This is directed against the African slave-trade, the most hideous feature, perhaps, in the system. But there was no real distinction between slavers plying from one American port to another and those which crossed the ocean for the same purpose. There was no essential difference between slaves raised for the market in Virginia–whence they were exported and sold–and those kidnapped for the same object on the Guinea coast. The physical suffering of a land journey might be less than that of a long sea-voyage, but the anguish of separation between mother and child was the same in all cases. The chains which clanked on the limbs of the wretched creatures, driven from the auction block along the road which passed beneath the national capitol, and the fetters of the captured fugitive were no softer or lighter than those forged for the cargo of the slave-ships. Yet the man who so magnificently denounced the one in 1820, found no cause to repeat the denunciation in 1850, when only domestic traffic was in question. The memorial of 1819 and the oration of 1820 place the African slave-trade and the domestic branch of the business on precisely the same ground of infamy and cruelty. In 1850 Mr. Webster seems to have discovered that there was a wide gulf fixed between them, for the latter wholly failed to excite the stern condemnation poured forth by the memorialist of 1819 and the orator of 1820. The Fugitive Slave Law, more inhuman than either of the forms of traffic, was defended in 1850 on good constitutional grounds; but the eloquent invective of the early days against an evil which constitutions might necessitate but could not alter or justify, does not go hand in hand with the legal argument.
The next occasion after the Missouri Compromise, on which slavery made its influence strongly felt at Washington, was when Mr. Adams’s scheme of the Panama mission aroused such bitter and unexpected resistance in Congress. Mr. Webster defended the policy of the President with great ability, but he confined himself to the international and constitutional questions which it involved, and did not discuss the underlying motive and true source of the opposition. The debate on Foote’s resolution in 1830, in the wide range which it took, of course included slavery, and Mr. Hayne had a good deal to say on that subject, which lay at the bottom of the tariff agitation, as it did at that of every Southern movement of any real importance. In his reply, Mr. Webster said that he had made no attack upon this sensitive institution, that he had simply stated that the Northwest had been greatly benefited by the exclusion of slavery, and that it would have been better for Kentucky if she had come within the scope of the ordinance of 1787. The weight of his remarks was directed to showing that the complaint of Northern attacks on slavery as existing in the Southern States, or of Northern schemes to compel the abolition of slavery, was utterly groundless and fallacious. At the same time he pointed out the way in which slavery was continually used to unite the South against the North.
“This feeling,” he said, “always carefully kept alive, and maintained at too intense a heat to admit discrimination or reflection, is a lever of great power in our political machine. There is not and never has been a disposition in the North to interfere with these interests of the South. Such interference has never been supposed to be within the power of government; nor has it been in any way attempted. The slavery of the South has always been regarded as a matter of domestic policy left with the States themselves, and with which the Federal government had nothing to do. Certainly, sir, I am and ever have been of that opinion. The gentleman, indeed, argues that slavery, in the abstract, is no evil. Most assuredly, I need not say I differ with him altogether and most widely on that point. I regard domestic slavery as one of the greatest evils, both moral and political.”
His position is here clearly defined. He admits fully that slavery within the States cannot be interfered with by the general government, under the Constitution. But he also insists that it is a great evil, and the obvious conclusion is, that its extension, over which the government does have control, must and should be checked. This is the attitude of the memorial and the oration. Nothing has yet changed. There is less fervor in the denunciation of slavery, but that may be fairly attributed to circumstances which made the maintenance of the general government and the enforcement of the revenue laws the main points in issue.
In 1836 the anti-slavery movement, destined to grow to such vast proportions, began to show itself in the Senate. The first contest came on the reception of petitions for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. Mr. Calhoun moved that these petitions should not be received, but his motion was rejected by a large majority. The question then came on the petitions themselves, and, by a vote of thirty-four to six, their prayer was rejected, Mr. Webster voting with the minority because he disapproved this method of disposing of the matter. Soon after, Mr. Webster presented three similar petitions, two from Massachusetts and one from Michigan, and moved their reference to a committee of inquiry. He stated that, while the government had no power whatever over slavery in the States, it had complete control over slavery in the District, which was a totally distinct affair. He urged a respectful treatment of the petitions, and defended the right of petition and the motives and characters of the petitioners. He spoke briefly, and, except when he was charged with placing himself at the head of the petitioners, coldly, and did not touch on the merits of the question, either as to the abolition of slavery in the District or as to slavery itself.
