay, on some of the princi- 
 ples upon which he had supported it. Mr. Webster 
 did not contest the constitutional right of Congress 
 to lay duties for the protection of manufactures. 
 He opposed the bill on grounds of expediency, drawn 
 from the condition of the country at the time, and 
 from the unfriendly bearing of some of its provisions 
 on the navigating interests. 
 
 No subject of great popular interest came up for 
 debate in the second session of the Eighteenth Con- 
 gress, but the attention of Mr. Webster, as chairman 
 of the Judiciary Committee, was assiduously devoted
 
 1 88 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 
 
 to a subject of great practical importance; brought 
 forward entirely without ostentation or display, but 
 inferior in interest to scarce any act of legislation 
 since the first organization of government. We 
 refer to the act of the 3d of March, 1825, "more 
 effectually to provide for the punishment of certain 
 crimes against the United States, and for other 
 purposes." There was a class of cases, arising out 
 of the complex nature of our system, and the two- 
 fold jurisdiction existing in the United States, 
 which, being entirely novel in the history of other 
 governments, was scarcely to be provided for in ad- 
 vance. The analysis of the English constitution here 
 failed the able men upon whom it devolved to put 
 the new system of government in operation. It is 
 to be wondered at, not that some things were over- 
 looked, but that so many were provided for. 
 
 Of the cases left thus unprovided for, more per- 
 haps were to be found in the judiciary department 
 than in any other. Many crimes committed on ship- 
 board, beyond the jurisdiction of any State, or in 
 places within the Union excepted from State juris- 
 diction, were unprovided for. Mr. Webster accord- 
 ingly drew up what finally passed the two houses, 
 as the sixty-fifth chapter of the laws of the second 
 session of the Eighteenth Congress, and procured the 
 assent of the Committee on the Judiciary to report it 
 to the House. Some amendments of no great mo- 
 ment were made to it on its passage, partly on the 
 motion of Mr. Webster himself, and partly on the 
 suggestion of other members of the House. As it 
 finally passed, in twenty-six sections, it covered all
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER 189 
 
 the cases which had occurred in the thirty-five years 
 which had elapsed since the law of 1790 was en- 
 acted; and it amounted to a brief, but comprehen- 
 sive, code of the criminal jurisprudence of the United 
 States, as distinct from that of the separate States. 
 At this session of Congress the election of a Presi- 
 dent of the United States devolved upon the House 
 of Representatives, in default of a popular choice. 
 The votes of the electoral colleges were ninety-nine 
 for General Jackson, eighty-four for Mr. Adams, 
 forty-one for Mr. Crawford, and thirty-seven for 
 Mr. Clay. This was the second time since the adop- 
 tion of the Constitution, in 1789, and such an event 
 had occurred. The other case was in 1801, and 
 under the Constitution in its original form, which 
 required the electoral colleges to vote for two per- 
 sons, without designating which of the two was to 
 be President, and which Vice-President, the choice 
 between the two to be decided by plurality. The 
 Republican candidates, Thomas Jefferson and Aaron 
 Burr, having received each an equal number of votes, 
 it devolved upon the House of Representatives to 
 designate one of them as President. The Constitu- 
 tion was immediately amended so as to require the 
 candidates for the two offices to be designated as 
 such in the electoral colleges; so that precisely such 
 a case as that of 1801 can never recur. In 1824, 
 however, no person having received a majority of 
 all the votes, it became necessary for the House to 
 choose a President from among the three candidates 
 having the highest number. On these occasions the 
 House votes, not per capita, but by States. The re-
 
 190 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 
 
 suit was declared to be, for Mr. Adams thirteen 
 votes, for General Jackson seven, and for Mr. Craw- 
 ford four. 
 
 Mr. Webster had been elected to the Nineteenth 
 Congress in the autumn of 1824, by a vote of four 
 thousand nine hundred and ninety out of five thou- 
 sand votes cast, the nearest approach to unanimity 
 in a Congressional election, perhaps, that ever took 
 place. The session which began in December, 1825, 
 was of course the first session under Mr. Adams's 
 administration. The brief armistice in party war- 
 fare which existed under Mr. Monroe was over. 
 The friends of General Jackson en masse, most of 
 the friends of Mr. Crawford, and a portion of those 
 of Mr. Clay, joined in a violent opposition to the 
 new administration. It would be impossible in this 
 place to unfold the griefs, the interests, the projects, 
 the jealousies, and the mutual struggles, of the lead- 
 ers and the factions, who, with no community of 
 political principle, entered into this warfare. The 
 absence of any well-defined division of parties, like 
 that which had formerly existed, gave wide scope 
 to personal intrigue and sectional preference. Al- 
 though, estimated in reference to individual suf- 
 frages. Mr. Adams had received a popular majority ; 
 and although he was selected from the three highest 
 candidates by an absolute majority of the States vot- 
 ing in the House of Representatives, and by a very 
 large plurality over each of his competitors, yet, 
 as General Jackson had received a small plurality of 
 votes in the electoral colleges (but a little more, how- 
 ever, than a third part of the entire electoral vote),
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER 191 
 
 he stood before the masses as a candidate wrong-fully 
 deprived of the place to which he was designated 
 by the popular choice. Great sensibility was evinced 
 at this defeat of the " Will of the People ; " and none 
 seemed to feel the wrong more than a portion of 
 the friends of that one of the three candidates who 
 had received the smallest vote, but whom there had 
 been, nevertheless, a confident hope of electing in 
 the House. The prejudice against Mr. Adams aris- 
 ing from this source derived strength from the 
 widely circulated calumny of a corrupt understand- 
 ing between him and Mr. Clay. The bare suspicion 
 of an arrangement between party leeaders to help 
 each other into office, however groundless in point of 
 fact, and however disproved by all the testimony 
 which could be brought to bear on a negative propo- 
 sition, was sufficient seriously to affect the popular- 
 ity of both parties. 
 
 Mr. Adams's administration was conducted with 
 the highest ability ; it was incorruptible ; it was fru- 
 gal ; it was tolerant of opponents to its own injury. 
 With the exception of half a dozen editors of news- 
 papers warmly opposed to the administration, from 
 whom the trifling privilege of printing the laws was 
 withdrawn, no one was removed from office for 
 political opinion. But the administration was un- 
 popular, and was doomed from its formation. It 
 was supported by very able men in both houses of 
 Congress, and of these Mr. Webster was by all ac- 
 knowledgment the chief. But it failed to command 
 the confidence of a numerical majority of the people. 
 
 The leading measure of the first session of the
 
 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 
 
 Nineteenth Congress was the Congress of Panama. 
 Mr. Adams had announced in his message at the 
 commencement of the session, that an invitation to 
 the congress had been accepted, and that " ministers 
 on the part of the United States would be com- 
 missioned to attend its deliberations." The con- 
 firmation of the ministers was vigorously resisted in 
 the Senate, and the resolution declaring the expedi- 
 ency of making the requisite appropriation as strenu- 
 ously opposed in the House. 
 
 The subject was discussed with great ability in 
 both houses. The greater portion of the senatorial 
 debate was with closed doors. Mr. Webster's speech 
 in the House is far the ablest of those published. 
 It raised the question from the wretched level of 
 party politics to the elevation of real statesmanship. 
 It discussed the constitutional question with a clear- 
 ness and power which make us wonder that it was 
 ever raised; and it unfolded the true nature of the 
 proposed congress, as viewed in the light of the pub- 
 lic law. A very important topic of the speech was 
 an explanation of the declaration of President Mon- 
 roe, in his annual message of 1823, against the in- 
 terposition of the governments of Europe for the 
 purpose of enabling Spain to resubjugate her former 
 colonial possessions on this continent. Mr. Webster 
 pointed out the circumstances which warranted at 
 the time the opinion that such interposition might 
 be attempted ; and he stated the important fact, not 
 before known, that the purpose on the part of the 
 United States to resist it was deliberately and unani- 
 mously formed by Mr. Monroe's cabinet, consisting
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER 193 
 
 at that time of Messrs. Adams, Crawford, Calhoun, 
 Southard, and Wirt. 
 
 The speech on the Panama question was the most 
 considerable effort made by Mr. Webster in the 
 Nineteenth Congress. In the interval of the two ses- 
 sions, in November, 1826, he was reflected with but 
 a show of opposition. The eulogy upon Adams and 
 Jefferson, of which we have already spoken, was de- 
 livered in the month of August of this year. In the 
 month of June, 1827, Mr. Webster was elected to 
 the Senate of the United States by a large majority 
 of the votes of the two houses of the legislature of 
 Massachusetts. 
 
 The principal measure which occupied the atten- 
 tion of the two houses during the first session of the 
 Twentieth Congress was the revision of the tariff. 
 This measure had its origin in the distressed condi- 
 tion of the woollen interests, which found itself de- 
 prived (partly by the effect of the repeal of the duty 
 on wool imported into Great Britain) of that meas- 
 ure of protection which the tariff law of 1824 was 
 designed to afford. An unsuccessful attempt had 
 been made at the last session of Congress, to pass 
 a law exclusively for the relief of the woollen manu- 
 facturers ; but no law having in view the protection 
 of any one great interest is likely to be enacted by 
 Congress, however called for by the particular cir- 
 cumstances of the case. At the present session an en- 
 tire revision of the tariff was attempted. A major- 
 ity of the two houses was in favor of protection ; but 
 there were different views among the friends of the 
 policy as to the articles to be protected and the 
 
 A. B., VOL. VI. 13
 
 194 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 
 
 amount of protection. This diversity of opinions 
 and supposed diversity .of interests enabled those 
 wholly opposed to the principle and policy of protec- 
 tion, by uniting their votes on questions of detail 
 with members who represented local interests, to 
 render the bill objectionable in many parts to several 
 of its friends, and to reduce them to the alternative 
 of either voting against it, or tolerating more or less 
 which they deemed inexpedient, and even highly in- 
 jurious. Hence it received the name of the " Bill 
 of Abominations." 
 
 Mr. Webster addressed the Senate, while the bill 
 was before that body, exposing the objectionable 
 features to which we have alluded. Believing, how- 
 ever, that the great article of woollens required the 
 protection given it by the bill, and regarding the 
 general system of protection as the established policy 
 of the country and of the government, and feeling 
 that the capital which had been invited into manu- 
 factures by former acts of legislation was now en- 
 titled to be sustained against the glut of foreign mar- 
 kets, fraudulent invoices, and the competition of 
 foreign labor working at starvation wages, he gave 
 his vote for the bill, and ever afterward supported 
 the policy of moderate protection. He has been 
 accused of inconsistency in this respect ; and by none 
 more earnestly than by the friends of Mr. Calhoun, 
 who was one of those influential statesmen of the 
 South by whom, in the Fourteenth Congress, the 
 foundation of a protective tariff was laid on the 
 corner-stone of the square-yard duty on domestic 
 cotton fabrics. But he was sustained by the great
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER 19$ 
 
 majority of his constituents and of the people of 
 the Northern, Middle, and Northwestern States; 
 and should the prospects of success be fulfilled with 
 which manufactures have been attempted at the 
 South, there is little doubt that she will at length 
 perceive that her own interest would be promoted 
 by upholding the same policy. 
 
 When the speech of Mr. Webster of 1824, in 
 Which he assigned his reasons for voting against the 
 tariff law of that year, is carefully compared with 
 his speech of 1828, just referred to, it will be found 
 that there is no other diversity than that which 
 was induced by the change in the state of the coun- 
 try itself in reference to its manufacturing interests, 
 and by the course pursued in reference to the details 
 of the bill by those opposed to protection in toto.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 Election of General Jackson. Debate on Foot's Resolution. 
 Mr. Hayne's First Speech. Mr. Webster's First Speech. 
 Reply of Mr. Hayne. Mr. Webster's Great Speech. De- 
 scription from March's " Reminiscences of Congress." Re- 
 ception throughout the Country. 
 
 IN the interval between the two sessions of the 
 Twentieth Congress, the Presidential election was 
 decided. Mr. Adams and General Jackson were the 
 opposing candidates; and the latter was chosen by 
 a large popular majority; but that there was no 
 cordiality among the component elements of the 
 party by which General Jackson was elevated to the 
 chair was soon quite apparaent. 
 
 The first session of the Twenty-first Congress, 
 that of 1829-30, is rendered memorable in the his- 
 tory of Mr. Webster, as well as in the parliamentary 
 history of the country,. by what has been called the 
 debate on Foot's resolution, in which Mr. Webster 
 delivered the speech which is usually regarded as 
 his ablest, and which may probably with truth be 
 pronounced the most celebrated speech ever delivered 
 in Congress. The great importance of this effort 
 will no doubt be considered as a sufficient reason 
 for relating somewhat in detail the circumstances 
 under which it was made. 
 
 The debate arose in the following manner.
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER 1 97 
 
 On the 29th of December, 1829, Mr. Foot, one of 
 the Senators from Connecticut, moved the following 
 resolution : 
 
 " Resolved, That the Committee on Public Lands be in- 
 structed to inquire and report the quantity of public lands re- 
 maining unsold within each State and Territory, and whether 
 it be expedient to limit for a certain period the sales of the 
 public lands to such lands only as have heretofore been offered 
 for sale, and are now subject to entry at the minimum price. 
 And, also, whether the office of Surveyor-General, and some of 
 the land offices, may not be abolished without detriment to the 
 public interest." 
 
 There is no reason to believe that, in bringing 
 forward this resolution, Mr. Foot acted in concert 
 with any other member of the Senate. When it came 
 up for consideration the next day, the mover stated 
 that he had been induced to offer the resolution from 
 having at the last session examined the report of 
 the Commissioner of the Land Office, from which 
 it appeared that the quantity of land remaining un- 
 sold at the minimum price of one dollar and twenty- 
 five cents per acre exceeded seventy-two millions of 
 acres ; while it appeared from the commissioner's 
 report at this session, that the annual demand was 
 not likely to exceed a million of acres at present, 
 although of course it might be expected somewhat 
 to increase with the growth of the population. 
 
 This resolution, though one of inquiry only, was 
 resisted. It was represented by Mr. Benton of Mis- 
 souri as a resolution to inquire into the expediency 
 of committing a great injury upon the new States 
 of the West. Mr. Holmes of Maine supported the 
 resolution, as one of inquiry into an important sub-
 
 198 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 
 
 ject. Mr. Foot disclaimed every purpose unfriendly 
 to the West, and at the close of the conversation (in 
 which Mr. Webster took no part), it was agreed 
 that the consideration of the resolution should be 
 postponed to the nth of January, and made the 
 special order of the day for that day. 
 
 When the resolution came up it was discussed by 
 Mr. Benton of Missouri and Mr. Holmes of Maine. 
 Other members took some part in the debate, and 
 then Mr. Hayne of South Carolina commenced a 
 speech, which occupied the rest of the day. Mr. 
 Hayne was one of the younger members of the 
 Senate. He came forward in his native State in 
 1814, when hardly of age, with great eclat, filled in 
 rapid succession responsible offices, and came to the 
 Senate of the United States in 1823, with a reputa- 
 tion already brilliant, and rapidly increasing. He 
 was active and diligent in business, fluent, graceful, 
 and persuasive as a debater ; of a sanguine and self- 
 relying temper; shrinking from no antagonist, and 
 disposed to take the part of a champion. 
 
