When he returned to Washington in 1823, the situation was much altered from that which he had left in 1817. In reality there were no parties, or only one; but the all-powerful Republicans who had adopted, under the pressure of foreign war, most of the Federalist principles so obnoxious to Jefferson and his school, were split up into as many factions as there were candidates for the presidency. It was a period of transition in which personal politics had taken the place of those founded on opposing principles, and this "era of good feeling" was marked by the intense bitterness of the conflicts produced by these personal rivalries. In addition to the factions which were battling for the control of the Republican party and for the great prize of the presidency, there was still another faction, composed of the old Federalists, who, although without organization, still held to their name and their prejudices, and clung together more as a matter of habit than with any practical object. Mr. Webster had been one of the Federalist leaders in the old days, and when he returned to public life with all the distinction which he had won in other fields, he was at once recognized as the chief and head of all that now remained of the great party of Washington and Hamilton. No Federalist could hope to be President, and for this very reason Federalist support was eagerly sought by all Republican candidates for the presidency. The favor of Mr. Webster as the head of an independent and necessarily disinterested faction was, of course, strongly desired in many quarters. His political position and his high reputation as a lawyer, orator, and statesman made him, therefore, a character of the first importance in Washington, a fact to which Mr. Clay at once gave public recognition by placing his future rival at the head of the Judiciary Committee of the House.
The six years of congressional life which now ensued were among the most useful if not the most brilliant in Mr. Webster's whole public career. He was free from the annoyance of opposition at home, and was twice returned by a practically unanimous popular vote. He held a commanding and influential and at the same time a thoroughly independent position in Washington, where he was regarded as the first man on the floor of the House in point of ability and reputation. He was not only able to show his great capacity for practical legislation, but he was at liberty to advance his own views on public questions in his own way, unburdened by the outside influences of party and of association which had affected him so much in his previous term of service and were soon to reassert their sway in all his subsequent career.
His return to Congress was at once signalized by a great speech, which, although of no practical or immediate moment, deserves careful attention from the light which it throws on the workings of his mind and the development of his opinions in regard to his country. The House had been in session but a few days when Mr. Webster offered a resolution in favor of providing by law for the expenses incident to the appointment of a commissioner to Greece, should the President deem such an appointment expedient. The Greeks were then in the throes of revolution, and the sympathy for the heirs of so much glory in their struggle for freedom was strong among the American people. When Mr. Webster rose on January 19, 1824, to move the adoption of the resolution which he had laid upon the table of the House, the chamber was crowded and the galleries were filled by a large and fashionable audience attracted by the reputation of the orator and the interest felt in his subject. His hearers were disappointed if they expected a great rhetorical display, for which the nature of the subject and the classic memories clustering about it offered such strong temptations. Mr. Webster did not rise for that purpose, nor to make capital by an appeal to a temporary popular interest. His speech was for a wholly different purpose. It was the first expression of that grand conception of the American Union which had vaguely excited his youthful enthusiasm. This conception had now come to be part of his intellectual being, and then and always stirred his imagination and his affections to their inmost depths. It embodied the principle from which he never swerved, and led to all that he represents and to all that his influence means in our history.
As the first expression of his conception of the destiny of the United States as a great and united nation, Mr. Webster was, naturally, "more fond of this child" than of any other of his intellectual family. The speech itself was a noble one, but it was an eloquent essay rather than a great example of the oratory of debate. This description can in no other case be applied to Mr. Webster's parliamentary efforts, but in this instance it is correct, because the occasion justified such a form. Mr. Webster's purpose was to show that, though the true policy of the United States absolutely debarred them from taking any part in the affairs of Europe, yet they had an important duty to perform in exercising their proper influence on the public opinion of the world. Europe was then struggling with the monstrous principles of the "Holy Alliance." Those principles Mr. Webster reviewed historically. He showed their pernicious tendency, their hostility to all modern theories of government, and their especial opposition to the principles of American liberty. If the doctrines of the Congress of Laybach were right and could be made to prevail, then those of America were wrong and the systems of popular government adopted in the United States were doomed. Against such infamous principles it behooved the people of the United States to raise their voice. Mr. Webster sketched the history of Greece, and made a fine appeal to Americans to give an expression of their sympathy to a people struggling for freedom. He proclaimed, so that all men might hear, the true duty of the United States toward the oppressed of any land, and the responsibility which they held to exert their influence upon the opinions of mankind. The national destiny of his country in regard to other nations was his theme; to give to the glittering declaration of Canning, that he would "call in the new world to redress the balance of the old," a deep and real significance was his object.