The Southerners, especially the extremists and the nullifiers, were always more ready than any one else to strain the powers of the central government to the last point, and use them most tyrannically and illegally in their own interest and in that of their pet institution. The session of 1836 furnished a striking example of this characteristic quality. Mr. Calhoun at that time introduced his monstrous bill to control the United States mails in the interests of slavery, by authorizing postmasters to seize and suppress all anti-slavery documents. Against this measure Mr. Webster spoke and voted, resting his opposition on general grounds, and sustaining it by a strong and effective argument. In the following year, on his way to the North, after the inauguration of Mr. Van Buren, a great public reception was given to him in New York, and on that occasion he made the speech in Niblo’s Garden, where he defined the Whig principles, arraigned so powerfully the policy of Jackson, and laid the foundation for the triumphs of the Harrison campaign. In the course of that speech he referred to Texas, and strongly expressed his belief that it should remain independent and should not be annexed. This led him to touch upon slavery. He said:–
“I frankly avow my entire unwillingness to do anything that shall extend the slavery of the African race on this continent, or add other slave-holding States to the Union. When I say that I regard slavery in itself as a great moral, social, and political evil, I only use the language which has been adopted by distinguished men, themselves citizens of slave-holding States. I shall do nothing, therefore, to favor or encourage its further extension. We have slavery already amongst us. The Constitution found it in the Union, it recognized it, and gave it solemn guaranties. To the full extent of the guaranties we are all bound in honor, in justice, and by the Constitution…. But when we come to speak of admitting new States, the subject assumes an entirely different aspect…. In my opinion, the people of the United States will not consent to bring into the Union a new, vastly extensive, and slave-holding country, large enough for half a dozen or a dozen States. In my opinion, they ought not to consent to it…. On the general question of slavery a great portion of the community is already strongly excited. The subject has not only attracted attention as a question of politics, but it has struck a far deeper-toned chord. It has arrested the religious feeling of the country; it has taken strong hold on the consciences of men. He is a rash man, indeed, and little conversant with human nature, and especially has he a very erroneous estimate of the character of the people of this country, who supposes that a feeling of this kind is to be trifled with or despised. It will assuredly cause itself to be respected. It may be reasoned with, it may be made willing–I believe it is entirely willing–to fulfil all existing engagements and all existing duties, to uphold and defend the Constitution as it is established, with whatever regrets about some provisions which it does actually contain. But to coerce it into silence, to endeavor to restrain its free expression, to seek to compress and confine it, warm as it is and more heated as such endeavors would inevitably render it,–should this be attempted, I know nothing, even in the Constitution or in the Union itself, which would not be endangered by the explosion which might follow.”
Thus Mr. Webster spoke on slavery and upon the agitation against it, in 1837. The tone was the same as in 1820, and there was the same ring of dignified courage and unyielding opposition to the extension and perpetuation of a crying evil.
In the session of Congress preceding the speech at Niblo’s Garden, numerous petitions for the abolition of slavery in the District had been offered. Mr. Webster reiterated his views as to the proper disposition to be made of them; but announced that he had no intention of expressing an opinion as to the merits of the question. Objections were made to the reception of the petitions, the question was stated on the reception, and the whole matter was laid on the table. The Senate, under the lead of Calhoun, was trying to shut the door against the petitioners, and stifle the right of petition; and there was no John Quincy Adams among them to do desperate battle against this infamous scheme.
In the following year came more petitions, and Mr. Calhoun now attempted to stop the agitation in another fashion. He introduced a resolution to the effect that these petitions were a direct and dangerous attack on the “institution” of the slave-holding States. This Mr. Clay improved in a substitute, which stated that any act or measure of Congress looking to the abolition of slavery in the District would be a violation of the faith implied in the cession by Virginia and Maryland,–a just cause of alarm to the South, and having a direct tendency to disturb and endanger the Union. Mr. Webster wrote to a friend that this was an attempt to make a new Constitution, and that the proceedings of the Senate, when they passed the resolutions, drew a line which could never be obliterated. Mr. Webster also spoke briefly against the resolutions, confining himself strictly to demonstrating the absurdity of Mr. Clay’s doctrine of “plighted faith.” He disclaimed carefully, and even anxiously, any intention of expressing an opinion on the merits of the question; although he mentioned one or two reasonable arguments against abolition. The resolutions were adopted by a large majority, Mr. Webster voting against them on the grounds set forth in his speech. Whether the approaching presidential election had any connection with his careful avoidance of everything except the constitutional point, which contrasted so strongly with his recent utterances at Niblo’s Garden, it is, of course, impossible to determine. John Quincy Adams, who had no love for Mr. Webster, and who was then in the midst of his desperate struggle for the right of petition, says, in his diary, in March, 1838, speaking of the delegation from Massachusetts:–
“Their policy is dalliance with the South; and they care no more for the right of petition than is absolutely necessary to satisfy the feeling of their constituents. They are jealous of Cushing, who, they think, is playing a double game. They are envious of my position as the supporter of the right of petition; and they truckle to the South to court their favor for Webster. He is now himself tampering with the South on the slavery and the Texas question.”