 Mr. Webster, up to this time, had not participated 
 in the debate, which had in fact been rather a point- 
 less affair, and was dragging its slow length through 
 the Senate, no one knew exactly to what purpose. 
 It had as yet assumed no character in which it in- 
 vited or required his attention. He was much en- 
 gaged at the time in the Supreme Court of the 
 United States. Leaving the court-room when the 
 court adjourned on Tuesday, the iQth, Mr. Web- 
 ster came into the Senate in season to hear the 
 greater part of Mr. Hayne's speech ; and it was sug-
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER 199 
 
 gested to him by several friends that an immediate 
 answer to Mr. Hayne was due from him. The line 
 of discussion pursued by the Senator from South 
 Carolina was such as to require, if not to provoke, 
 an immediate answer from the North. Mr. Webster 
 accordingly rose when Mr. Hayne took his seat, 
 but gave way to a motion for adjournment from Mr. 
 Benton. These circumstances will sufficiently show 
 how entirely without premeditation, and with what 
 preoccupation by other trains of thought, Mr. Web- 
 ster was led into this great intellectual conflict. 
 
 He appeared in the Senate the next morning, 
 Wednesday, January 2Oth, and Mr. Foot's resolu- 
 tion being called up, was modified, on the suggestion 
 of Messrs. Sprague of Maine and Woodbury oi 
 New Hampshire, by adding the following clause : 
 
 " Or whether it be expedient to adopt measures to hasten the 
 sales and extend more rapidly the surveys of the public lands." 
 
 Mr. Webster immediately proceeded with the de- 
 bate. No elaborate preparation, of course, could 
 have been made by him, as the speech of Mr. Hayne. 
 to which his reply was mainly directed, was delivered 
 the day before. He vindicated the government, 
 under its successive administrations, from the gen- 
 eral charge of having managed the public lands in 
 a spirit of hostility to the Western States. He par- 
 ticularly defended New England against the accu- 
 sation of hostility to the West. A passage in this 
 part of his speech, contrasting Ohio as she was in 
 1794 with the Ohio of 1830, will compare advan- 
 tageously with any thing in his speeches. In speak- 
 ing of the settlement of the West, Mr, Webster in-
 
 20O AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 
 
 troduced with just commendation the honored name 
 of Nathan Dane, as the author of the Ordinance of 
 1787, for the organization and government of the 
 territory northwest of the Ohio. He maintained 
 that every measure of legislation beneficial to the 
 West had been carried in Congress by the aid of 
 New England votes, and he closed by an allusion to 
 his own course as uniformly friendly to that part 
 of the Union. Mr. Benton followed Mr. Webster, 
 and commenced a speech in reply. 
 
 The next day, Thursday, the 2ist, the subject 
 again came up, and it was now evident that the de- 
 bate had put on a new character. Its real interest 
 and importance were felt to be commencing. Air. 
 Chambers expressed the hope that the Senate would 
 consent to postpone the further consideration of 
 the resolution till the next Monday, as Mr. Web- 
 ster, who had engaged in the discussion and wished 
 to be present when it should be resumed, had press- 
 ing engagements out of the house, and could not 
 conveniently give his attendance in the Senate before 
 Monday. * Mr. Hayne said " he saw the gentleman 
 from Massachusetts in his seat, and presumed he 
 could make an arrangement which would enable 
 him to be present here, during the discussion to- 
 day. He was unwilling that this subject should be 
 postponed before he had an opportunity of replying 
 to some of the observations which had fallen from 
 that gentleman yesterday. He would not deny that 
 
 * Mr. Chambers referred to the case in court just mentioned, 
 in which Mr. Webster was engaged, and in which the argument 
 had already begun.
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER 2OI 
 
 some things had fallen from him which rankled * 
 here (touching his breast), from which he would 
 desire at once to relieve himself. The gentleman 
 had discharged his fire in the presence of the Sen- 
 ate. He hoped he would now afford him an oppor- 
 tunity of returning the shot." 
 
 The manner in which this was said was not such 
 as to soften the harshness of the sentiment. It will 
 be difficult, in reverting to Mr. Webster's speech, 
 to find either in its substance or spirit any adequate 
 grounds for the feeling manifested by Mr. Hayne. 
 Nor would it probably be easy in the history of 
 Congress to find another case in which a similar act 
 of accommodation in the way of postponing a sub- 
 ject has been refused, at least on such a ground. Mr. 
 Webster, in reply to Mr. Hayne's remark, that he 
 wished without delay to return his shot, said, " Let 
 the discussion proceed; I am ready now to receive 
 the gentleman's fire." 
 
 Mr. Benton then addressed the Senate for about 
 an hour, in conclusion of the speech which he had 
 commenced the day before. At the close of Mr. 
 Benton's argument, Mr. Bell of New Hampshire 
 moved that the further consideration of the subject 
 should be postponed till Monday, but the motion 
 was negatived. Mr. Hayne then took the floor, and 
 spoke for about an hour in reply to Mr. Webster's 
 remarks of the preceding day. Before he had con- 
 cluded his argument, the Senate adjourned till Mon- 
 day. On that day, January the 25th, he spoke for 
 two hours and a half, and completed his speech. Mr. 
 
 * Mr. Hayne subsequently disclaimed having used this word.
 
 202 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 
 
 Webster immediately rose to reply, but the day was 
 far advanced, and he yielded to a motion for 
 adjournment. 
 
 The second speech of Mr. Hayne, to which Mr. 
 Webster was now called upon to reply, was still 
 more strongly characterized than the first with se- 
 verity, not to say bitterness, toward the Eastern 
 States. The tone toward Mr. Webster personally 
 was not courteous. It bordered on the offensive. It 
 was difficult not to find in both of the speeches of 
 the Senator from South Carolina the indication of 
 a preconceived purpose to hold up New England, 
 and Mr. Webster as her most distinguished repre- 
 sentative, to public odium. In his second speech, 
 Mr. Hayne reaffirmed and urged those constitutional 
 opinions which are usually known as the doctrines 
 of Nullification; that is to say, the assumed right 
 of a State, when she deems herself oppressed by 
 an unconstitutional act of Congress, to declare by 
 State ordinance the act of Congress null and void, 
 and discharge the citizens of the State from the duty 
 of obedience. 
 
 Such being the character of Mr. Hayne's speech, 
 Mr. Webster had three objects to accomplish in his 
 answer. The first was to repel the personalities 
 toward himself, which formed one of the most prom- 
 inent features of Mr. Hayne's speech. This object 
 was accomplished by a few retaliatory strokes, in 
 which the severest sarcasm was so mingled with 
 unaffected good humor and manly expostulation, as 
 to carry captive the sympathy of the audience. The 
 vindication of the Eastern States generally, and of
 
 I ( DANIEL WEBSTER 203 
 
 Massachusetts in particular, was the second object, 
 and was pursued in a still higher strain. When it 
 was finished, no one probably regretted more keenly 
 than the accomplished antagonist the easy credence 
 which he had lent to the purveyors of forgotten 
 scandal, some of whom were present, and felt grate- 
 ful for their obscurity. 
 
 The third and far the more important object with 
 Mr. Webster was the constitutional argument, in 
 which he asserted the character of our political sys- 
 tem as a government established by the people of the 
 United States, in contradistinction to a compact be- 
 tween the separate States; and exposed the fallacy 
 of attempting to turn the natural right of revolution 
 against the government into a right reserved under 
 the Constitution to overturn the government itself. 
 
 Several chapters of the interesting work of Mr. 
 March, already referred to,* are devoted to the sub- 
 ject of this debate; and we have thought that we 
 could in no way convey to the reader so just and dis- 
 tinct an impression of the effect of Mr. Webster's 
 speech at the time of its delivery, as by borrowing 
 largely from his animated pages. 
 
 " It was on Tuesday, January the 26th, 1830, a day to be 
 hereafter for ever memorable in Senatorial annals, that the 
 Senate resumed the consideration of Foot's resolution. There 
 never was before, in the city, an occasion of so much excite- 
 ment. To witness this great intellectual contest, multitudes of 
 strangers had for two or three days previous been rushing into 
 the city, and the hotels overflowed. As early as 9 o'clock of 
 this morning, crowds poured into the Capitol, in hot haste ; at 
 12 o'clock, the hour of meeting, the Senate-chamber its gal- 
 
 * Reminiscences of Congress.
 
 204 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 
 
 leries, floor, and even lobbies was filled to its utmost capacity. 
 The very stairways were dark with men, who clung to one an- 
 other, like bees in a swarm. 
 
 " The House of Representatives was early deserted. An ad- 
 journment would have hardly made it emptier. The Speaker, 
 it is true, retained his chair, but no business of moment was. 
 or could be, attended to. Members all rushed in to hear Mr. 
 Webster, and no call of the House or other parliamentary pro- 
 ceedings could compel them back. The floor of the Senate 
 was so densely crowded, that persons once in could not get out, 
 nor change their position ; in the rear of the Vice-Presidential 
 chair, the crowd was particularly intense. Dixon H. Lewis, 
 then a Representative from Alabama, became wedged in here. 
 From his enormous size, it was impossible for him to move 
 without displacing a vast portion of the multitude. Unfor- 
 tunately, too, for him, he was jammed in directly behind the 
 chair of the Vice-President, where he could not see, and 
 hardly hear, the speaker. By slow and laborious effort, paus- 
 ing occasionally to breathe, he gained one of the windows, 
 which, constructed of painted glass, flank the chair of the Vice- 
 President on either side. Here he paused, unable to make 
 more headway. But determined to see Mr. Webster as he 
 spoke, with his knife he made a large hole in one of the panes 
 of the glass ; which is still visible as he made it. Many were 
 so placed as not to be able to see the speaker at all. 
 
 " The courtesy of Senators accorded to the fairer sex room 
 on the floor, the most gallant of them, their own seats. The 
 gay bonnets and brilliant dresses threw a varied and picturesque 
 beauty over the scene, softening and embellishing it. 
 
 " Seldom, if ever, has speaker in this or any other country 
 had more powerful incentives to exertion; a subject, the deter- 
 mination of which involved the most important interests, and 
 even duration, of the republic ; competitors, unequalled in repu- 
 tation, ability, or position ; a name to make still more glorious, 
 or lose for ever; and an audience, comprising not only persons 
 of this country most eminent in intellectual greatness, but rep- 
 resentatives of other nations, where the art of eloquence had 
 flourished for ages. All the soldier seeks in opportunity 
 was here. 
 
 " Mr. Webster perceived, and felt equal to, the destinies of 
 the moment. The very greatness of the hazard exhilarated
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER 2O$ 
 
 him. His spirits rose with the occasion. He awaited the time 
 of onset with a stern and impatient joy. He felt like the war- 
 horse of the Scriptures, who ' paweth in the valley, and re- 
 joiceth in his strength : who goeth on to meet the armed men, 
 who saith among the trumpets, Ha, ha ! and who smelleth the 
 battle afar off, the thunder of the captains and the shouting.' 
 
 " A confidence in his own resources, springing from no vain 
 estimate of his power, but the legitimate offspring of previous 
 severe mental discipline, sustained and excited him. He had 
 gauged his opponents, his subject, and himself. 
 
 " He was, too, at this period, in the very prime of manhood. 
 He had reached middle age, an era in the life of man when 
 the faculties, physical or intellectual, may be supposed to attain 
 their fullest organization and most perfect development. What- 
 ever there was in him of intellectual energy and vitality, the 
 occasion, his full life, and high ambition might well bring 
 forth. 
 
 " He never rose on an ordinary occasion to address an or- 
 dinary audience more self-possessed. There was no tremulous- 
 ness in his voice or manner; nothing hurried, nothing simu- 
 lated. The calmness of superior strength was visible every- 
 where ; in countenance, voice, and bearing. A deep-seated 
 conviction of the extraordinary character of the emergency, and 
 of his ability to control it, seemed to possess him wholly. If 
 an observer, more than ordinarily keen-sighted, detected at 
 tfimes something like exultation in his eye, he presumed it 
 sprang from the excitement of the moment, and the anticipa- 
 tion of victory. 
 
 " The anxiety to hear the speech was so intense, irrepress- 
 ible, and universal, that no sooner had the Vice-President as- 
 sumed the chair than a motion was made, and unanimously 
 carried, to postpone the ordinary preliminaries of Senatorial 
 action, and to take up immediately the consideration of the 
 resolution. 
 
 " Mr. Webster rose and addressed the Senate. His ex- 
 ordium is known by heart everywhere : ' Mr. President, when 
 the mariner has been tossed, for many days, in thick weather, 
 and on an unknown sea, he naturally avails himself of the first 
 pause in the storm, the earliest glance of the sun, to take his 
 latitude, and ascertain how far the elements have driven him 
 from his true course. Let us imitate this prudence, and, before
 
 206 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 
 
 we float farther on the waves of this debate, refer to the point 
 from which we departed, that we may at least be able to con- 
 jecture where we now are. I ask for the reading of the reso- 
 lution before the Senate.' 
 
 " There wanted no more to enchain the attention. There 
 was a spontaneous, though silent, expression of eager appro- 
 bation, as the orator concluded these opening remarks. 
 
 " Those who had doubted Mr. Webster's ability to cope with 
 and overcome his opponents were fully satisfied of their error 
 before he had proceeded far in his speech. 'Their fears soon 
 took another direction. When they heard his sentences of 
 powerful thought, towering in accumulative grandeur, one 
 above the other, as if the orator strove, Titan-like, to reach the 
 very heavens themselves, they were giddy with an apprehension 
 that he would break down in his flight. They dared not be- 
 lieve that genius, learning, and intellectual endowment how- 
 ever uncommon, that was simply mortal, could sustain itself 
 long in a career seemingly so perilous. They feared an 
 Icarian fall. 
 
 " What New England heart was there but throbbed with 
 vehement, tumultuous, irrepressible emotion, as he dwelt upon 
 New England sufferings, New England struggles, and New 
 England triumphs during the war of the Revolution? There 
 was scarcely a dry eye in the Senate ; all hearts were overcome ; 
 grave judges and men grown old in dignified life turned aside 
 their heads, to conceal the evidences of their emotion. 
 
 " In one corner of the gallery was clustered a group of 
 Massachusetts men. They had hung from the first moment 
 upon the words of the speaker, with feelings variously but 
 always warmly excited, deepening in intensity as he proceeded. 
 At first, while the orator was going through his exordium, 
 they held their breath and hid their faces, mindful of the 
 savage attack upon him and New England, and the fearful 
 odds against him, her champion ; as he went deeper into his 
 speech, they felt easier; when he turned Hayne's flank on 
 Banquo's ghost, they breathed freer and deeper. But now, as 
 he alluded to Massachusetts, their feelings were strained to the
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER 2O/ 
 
 highest tension ; and when the orator, concluding his encomium 
 of the land of their birth, turned, intentionally or otherwise, 
 his burning eye full upon them, they shed tears like girls! 
 
 " No one who was not present can understand the excitement 
 of the scene. No one who was, can give an adequate descrip- 
 tion of it. No word-painting can convey the deep, intense 
 enthusiasm, the reverential attention, of that vast assembly, 
 nor limner transfer to canvas their earnest, eager, awe-struck 
 countenances. Though language were as subtile and flexible 
 as thought, it still would be impossible to represent the full 
 idea of the scene. There is something intangible in an emo- 
 tion, which cannot be transferred. The nicer shades of feeling 
 elude pursuit. Every description, therefore, of the occasion, 
 seems to the narrator himself most tame, spiritless, unjust. 
 
 " The exulting rush of feeling with which he went through 
 the peroration threw a glow over his countenance, like inspira- 
 tion. Eye, brow, each feature, every line of the face, seemed 
 touched, as with a celestial fire. 
 
