After the reply to Hayne in 1830, Mr. Webster became a standing candidate for the presidency, or for the Whig nomination to that office. From that time forth, the sharp denunciation of slavery and traffic in slaves disappears, although there is no indication that he ever altered his original opinion on these points; but he never ceased, sometimes mildly, sometimes in the most vigorous and sweeping manner, to attack and oppose the extension of slavery to new regions, and the increase of slave territory. If, then, in the 7th of March speech, he was inconsistent with his past, such inconsistency must appear, if at all, in his general tone in regard to slavery, in his views as to the policy of compromise, and in his attitude toward the extension of slavery, the really crucial question of the time.
As to the first point, there can be no doubt that there is a vast difference between the tone of the Plymouth oration and the Boston memorial toward slavery and the slave-trade, and that of the 7th of March speech in regard to the same subjects. For many years Mr. Webster had had but little to say against slavery as a system, but in the 7th of March speech, in reviewing the history of slavery, he treats the matter in such a very calm manner, that he not only makes the best case possible for the South, but his tone is almost apologetic when speaking in their behalf. To the grievances of the South he devotes more than five pages of his speech, to those of the North less than two. As to the infamy of making the national capital a great slave-mart, he has nothing to say—although it was a matter which figured as one of the elements in Mr. Clay's scheme.
But what most shocked the North in this connection were his utterances in regard to the Fugitive Slave Law. There can be no doubt that under the Constitution the South had a perfect right to claim the extradition of fugitive slaves. The legal argument in support of that right was excellent, but the Northern people could not feel that it was necessary for Daniel Webster to make it. The Fugitive Slave Law was in absolute conflict with the awakened conscience and moral sentiment of the North. To strengthen that law, and urge its enforcement, was a sure way to make the resistance to it still more violent and intolerant. Constitutions and laws will prevail over much, and allegiance to them is a high duty, but when they come into conflict with a deep-rooted moral sentiment, and with the principles of liberty and humanity, they must be modified, or else they will be broken to pieces. That this should have been the case in 1850 was no doubt to be regretted, but it was none the less a fact. To insist upon the constitutional duty of returning fugitive slaves, to upbraid the North with their opposition, and to urge upon them and upon the country the strict enforcement of the extradition law, was certain to embitter and intensify the opposition to it. The statesmanlike course was to recognize the ground of Northern resistance, to show the South that a too violent insistence upon their constitutional rights would be fatal, and to endeavor to obtain such concessions as would allay excited feelings. Mr. Webster's strong argument in favor of the Fugitive Slave Law pleased the South, of course; but it irritated and angered the North. It promoted the very struggle which it proposed to allay, for it admitted the existence of only one side to the question. The consciences of men cannot be coerced; and when Mr. Webster undertook to do it he dashed himself against the rocks. People did not stop to distinguish between a legal argument and a defence of the merits of catching runaway slaves. To refer to the original law of 1793 was idle. Public opinion had changed in half a century; and what had seemed reasonable at the close of the eighteenth century was monstrous in the middle of the nineteenth.
All this Mr. Webster declined to recognize. He upheld without diminution or modification the constitutional duty of sending escaping slaves back to bondage; and from the legal soundness of this position there is no escape. The trouble was that he had no word to say against the cruelty and barbarity of the system. To insist upon the necessity of submitting to the hard and repulsive duty imposed by the Constitution was one thing. To urge submission without a word of sorrow or regret was another. The North felt, and felt rightly, that while Mr. Webster could not avoid admitting the force of the constitutional provisions about fugitive slaves, and was obliged to bow to their behest, yet to defend them without reservation, to attack those who opposed them, and to urge the rigid enforcement of a Fugitive Slave Law, was not in consonance with his past, his conscience, and his duty to his constituents. The constitutionality of a Fugitive Slave Law may be urged and admitted over and over again, but this could not make the North believe that advocacy of slave-catching was a task suited to Daniel Webster. The simple fact was that he did not treat the general question of slavery as he always had treated it. Instead of denouncing and deploring it, and striking at it whenever the Constitution permitted, he apologized for its existence, and urged the enforcement of its most obnoxious laws. This was not his attitude in 1820; this was not what the people of the North expected of him in 1850.