This harsh judgment may or may not be correct, but it shows very plainly that Mr. Webster’s caution in dealing with these topics was noticed and criticised at this period. The annexation of Texas, moreover, which he had so warmly opposed, seemed to him, at this juncture, and not without reason, to be less threatening, owing to the course of events in the young republic. Mr. Adams did not, however, stand alone in thinking that Mr. Webster, at this time, was lukewarm on the subject. In 1839 Mr. Giddings says “that it was impossible for any man, who submitted so quietly to the dictation of slavery as Mr. Webster, to command that influence which was necessary to constitute a successful politician.” How much Mr. Webster’s attitude had weakened, just at this period, is shown better by his own action than by anything Mr. Giddings could say. The ship Enterprise, engaged in the domestic slave-trade from Virginia to New Orleans, had been driven into Port Hamilton, and the slaves had escaped. Great Britain refused compensation. Thereupon, early in 1840, Mr. Calhoun introduced resolutions declaratory of international law on this point, and setting forth that England had no right to interfere with, or to permit, the escape of slaves from vessels driven into her ports. The resolutions were idle, because they could effect nothing, and mischievous because they represented that the sentiment of the Senate was in favor of protecting the slave-trade. Upon these resolutions, absurd in character and barbarous in principle, Mr. Webster did not even vote. There is a strange contrast here between the splendid denunciation of the Plymouth oration and this utter lack of opinion, upon resolutions designed to create a sentiment favorable to the protection of slave-ships engaged in the domestic traffic. Soon afterwards, when Mr. Webster was Secretary of State, he advanced much the same doctrine in the discussion of the Creole case, and his letter was approved by Calhoun. There may be merit in the legal argument, but the character of the cargo, which it was sought to protect, put it beyond the reach of law. We have no need to go farther than the Plymouth oration to find the true character of the trade in human beings as carried on upon the high seas.
After leaving the cabinet, and resuming his law practice, Mr. Webster, of course, continued to watch with attention the progress of events. The formation of the Liberty party, in the summer of 1843, appeared to him a very grave circumstance. He had always understood the force of the anti-slavery movement at the North, and it was with much anxiety that he now saw it take definite shape, and assume extreme grounds of opposition. This feeling of anxiety was heightened when he discovered, in the following winter, while in attendance upon the Supreme Court at Washington, the intention of the administration to bring about the annexation of Texas, and spring the scheme suddenly upon the country. This policy, with its consequence of an enormous extension of slave territory, Mr. Webster had always vigorously and consistently opposed, and he was now thoroughly alarmed. He saw what an effect the annexation would produce upon the anti-slavery movement, and he dreaded the results. He therefore procured the introduction of a resolution in Congress against annexation; wrote some articles in the newspapers against it himself; stirred up his friends in Washington and New York to do the same, and endeavored to start public meetings in Massachusetts. His friends in Boston and elsewhere, and the Whigs generally, were disposed to think his alarm ill-founded. They were absorbed in the coming presidential election, and were too ready to do Mr. Webster the injustice of supposing that his views upon the probability of annexation sprang from jealousy of Mr. Clay. The suspicion was unfounded and unfair. Mr. Webster was wholly right and perfectly sincere. He did a good deal in an attempt to rouse the North. The only criticism to be made is that he did not do more. One public meeting would have been enough, if he had spoken frankly, declared that he knew, no matter how, that annexation was contemplated, and had then denounced it as he did at Niblo’s Garden. “One blast upon his bugle-horn were worth a thousand men.” Such a speech would have been listened to throughout the length and breadth of the land; but perhaps it was too much to expect this of him in view of his delicate relations with Mr. Clay. At a later period, in the course of the campaign, he denounced annexation and the increase of slave territory, but unfortunately it was then too late. The Whigs had preserved silence on the subject at their convention, and it was difficult to deal with it without reflecting on their candidate. Mr. Webster vindicated his own position and his own wisdom, but the mischief could not then be averted. The annexation of Texas after the rejection of the treaty in 1844 was carried through, nearly a year later, by a mixture of trickery and audacity in the last hours of the Tyler administration.