 " The swell and roll of his voice struck upon the ears of the 
 spell-bound audience, in deep and melodious cadence, as waves 
 upon the shore of the ' far-resounding ' sea. The Miltonic 
 grandeur of his words was the fit expression of his thought, 
 and raised his hearers up to his theme. His voice, exerted to 
 its utmost power, penetrated every recess or corner of the 
 Senate, penetrated even the ante-rooms and stairways, as he 
 pronounced in deepest tones of pathos these words of solemn 
 significance : ' 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, now known and honored 
 throughout the earth, still full high advanced, its arms and 
 trophies streaming in their original lustre, 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 char- 
 acters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds, as they 
 float over the sea and over the land, and in every wind under
 
 208 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 
 
 the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every Ameri- 
 can heart, LIBERTY AND UNION, NOW AND FOR EVER, ONE AND 
 
 INSEPARABLE ! 
 
 After having spoken about three hours on the 26th 
 of January, Mr. Webster gave way for an adjourn- 
 ment. He resumed and concluded the speech on the 
 following day. During most of the time that he was 
 speaking, Mr. Hayne occupied himself in taking 
 notes, and rose to reply at the conclusion of ' Mr. 
 Webster's argument. An adjournment was pro- 
 posed by one of Mr. Hayne's friends, but he wisely 
 determined to terminate all that he intended to say 
 on the subject upon the spot. He accordingly ad- 
 dressed the Senate for about half an hour upon the 
 constitutional question which formed the most im- 
 portant portion of Mr. Webster's speech. These re- 
 marks of Mr. Hayne were, in the newspaper report, 
 expanded into an elaborate argument, which occu- 
 pied nineteen pages in the register of Congressional 
 debates. When Mr. Hayne sat down, Mr. Webster, 
 in turn, rose to make a brief rejoinder. " The gen- 
 tleman," said he, " has in vain attempted to recon- 
 struct his shattered argument " ; and this formida- 
 ble exordium was followed up by a brief restatement 
 of his own argument, which, for condensation, pre- 
 cision, and force, may be referred to as a specimen of 
 parliamentary logic never surpassed. The art of 
 reasoning on moral questions can go no further. 
 
 Thus terminated the day's great work. In the 
 evening the Senatorial champions met at a friend's 
 house, and exchanged those courteous salutations 
 which mitigate the asperity of political collision, and
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER 2OQ 
 
 prevent the conflicts of party from embittering social 
 life. 
 
 The sensation produced by the great debate on 
 those who heard it was but the earnest of its effect 
 on the country at large. The length of Mr. Web- 
 ster's speech did not prevent its being copied into 
 the leading newspapers throughout the country. It 
 was the universal theme of conversation. Letters of 
 acknowledgment and congratulation from the most 
 distinguished individuals, from politicians retired 
 from active life, from entire strangers, from persons 
 not sympathizing with all Mr. Webster's views, from 
 distant parts of the Union, were addressed to him 
 by every mail. Immense editions of the speech in a 
 pamphlet form were called for. It is no exaggera- 
 tion to say, that throughout the country Mr. Web- 
 ster's speech was regarded, not only as a brilliant 
 and successful personal defence and a triumphant 
 vindication of New England, but as a complete over- 
 throw of the dangerous constitutional heresies which 
 had menaced the stability of the Union. 
 
 In this light it was looked upon by a large num- 
 ber of the most distinguished citizens of New York, 
 who took occasion to offer Mr. Webster the com- 
 pliment of a public dinner the following winter. 
 Circumstances delayed the execution of their pur- 
 pose till some time had elapsed from the delivery of 
 the speech, but the recollection of it was vivid, and 
 it was referred to by Chancellor Kent, the president 
 of the day, as the service especially demanding the 
 grateful recognition of the country. After alluding 
 to the debate on Foot's resolution and to the char- 
 
 A. B., VOL. VI. II
 
 2IO AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 
 
 acter of Mr. Webster's speech, the venerable Chan- 
 cellor added : 
 
 " The consequences of that discussion have been extremely 
 beneficial. It turned the attention of the public to the great 
 doctrines of national rights and national union. Constitutional 
 law ceased to remain wrapped up in the breasts, and taught 
 only by the responses, of the living oracles of the law. Soc- 
 rates was said to have drawn down philosophy from the skies, 
 and scattered it among the schools. It may with equal truth 
 be said that constitutional law, by means of those senatorial 
 discussions and the master genius that guided them, was 
 rescued from the archives of our tribunals and the libraries of 
 our lawyers, and placed under the eye and submitted to the 
 judgment of the American people. Their verdict is with us, 
 and from it there lies no appeal." * 
 
 With respect to Mr. Foot's resolution it may be 
 observed, that it continued before the Senate a long 
 time, a standing subject of discussion. At length, 
 on the 2 ist of May, a motion for indefinite postpone- 
 ment, submitted by Mr. Webster at the close of his 
 first speech, prevailed, and thus the whole discussion 
 ended. 
 
 * Chancellor Kent's remarks are given entire in the intro- 
 duction to " Mr. Webster's Speech at the New York Dinner,' 1 
 vol. i. p. 194..
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 President Jackson's Administrations. Speedy Discord among 
 the Parties. Mr. Webster's Relations to the Administration. 
 Veto of the Bank. Rise and Progress of Nullification in 
 South Carolina. The Force Bill. Mr. Madison's Letter on 
 Secession. Removal of the Deposits. Mr. Van Buren's 
 Election. Financial Crisis and Extra Session of Congress. 
 Government Plan of Finance. Mr. Webster's Visit to 
 Europe and distinguished Reception. Presidential Canvass 
 of 1840. Election of General Harrison. 
 
 IT would require a volume of ample dimensions to 
 relate the history of Mr. Webster's Senatorial career 
 from this time till the accession of General Harrison 
 to the Presidency, in 1841. In this interval the gov- 
 ernment was administered for two successive terms 
 by General Jackson, and for a single term by Mr. 
 Van Buren. It was a period filled with incidents of 
 great importance in various departments of the gov- 
 ernment, often of a startling character at the time, 
 and not less frequently exerting a permanent in- 
 fluence on the condition of the country. It may be 
 stated as the general characteristic of the political 
 tendencies of this period, that there was a decided 
 weakening of respect for constitutional restraint. 
 Vague ideas of executive discretion prevailed on the 
 one hand in the interpretation of the Constitution, 
 and of popular sovereignty on the other, as repre- 
 sented by a President elevated to office by overwhelm- 
 ing majorities of the people. The expulsion of the 
 
 211
 
 212 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 
 
 Indian tribes from the Southern States, in violation 
 of the faith of treaties and in open disregard of the 
 opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States 
 as to their obligation ; the claim of a right on the part 
 of a State to nullify an act of the General Govern- 
 ment; the violation of the charter of the bank, and 
 the Presidential veto of the act of Congress rechar- 
 tering it; the deposit of the public money in the 
 selected State banks with a view to its safekeeping 
 and for the greater encouragement of trade by the 
 loan of the public funds; the explosion of this sys- 
 tem, and the adoption of one directly opposed to it, 
 which rejected wholly the aid of the banks and de- 
 nied the right of the government to employ the pub- 
 lic funds for any but fiscal purposes; the executive 
 menaces of war against France; the unsuccessful 
 attempt of Mr. Van Buren's administration to carry 
 on the government upon General Jackson's system; 
 the panic of 1837, succeeded by the general uprising 
 of the country and the universal demand -for a 
 change of men and measures, these are the leading 
 incidents in the chronicle of the period in question. 
 On some of them Mr. Webster put forth all his 
 power. The questions pertaining to the construction 
 of the Constitution, to the bank, to the veto power, 
 to the currency, to the constitutionality of the tariff, 
 to the right of removal from office, and to the 
 finances, were discussed in almost every conceivable 
 form, and with every variety of argument and 
 illustration. 
 
 It has already been observed that General Jackson 
 was brought into power by a somewhat ill-compacted
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER 213 
 
 alliance between his original friends and a portion of 
 the friends of the other candidates of 1824. As far 
 as Mr. Calhoun and his followers were concerned, 
 the cordiality of the union was gone before the in- 
 auguration of the new President. There was not 
 only on the list of the cabinet to be appointed no 
 adequate representative of the Vice-President, but 
 his rival candidate for the succession (Mr. Van 
 Buren) was placed at the head of the administra- 
 tion. There is reason to suppose that General Jack- 
 son, who, though his policy tended greatly to impair 
 the strength of the Union, was in feeling a warm 
 Unionist, witnessed with no dissatisfaction the re- 
 sult of the great constitutional debate and its in- 
 fluence upon the country. 
 
 In the Twenty-second Congress (the second of 
 General Jackson's administration) the bank question 
 became prominent. General Jackson had in his first 
 message called the attention of Congress to the sub- 
 ject of the bank. No doubt of its constitutionality 
 was then intimated by him. In the course of a year 
 or two an attempt was made, on the part of the 
 Executive, to control the appointment of the officers 
 of one of the Eastern branches. This attempt was 
 resisted by the bank, and from that time forward a 
 state of warfare, at first partially disguised, but 
 finally open and flagrant, existed between the gov- 
 ernment and the directors of the institution. In the 
 first session of the Twenty-second Congress (1831- 
 32), a bill was introduced by Mr. Dallas, and passed 
 the two houses, to renew the charter of the bank. 
 This measure was supported by Mr, Webster, on the
 
 214 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 
 
 ground of the importance of a national bank to the 
 fiscal operations of the government, and to the cur- 
 rency, exchange, and general business of the coun- 
 try. No specific complaints of mismanagement had 
 then been made, nor were any abuses alleged to exist. 
 The bank was, almost without exception, popular at 
 that time with the business interests of the coun- 
 try, and particularly at the South and West. Its 
 credit in England was solid; its bills and drafts on 
 London took the place of specie for remittances to 
 India and China. Its convenience and usefulness 
 were recognized in the report of the Secretary of the 
 Treasury (Mr. Lane), at the same time that its con- 
 stitutionality was questioned and its existence threat- 
 ened by the President. So completely, however, was 
 the policy of General Jackson's administration the 
 impulse of his own feelings and individual impres- 
 sions, and so imperfectly had these been disclosed 
 on the present occasion, that the fate of the bill for 
 rechartering the bank was a matter of uncertainty 
 on the part both of adherents and opponents. Many 
 persons on both sides of the two houses were taken 
 by surprise by the veto. 
 
 But events of a different complexion soon oc- 
 curred, and gave a new direction to the thoughts of 
 men throughout the country. The opposition of 
 South Carolina to the protective policy had been 
 pushed to a point of excitement at which it was be- 
 yond the control of party leaders. Although, as we 
 have seen, that policy had in 1816 been established 
 by the aid of distinguished statesmen of South Caro- 
 lina, who saw in the success of American cotton
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER 21$ 
 
 manufactures a new market for the staple of the 
 South, in which it would take the place of the cotton 
 of India, the protective policy at a later period had 
 come to be generally considered unconstitutional at 
 the South. A change of opinion somewhat similar 
 had taken place in New England, which had been 
 originally opposed to this policy, as adverse to the 
 commercial and navigating interests. Experience 
 gradually showed that such was not the case. The 
 enactment of the law of 1824 was considered as es- 
 tablishing the general principle of protection as the 
 policy of the country. It was known to be the policy 
 of the great central States. The capital of the North 
 was to some extent forced into new channels. Some 
 branches of manufactures flourished, as skill was 
 acquired and improvements in machinery made. 
 The coarse cotton fabrics which had enjoyed the pro- 
 tection of the minimum duty prospered, manufactur- 
 ing villages grew up, the price of the fabric fell, and 
 as competition increased the tariff did little more 
 than protect the domestic manufacturer from fraudu- 
 lent invoices and the fluctuation of foreign markets. 
 Thus all parties were benefited, not excepting the 
 South, which gained a new customer for her staple. 
 These changes in the condition of things led Mr. 
 Webster, as we have remarked in a former chapter, 
 to modify his course on the tariff question. 
 
 Unfortunately, no manufactures had been estab- 
 lished at the South. The vast quantities of new 
 and fertile land opened in the west of Georgia, in 
 Alabama, and Mississippi, injured the value of the 
 old and partly exhausted lands of the Atlantic States,
 
 2l6 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 
 
 Labor was drawn off to found plantations in the new 
 States, and the injurious consequences were ascribed 
 to the tariff. Considerations of a political nature 
 had entirely changed the tolerant feeling which, up 
 to a certain period, had been shown by one class of 
 Southern politicians toward the protective policy. 
 With the exception of Louisiana, and one or two 
 votes in Virginia, the whole South was united 
 against the tariff. South Carolina had suffered most 
 by the inability of her worn lands to sustain the com- 
 petition with the lands of the Yazoo and the Red 
 River, and to her the most active opposition, under 
 the lead of Mr. Calhoun, was confined. The mod- 
 ern doctrine of nullification was broached by her ac- 
 complished statesmen, and an unsuccessful attempt 
 made to deduce it from the Virginia resolutions of 
 1798. Mr. Madison, in a letter addressed to the 
 writer of these pages,* in August, 1830, firmly re- 
 sisted this attempt ; and, as a theory, the whole doc- 
 trine of nullification was overthrown by Mr. Web- 
 ster, in his speech of the 26th of January, 1830. But 
 public sentiment had gone too far in South Carolina 
 to be checked; party leaders were too deeply com- 
 mitted to retreat; and at the close of 1832 the ordi- 
 nance of nullification was adopted by a State con- 
 vention. 
 
 This decisive act roused the hero of New Orleans 
 from the vigilant repose with which he had watched 
 the coming storm. Confidential orders to hold them- 
 selves in readiness for active service were sent in 
 every direction to the officers of the army and the 
 
 * North American Review, vol. xxxi, p. 537.
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 navy. Prudent and resolute men were quietly sta- 
 tioned at the proper posts. Arms and munitions in 
 abundance were held in readiness, and a chain of 
 expresses in advance of the mail was established 
 from the Capitol to Charleston. These preparations 
 made, the Presidential proclamation of the nth of 
 December, 1832, was issued. It was written by Mr. 
 Edward Livingston, then Secretary of State, from 
 notes furnished by General Jackson himself; but 
 there is not an idea of importance in it which may 
 not be found in Mr. Webster's speech on Foot's 
 resolution. 
 
 The proclamation of the President was met by 
 the counter-proclamation of Governor Hayne; and 
 the State of South Carolina proceeded to pass laws 
 for carrying the ordinance of nullification into effect, 
 and for putting the State into a condition to carry on 
 war with the General Government. In this posture 
 of affairs the President of the United States laid 
 the matter before Congress, in his message of the 
 1 6th of January, 1833, and the bill " further to pro- 
 vide for the collection of duties on imports " was in- 
 troduced into the Senate, in pursuance of his recom- 
 mendations. Mr. Calhoun was at this time a mem- 
 ber of that body, having been chosen to succeed Gov- 
 ernor Hayne, and having of course resigned the 
 office of Vice-President. Thus called, for the first 
 time, to sustain in person before the Senate and the 
 country the policy of nullification, which had been 
 adopted by South Carolina mainly under his influ- 
 ence, and which was now threatening the Union, it 
 hardly need be said that he exerted all his ability,
 
 2l8 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 
 
 and put forth all his resources, in defence of the 
 doctrine which had brought his State to the verge 
 of revolution. It is but justice to add, that he met 
 the occasion with equal courage and vigor. The 
 bill " to make further provision for the collection of 
 the revenue," or " Force Bill," as it was called, was 
 reported by Mr. Wilkins from the Committee on the 
 Judiciary on the 2ist of January, and on the follow- 
 ing day Mr. Calhoun moved a series of resolutions, 
 affirming the right of a State to annul, as far as her 
 citizens are concerned, any act of Congress which 
 she may deem oppressive and unconstitutional. On 
 the 1 5th and i6th of February, he spoke at length in 
 opposition to the bill, and in development and sup- 
 port of his resolutions. On this occasion the doc- 
 trine of nullification was sustained by him with far 
 greater ability than it had been by General Hayne, 
 and in a speech which we believe is regarded as Mr. 
 Calhoun's most powerful effort. In closing his 
 speech, Mr. Calhoun challenged the opponents of his 
 doctrines to disprove them, and warned them, in the 
 concluding sentence, that the principles they might 
 advance would be subjected to the revision of 
 posterity. 
 
