When, therefore, on the 21st of January, Hayne rose to deliver his First Reply, and Webster five days later took the floor to begin his Second Reply—probably the greatest effort in the history of American legislative oratory—the little chamber then used by the Senate, but nowadays given over to the Supreme Court, presented a spectacle fairly to be described as historic. Every senator who could possibly be present answered at roll call. Here were Webster’s more notable fellow New Englanders—John Holmes of Maine, Levi Woodbury of New Hampshire, Horatio Seymour of Vermont. There were Mahlon Dickerson and Theodore Frelinghuysen of New Jersey, and John M. Clayton of Delaware. Here, John Tyler of Virginia, John Forsyth of Georgia, William R. King of Alabama; there, Hugh L. White and Felix Grundy of Tennessee, and Thomas H. Benton of Missouri. From the President’s chair Hayne’s distinguished fellow South Carolinian, Calhoun, looked down upon the assemblage with emotions which he vainly strove to conceal.
During the later stages of the discussion people of prominence from adjoining States filled the hotels of the city and bombarded the senators with requests for tickets of admission to the senate galleries. Lines were formed, and when the doors were thrown open in the morning every available inch of space was instantly filled with interested and excited spectators. So great was the pressure that all rules governing the admission of the public were waived. On the day of Webster’s greatest effort ladies were admitted to the seats of the members, and the throng overflowed through the lobbies and down the long stairways, quite beyond hearing distance. In the House of Representatives the Speaker remained at his post, but the attendance was so scant that no business could be transacted.
Hayne’s speech—begun on the 21st and continued on the 25th of January—was the fullest and most forceful exposition of the doctrines of strict construction, state rights, and nullification that had ever fallen upon the ear of Congress. It was no mere piece of abstract argumentation. Hayne was not the man to shrink from personalities, and he boldly accused the New England Federalists of disloyalty and Webster himself of complicity in “bargain and corruption.” Thrusting and parrying, he stirred his supporters to wild enthusiasm and moved even the solemn-visaged Vice President to smiles of approval. The nationalists winced and wondered whether their champion would be able to measure up with so keen an antagonist. Webster sat staring into space, breaking his reverie only now and then to make a few notes.
The debate reached a climax in Webster’s powerful Second Reply, on the 26th and 27th of January. Everything was favorable for a magnificent effort: the hearing was brilliant, the theme was vital, the speaker was in the prime of his matchless powers. On the desk before the New Englander as he arose were only five small letter-paper pages of notes. He spoke with such immediate preparation merely as the labors of a single evening made possible. But it may be doubted whether any forensic effort in our history was ever more thoroughly prepared for, because Webster lived his speech before he spoke it. The origins of the Federal Union, the theories and applications of the Constitution, the history and bearings of nullification—these were matters with which years of study, observation, professional activity, and association with men had made him absolutely familiar. If any living American could answer Hayne and his fellow partizans, Webster was the man to do it.
Forty-eight in the total of seventy-three pages of print filled by this speech are taken up with a defense of New England against the Southern charges of sectionalism and disloyalty. Few utterances of the time are more familiar than the sentences bringing this part of the oration to a close: “Mr. President, I shall enter on no encomium of Massachusetts; she needs none. There she is. Behold her, and judge for yourselves. There is her history; the world knows it by heart. … There is Boston, and Concord, and Lexington, and Bunker Hill; and there they will remain forever.” If this had been all, the speech would have been only a spirited defense of the good name of a section and would hardly have gained immortality. It was the Union, however, that most needed defense; and for that service the orator reserved his grandest efforts.
From the opening of the discussion Webster’s object had been to “force from Hayne or his supporters a full, frank, clear-cut statement of what nullification meant; and then, by opposing to this doctrine the Constitution as he understood it, to show its utter inadequacy and fallaciousness either as constitutional law or as a practical working scheme.” ¹ In the Southerner’s First Reply Webster found the statement that he wanted; he now proceeded to demolish it. Many pages of print would be required to reproduce, even in substance, the arguments which he employed. Yet the fundamentals are so simple that they can be stated in a dozen lines. Sovereignty, under our form of government, resides in the people of the United States. The exercise of the powers of sovereignty is entrusted by the people partly to the National Government and partly to the state Governments. This division of functions is made in the federal Constitution. If differences arise, as they must, as to the precise nature of the division, the decision rests—not with the state legislatures, as Hayne had said—but with the federal courts, which were established in part for that very purpose. No State has a right to “nullify” a federal law; if one State has this right, all must have it, and the result can only be conflicts that would plunge the Government into chaos and the people ultimately into war. If the Constitution is not what the people want, they can amend it; but as long as it stands, the Constitution and all lawful government under it must be obeyed.
¹ MacDonald, Jacksonian Democracy, p. 98.
The incomparably eloquent peroration penetrated to the heart of the whole matter. The logic of nullification was disunion. Fine theories might be spun and dazzling phrases made to convince men otherwise, but the hard fact would remain. Hayne, Calhoun, and their like were playing with fire. Already they were boldly weighing “the chances of preserving liberty when the bonds that unite us together shall be broken asunder”; already they were hanging over the precipice of disunion, to see whether they could “fathom the depth of the abyss below.” The last powerful words of the speech were, therefore, a glorification of the Union:
While the Union lasts, we have high, exciting, gratifying prospects spread out before us, for us and our children. Beyond that I seek not to penetrate the veil. God grant that in my day, at least, that curtain may not rise. … 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 afterward”; but everywhere, spread all over in characters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every American heart—“Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!”
Undaunted by the flood of eloquence that for four hours held the Senate spellbound, Hayne replied in a long speech that touched the zenith of his own masterful powers of argumentation. He conceded nothing. Each State, he still maintained, is “an independent sovereignty”; the Union is based upon a compact; and every party to the compact has a right to interpret for itself the terms of the agreement by which all are bound together. In a short, crisp speech, traversing the main ground which he had already gone over, Webster exposed the inconsistencies and dangers involved in this argument; and the debate was over. The Foote resolution, long since forgotten, remained on the Senate calendar four months and was then tabled. Webster went back to his cases; the politicians turned again to their immediate concerns; the humdrum of congressional business was resumed; and popular interest drifted to other things.