In regard to the policy of compromise there is a much stronger contrast between Mr. Webster's attitude in 1850 and his earlier course than in the case of his views on the general subject of slavery. In 1819, although not in public life, Mr. Webster, as is clear from the tone of the Boston memorial, was opposed to any compromise involving an extension of slavery. In 1832-33 he was the most conspicuous and unyielding enemy of the principle of compromise in the country. He then took the ground that the time had come to test the strength of the Constitution and the Union, and that any concession would have a fatally weakening effect. In 1850 he supported a compromise which was so one-sided that it hardly deserves the name. The defence offered by his friends on this subject—and it is the strongest point they have been able to make—is that these sacrifices, or compromises, were necessary to save the Union, and that—although they did not prevent ultimate secession—they caused a delay of ten years, which enabled the North to gather sufficient strength to carry the civil war to a successful conclusion. It is not difficult to show historically that the policy of compromise between the national principle and unlawful opposition to that principle was an entire mistake from the very outset, and that if illegal and partisan State resistance had always been put down with a firm hand, civil war might have been avoided. Nothing strengthened the general government more than the well-judged and well-timed display of force by which Washington and Hamilton crushed the Whiskey Rebellion, or than the happy accident of peace in 1814, which brought the separatist movement in New England to a sudden end. After that period Mr. Clay's policy of compromise prevailed, and the result was that the separatist movement was identified with the maintenance of slavery, and steadily gathered strength. In 1819 the South threatened and blustered in order to prevent the complete prohibition of slavery in the Louisiana purchase. In 1832 South Carolina passed the nullification ordinance because she suffered by the operation of a protective tariff. In 1850 a great advance had been made in their pretensions. Secession was threatened because the South feared that the Mexican conquests would not be devoted to the service of slavery. Nothing had been done, nothing was proposed even, prejudicial to Southern interests; but the inherent weakness of slavery, and the mild conciliatory attitude of Northern statesmen, incited the South to make imperious demands for favors, and seek for positive gains. They succeeded in 1850, and in 1860 they had reached the point at which they were ready to plunge the country into the horrors of civil war solely because they lost an election. They believed, first, that the North would yield everything for the sake of union, and secondly, that if there was a limit to their capacity for surrender in this direction, yet a people capable of so much submission in the past would never fight to maintain the Union. The South made a terrible mistake, and was severely punished for it; but the compromises of 1820, 1833, and 1850 furnished some excuse for the wild idea that the North would not and could not fight. Whether a strict adherence to the strong, fearless policy of Hamilton, which was adopted by Jackson and advocated by Webster in 1832-33, would have prevented civil war, must, of course, remain matter of conjecture. It is at least certain that in that way alone could war have been avoided, and that the Clay policy of compromise made war inevitable by encouraging slave-holders to believe that they could always obtain anything they wanted by a sufficient show of violence.
It is urged, however, that the policy of compromise having been adopted, a change in 1850 would have simply precipitated the sectional conflict. In judging Mr. Webster, the practical question, of course, is as to the best method of dealing with matters as they actually were and not as they might have been had a different course been pursued in 1820 and 1832. The partisans of Mr. Webster have always taken the ground that in 1850 the choice was between compromise and secession; that the events of 1861 showed that the South, in 1850, was not talking for mere effect; that the maintenance of the Union was the paramount consideration of a patriotic statesman; and that the only practicable and proper course was to compromise. Admitting fully that Mr. Webster's first and highest duty was to preserve the Union, it is perfectly clear now, when all these events have passed into history, that he took the surest way to make civil war inevitable, and that the position of 1832 should not have been abandoned. In the first place, the choice was not confined to compromise or secession. The President, the official head of the Whig party, had recommended the admission of California, as the only matter actually requiring immediate settlement, and that the other questions growing out of the new territories should be dealt with as they arose. Mr. Curtis, Mr. Webster's biographer, says this was an impracticable plan, because peace could not be kept between New Mexico and Texas, and because there was great excitement about the slavery question throughout the country. These seem very insufficient reasons, and only the first has any practical bearing on the matter. General Taylor said: Admit California, for that is an immediate and pressing duty, and I will see to it that peace is preserved on the Texan boundary. Zachary Taylor may not have been a great statesman, but he was a brave and skilful soldier, and an honest man, resolved to maintain the Union, even if he had to shoot a few Texans to do it. His policy was bold and manly, and the fact that it was said to have been inspired by Mr. Seward, a leader in the only Northern party which had any real principle to fight for, does not seem such a monstrous idea as it did in 1850 or does still to those who sustain Mr. Webster's action. That General Taylor's policy was not so wild and impracticable as Mr. Webster's friends would have us think, is shown by the fact that Mr. Benton, Democrat and Southerner as he was, but imbued with the vigor of the Jackson school, believed that each question should be taken up by itself and settled on its own merits. A policy which seemed wise to three such different men as Taylor, Seward, and Benton, could hardly have been so utterly impracticable and visionary as Mr. Webster's partisans would like the world to believe. It was in fact one of the cases which that extremely practical statesman Nicolo Machiavelli had in mind when he wrote that, "Dangers that are seen afar off are easily prevented; but protracting till they are near at hand, the remedies grow unseasonable and the malady incurable."
It may be readily admitted that there was a great and perilous political crisis in 1850, as Mr. Webster said. In certain quarters, in the excitement of party strife, there was a tendency to deride Mr. Webster as a "Union-saver," and to take the ground that there had been no real danger of secession. This, as we can see now very plainly, was an unfounded idea. When Congress met, the danger of secession was very real, although perhaps not very near. The South, although they intended to secede as a last resort, had no idea that they should be brought to that point. Menaces of disunion, ominous meetings and conventions, they probably calculated, would effect their purpose and obtain for them what they wanted, and subsequent events proved that they were perfectly right in this opinion. On February 14 Mr. Webster wrote to Mr. Harvey:—
"I do not partake in any degree in those apprehensions which you say some of our friends entertain of the dissolution of the Union or the breaking up of the government. I am mortified, it is true, at the violent tone assumed here by many persons, because such violence in debate only leads to irritation, and is, moreover, discreditable to the government and the country. But there is no serious danger, be assured, and so assure our friends."