 Mr. Webster, before Mr. Calhoun had resumed 
 his seat, or he had risen from his own, accepted the 
 challenge, and commenced his reply. He began to 
 speak as he was rising, and continued to address the 
 Senate with great force and effect, for about two 
 hours. The Senate then took a recess, and after it 
 came together Mr. Webster spoke again, from five 
 o'clock till eight in the evening, The speech was
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER 2 19 
 
 more purely a constitutional argument than that of 
 the 26th of January, 1830. It was mainly devoted 
 to an examination of Mr. Calhoun's resolutions ; to a 
 review of the adoption and ratification of the Con- 
 stitution of the United States, by way of elucidating 
 the question whether the system provided by the 
 Constitution is a government of the people or a com- 
 pact between the States; and to a discussion of the 
 constitutionality of the tariff. The Senate-chamber 
 was thronged to its utmost capacity, both before and 
 after the recess, although the streets of Washington, 
 owing to the state of the weather at the time, were 
 nearly impassable. 
 
 The opinion entertained of this speech by the in- 
 dividual who, of all the people of America, was the 
 best qualified to estimate its value, may be seen from 
 the following letter of Mr. Madison, which has never 
 before been published : 
 
 " Montpellier, March i^th, 1833. 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR : I return my thanks for the copy of your 
 late very powerful speech in the Senate of the United States. 
 It crushes ' nullification,' and must hasten an abandonment of 
 ' secession.' But this dodges the blow, by confounding the 
 claim to secede at will with the right of seceding from intol- 
 erable oppression. The former answers itself, being a violation 
 without cause of a faith solemnly pledged. The latter is an- 
 other name only for revolution, about which there is no theo- 
 retic controversy. Its double aspect, nevertheless, with the 
 countenance received from certain quarters, is giving it a popu- 
 lar currency here, which may influence the approaching elec- 
 tions both for Congress and for the State legislature. It has 
 gained some advantage also by mixing itself with the question, 
 whether the Constitution of the United States was formed by 
 the people or by the States, now under a theoretic discussion 
 by animated partisans.
 
 22O AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 
 
 " It is fortunate when disputed theories can be decided by 
 undisputed facts, and here the undisputed fact is, that the Con- 
 stitution was made by the people, but as embodied into the 
 several States who were parties to it, and therefore made by 
 the States in their highest authoritative capacity. They might, 
 by the same authority and by the same process, have converted 
 the confederacy into a mere league or treaty, or continued it 
 with enlarged or abridged powers ; or have embodied the people 
 of their respective States into one people, nation, or sover- 
 eignty ; or, as they did, by a mixed form, make them one people, 
 nation, or sovereignty for certain purposes, and not so for 
 others. 
 
 " The Constitution of the United States, being established by 
 a competent authority, by that of the sovereign people of the 
 several States who were parties to it, it remains only to inquire 
 what the Constitution is ; and here it speaks for itself. It 
 organizes a government into the usual legislative, executive, 
 and judiciary departments; invests it with specified powers, 
 leaving others to the parties to the Constitution. It makes 
 the government like other governments to operate directly on 
 the people; places at its command the needful physical means 
 of executing its powers; and finally proclaims its supremacy, 
 and that of the laws made in pursuance of it, over the consti- 
 tutions and laws of the States, the powers of the government 
 being exercised, as in other elective and responsible govern- 
 ments, under the control of its constituents, the people and the 
 legislatures of the States, and subject to the revolutionary 
 rights of the people, in extreme cases. 
 
 " Such is the Constitution of the United States de jure and 
 de facto, and the name, whatever it be, that may be given to it 
 can make it nothing more or less than what it is. 
 
 " Pardon this hasty effusion, which, whether precisely ac- 
 cording or not with your ideas, presents, I am aware, none that 
 will be new to you. 
 
 " With great esteem and cordial salutations, 
 
 " JAMES MADISON. 
 
 " MR. WEBSTER." 
 
 It may be observed, in reference to the closing 
 remark in the above important letter, that the view 
 which it presents of the nature of the government
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER 221 
 
 established by the Constitution is precisely that taken 
 by Mr. Webster in the various speeches in which 
 the subject is discussed by him. 
 
 The President of the United States felt the impor- 
 tance of Mr. Webster's aid in the great constitutional 
 struggle of the session. There were men of great 
 ability enlisted in support of his administration, 
 Messrs. Forsyth, Grundy, Dallas, Rives, and others, 
 but no one competent to assume the post of antag- 
 onist to the great Southern leader. The general 
 political position of Mr. Webster made it in no de- 
 gree his duty to sustain the administration in any 
 party measure, but the reverse. But his whole 
 course as a public man, and all his principles, forbade 
 him to act from .party motives in a great crisis of the 
 country's fortunes. The administration was now 
 engaged in a fearful struggle for the preservation of 
 the Union, and the integrity of the Constitution. 
 The doctrines of the proclamation were the doctrines 
 of his speech on Foot's resolution almost to the 
 words. He would have been unjust to his most 
 cherished principles and his views of public duty had 
 he not come to the rescue, not of the administration, 
 but of the country, in this hour of her peril. His aid 
 was personally solicited in the great debate on the 
 " Force Bill " by a member of the Cabinet, but it was 
 not granted till the bill had undergone important 
 amendments suggested by him, when it was given 
 cordially, without stint and without condition.* 
 
 * It is not wholly unworthy of remark in this place, as illus- 
 trating the dependence on Mr. Webster's aid which was felt 
 at the White House, that, on the day of his reply to Mr. Cal- 
 houn, the President's carriage was sent to Mr. Webster's lodg-
 
 222 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 
 
 In the recess of Congress in the year 1833, Mr. 
 Webster made a short journey to the Middle States 
 and the West. He was everywhere the object of the 
 most distinguished and respectful attentions. Public 
 receptions took place at Buffalo and Pittsburg, 
 where, under the auspices of committees of the high- 
 est respectability, he addressed immense assem- 
 blages convened without distinction of party. Invi- 
 tations to similar meetings reached him from many 
 quarters, which he was obliged by want of leisure to 
 decline. 
 
 The friendly relations into which Mr. Webster 
 had been drawn with the President, and the enthu- 
 siastic welcome given to the President on his tour 
 to the East, in the summer of 1833, awakened jeal- 
 ousy in certain quarters. It was believed at the time, 
 by well-informed persons, that among the motives 
 which actuated some persons in General Jackson's 
 confidence, in fanning his hostility to the Bank of 
 'the United States, was that of bringing forward a 
 question of great interest both to the public and the 
 President, on which he would be sure to encounter 
 Mr. Webster's opposition. 
 
 Such a subject was the removal of the deposits of 
 the public moneys from the Bank of the United 
 States, a measure productive of more immediate 
 distress to the community and a larger train of evil 
 consequences than perhaps any similar measure in 
 our political history. It was finally determined upon 
 
 ings, as was supposed with a message borne by the President's 
 private secretary. Happening to be still at the door when Mr. 
 Webster was about to go to the Capitol, it conveyed him to the 
 Senate-chamber.
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER 223 
 
 while the President was on his Northern tour, in the 
 summer of 1833, receiving in every part of New 
 England those warm demonstrations of respect 
 which his patriotic course in the great nullification 
 struggle had inspired. It is proper to state, that up 
 to this period, in the judgment of more than one 
 committee of Congress appointed to investigate its 
 affairs, in the opinion of both houses of Congress, 
 who in 1832 had passed a bill to renew the charter, 
 and of the House of Representatives, which had re- 
 solved that the deposits were safe in its custody, the 
 affairs of the bank had been conducted with pru- 
 dence, integrity, and remarkable skill. It was not 
 the least evil consequence of the warfare waged upon 
 the bank, that it was finally drawn into a position 
 (though not till its Congressional charter expired, 
 and it accepted very unwisely a charter as a State 
 institution) in which, in its desperate struggle to 
 sustain itself, it finally forfeited the confidence of its 
 friends and the public, and made a deplorable and 
 shameful shipwreck at once of its interests and 
 honor, involving hundreds, at home and abroad, in 
 its own deserved ruin. 
 
 The second administration of General Jackson, 
 which commenced in March, 1833, was principally 
 employed in carrying on this war against the bank, 
 and in the effort to build up the league of the asso- 
 ciated banks into an efficient fiscal agent of the gov- 
 ernment. The dangerous crisis of affairs in South 
 Carolina had, for the time, passed. The passage of 
 the " Force Bill " had vindicated the authority of 
 the Constitution as the supreme law of the land, and
 
 224 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 
 
 had armed the President with the needed powers to 
 maintain it. On the other hand, the Compromise 
 Bill of Mr. Clay, providing for the gradual reduc- 
 tion of all duties to one uniform rate of twenty per 
 cent., was accepted by Mr. Calhoun and his friends 
 as a practical concession, and furnished them the 
 opportunity of making what they deemed a not dis- 
 creditable retreat from the attitude of military re- 
 sistance in which they had placed the State. Re- 
 garding this bill in the light of a concession to un- 
 constitutional menace, as tending to the eventual 
 prostration of all the interests which had grown up 
 under the system so long pursued by the govern- 
 ment, Mr. Webster felt himself compelled to with- 
 hold from it his support. He rejoiced, however, in 
 the concurrence of events which had averted the 
 dread appeal to arms that seemed at one time una- 
 voidable. 
 
 It would occupy an unreasonable space to dwell 
 upon every public measure before Congress at this 
 session ; but there is one which cannot with propriety 
 be passed over, as it drew forth from Mr. Webster 
 an argument not inferior to his speech on the " Force 
 Bill." A resolution, originally moved by Mr. Clay, 
 expressing disapprobation of the removal of the de- 
 posits from the bank, was, after material amend- 
 ments, adopted by the Senate. This resolution led 
 to a formal protest from the President, communi- 
 cated to the Senate on the I5th of April, 1834. 
 Looking upon the resolution referred to as one of 
 expediency, it is probable that Mr. Webster did not 
 warmly favor, though, with Mr. Calhoun, he con-
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER 225 
 
 curred in, its passage. The protest of the President, 
 however, placed the subject on new ground. Mr. 
 Webster considered it as an encroachment on the 
 constitutional rights of the Senate, and as a denial 
 to that body of the freedom of action which the 
 executive claimed so earnestly for itself. He ac- 
 cordingly addressed the Senate on the 7th of May, 
 in a speech of the highest ability, in which the doc- 
 trines of the protest were subjected to the severest 
 scrutiny, and the constitutional rights and duties of 
 the Senate asserted with a force and spirit worthy 
 of the important position occupied by that body in 
 the frame of the government. This speech will be 
 ever memorable for that sublime passage on the ex- 
 tent of the power of England, which will be quoted 
 with admiration wherever our language is spoken 
 and while England retains her place in the family of 
 nations. 
 
 At the same session of Congress, Mr. Webster 
 spoke frequently on the presentation of memorials, 
 which were poured in upon him from every part of 
 the country, in reference to the existing distress. 
 These speeches were of necessity made, in almost 
 every case, with little or no preparation, but many 
 of them contain expositions of the operation of the 
 financial experiment instituted by General Jackson, 
 which will retain a permanent value in our political 
 history. Some of them are marked by bursts of the 
 highest eloquence. The entire subject of the cur- 
 rency was also treated with great ability by Mr. 
 Webster, in a report made at this session of Con- 
 gress from the committee of the Senate on finance, 
 A. B., VOL. vi. 15
 
 226 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 
 
 of which he was chairman. Few documents more 
 skilfully digested or powerfully reasoned proceeded 
 from his pen. 
 
 The same topics substantially occupied the atten- 
 tion of the Senate at the Twenty-fourth as at the 
 Twenty-third Congress. The principal subjects dis- 
 cussed pertained to the currency. The specie circular 
 and the distribution of the surplus revenue were 
 among the prominent measures. A motion made in 
 the Senate to expunge from its records the resolution 
 of March, 1834, by which the Senate expressed its 
 disapprobation of the removal of the deposits, drew 
 forth from Mr. Webster, on behalf of himself and 
 his colleague, a protest against that measure, of sin- 
 gular earnestness and power. Committed to writ- 
 ing, and read with unusual solemnity, it produced 
 upon the Senate an effect which is still remembered 
 and spoken of. Every word in it is weighed as in a 
 balance. 
 
 The administration of General Jackson was draw- 
 ing to a close; Mr. Van Buren had been chosen to 
 succeed him in November, 1836. In the month of 
 February following, upon an invitation from a large 
 committee of merchants, professional men, and citi- 
 zens generally of New York, given some months pre- 
 vious, Mr. Webster attended one of those great pub- 
 lic meetings which he has been so often called to 
 address. His speech on this occasion, delivered in 
 Niblo's Saloon on the I5th of March, 1837, is one 
 of the most important of his utterances of General 
 Jackson's policy, and closed with a prediction of the 
 impending catastrophe. After the adjournment of
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER 22 / 
 
 Congress, Mr. Webster made a hasty tour to the 
 West, in the course of which he addressed large pub- 
 lic meetings at Wheeling in Virginia, at Madison in 
 Indiana, and at other places. The coincidence of 
 passing events with all his anticipations of the cer- 
 tain effects of the administration policy gave pecul- 
 iar force to these addresses. It is to be regretted 
 that these speeches appear from inadequate reports ; 
 of some of the speeches made by him on this tour, 
 no notes were taken. 
 
 Such was the financial embarrassment induced by 
 the explosion of the system of the late administra- 
 tion, that President Van Buren's first official act was 
 a proclamation for an extra session of Congress, to 
 be held in September, 1837. At this session the new 
 government plan of finance, usually called " the 
 Sub-treasury system," was brought forward. It was 
 the opinion of Mr. Webster, that the rigid enforce- 
 ment by the government of a system of specie pay- 
 ments in all its public receipts and expenditures was 
 an actual impossibility, in the present state of things 
 in this country and the other commercial countries 
 of the civilized world. The attempt to reject alto- 
 gether the aid of convertible paper, of bills of ex- 
 change, of drafts, and other substitutes for the use 
 and transportation of the precious metals, must fail 
 in practice in a commercial country, where the great 
 mass of the business affairs of the community are 
 transacted with their aid. If the attempt could be 
 forced through, it would be like an attempt on the 
 part of the government to make use of the ancient 
 modes of travel and conveyance, while every citizen
 
 228 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 
 
 in his private affairs enjoyed the benefit of steam 
 navigation and railways. Mr. Webster accordingly 
 opposed the sub-treasury project from its inception; 
 and it failed to become a law at the extra session of 
 Congress in 1837. 
 
