Daniel Webster

by Henry Cabot Lodge

His course once taken, he made the best of it, and delivered a speech in Faneuil Hall, in which it is painful to see the effort to push aside slavery and bring forward the tariff and the sub-treasury. He scoffed at this absorption in "one idea," and strove to thrust it away. It was the cry of "peace, peace," when there was no peace, and when Daniel Webster knew there could be none until the momentous question had been met and settled. Like the great composer who heard in the first notes of his symphony "the hand of Fate knocking at the door," the great New England statesman heard the same warning in the hoarse murmur against slavery, but he shut his ears to the dread sound and passed on.

When Mr. Webster returned to Washington, after the election of General Taylor, the strife had already begun over our Mexican conquests. The South had got the territory, and the next point was to fasten slavery upon it. The North was resolved to prevent the further spread of slavery, but was by no means so determined or so clear in its views as its opponent. President Polk urged in his message that Congress should not legislate on the question of slavery in the territories, but that if they did, the right of slave-holders to carry their slaves with them to the new lands should be recognized, and that the best arrangement was to extend the line of the Missouri Compromise to the Pacific. For the originator and promoter of the Mexican war this was a very natural solution, and was a fit conclusion to one of the worst presidential careers this country has ever seen. The plan had only one defect. It would not work. One scheme after another was brought before the Senate, only to fail. Finally, Mr. Webster introduced his own, which was merely to authorize military government and the maintenance of existing laws in the Mexican cessions, and a consequent postponement of the question. The proposition was reasonable and sensible, but it fared little better than the others. The Southerners found, as they always did sooner or later, that facts were against them. The people of New Mexico petitioned for a territorial government and for the exclusion of slavery. Mr. Calhoun pronounced this action "insolent." Slavery was not only to be permitted, but the United States government was to be made to force it upon the people of the territories. Finally, a resolution was offered "to extend the Constitution" to the territories,—one of those utterly vague propositions in which the South delighted to hide well-defined schemes for extending, not the Constitution, but slave-holding, to fresh fields and virgin soil. This gave rise to a sharp debate between Mr. Webster and Mr. Calhoun as to whether the Constitution extended to the territories or not. Mr. Webster upheld the latter view, and the discussion is chiefly interesting from the fact that Mr. Webster got the better of Mr. Calhoun in the argument, and as an example of the latter's excessive ingenuity in sustaining and defending a more than doubtful proposition. The result of the whole business was, that nothing was done, except to extend the revenue laws of the United States to New Mexico and California.

Before Congress again assembled, one of the subjects of their debates had taken its fortunes into its own hands. California, rapidly peopled by the discoveries of gold, had held a convention and adopted a frame of government with a clause prohibiting slavery. When Congress met, the Senators and Representatives of California were in Washington with their free Constitution in their hands, demanding the admission of their State into the Union.

New Mexico was involved in a dispute with Texas as to boundaries, and if the claim of Texas was sanctioned, two thirds of the disputed territory would come within the scope of the annexation resolutions, and be slave-holding States. Then there was the further question whether the Wilmot Proviso should be applied to New Mexico on her organization as a territory.

The President, acting under the influence of Mr. Seward, advised that California should be admitted, and the question of slavery in the other territories be decided when they should apply for admission. Feeling was running very high in Washington, and there was a bitter and protracted struggle of three weeks, before the House succeeded in choosing a Speaker. The State Legislatures on both sides took up the burning question, and debated and resolved one way or the other with great excitement. The Southern members held meetings, and talked about secession and about withdrawing from Congress. The air was full of murmurs of dissolution and intestine strife. The situation was grave and even threatening.

In this state of affairs Mr. Clay, now an old man, and with but a short term of life before him, resolved to try once more to solve the problem and tide over the dangers by a grand compromise. The main features of his plan were: the admission of California with her free Constitution; the organization of territorial governments in the Mexican conquests without any reference to slavery; the adjustment of the Texan boundary; a guaranty of the existence of slavery in the District of Columbia until Maryland should consent to its abolition; the prohibition of the slave-trade in the District; provision for the more effectual enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law, and a declaration that Congress had no power over the slave-trade between the slave-holding States. As the admission of California was certain, the proposition to bring about the prohibition of the slave-trade in the District was the only concession to the North. Everything else was in the interest of the South; but then that was always the manner in which compromises with slavery were made. They could be effected in no other way.