The speech touched Mr. Clay to the quick. He supported Mr. Webster's resolution with all the ardor of his generous nature, and supplemented it by another against the interference of Spain in South America. A stormy debate followed, vivified by the flings and taunts of John Randolph, but the unwillingness to take action was so great that Mr. Webster did not press his resolution to a vote. He had at the outset looked for a practical result from his resolution, and had desired the appointment of Mr. Everett as commissioner, a plan in which he had been encouraged by Mr. Calhoun, who had given him to understand that the Executive regarded the Greek mission with favor. Before he delivered his speech he became aware that Calhoun had misled him, that Mr. Adams, the Secretary of State, considered Everett too much of a partisan, and that the administration was wholly averse to any action in the premises. This destroyed all hope of a practical result, and made an adverse vote certain. The only course was to avoid a decision and trust to what he said for an effect on public opinion. The real purpose of the speech, however, was achieved. Mr. Webster had exposed and denounced the Holy Alliance as hostile to the liberties of mankind, and had declared the unalterable enmity of the United States to its reactionary doctrines. The speech was widely read, not only wherever English was spoken, but it was translated into all the languages of Europe, and was circulated throughout South America. It increased Mr. Webster's fame at home and laid the foundation of his reputation abroad. Above all, it stamped him as a statesman of a broad and national cast of mind.
He now settled down to hard and continuous labor at the routine business of the House, and it was not until the end of March that he had occasion to make another elaborate and important speech. At that time Mr. Clay took up the bill for laying certain protective duties and advocated it strenuously as part of a general and steady policy which he then christened with the name of "the American system." Against this bill, known as the tariff of 1824, Mr. Webster made, as Mr. Adams wrote in his diary at the time, "an able and powerful speech," which can be more properly considered when we come to his change of position on this question a few years later.
As chairman of the Judiciary Committee, the affairs of the national courts were his particular care. Western expansion demanded an increased number of judges for the circuits, but, unfortunately, decisions in certain recent cases had offended the sensibilities of Virginia and Kentucky, and there was a renewal of the old Jeffersonian efforts to limit the authority of the Supreme Court. Instead of being able to improve, he was obliged to defend the court, and this he did successfully, defeating all attempts to curtail its power by alterations of the act of 1789. These duties and that of investigating the charges brought by Ninian Edwards against Mr. Crawford, the Secretary of the Treasury, made the session an unusually laborious one, and detained Mr. Webster in Washington until midsummer.
The short session of the next winter was of course marked by the excitement attendant upon the settlement of the presidential election which resulted in the choice of Mr. John Quincy Adams by the House of Representatives. The intense agitation in political circles did not, however, prevent Mr. Webster from delivering one very important speech, nor from carrying through successfully one of the most important and practically useful measures of his legislative career. The speech was delivered in the debate on the bill for continuing the national Cumberland road. Mr. Webster had already, many years before, defined his position on the constitutional question involved in internal improvements. He now, in response to Mr. McDuffie of South Carolina, who denounced the measure as partial and sectional, not merely defended the principle of internal improvements, but declared that it was a policy to be pursued only with the purest national feeling. It was not the business of Congress, he said, to legislate for this State or that, or to balance local interests, and because they helped one region to help another, but to act for the benefit of all the States united, and in making improvements to be guided only by their necessity. He showed that these roads would open up the West to settlement, and incidentally defended the policy of selling the public lands at a low price as an encouragement to emigration, telling his Southern friends very plainly that they could not expect to coerce the course of population in favor of their own section. The whole speech was conceived in the broadest and wisest spirit, and marks another step in the development of Mr. Webster as a national statesman. It increased his reputation, and brought to him a great accession of popularity in the West.
The measure which he carried through was the famous "Crimes Act," perhaps the best monument that there is of his legislative and constructive ability. The criminal law of the United States had scarcely been touched since the days of the first Congress, and was very defective and unsatisfactory. Mr. Webster's first task, in which he received most essential and valuable though unacknowledged assistance from Judge Story, was to codify and digest the whole body of criminal law. This done, the hardly less difficult undertaking followed of carrying the measure through Congress. In the latter, Mr. Webster, by his skill in debate and familiarity with his subject, and by his influence in the House, was perfectly successful. That he and Judge Story did their work well in perfecting the bill is shown by the admirable manner in which the Act stood the test of time and experience.
When the new Congress came together in 1825, Mr. Webster at once turned his attention to the improvement of the Judiciary, which he had been obliged to postpone in order to ward off the attacks upon the court. After much deliberation and thought, aided by Judge Story, and having made some concessions to his committee, he brought in a bill increasing the Supreme Court judges to ten, making ten instead of seven circuits, and providing that six judges should constitute a quorum for the transaction of business. Although not a party question, the measure excited much opposition, and was more than a month in passing through the House. Mr. Webster supported it at every stage with great ability, and his two most important speeches, which are in their way models for the treatment of such a subject, are preserved in his works. The bill was carried by his great strength in debate and by height of forcible argument. But in the Senate, where it was deprived of the guardianship of its author, it hung along in uncertainty, and was finally lost through the apathy or opposition of those very Western members for whose benefit it had been devised. Mr. Webster took its ultimate defeat very coolly. The Eastern States did not require it, and were perfectly contented with the existing arrangements, and he was entirely satisfied with the assurance that the best lawyers and wisest men approved the principles of the bill. The time and thought which he had expended were not wasted so far as he was personally concerned, for they served to enhance his influence and reputation both as a lawyer and statesman.