 During the debate one of Mr. Calhoun's speeches 
 called upon Mr. Webster for a rejoinder, which was 
 made by him on the I2th of March. It is the most 
 elaborate and effective of Mr. Webster's speeches on 
 the subject of the currency. The constitutional right 
 of the General Government to employ a convertible 
 paper in its fiscal transactions, and to make use of 
 banks in the custody and transmission of its funds, 
 is argued in this speech with much ability, from the 
 necessity of the case, from the contemporaneous ex- 
 positions of the Constitution, from the practice of 
 the government under every administration, from 
 the expressed views and opinions of every President 
 of the United States, including General Jackson, 
 and from the often-declared opinions of all the lead- 
 ing statesmen of the country, not excepting Mr. 
 Calhoun himself, whose course in this respect was 
 reviewed by Mr. Webster somewhat at length, and 
 in such a way as unavoidably to suggest the idea of 
 inconsistency, although no such charge was made. 
 
 To some portions of this speech Mr. Calhoun re- 
 plied a few weeks afterward, and sought to ward 
 off the comments upon his own course in reference 
 to this class of questions, by some severe strictures 
 on that of Mr. Webster, which drew from that gen- 
 tleman a prompt and spirited rejoinder. 
 
 This is the only occasion during the long political 
 lives of these distinguished statesmen, begun nearly
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER 229 
 
 at the same time, and continued through a Congres- 
 sional career which brought them of necessity much 
 in contact with each other, in which there was any 
 approach to personality in their keen encounters. In 
 fact, of all the highly eminent public men of the day, 
 they are the individuals who have made the least 
 use of the favorite weapon of ordinary politicians, 
 personality toward opponents. On the decease of 
 Mr. Calhoun at Washington, in the spring of 1850, 
 their uninterrupted friendly relations were alluded to 
 by Mr. Webster in cordial and affecting terms. He 
 regarded Mr. Calhoun as decidedly the ablest of the 
 public men to whom he had been opposed in the 
 course of his political life. 
 
 These kindly feelings on Mr. Webster's part were 
 fully reciprocated by Mr. Calhoun. He is known to 
 have declared on his death-bed, that, of all the public 
 men of the day, there was no one whose political 
 course had been more strongly marked by a strict 
 regard to truth and honor than Mr. Webster's. 
 
 In the spring of 1839, Mr. Webster crossed the 
 Atlantic for the first time in his life, making a hasty 
 tour through England, Scotland, and France. His 
 attention was particularly drawn to the agriculture 
 of England and Scotland; to the great subjects of 
 currency and exchange; to the condition of the labor- 
 ing classes ; and to the practical effect on the politics 
 of Europe of the system of the Continental alliance. 
 No traveller from this country has probably ever 
 been received with equal attention in the highest 
 quarters in England. Courtesies usually paid only 
 to ambassadors and foreign ministers were extended 
 to him. His table was covered with invitations to
 
 230 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 
 
 the seats of the nobility and gentry; and his com- 
 pany was eagerly sought at the public entertainments 
 which took place while he was in the country. 
 Among the distinguished individuals with whom he 
 contracted intimate relations of friendship, the late 
 Lord Ashburton may be particularly mentioned. A 
 mutual regard of more than usual warmth arose be- 
 tween them. This circumstance was well understood 
 in the higher circles of English society, and when, 
 two years later, a change of administration in both 
 countries brought the parties to which they were 
 respectively attached into power, the friendly rela- 
 tions well known to exist between them were no 
 doubt among the motives which led to the appoint- 
 ment of Lord Ashburton as special minister to the 
 United States. 
 
 Toward that great political change which was 
 consummated in 1840, by which General Harrison 
 was raised to the Presidency, no individual probably 
 in the country had contributed more largely than 
 Mr. Webster; and this by powerful appeals to the 
 reason of the people. His speeches had been for 
 years a public armory, from which weapons both of 
 attack and defence were furnished to his political 
 friends throughout the Union. The financial policy 
 of the two preceding administrations was the chief 
 cause of the general discontent which prevailed ; and 
 it is doing no injustice to the other eminent leaders 
 of opposition in the several States to say, that by 
 none of them had the vices of this system from the 
 first been so laboriously and effectively exposed as 
 by Mr. Webster,
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 Critical State of Foreign Affairs. Mr. Webster appointed to 
 the State Department. Death of President Harrison. Em- 
 barrassed Relations with England. The Northeastern Boun- 
 dary. Other Subjects of Negotiation. Extradition. Sup- 
 pression of the Slave-Trade. Affair of the Caroline. Im- 
 pressment, etc. China. The Sandwich Islands. Mexico. 
 Mr. Webster's Services as Secretary of State. 
 
 THE condition of affairs in the United States, on 
 the accession of President Harrison to office, in the 
 spring of 1841, was difficult and critical, especially 
 as far as the foreign relations of the country were 
 concerned. Ancient and modern controversies ex- 
 isted with England, which seemed to defy adjust- 
 ment. The great question of the northwestern boun- 
 dary had been the subject of negotiation almost ever 
 since the peace of 1783. Every effort to settle it had 
 but increased the difficulties with which it was beset, 
 by exhausting the expedients of diplomacy. The 
 Oregon question was rapidly assuming a formidable 
 aspect, as emigrants began to move, into the country 
 in dispute. Not less serious was the state of affairs 
 on the southwestern frontier, where, although a colli- 
 sion with Mexico might not in itself be an event to be 
 viewed with great anxiety, it was probable, as things 
 then stood, that it would have brought a war with 
 Great Britain in its train. 
 
 231
 
 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 
 
 Such was the state of things when General Harri- 
 son acceded to the Presidency, after perhaps the 
 most strenuously contested election ever known, and 
 by a larger popular vote than had ever before been 
 given in the United States. As soon as the result 
 was known, the President elect addressed a letter to 
 Mr. Webster, offering him any place he might choose 
 in his Cabinet, and asking his advice as to the other 
 members of which it should be composed. Averse 
 to the daily drudgery of the Treasury, Mr. Webster 
 gave his preference to the Department of State, 
 without concealing from himself that it might be the 
 post of greater care and responsibility. 
 
 But the death of the new President, when just 
 entering upon the discharge of his duties, changed 
 the state of affairs in this respect. The great na- 
 tional party which had called him to the helm was 
 struck with astonishment. No rallying-point pre- 
 sented itself. A position of things existed, not over- 
 looked, indeed, by the sagacious men who framed 
 the Constitution, but which, from its very nature, 
 can never enter practically into the calculations of 
 the enthusiastic multitudes by which, in times of 
 difficulty and excitement, a favorite candidate is 
 borne to the chair. How much of the control which 
 it would otherwise have possessed over public 
 opinion could be retained by an administration thus 
 unexpectedly deprived of its head, was a question 
 which time alone could settle. Happily, as far as our 
 foreign relations were concerned, a character had 
 been assumed by the administration, from the very 
 formation of General Harrison's Cabinet, which was
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER 233 
 
 steadily maintained, till the adjustment of the most 
 difficult points in controversy was effected by the 
 treaty of Washington. President Harrison, as is 
 well known, lived but one month after his inaugura- 
 tion, but all the members of his Cabinet remained 
 in office under Mr. Tyler, who succeeded to the 
 Presidency. With him, of course, rested the general 
 authority of regulating and directing the negotia- 
 tions with foreign powers, in which the government 
 might be engaged. But the active management of 
 these negotiations was in the hands of the Secretary 
 of State, and it is believed that no difference of 
 views in regard to important matters arose between 
 him and Mr. Tyler. For the result of the principal 
 negotiation, Mr. Tyler manifested great anxiety; 
 and Mr. Webster has not failed, in public or private, 
 to bear witness to the intelligent and earnest atten- 
 tion which was bestowed by him on the proceedings, 
 through all their stages, and to express his sense of 
 the confidence reposed in himself by the head of the 
 administration, from the beginning to the end of 
 the transactions. 
 
 If the position of things was difficult here, it was 
 not less so on the other side of the Atlantic ; indeed, 
 many of the causes of embarrassment were common 
 to the two countries. There, as here, the corre- 
 spondence, whether conducted at Washington or 
 London, had of late years done nothing toward an 
 amicable settlement of the great questions at issue. 
 It had degenerated into an exercise of diplomatic 
 logic, with the effect, in England as well as in Amer- 
 ica, of strengthening each party in the belief of its
 
 234 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 
 
 own rights, and of working up the public mind to 
 a reluctant feeling that the time was at hand when 
 those rights must be maintained by force. 
 
 While this was the state of affairs with reference 
 to the immediate relations of the two countries, 
 Lord Palmerston was urging France into a coopera- 
 tion with the four other leading powers of Europe 
 in the adoption of a policy, by the negotiation of the 
 quintuple treaty, which would have left the United 
 States in a position of dangerous insulation on the 
 subject of the great maritime question of the day. 
 
 At this juncture, a change of administration oc- 
 curred in England, subsequent but by a few months 
 to that which had taken place in the government 
 of the United States. Lord Melbourne's govern- 
 ment gave way to that of Sir Robert Peel in the 
 summer of 1841 ; it remained to be seen with what 
 influence on the relations of the two countries. 
 
 From his first entrance on office as Secretary of 
 State, Mr. Webster, long familiar with the per- 
 plexed history of the negotiation relative to the 
 boundary between Canada and the United States, 
 had perceived the necessity of taking a "new de- 
 parture." 
 
 Early in the summer of 1841, Mr. Webster had 
 intimated to Mr. Fox, the British Minister at Wash- 
 ington, that the American government was prepared 
 to consider, and, if practicable, adopt, a conven- 
 tional line, as the only mode of cutting the Gordian 
 knot of the controversy. This overture was, of 
 course, conveyed to London. Though not leading 
 to any result on the part of the ministry just going
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER 235 
 
 out of office, it was embraced by their successors in 
 the same wise and conciliatory spirit in which it 
 had been made. On the 26th of December, 1841, 
 a note was addressed by Lord Aberdeen to Mr. Ev- 
 erett, inviting him to an interview on the following 
 day, when he communicated the purpose of the Brit- 
 ish government to send a special mission to the 
 United States, Lord Ashburton being the person 
 selected as minister, and furnished with full powers 
 to settle every question in controversy. 
 
 This step on the part of the British government 
 was as bold as it was wise. It met the difficulty in 
 the face. It justly assumed the existence of a cor- 
 responding spirit of conciliation on the part of the 
 United States, and of a desire to bring matters to 
 a practical result. It was bold, because it was the 
 last expedient for an amicable adjustment, and be- 
 cause its failure must necessarily lead to very serious 
 and immediate consequences. 
 
 In his choice of a minister, Lord Aberdeen was 
 not less fortunate than he had been wise in propos- 
 ing the measure. Lord Ashburton was above the 
 reach of the motives which influence politicians of 
 an ordinary stamp, and unencumbered by the habits 
 of routine which belong to men regularly trained 
 in a career. He possessed a weight of character 
 at home which made him independent of the vulgar 
 resorts of popularity. He was animated by a kindly 
 feeling, and bound by kindly associations to this 
 country. There was certainly no public man in Eng- 
 land who united in an equal degree the confidence 
 of his own government and country with those
 
 236 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 
 
 claims to the good-will of the opposite party, which 
 were scarcely less essential to success. The relations 
 of personal friendship contracted by Mr. Webster 
 with Lord Ashburton in 1839 have already been 
 alluded to, as influencing the selection. They de- 
 cided Lord Ashburton in accepting the appointment. 
 The writer was informed by Lord Ashburton him- 
 self, that he should have despaired of bringing mat- 
 ters to a settlement advantageous to both countries, 
 but for his reliance on the upright and honorable 
 character of the American Secretary. 
 
 With the appointment of Lord Ashburton, the 
 discussion of the main questions in controversy be- 
 tween the two countries, as far as it had been carried 
 on in London, was transferred to Washington. But 
 as an earnest of the conciliatory spirit which bore 
 sway in the British counsels, Lord Aberdeen had 
 announced to Mr. Everett, in the interval which 
 elapsed between Lord Ashburton's appointment and 
 his arrival at his place of destination, that the 
 Queen's government admitted the wrong done by 
 the detention of the Tigris and Seamew in the 
 African waters, and was prepared to indemnify 
 their owners for the losses sustained. 
 
 The first step taken by Mr. Webster, after receiv- 
 ing the directions of the President in reference to 
 the negotiation, was to invite the cooperation of 
 Massachusetts and Maine, the territory in dispute 
 being the property of the two States, and under the 
 jurisdiction of the latter. The extent of the treaty- 
 making power of the United States, in a matter of 
 such delicacy as the cession of territory claimed by
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER 237 
 
 a State to be within its limits, belongs to the more 
 difficult class of constitutional doctrines. 
 
 Massachusetts had anticipated the necessity of the 
 measure, and made provision for the appointment 
 of commissioners. The legislature of Maine was 
 promptly convened for the same purpose by the late 
 Governor Fairfield. Four parties were thus in pres- 
 ence at Washington for the management of the 
 negotiation: the United States and Great Britain, 
 Massachusetts and Maine. Recollecting that the 
 question to be settled was one which had defied all 
 the arts of diplomacy for half a century, it seemed 
 to a distant, and especially a European observer, as 
 if the last experiment, exceeding every former step 
 in its necessary complication, was destined to a fail- 
 ure proportionately signal and ignominious. The 
 course pursued by the American Secretary, in mak- 
 ing the result of the negotiation relative to the boun- 
 dary contingent upon the approval of the State 
 commissioners, was regarded in Europe as decidedly 
 ominous of its failure. 
 
 It undoubtedly required a high degree of political 
 courage thus to put the absolute control of the sub- 
 ject, to a certain extent, out of the hands of the 
 National Government; but it was a courage fully 
 warranted by the event. It is now evident that this 
 mode of procedure was the only one which could 
 have been adopted with any hope of success. 
 Though complicated in appearance, it was in reality 
 the simplest mode in which the cooperation of the 
 States could have been secured. 
 
 The fate of the negotiation might be considered
 
 238 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 
 
 as involved in the success of this appeal to the Chief 
 Magistrate of Maine, and through him to his con- 
 stituents. It is said that, when Mr. Webster heard 
 that the legislature of Maine had adopted the reso- 
 lutions for the commission, he went to President 
 Tyler and said, with evident satisfaction and some 
 animation. "The crisis is past! " 
 
 It was, in truth, an adjustment equally honorable 
 and advantageous to all parties. There is not an 
 individual of common sense or common conscience 
 in Maine or Massachusetts, in the United States 
 or Great Britain, who would now wish it disturbed. 
 It took from Maine a tract of land northwest of the 
 St. John, which the people of Maine believed to 
 belong to them under the treaty of 1783. But the 
 disputed title to the worthless tract of morass, heath, 
 and rock, covered with snow or fog throughout a 
 great part of the year, was not ceded gratuitously. 
 We obtained the navigation of the St. John, the 
 natural outlet of the whole country, without which 
 the territory watered by it would have been of com- 
 paratively little value; we obtained a good natural 
 boundary as far as the course of the river was fol- 
 lowed ; and we established the line which we claimed 
 at the head of the Connecticut, on Lake Champlain, 
 and on the upper lakes; territorial objects of con- 
 siderable interest. Great Britain had equal reason 
 to be satisfied with the result. For her the territory 
 northwest of the St. John, worthless to us, had a 
 geographical and political value; it gave her a con- 
 venient connection between her provinces, which 
 was all she desired. Both sides gained the only ob-
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER 239 
 
 ject which really was of importance to either, a set- 
 tlement by creditable means of a wearisome na- 
 tional controversy; an honorable escape from the 
 scourge and curse of war. 
 
