The Works of Daniel Webster, Volume 1

by Daniel Webster

In the summer and autumn of 1849 events of the utmost importance occurred in California. The 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. General Riley, who had been appointed by the President to command the forces in that territory, was instructed to facilitate, as far as it was in his power, the assembling of a convention; and the course pursued by the convention and the people in the formation of the constitution was understood to be in all respects approved by President Taylor.

Other occurrences, however, had in the mean time taken place, which materially increased the difficulties attending the territorial question. The subject of slavery had for fifteen or twenty years been agitated 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 generally deemed it their duty to introduce into the acts passed for their government a restriction analogous to the antislavery 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 “Wilmot Proviso.” This motion in the House of Representatives was extensively seconded by the press, by popular assemblies, and by legislative resolutions throughout the non-slaveholding States, and caused a considerable increase of antislavery agitation.

The South, of course, took an interest in the question not inferior to that of the North. The extension of the United States on the southwestern frontier has long been a cardinal point in the policy of most Southern statesmen. The application of an antislavery proviso to territories acquired by conquest in that quarter came into direct conflict with this policy. Meetings clv 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 consideration 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 constituents.” At a subsequent meeting a substitute for this address was submitted by 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 Congress from the slaveholding States. Of these all but two were of the Democratic party.[30]

These proceedings contributed materially to increase 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 convention of delegates of this party assembled at Buffalo in New York, at which an antislavery platform was adopted, and Mr. Van Buren was nominated as a candidate for the Presidency.

These occurrences and the state of feeling which 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 coöperation 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 antislavery 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 clvi entire good faith, did but increase the danger, by their tendency to produce misapprehension and self-deception 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 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 forward 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 reference to which it had seemed hopeless to propose any terms of compromise; and it opened, as it were providentially, the door for an understanding on other points, on the basis of carrying into execution existing compacts and constitutional provisions on the one hand, and not strenuously insisting, on the other hand, upon applying the antislavery 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 subject of so much difficulty, and one on which the public mind has clvii 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 dissent from the doctrines of the speech (we do not, of course, allude to the mere clamor of political or personal enemies) will pause from the work of denunciation, and make the attempt themselves to lay down a practicable platform on which this great controversy can in fact be settled, and the union of the States perpetuated, they will not find it so hard to censure what is done by others as to do better themselves. It is quite easy to construct a Southern platform or a Northern platform; the difficulty is 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 towards effecting this paramount object?

Mr. Webster’s thoughts are known to have been earnestly and profoundly employed on this subject 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 coöperation 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, because, in that case, should final disaster ensue, there would clviii 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.