This outline Mr. Clay submitted to Mr. Webster January 21, 1850, and Mr. Webster gave it his full approval, subject, of course, to further and more careful consideration. February 5 Mr. Clay introduced his plan in the Senate, and supported it in an eloquent speech. On the 13th the President submitted the Constitution of California, and Mr. Foote moved to refer it, together with all matters relating to slavery, to a select committee. It now became noised about that Mr. Webster intended to address the Senate on the pending measures, and on the 7th of March he delivered the memorable speech which has always been known by its date.

It may be premised that in a literary and rhetorical point of view the speech of the 7th of March was a fine one. The greater part of it is taken up with argument and statement, and is very quiet in tone. But the famous passage beginning "peaceable secession," which came straight from the heart, and the peroration also, have the glowing eloquence which shone with so much splendor all through the reply to Hayne. The speech can be readily analyzed. With extreme calmness of language Mr. Webster discussed the whole history of slavery in ancient and modern times, and under the Constitution of the United States. His attitude is so judicial and historical, that if it is clear he disapproved of the system, it is not equally evident that he condemned it. He reviewed the history of the annexation of Texas, defended his own consistency, belittled the Wilmot Proviso, admitted substantially the boundary claims of Texas, and declared that the character of every part of the country, so far as slavery or freedom was concerned, was now settled, either by law or nature, and that he should resist the insertion of the Wilmot Proviso in regard to New Mexico, because it would be merely a wanton taunt and reproach to the South. He then spoke of the change of feeling and opinion both at the North and the South in regard to slavery, and passed next to the question of mutual grievances. He depicted at length the grievances of the South, including the tone of the Northern press, the anti-slavery resolutions of the Legislature, the utterances of the abolitionists, and the resistance to the Fugitive Slave Law. The last, which he thought the only substantial and legally remediable complaint, he dwelt on at great length, and severely condemned the refusal of certain States to comply with this provision of the Constitution. Then came the grievances of the North against the South, which were dealt with very briefly. In fact, the Northern grievances, according to Mr. Webster, consisted of the tone of the Southern press and of Southern speeches which, it must be confessed, were at times a little violent and somewhat offensive. The short paragraph reciting the unconstitutional and high-handed action of the South in regard to free negroes employed as seamen on Northern vessels, and the outrageous treatment of Mr. Hoar at Charleston in connection with this matter, was not delivered, Mr. Giddings says, but was inserted afterwards and before publication, at the suggestion of a friend. After this came the fine burst about secession, and a declaration of faith that the Southern convention called at Nashville would prove patriotic and conciliatory. The speech concluded with a strong appeal in behalf of nationality and union.

Mr. Curtis correctly says that a great majority of Mr. Webster's constituents, if not of the whole North, disapproved this speech. He might have added that that majority has steadily increased. The popular verdict has been given against the 7th of March speech, and that verdict has passed into history. Nothing can now be said or written which will alter the fact that the people of this country who maintained and saved the Union have passed judgment upon Mr. Webster and condemned what he said on the 7th of March, 1850, as wrong in principle and mistaken in policy. This opinion is not universal,—no opinion is,—but it is held by the great body of mankind who know or care anything about the subject, and it cannot be changed or substantially modified, because subsequent events have fixed its place and worth irrevocably. It is only necessary, therefore, to examine very briefly the grounds of this adverse judgment, and the pleas put in against it by Mr. Webster and by his most devoted partisans.

From the sketch which has been given of Mr. Webster's course on the slavery question, we see that in 1819 and 1820 he denounced in the strongest terms slavery and every form of slave-trade; that while he fully admitted that Congress had no power to touch slavery in the States, he asserted that it was their right and their paramount duty absolutely to stop any further extension of slave territory. In 1820 he was opposed to any compromise on this question. Ten years later he stood out to the last, unaffected by defeat, against the principle of compromise which sacrificed the rights and the dignity of the general government to the resistance and threatened secession of a State.