 Besides the convenience of such an understanding 
 on the part of the two great commercial countries, 
 from which language, personal appearance, and 
 manners render mutual escape so easy, the condition 
 of the frontier of the United States and Canada was 
 such as to make this provision all but necessary for 
 the preservation of the peace of the two countries 
 
 Another difficult question settled in this adjust- 
 ment was that of the extradition of fugitives from 
 justice, and the stipulations for extradition in the 
 treaty of Washington appear to have served as a 
 model for those since entered into between the most 
 considerable European powers. A convention for 
 the same purpose was concluded between England 
 and France on the I3th of February, 1843, and 
 other similar compacts have still more recently been 
 negotiated. Between the United States and Great 
 Britain the operation of this part of the treaty has 
 been, in all ordinary cases, entirely satisfactory. 
 Persons charged with the crimes to which its pro- 
 visions extend have been mutually surrendered ; and 
 the cause of public justice, and in many cases im- 
 portant private interests, have been materially 
 served on both sides of the water. 
 
 Not inferior in importance and delicacy to the 
 other subjects provided for by the treaty was that 
 which concerned the measures for the suppression 
 of " the slave-trade " on the coast of Africa. In
 
 240 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 
 
 order to understand the difficulties with which Mr. 
 Webster had to contend on this subject, a brief his- 
 tory of the question must be given. The law of 
 nations, as understood and expounded by the most 
 respectable authorities and tribunals, European and 
 American, recognizes the right of search of neutral 
 vessels in time of war, by the public ships of the 
 belligerents. It recognizes no right of search in 
 time of peace. It makes no distinction between a 
 right of visitation and a right of search. To com- 
 pel a trading-vessel, against the will of her com- 
 mander, to come to and be boarded, for any purpose 
 whatsoever, is an exercise of the right of search 
 which the law of nations concedes to belligerents for 
 certain purposes. To do this in time of peace, under 
 whatever name it may be excused or justified, is to 
 perform an act of mere power, for which the law of 
 nations affords no warrant. The moral quality of 
 the action, and the estimate formed of it, will of 
 course depend upon circumstances, motives, and 
 manner. If an armed ship board a vessel under rea- 
 sonable suspicion that she is a pirate and when there 
 is no other convenient mode of ascertaining that 
 point, there would be no cause of blame, although 
 the suspicion turned out to be groundless. 
 
 The British government, for the praiseworthy 
 purpose of putting a stop to the traffic in slaves, has 
 at different times entered into conventions with sev- 
 eral of the states of Europe authorizing a mutual 
 right of search of the trading-vessels of each con- 
 tracting party by the armed cruisers of the other 
 party. These treaties give no right to search the
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER 241 
 
 vessels of nations not parties to them. But if an 
 armed ship of either party should search a vessel of 
 a third power under a reasonable suspicion that she 
 belonged to the other contracting party, and was 
 pursuing trie slave-trade in contravention of the 
 treaty, this act of power, performed by mistake, and 
 with requisite moderation and circumspection in the 
 manner, would not be just ground of offence. It 
 would, however, authorize a reasonable expectation 
 of indemnification on behalf of the private individ- 
 uals who might suffer by the detention, as in other 
 cases of injury inflicted on innocent persons by pub- 
 lic functionaries acting with good intentions, but at 
 their peril. 
 
 The government of the United States, both in its 
 executive and legislative branches, has at almost all 
 times manifested an extreme repugnance to enter 
 into conventions for a mutual right of search. It 
 has not yielded to any other power in its aversion 
 to the slave-trade, which it was the first government 
 to denounce as piracy. The reluctance in question 
 grew principally out of the injuries inflicted upon 
 the American commerce, and still more out of the 
 personal outrages in the impressment of American 
 seamen, which took place during the wars of Napo- 
 leon, and incidentally to the belligerent right of 
 search and the enforcement of the Orders in Council 
 and the Berlin and Milan Decrees. Besides a whole- 
 sale confiscation of American property, hundreds of 
 American seamen were impressed into the ships of 
 war of Great Britain. So deeply had the public 
 sensibility been wounded on both points, that any 
 
 A. B., VOL. VI. l6
 
 242 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 
 
 extension of the right of search by the consent of the 
 United States was for a long time nearly hopeless. 
 
 But this feeling, strong and general as it was, 
 yielded at last to the detestation of the slave-trada. 
 Toward the close of the second administration of 
 Mr. Monroe the Executive had been induced, acting 
 under the sanction of resolutions of the two houses 
 of Congress, to agree to a convention with Great 
 Britain for a mutual right of search of vessels sus- 
 pected of being engaged in the traffic. 
 
 In defining the limits within which this right 
 should be exercised, the coasts of America were in- 
 cluded. The Senate were of opinion that such a pro- 
 vision might be regarded as an admission that the 
 slave-trade was carried on between the coasts of 
 Africa and the United States, contrary to the known 
 fact, and to the reproach either of the will or power 
 of the United States to enforce their laws, by which 
 it was declared to be piracy. It also placed the whole 
 coast of the Union under the surveillance of the 
 cruisers of a foreign power. The Senate, accord- 
 ingly, ratified the treaty, with an amendment ex- 
 empting the coasts of the United States from the 
 operation of the article. They also introduced other 
 amendments of less importance. 
 
 On the return of the treaty to London thus amend- 
 ed, Mr. Canning, the British Foreign Secretary, 
 gave way to a feeling of dissatisfaction at the course 
 pursued by the Senate, not so much on account of 
 any decided objection to the amendment in itself 
 considered, as to the claim of the Senate to introduce 
 any change into a treaty negotiated according to in-
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER 243 
 
 structions. Under the influence of this feeling, Mr. 
 Canning refused to ratify the treaty as amended, 
 and no further attempt was at that time made to 
 renew the negotiation. 
 
 After the treaty with Portugal, in 1838, the ves- 
 sels of that country, which, with those of Spain, 
 were most largely engaged in the traffic, began to 
 assume the flag of the United States as a protection ; 
 and in many cases, also, although the property of 
 vessels and cargo had, by collusive transfers on the 
 African coast, become Spanish or Portuguese, the 
 vessels had been built and fitted out in the United 
 States, and too often, it may be feared, with Amer- 
 ican capital. Vessels of this description were pro- 
 vided with two sets of papers, to be used as occasion 
 might require. 
 
 Had nothing further been done by British cruis- 
 ers than to board and search these vessels, whether 
 before or after a transfer of this kind, no complaint 
 would probably have been made by the government 
 of the United States. But, as many American ves- 
 sels were engaged in lawful commerce on the coast 
 of Africa, it frequently happened that they were 
 boarded by British cruisers, not always under the 
 command of discreet officers. Some voyages were 
 broken up, officers and men occasionally ill-treated, 
 and vessels sent to the United States or Sierra Leone 
 for adjudication. 
 
 In 1840 an agreement was made between the offi- 
 cers in command of the British and American squad- 
 rons respectively, sanctioning a reciprocal right of 
 search on the coast of Africa. It was a well-meant,
 
 244 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 
 
 but unauthorized step, and was promptly disavowed 
 by the administration of Mr. Van Buren. Its opera- 
 tion, while it lasted, was but to increase the existing 
 difficulty. Reports of the interruptions experienced 
 by our commerce in the African waters began 
 greatly to multiply; and there was a strong interest 
 on the part of those surreptitiously engaged in the 
 traffic to give them currency. A deep feeling began 
 to be manifested in the country ; and the correspond- 
 ence between the American Minister in London and 
 Lord Palmerston, in the last days of the Melbourne 
 ministry, was such as to show that the controversy 
 had reached a critical point. Such was the state of 
 the question when Mr. Webster entered the Depart- 
 ment of State. 
 
 The controversy was transmitted, as we have seen, 
 to the new administrations on both sides of the 
 water, but soon assumed a somewhat modified char- 
 acter. The quintuple treaty, as it was called, was 
 concluded at London, on the 2Oth of December, 
 1841, by England, France, Austria, Prussia, and 
 Russia; and information of that fact, as we have 
 seen above, was given by Lord Aberdeen to Mr. 
 Everett the same day. A strong desire was inti- 
 mated that the United States would join this asso- 
 ciation of the great powers, but no formal invitation 
 for that purpose was addressed to them. But the 
 recent occurrences on the coast of Africa, and the 
 tone of the correspondence above alluded to, had 
 increased the standing repugnance of the United 
 States to the recognition of a right of search in time 
 of peace.
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER 24$ 
 
 The preceding sketch of the history of the ques- 
 tion will show the difficulty of the position in refer- 
 ence to this most important interest, at the time 
 Lord Ashburton's mission was instituted. With 
 what practical good sense and high statesmanship 
 the controversy was terminated is well known to the 
 country. 
 
 The wisdom with which the eighth article of the 
 treaty was drawn up was soon seen in its conse- 
 quences. Its effect was decisive. It put a stop to all 
 discontent at home in reference to the interruption of 
 our lawful commerce on the coast of Africa. 
 
 The three subjects on which we have dwelt, name- 
 ly, the northeastern boundary, the extradition of 
 fugitives, and the suppression of the slave-trade, 
 were the only ones which required to be provided for 
 by treaty stipulation. Other subjects, scarcely less 
 important and fully as difficult, were happily dis- 
 posed of in the correspondence of the plenipoten- 
 tiaries. 
 
 Some disappointment was probably felt, when the 
 treaty of Washington was published, that a settle- 
 ment of the Oregon question was not included 
 among its provisions. It need not be said that a sub- 
 ject of such magnitude did not escape the attention 
 of the negotiators. It was, however, speedily in- 
 ferred by Mr. Webster, from the purport of his 
 formal conferences with Lord Ashburton on this 
 point, that an arrangement of this question was not 
 then practicable, and that to attempt it would be to 
 put the entire negotiation to great risk of failure. 
 On the otjier hand, it was not less certain that ? by
 
 246 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 
 
 i 
 
 closing up the other matters in controversy, the best 
 preparation was made for bringing the Oregon dis- 
 pute to an amicable issue, whenever circumstances 
 should favor that undertaking. Considerable firm- 
 ness was no doubt required to act upon this policy, 
 and to forego the attempt, at least, to settle a ques- 
 tion rapidly growing into the most formidable mag- 
 nitude. It is unnecessary to say how completely the 
 course adopted has been justified by the event 
 
 We have in the preceding remarks confined our- 
 selves to the topics connected with the treaty of 
 Washington. But other subjects of great impor- 
 tance connected with the foreign affairs of the coun- 
 try engaged the attention of Mr. Webster as Secre- 
 tary of State. 
 
 The first of these pertained to our controversies 
 with Mexico, and was treated in a letter to M. de 
 Bocanegra, the Mexican Secretary of State and For- 
 eign Relations. Under the head of " Relations with 
 Spain " there was a correspondence of great interest 
 between the Chevalier d'Argaiz, the representative 
 of that government, and Mr. Webster, on the sub- 
 ject of the " Amistad." The pertinacity with which 
 this matter was pursued by Spain, after its adjudica- 
 tion by the Supreme Court of the United States, fur- 
 nishes an instructive commentary upon the sincerity 
 of that government in its measures for the abolition 
 of the slave-trade. 
 
 Of still greater interest are the institution of the 
 mission to China, and the steps which led to the es- 
 tablishment of the independence of the Sandwich
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER 247 
 
 Islands. At any period less crowded with impor- 
 tant events the opening of diplomatic relations with 
 China, and the conclusion of a treaty of commerce 
 with that power, would have been deemed occur- 
 rences of unusual importance. It certainly reflects 
 great credit on the administration, that it acted with 
 such promptitude and efficiency in seizing this oppor- 
 tunity of multiplying avenues of commercial inter- 
 course. Nor is less praise due to the energy and 
 skill of the negotiator, Mr. Gushing, to whom this 
 novel and important undertaking was confided, un- 
 der instruction from Mr. Webster, and who was 
 able to embark from China, on his return home- 
 ward, in six months after his arrival, having in the 
 mean time satisfactorily concluded the treaty. 
 
 The application of the representatives of the Sand- 
 wich Islands to the government of the United States, 
 and the countenance extended to them at Washing- 
 ton, exercised a most salutary and seasonable influ- 
 ence over the destiny of those islands. The British 
 government was promptly made aware of the course 
 pursued by the United States, and was no doubt led, 
 in a considerable degree, by this circumstance, to 
 promise the Hawaiian delegates, on the part of Eng- 
 land, to respect the independent neutrality of their 
 government. In the mean time the British admiral 
 on that station had taken provisional possession of 
 them on behalf of his government, in anticipation of 
 a similar movement which was expected on the part 
 of France. If intelligence of this occurrence had 
 been received in London before the promise above 
 alluded to was given by Lord Aberdeen to Messrs,
 
 248 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 
 
 Richards and Haalilio, it is not impossible that Great 
 Britain might have felt herself warranted in retain- 
 ing the protectorate of the Hawaiian Islands as an 
 offset for the occupation of Tahiti by the French. 
 As it was, the temporary arrangement of the British 
 admiral was disavowed, and the government r&- 
 stored to the native chief. 
 
 There was also a correspondence between Mr. 
 Webster and the Portuguese Minister, on the subject 
 of duties on Portuguese wines, and a report of great 
 importance on the Sound duties and the Zoll-Verein, 
 topics to which the recent changes in the Germanic 
 system will henceforward impart a greatly increased 
 importance. 
 
 This brief enumeration will of itself sufficiently 
 show the extensive range of the subjects to which 
 the attention of Mr. Webster was called, during the 
 two years for which he rilled the Department of 
 State. 
 
 The published correspondence probably forms but 
 a small portion of the official labors of the Depart- 
 ment of State for the period during which it was 
 filled by Mr. Webster. They constitute, neverthe- 
 less, the most important part of the documentary 
 record of a period of official service, brief, indeed, 
 but as beneficial to the country as any of which the 
 memory is preserved in her annals. The adminis- 
 tration of General Harrison found the United States, 
 in the spring of 1841, on the verge of a war, not with 
 a feeble Spanish province, scarcely capable of a re- 
 spectable resistance, but with the most powerful gov- 
 ernment on earth. The conduct of our foreign
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER 249 
 
 relations was intrusted to Mr. Webster, as Secretary 
 of State, and in the two years during which he filled 
 that office controversies of fifty years' standing were 
 terminated, new causes of quarrel that sprung up 
 like hydra's heads were settled, and peace was pre- 
 served upon honorable terms. The British govern- 
 ment, fresh from the conquest of China, perhaps 
 never felt itself stronger than in the year 1842, and a 
 full share of credit is due to the spirit of conciliation 
 which swayed its counsels. Much is due to the 
 wise and amiable minister who was despatched from 
 England on the holy errand of peace; much to the 
 patriotism of the Senate of the United States, who 
 confirmed the treaty of Washington by a larger ma- 
 jority than ever before sustained a measure of this 
 kind which divided public opinion ; but the first meed 
 of praise is unquestionably due to the American ne- 
 gotiator. Let the just measure of that praise be 
 estimated, by reflecting what would have been our 
 condition during those exciting years, if, instead of, 
 or in addition to, the war with Mexico, we had been 
 involved in a war with Great Britain.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 Mr. Webster resigns his Place in Mr. Tyler's Cabinet. Sup- 
 ports Mr. Clay's Nomination for the Presidency. Mr. Web- 
 ster returns to the Senate. Admission of Texas to the 
 Union. The War with Mexico. Settlement of the Oregon 
 Controversy. Revival of the Sub-Treasury System and Re- 
 peal of the Tariff Law of 1842. Southern Tour. Efforts in 
 Congress to organize a Territorial Government for the Prov- 
 inces gained from Mexico. Nomination of General Taylor 
 for the Presidency. Constitution adopted by California pro- 
 hibiting Slavery. Increase of Anti-slavery Agitation. Mr. 
 Webster's " Seventh of March Speech " for the Union. 
 General Taylor's Death, and the Accession of Mr. Fillmore 
 to the Presidency. Mr. Webster called to the Department 
 of State. 
 