The next day he wrote to Mr. Furness, a leader of the anti-slavery party, expressing his abhorrence of slavery as an institution, his unwillingness to break up the existing political system to secure its abolition, and his belief that the whole matter must be left with Divine Providence. It is clear from this letter that he had dismissed any thought of assuming an aggressive attitude toward slavery, but there is nothing to indicate that he thought the Union could be saved from wreck only by substantial concessions to the South. Between the date of the letter to Harvey and March 7, Mr. Curtis says that the aspect of affairs had materially changed, and that the Union was in serious peril. There is nothing to show that Mr. Webster thought so, or that he had altered the opinion which he had expressed on February 14. In fact, Mr. Curtis's view is the exact reverse of the true state of affairs. If there was any real and immediate danger to the Union, it existed on February 14, and ceased immediately afterwards, on February 16, as Dr. Von Holst correctly says, when the House of Representatives laid on the table the resolution of Mr. Root of Ohio, prohibiting the extension of slavery to the territories. By that vote, the victory was won by the slave-power, and the peril of speedy disunion vanished. Nothing remained but to determine how much the South would get from their victory, and how hard a bargain they could drive. The admission of California was no more of a concession than a resolution not to introduce slavery in Massachusetts would have been. All the rest of the compromise plan, with the single exception of the prohibition of the slave-trade in the District of Columbia, was made up of concessions to the Southern and slave-holding interest. That Henry Clay should have originated and advocated this scheme was perfectly natural. However wrong or mistaken, this had been his steady and unbroken policy from the outset, as the best method of preserving the Union and advancing the cause of nationality. Mr. Clay was consistent and sincere, and, however much he may have erred in his general theory, he never swerved from it. But with Mr. Webster the case was totally different. He had opposed the principle of compromise from the beginning, and in 1833, when concession was more reasonable than in 1850, he had offered the most strenuous and unbending resistance. Now he advocated a compromise which was in reality little less than a complete surrender on the part of the North. On the general question of compromise he was, of course, grossly inconsistent, and the history of the time, as it appears in the cold light of the present day, shows plainly that, while he was brave and true and wise in 1833, in 1850 he was not only inconsistent, but that he erred deeply in policy and statesmanship. It has also been urged in behalf of Mr. Webster that he went no farther than the Republicans in 1860 in the way of concession, and that as in 1860 so in 1850, anything was permissible which served to gain time. In the first place, the tu quoque argument proves nothing and has no weight. In the second place, the situations in 1850 and in 1860 were very different.
There were at the former period, in reference to slavery, four parties in the country—the Democrats, the Free-Soilers, the Abolitionists, and the Whigs. The three first had fixed and widely-varying opinions; the last was trying to live without opinions, and soon died. The pro-slavery Democrats were logical and practical; the Abolitionists were equally logical but thoroughly impracticable and unconstitutional, avowed nullifiers and secessionists; the Free-Soilers were illogical, constitutional, and perfectly practical. As Republicans, the Free-Soilers proved the correctness and good sense of their position by bringing the great majority of the Northern people to their support. But at the same time their position was a difficult one, for while they were an anti-slavery party and had set on foot constitutional opposition to the extension of slavery, their fidelity to the Constitution compelled them to admit the legality of the Fugitive Slave Law and of slavery in the States. They aimed, of course, first to check the extension of slavery and then to efface it by gradual restriction and full compensation to slave-holders. When they had carried the country in 1860, they found themselves face to face with a breaking Union and an impending war. That many of them were seriously frightened, and, to avoid war and dissolution, would have made great concessions, cannot be questioned; but their controlling motive was to hold things together by any means, no matter how desperate, until they could get possession of the government. This was the only possible and the only wise policy, but that it involved them in some contradictions in that winter of excitement and confusion is beyond doubt. History will judge the men and events of 1860 according to the circumstances of the time, but nothing that happened then has any bearing on Mr. Webster's conduct. He must be judged according to the circumstances of 1850, and the first and most obvious fact is, that he was not fighting merely to gain time and obtain control of the general government. The crisis was grave and serious in the extreme, but neither war nor secession were imminent or immediate, nor did Mr. Webster ever assert that they were. He thought war and secession might come, and it was against this possibility and probability that he sought to provide. He wished to solve the great problem, to remove the source of danger, to set the menacing agitation at rest. He aimed at an enduring and definite settlement, and that was the purpose of the 7th of March speech. His reasons—and of course they were clear and weighty in his own mind—proceeded from the belief that this wretched compromise measure offered a wise, judicious, and permanent settlement of questions which, in their constant recurrence, threatened more and more the stability of the Union. History has shown how wofully mistaken he was in this opinion.