 MR. WEBSTER remained in the Department of 
 State but a little over two years. His last act was 
 the preparation of the instructions of Mr. Gushing, 
 who had been appointed Commissioner to China. 
 Difficulties had occurred the summer before, between 
 President Tyler and some of the members of his 
 Cabinet, and all of those gentlemen, with the excep- 
 tion of Mr. Webster, tendered their resignations, 
 which were accepted. Hard thoughts were enter- 
 tained of Mr. Webster in some quarters for con- 
 tinuing to hold his seat after the resignation of his 
 colleagues. President Tyler, however, had in no 
 degree withdrawn his confidence from Mr. Webster 
 
 250
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER 251 
 
 in reference to the foreign affairs of the country, nor 
 interfered with the administration of his department, 
 and Mr. Webster conceived that the interests in- 
 volved in his remaining at his post were far too im- 
 portant to be sacrificed to punctilio. His own sense 
 of duty in this respect was confirmed by the unani- 
 mous counsel of the Massachusetts delegation in 
 Congress, and by judicious friends in all parts of the 
 country. In fact, it will be remembered that when 
 difficulties sprung up between Mr. Tyler and the 
 Whig party in Congress, in 1842, the Whig press 
 generally throughout the country called upon the 
 members of the Cabinet appointed by General Harri- 
 son to retain their places till they should be removed 
 by Mr. Tyler. 
 
 Mr. Webster remained in private life during the 
 residue of President Tyler's administration, occupied 
 as usual with professional pursuits, and enjoying in 
 the appropriate seasons the retirement of his farm. 
 He endeavored by private communications to arouse 
 the feeling of the North to the projects which he per- 
 ceived to be in agitation for the annexation of 
 Texas, but the danger was regarded at that time as 
 too remote to be contended against. A short time 
 only elapsed before the fulfilment of his anticipa- 
 tions was forced upon the country, with fearful 
 urgency, and a train of consequences of which it 
 was left to posterity to witness the full development. 
 Between the years 1843 and 1845 tne fortunes of 
 the United States were subjected to an influence, for 
 good or for evil, not to be exhausted for centuries. 
 
 The nomination of Mr. Clay to the Presidency in
 
 2$2 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 
 
 1844 was cordially supported by Mr. Webster. He 
 took the field, as in the summer of 1840 in favor of 
 General Harrison. 
 
 It is well known that the result of this election 
 was decisive of the question of the annexation of 
 Texas. The opinions expressed by Mr. Van Buren 
 against the immediate consummation of that project 
 had prevented his receiving the nomination of the 
 Baltimore Convention. Mr. Clay was pledged 
 against the measure, and Mr. Polk was selected as 
 its sure friend. 
 
 At the first session of the Twenty-ninth Congress 
 (1845-46), Mr. Webster took his seat as the suc- 
 cessor of Mr. Choate in the Senate of the United 
 States. The question of the admission of Texas 
 was decided at the very commencement of the ses- 
 sion. It was opposed by Mr. Webster. To all the 
 other objections to the measure in his mind was 
 added that of unconstitutionally. The annexation 
 was now brought about simply by a joint resolution 
 of the two houses, after it had been found impossible 
 to effect it by treaty, the only form 'known to the 
 Constitution by which a compact can be entered into 
 with a foreign power. Mr. Jefferson was of opinion 
 in 1803, that even a treaty with France was not suffi- 
 cient for the annexation of Louisiana, but that an 
 amendment of the Constitution was necessary for 
 that purpose. In 1845 the Executive and a majority 
 of Congress, having failed to carry the ratification 
 of a treaty of annexation by the constitutional ma- 
 jority, scrupled not to accomplish their purpose by a 
 joint resolution of the two houses; and this measure
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER 253 
 
 was effected under the lead of statesmen who claim 
 to construe the Constitution with literal strictness. 
 Events like these furnish a painful illustration of the 
 frailty of constitutional restraints as a barrier against 
 the consummation of the favorite measures of a 
 dominant party. 
 
 The great event of the administration of President 
 Polk was the war with Mexico. 
 
 The proffered annexation of Texas had been de- 
 clined both by General Jackson and Mr. Van Buren, 
 on the ground that, unless made with the consent of 
 Mexico, it would involve a war with that power. 
 That this would be the effect was not less certain on 
 the 2d of December, 1845, when Congress were con- 
 gratulated on the " bloodless " acquisition, than it 
 was when, on the I3th of January following, Gen- 
 eral Taylor was instructed to occupy the left bank 
 of the Rio del Norte. In fact, in the very message 
 in which President Polk remarks to Congress " that 
 the sword had had no part in the victory," he gives 
 them also the significant information, that, upon the 
 earnest appeal both of the Congress and convention 
 of Texas, he had ordered " an efficient military force 
 to take a position between the Nueces and the Del 
 Norte." 
 
 This force, however efficient in proportion to its 
 numbers and in virtue of the gallantry and skill of its 
 commander, was found to be inadequate to sustain 
 the brunt of the Mexican arms. Rapid movements 
 on the part of Generals Ampudia and Arista, com- 
 manding on the frontier, seriously endangered the 
 safety of General Taylor's force, and it became
 
 254 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 
 
 necessary for Congress to strengthen it by prompt 
 reinforcements. In this way the war was com- 
 menced. No formal declaration had taken place, 
 nor had it been in the power of Congress to make 
 known its will on the subject, till an absolute 
 necessity arose of reinforcing General Taylor, and 
 the subject had ceased to be one for legislative 
 discretion. 
 
 Under these circumstances it was of course im- 
 possible for Mr. Webster to approve the war. It 
 had been brought on by the Executive will, and with- 
 out the concurrence of Congress till Congress had 
 ceased to have an option, and its well-known ulterior 
 objects were such as he could not but contemplate 
 with equal disapprobation and alarm. Still, how- 
 ever, in common with the body of his political 
 friends, in and out of Congress, he abstained from 
 all factious opposition, and all measures calculated 
 to embarrass the government. The supplies were 
 voted for by him, but he never ceased to urge upon 
 the President to pursue a magnanimous policy to- 
 ward the distracted and misgoverned country with 
 which he had been brought in collision. Nothing 
 but the most deplorable infatuation could have led 
 the government of Mexico to suppose, that, after the 
 independence of Texas had been recognized by the 
 United States, Great Britain, France, and Belgium, 
 it would be possible for a power as feeble as that of 
 Mexico to reduce the rebellious province to sub- 
 mission. 
 
 The settlement of the controversy with England 
 relative to the boundary of Oregon was effected in
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER 2$ 5 
 
 the first year of Mr. Folk's administration. The 
 foundations for this adjustment had long been laid ; 
 in fact, as long ago as the administration of Mr. 
 Monroe, the United States had offered to England 
 the obvious basis of the extension of the forty-ninth 
 degree of latitude to the Pacific. Great Britain al- 
 lowed herself to be influenced by the Hudson's Bay 
 Company so far, as to insist upon following the 
 course of the Columbia down to the sea. She even 
 took the extravagant ground that, although the 
 United States, by the Louisiana and Florida treaties, 
 combined the Spanish and the French titles with that 
 of actual contiguity and prior discovery of the 
 Columbia River, they had no exclusive title to any 
 portion of the territory, but that it was all subject 
 to her own joint and rival claim. This unreason- 
 able pretension brought the two countries to the 
 verge of war. The Baltimore Convention, in the 
 year 1844, set up a claim, equally unreasonable, to 
 the whole of the territory. President Polk in his 
 inaugural message, quoting the words of the res- 
 olution of the Baltimore Convention, pronounced 
 our title to the territory to be " clear and 
 unquestionable." 
 
 The assertion of these opposite extremes of pre- 
 tension happily resulted in the final adjustment on 
 the forty-ninth degree. Mr. Webster had uniformly 
 been of opinion that this was the fair basis of settle- 
 ment. Had he supposed that an arrangement could 
 have been effected on this basis with Lord Ashbur- 
 ton, he would gladly have included it in the treaty of 
 Washington. After Mr. Webster's retirement from
 
 256 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 
 
 the Department of State, it is stated by President 
 Polk that Mr. Upshur instructed Mr. Everett to 
 offer that line to the British government; but the 
 negotiation had in the mean time, by the appoint- 
 ment of Mr. Pakenham, been transferred to Wash- 
 ington. The offer of the forty-ninth degree of lati- 
 tude was renewed to Mr. Pakenham, but accom- 
 panied with conditions which led him to decline it, 
 and to express the hope that the United States would 
 make " some further proposal for the settlement of 
 the Oregon question more consistent with fairness 
 and equity, and with the reasonable expectations of 
 the British government." The offer thus injudi- 
 ciously rejected was withdrawn by the administra- 
 tion. In this dangerous juncture of affairs, the fol- 
 lowing incidents occurred, which we give in the 
 words of the London Examiner: 
 
 " In reply to a question put to him in reference to the present 
 war establishments of this country, and the propriety of apply- 
 ing the principle of arbitration in the settlement of disputes 
 arising among nations, Mr. McGregor, one of the candidates 
 for the representation of Glasgow, took occasion to narrate the 
 following very important and remarkable anecdote in connec- 
 tion with our recent, but now happily terminated differences 
 with the United States on the Oregon question. At the time 
 our ambassador at Washington, the Hon. Mr. Pakenham, 
 refused to negotiate on the forty-ninth parallel of north lati- 
 tude as the basis of a treaty, and when by that refusal the 
 danger of a rupture between Great Britain and America became 
 really imminent, Mr. Daniel Webster, formerly Secretary of 
 State to the American government, wrote a letter to Mr. Mc- 
 Gregor, in which he strongly deprecated Mr. Pakenham's con- 
 duct, which, if persisted in and adopted at home, would, to a 
 certainty, embroil the two countries, and suggested an equitable 
 compromise, taking the forty-ninth parallel as the basis of an
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER 257 
 
 adjustment. Mr. McGregor agreeing entirely with Mr. Web- 
 ster in the propriety of a mutual giving and taking to avoid a 
 rupture, and the more especially as the whole territory in dis- 
 pute was not worth 20,000 to either power, while the prepara- 
 tions alone for a war would cost a great deal more before the 
 parties could come into actual conflict, communicated the con- 
 tents of Mr. Webster's letter to Lord John Russell, who at the 
 time was living in the neighborhood of Edinburgh, and, in 
 reply, received a letter from Lord John, in which he stated his 
 entire accordance with the proposal recommended by Mr. Web- 
 ster, and approved of by Mr. McGregor, and requested the 
 latter, as he (Lord John) was not in a position to do it him- 
 self, to intimate his opinion to Lord Aberdeen. Mr. McGregor, 
 through Lord Canning, Under-Secretary for the Foreign De- 
 partment, did so, and the result was, that the first packet that 
 left England carried out to America the proposal, in accord- 
 ance with the communication already referred to, on which the 
 treaty of Oregon was happily concluded. Mr. McGregor may, 
 therefore, be very justly said to have been the instrument of 
 preserving the peace of the world; and, for that alone, even if 
 he had no other services to appeal to, he has justly earned the 
 applause and admiration, not of his own countrymen only, but 
 of all men who desire to promote the best interests of the 
 human race." 
 
 Without wishing to detract in any degree from 
 the praise due to Mr. McGregor for his judicious 
 and liberal conduct on this occasion, the credit of 
 the main result is exclusively due to his American 
 correspondent. A powerful influence was ascribed 
 also to an able article in the Edinburgh Review for 
 April, 1845, m which the reasonableness of this 
 basis of settlement was set forth with great ability. 
 
 The first session of the Twenty-ninth Congress 
 was signalized by the revival of the sub-treasury 
 system, and the overthrow of the tariff of 1842. 
 At a moment when the public finances were, in ref- 
 
 A. B., VOL. VI. 17
 
 258 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 
 
 erence to the means of collection, custody, and trans- 
 fer, in a sound and healthy condition, the adminis- 
 tration deemed it expedient to subject the country 
 and the treasury to the hazard and inconvenience 
 of a change. Mr. Webster spoke with equal earnest- 
 ness and power against the renewal of experiments 
 which had already proved so disastrous ; but the bill 
 was carried by a party vote. The same success 
 attended the President's recommendation of an en- 
 tire change in the revenue system, by which, instead 
 of specific duties, ad valorem duties were to be as- 
 sessed on the foreign valuation. Various other 
 changes were made in the tariff established in 1842, 
 equally tending to depress our own manufactures, 
 and to give a preference to foreign over native labor, 
 and this even in cases where no benefit could be 
 expected to accrue to the treasury from the change. 
 Mr. Webster made a truly Herculean effort against 
 the government project, in his speech of the 25th and 
 26th of July, 1846, but the decree had gone forth. 
 The scale was turned by the Senators from the new 
 State of Texas, which had been brought into the 
 Union by the votes of members of Congress whose 
 constituents had the deepest interest in sustaining 
 the tariff of 1842. 
 
 In the spring of 1847, after the adjournment of 
 Congress, Mr. Webster undertook a tour to the 
 South. His object was to pass by the way of the 
 Atlantic States to New Orleans, and to ascend the 
 Mississippi. He had never seen that part of the 
 Union, and promised himself equal gratification and 
 instruction from an opportunity, however brief, of
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER 259 
 
 personal inspection. He was ever of opinion that 
 higher motives than those of curiosity and recrea- 
 tion should lead the citizens of different parts of 
 the country to the interchange of visits of this kind. 
 That they had become so much less frequent than 
 they were in former years he regarded as one of the 
 inauspicious features of the times. He was accom- 
 panied on this excursion by his family. They passed 
 hastily through Virginia and North Carolina to 
 South Carolina. At Charleston he was received 
 with the most distinguished attention and cordial- 
 ity. He was welcomed on his arrival by an assem- 
 blage of the most respectable citizens. Entertain- 
 ments were given him by the New England Society 
 of Charleston and by the Charleston Bar. At these 
 festivals the sentiments and speeches were of the 
 most cordial description. Similar hospitalities and 
 honors were paid him at Columbia, Augusta, and 
 Savannah. No trace of sectional or party feeling 
 detracted from the warmth of his reception. His 
 visit was everywhere regarded as an interesting pub- 
 lic event. Unhappily, his health failed him on his 
 arrival at Savannah; and the advance of the season 
 made it impossible for him to execute the original 
 project of a journey to New Orleans. He was com- 
 pelled to hasten back to the North. 
 
 Meantime events of higher importance were in 
 progress. Success crowned our arms in the Mexi- 
 can war. The military skill, gallantry, and indom- 
 itable resolution of the great captains to whom the 
 chief command of the war had been committed 
 (though not by the first choice of the administra-
 
 260 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 
 
 tion), aided by the spirit and discipline of the 
 troops, achieved the conquest of Mexico. Peace was 
 dictated to her from Washington, and a treaty con- 
 cluded, by which extensive portions of her territory, 
 comprising the province of New Mexico and a con- 
 siderable part of California, were ceded to the 
 United States. Mr. Webster, foreseeing that these 
 cessions would prove a Pandora's box of discord and 
 strife between the different sections of the Union, 
 voted against the ratification of the treaty. He was 
 sustained in this course by some Southern Whig 
 Senators, but the constitutional majority deemed any 
 treaty better than the continuation of the war. 
 
 With the restoration of peace, the question what 
 should be done with the territories presented itself 
 with alarming prominence. Formidable under any 
 circumstances, it became doubly so in consequence 
 of the discovery of gold in California, and the pro- 
 digious rush to that quarter of adventurers from 
 every part of the world. Population flocked into 
 and took possession of the country, its ancient polit- 
 ical organization, feeble at best, was subverted, and 
 the immediate action of Congress was necessary to 
 prevent a state of anarchy. The House of Repre- 
 sentatives passed a bill providing for the organiza- 
 tion of a territorial government for the provinces 
 newly acquired from Mexico, with the anti-slavery 
 proviso, borrowed from the Ordinance of 1787. 
 This bill failed to pass the Senate, and nothing was 
 done at the first session of the Thirtieth Congress to 
 meet the existing emergency in California. 
 
 In consequence of months of disagreement be-
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER 26 1 
 
 tween the Houses of Congress as to the provinces re- 
 cently acquired from Mexico, all provision for the 
 territories was sacrificed; but a bill which had pre- 
 viously passed the House, extending the revenue 
 laws of the United States to California, was passed 
 by the Senate, and rescued the people of California 
 from an entire destitution of government on behalf 
 of the United States. The Senate on this occasion 
 was, for the first time since the adoption of the Con- 
 stitution, on the verge of disorganization ; and it was 
 felt throughout the day and night, that it was saved 
 from falling into that condition mainly by the par- 
 liamentary tact and personal influence of Mr. Web- 
 ster. This tribute was paid to Mr. Webster's ar- 
 duous exertions on that occasion by a member of 
 Congress warmly opposed to him. 
 
 Not the least important consequence of the Mex- 
 ican war was the political revolution in the United 
 States of which it was the cause. When the policy 
 of invading and conquering Mexico was determined 
 upon, it was probably regarded by the administra- 
 tion as a measure calculated to strengthen their 
 party. Opponents were likely to expose themselves 
 to odium by disapproving the war. The command- 
 ing generals were both Whigs, and one of them had 
 been named as a candidate for the Presidency. It 
 was probably thought that, if they succeeded, the 
 glory would accrue to the administration; if they 
 failed, the discredit would fall upon themselves. 
 
 If anticipations like these were formed, they were 
 signally disappointed. A series of the most brill- 
 iant triumphs crowned the arms both of General
 
 262 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 
 
 Taylor and General Scott. Those of General Tay- 
 lor were first in time ; and as they had been preceded 
 by doubts, anxieties, and, in the case of Buena Vista, 
 by rumors of disaster, they took the stronger hold 
 of the public mind. The nomination for the Presi- 
 dency was not reserved for the Whig convention. 
 It was in effect made at Palo Alto and Monterey, 
 and was confirmed at Buena Vista. It was a move- 
 ment of the people to which resistance was in vain. 
 
 Statesmen and civilians, however, might well 
 pause for a moment. The late experience of the 
 country, under a President elected in consequence 
 of military popularity, was not favorable to a repe- 
 tition of the experiment; and General Taylor was 
 wholly unknown in political life. At the Whig con- 
 vention in Philadelphia other distinguished Whigs, 
 General Scott, Mr. Clay, and Mr. Webster, had di- 
 vided the votes with General Taylor. He was, how- 
 ever, selected by a great majority as the candidate 
 of the party. Mr. Webster took the view of this 
 nomination which might have been expected from 
 a veteran statesman and a civilian of forty years' 
 experience in the service of the country. He had, 
 in common with the whole Whig party, in General 
 Jackson's case, opposed the nomination of a military 
 chieftain. 
 
 On his accession to the Presidency, however, Gen- 
 eral Taylor found Mr. Webster disposed and pre- 
 pared to give his administration a cordial and effi- 
 cient support. 
 
 In the summer and autumn of 1849 events of the 
 utmost importance occurred in California. The
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER 263 
 
 people of that region, left almost entirely without 
 a government by Congress, met in convention to 
 form a constitution ; and although nearly half of the 
 members who were new-comers were from the 
 Southern States, they unanimously agreed to the 
 prohibition of slavery. The. constitution prepared 
 by the convention was accepted by the people, and 
 with it they applied for admission to the Union. 
 
 Other occurrences, however, had in the meantime 
 taken place, which materially increased the difficul- 
 ties attending the territorial question. The subject 
 of slavery had for fifteen or twenty years been agi- 
 tated with steadily increasing warmth, and for the 
 latter portion of the period with growing violence. 
 On the acquisition of the Mexican provinces, the 
 representatives of the non-slaveholding States gen- 
 erally deemed it their duty to introduce into the acts 
 passed for their government a restriction analogous 
 to the anti-slavery proviso of the Ordinance of 1787. 
 A motion to this effect having been made by Mr. 
 Wilmot of Pennsylvania, by way of amendment to 
 one of the appropriation bills passed during the war, 
 the restriction has obtained the name of the " Wil- 
 mot Proviso." This motion in the House of Repre- 
 sentatives was extensively seconded by the press, by 
 popular assemblies, and by legislative resolutions 
 throughout the non-slaveholding States, and caused 
 a considerable increase of anti-slavery agitation. 
 
 The South, of course, took an interest in the ques- 
 tion not inferior to that of the North. The exten- 
 sion of the United States on the southwestern fron- 
 tier had long been a cardinal point in the policy of
 
 264 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 
 
 most Southern statesmen. The application of an 
 anti-slavery proviso to territories acquired by con- 
 quest in that quarter came into direct conflict with 
 this policy. Meetings were accordingly held at 
 Washington during the first session of the Thirtieth 
 Congress, attended by a majority of the members 
 from the slaveholding States, to take into considera- 
 tion the measures proper to be adopted. At one of 
 these meetings a sub-committee was appointed, of 
 which Mr. Calhoun was chairman, to prepare an 
 address " of the Southern delegates to their con- 
 stituents." At a subsequent meeting a substitute 
 for this address was submitted to Mr. Berrien of 
 Georgia, under the title of an address " to the people 
 of the United States." The original paper was, 
 however, adopted in preference, and received the 
 signatures of forty-eight of the members of Con- 
 gress from the slaveholding States. Of these all but 
 two were of the Democratic party. 
 
 These proceedings contributed materially to in- 
 crease the discontents existing at the South. Nor 
 was the progress of excitement less rapid at the 
 North. The nomination of General Taylor by the 
 Whig convention, accompanied by the refusal of that 
 convention to countenance the Wilmot Proviso, led 
 to the organization of the Free Soil party in the non- 
 slaveholding States. In the summer of 1848, a con- 
 vention of delegates of this party assembled at 
 Buffalo in New York, at which an anti-slavery 
 platform was adopted, and Mr. Van Buren was 
 nominated as a candidate for the Presidency. 
 
 These occurrences and the state of feeling which
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER 265 
 
 they created, or indicated, appeared to Mr. Webster 
 to constitute a crisis in the condition of the country 
 of a most formidable description. Opinion at the 
 North and South had, in his judgment, either 
 reached, or was rapidly reaching, a point at which 
 the cooperation of the two sections of the country 
 in carrying on the government as coequal members 
 of the Federal Union would cease to be practicable. 
 The constitutional opinions and the views on the 
 subject of slavery set forth in Mr. Calhoun's address 
 he deemed to be such as could never be acquiesced 
 in by the non-slaveholding States. On the other 
 hand, the organization of a party on the basis of 
 anti-slavery agitation at the North appeared to him 
 equally menacing to the Union. The professions 
 of attachment to the Union and the Constitution 
 made on both sides, and often, no doubt, in entire 
 good faith, did but increase the danger, by their 
 tendency to produce misapprehension and self-de- 
 ception as to the really irreconcilable nature of the 
 opposite extremes of opinion. 
 
 It was his profound and anxious sense of the 
 dangers of the Union, in this crisis of affairs, which 
 reconciled Mr. Webster to the nomination of General 
 Taylor. He saw in his position as a citizen of a 
 Southern State and a slaveholder the basis of support 
 to his administration from that quarter of the 
 Union; while his connection with the Whig party, 
 the known moderation of his views, with his declared 
 sentiments on the subject of the Presidential veto, 
 were a sufficient ground for the confidence of the 
 North. In fact, in the existing state of things, it
 
 266 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 
 
 was soon apparent that there was no other candidate 
 of either party so well calculated to allay sectional 
 differences, and guide the vessel of state over the 
 stormy sea of excitement and agitation. 
 
 But whatever reliance might justly have been 
 placed upon the character and disposition of General 
 Taylor, the prospect of affairs was sufficiently dark 
 and inauspicious. Thoughtful persons looked for- 
 ward to a struggle on the territorial question, at the 
 first session of the Thirty-first Congress, which 
 would convulse the country. In this state of things 
 the event which we have already alluded to took 
 place, and California presented herself for admission 
 as a State, with a constitution prohibiting slavery. 
 As California was the only portion of the Mexican 
 territory in reference to which the question was of 
 practical importance, Mr. Webster derived from this 
 unexpected and seasonable occurrence a gleam of 
 hope. It removed a topic of controversy in refer- 
 ence to which it had seemed hopeless to propose any 
 terms of compromise ; and it opened as it were provi- 
 dentially, the door for an understanding on other 
 points, on the basis of carrying into execution exist- 
 ing compacts and constitutional provisions on the 
 one hand, and not strenuously insisting, on the other 
 hand, upon applying the anti-slavery proviso where, 
 as in Utah and New Mexico, he was persuaded it 
 could be of no practical importance. 
 
 On these principles, and with this object in view, 
 Mr. Webster made his great speech of the 7th of 
 March, 1850. 
 
 It would be too much to expect, in reference to a
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER 267 
 
 subject of so much difficulty, and one on which the 
 public mind has been so greatly excited, that a speech 
 of this description should find universal favor in any 
 part of the country. It is believed, however, that by 
 the majority of patriotic and reflecting citizens in 
 every part of the United States, while on single 
 topics there may be differences of opinion, it has 
 been regarded as holding out a practical basis for 
 the adjustment of controversies, which had already 
 gone far to dissolve the Union, and could not be 
 much longer pursued without producing that result. 
 If those who have most strongly expressed their dis- 
 sent from the doctrines of the speech (we do not, of 
 course, allude to the mere clamor of political or per- 
 sonal enemies) had paused from the work of denun- 
 ciation, and make the attempt themselves to lay down 
 a practicable platform on which this great contro- 
 versy could in fact be settled, and the union of the 
 States perpetuated, they would not find it so hard 
 to censure what is done by others as to do better 
 themselves. It was quite easy to construct a South- 
 ern platform or a Northern platform; the difficulty 
 was to find a basis on which South and North will 
 be able and willing to stand together. Of all those 
 who have condemned the views of Mr. Webster, 
 who has gone further than he, in the speech of the 
 7th of March, 1850, to furnish such a basis? Or 
 rather, we may ask, who of those that have been 
 loudest in condemnation of his course has taken a 
 single step toward effecting this paramount object? 
 Mr. Webster's thoughts are known to have been 
 earnestly and profoundly employed on this subject
 
 268 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 
 
 from the commencement of the session. He saw 
 beforehand the difficulties and the dangers incident 
 to the step which he adopted, but he believed that, 
 unless some such step was taken in the North, the 
 separation of the States was inevitable. The known 
 state of opinion of leading members of Congress led 
 him to look for little support from them. He opened 
 the matter to some of his political friends, but they 
 did not encourage him in the course he felt bound to 
 pursue. He found that he could not expect the co- 
 operation of the members of Congress from his own 
 State, nor that of many of the members from the 
 other Northern States. He gave up all attempt to 
 rally beforehand a party which would sustain him. 
 His own description of his feelings at the time was, 
 " that he had made up his mind to embark alone on 
 what he was aware would prove a stormy sea, be- 
 cause, in that case, should final disaster ensue, there 
 would be but one life lost." But he believed that the 
 step which he was about to take would be sanctioned 
 by the mass of the people, and in that reliance he 
 went forward. 
 
 While the compromise measures were still unde- 
 cided before Congress, about midsummer of 1850, 
 President Taylor was removed from his high office 
 by death. In the reorganization of the Executive 
 occasioned by this event, Mr. Webster, to the gen- 
 eral satisfaction of the country, was placed by Presi- 
 dent Fillmore at the head of the administration, as 
 the Secretary of State. 
 
 At this point with the exception of an eloquent
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER 269 
 
 eulogy of his friend as an unselfish citizen and a 
 great statesman ends Mr. Everett's biographical 
 memoir of Daniel Webster. Writing as he did 
 while Mr. Webster was still living (the memoir be- 
 ing prefatory to an edition of the great man's 
 W T orks). Mr. Everett's sense of delicacy prevented 
 his mention of one notable element of Mr. Web- 
 ster's life, his honorable ambition for the Presidency. 
 
 In 1848, the general feeling of his friends was 
 that he would receive the Whig nomination; but 
 the popularity of General Zachary Taylor, the hero 
 of the Mexican War, effected the nomination and 
 election of that officer. In 1850, during the debates 
 on Clay's Compromise measures, Mr. Webster de- 
 livered his famous " Seventh of March " speech, 
 alluded to above. His ardent belief in the Union, 
 dread of civil war which he felt to be approaching 
 unless it could be prevented by conciliation and 
 horror of secession against which that speech con- 
 tained a thrillingly powerful appeal, led him to urge 
 the Compromise, and even to justify the Fugitive 
 Slave bill which was a part of it. The anti-slavery 
 sentiment of the North violently repudiated this, 
 as a bid for Southern Whig favor; but most un- 
 justly in the case of this man, who had never 
 swerved from principle for personal profit. In 
 1852, however, after his successful service as the 
 head of Mr. Tyler's cabinet (following President 
 Taylor's death in 1850), Mr. Webster's friends 
 again looked for his nomination; but he was not 
 forgiven, and the honor went to General Scott. 
 
 In May of that year, Mr. Webster was seriously
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 270 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 
 
 injured in a carriage accident at his farm in Marsh- 
 field, Mass., and the effects of this, of his forty 
 years of laborious public service, and of the rapid 
 advance of some chronic ailments perhaps, too, the 
 mortification of disappointment at being misjudged 
 and at missing the crowning ambition of his life 
 swiftly undermined his health. He died at Marsh- 
 field, October 24, 1852, at seventy years of age. 
 
 Dr. John Lord, in his " Beacon Lights of His- 
 tory," has well summed up Webster's character. 
 Recognizing his defects, he adds : " But these were 
 overbalanced by the warmth of his affection for his 
 faithful friends, simplicity of manners and of taste, 
 courteous treatment of opponents, dignity of char- 
 acter, kindness to the poor, hospitality, enjoyment 
 of rural scenes and sports, profound religious in- 
 stincts, devotion to what he deemed the welfare of 
 his country, independence of opinions and boldness 
 in asserting them at any hazard and against all 
 opposition, and unbounded contempt of all shams 
 and tricks. . . . His fame will spread, and 
 grow wider and greater, like that of Bacon and 
 Burke, and of other benefactors of mankind; and 
 his ideas will not pass away until the glorious fabric 
 of American institutions, whose foundations were 
 laid by God-fearing people, shall be utterly de- 
 stroyed, and the Capitol where his noblest efforts 
 were made shall become a mass of broken and pros- 
 trate columns beneath the debris of the nation's 
 ruin."
 
 A 000 654 488 6