Four days after the consummation of this project Mr. Webster took his seat in the Senate, and on March 11 wrote to his son that, “while we feel as we ought about the annexation of Texas, we ought to keep in view the true grounds of objection to that measure. Those grounds are,–want of constitutional power,–danger of too great an extent of territory, and opposition to the increase of slavery and slave representation. It was properly considered, also, as a measure tending to produce war.” He then goes on to argue that Mexico had no good cause for war; but it is evident that he already dreaded just that result. When Congress assembled again, in the following December, the first matter to engage their attention was the admission of Texas as a State of the Union. It was impossible to prevent the passage of the resolution, but Mr. Webster stated his objections to the measure. His speech was brief and very mild in tone, if compared with the language which he had frequently used in regard to the annexation. He expressed his opposition to this method of obtaining new territory by resolution instead of treaty, and to acquisition of territory as foreign to the true spirit of the Republic, and as endangering the Constitution and the Union by increasing the already existing inequality of representation, and extending the area of slavery. He dwelt on the inviolability of slavery in the States, and did not touch upon the evils of the system itself.
By the following spring the policy of Mr. Polk had culminated, intrigue had done its perfect work, hostilities had been brought on with Mexico, and in May Congress was invited to declare a war which the administration had taken care should already exist. Mr. Webster was absent at this time, and did not vote on the declaration of war; and when he returned he confined himself to discussing the war measures, and to urging the cessation of hostilities, and the renewal of efforts to obtain peace.
The next session–that of the winter of 1846-47–was occupied, of course, almost entirely with the affairs of the war. In these measures Mr. Webster took scarcely any part; but toward the close of the session, when the terms on which the war should be concluded were brought up, he again came forward. February 1, 1847, Mr. Wilmot of Pennsylvania introduced the famous proviso, which bears his name, as an amendment to the bill appropriating three millions of dollars for extraordinary expenses. By this proviso slavery was to be excluded from all territory thereafter acquired or annexed by the United States. A fortnight later Mr. Webster, who was opposed to the acquisition of more territory on any terms, introduced two resolutions in the Senate, declaring that the war ought not to be prosecuted for the acquisition of territory, and that Mexico should be informed that we did not aim at seizing her domain. A similar resolution was offered by Mr. Berrien of Georgia, and defeated by a party vote. On this occasion Mr. Webster spoke with great force and in a tone of solemn warning against the whole policy of territorial aggrandizement. He denounced all that had been done in this direction, and attacked with telling force the Northern democracy, which, while it opposed slavery and favored the Wilmot Proviso, was yet ready to admit new territory, even without the proviso. His attitude at this time, in opposition to any further acquisition of territory on any terms, was strong and determined, but his policy was a terrible confession of weakness. It amounted to saying that we must not acquire territory because we had not sufficient courage to keep slavery out of it. The Whigs were in a minority, however, and Mr. Webster could effect nothing. When the Wilmot Proviso came before the Senate Mr. Webster voted for it, but it was defeated, and the way was clear for Mr. Polk and the South to bring in as much territory as they could get, free of all conditions which could interfere with the extension of slavery. In September, 1847, after speaking and voting as has just been described in the previous session of Congress, Mr. Webster addressed the Whig convention at Springfield on the subject of the Wilmot Proviso. What he then said is of great importance in any comparison which may be made between his earlier views and those which he afterwards put forward, in March, 1850, on the same subject. The passage is as follows:–
“We hear much just now of a panacea for the dangers and evils of slavery and slave annexation, which they call the ‘Wilmot Proviso.’ That certainly is a just sentiment, but it is not a sentiment to found any new party upon. It is not a sentiment on which Massachusetts Whigs differ. There is not a man in this hall who holds to it more firmly than I do, nor one who adheres to it more than another.
“I feel some little interest in this matter, sir. Did I not commit myself in 1837 to the whole doctrine, fully, entirely? And I must be permitted to say that I cannot quite consent that more recent discoverers should claim the merit, and take out a patent.
“I deny the priority of their invention. Allow me to say, sir, it is not their thunder.
“There is no one who can complain of the North for resisting the increase of slave representation, because it gives power to the minority in a manner inconsistent with the principles of our government. What is past must stand; what is established must stand; and with the same firmness with which I shall resist every plan to augment the slave representation, or to bring the Constitution into hazard by attempting to extend our dominions, shall I contend to allow existing rights to remain.
“Sir, I can only say that, in my judgment, we are to use the first, the last, and every occasion which occurs, in maintaining our sentiments against the extension of the slave-power.”
In the following winter Mr. Webster continued his policy of opposition to all acquisitions of territory. Although the cloud of domestic sorrow was already upon him, he spoke against the legislative powers involved in the “Ten Regiment” Bill, and on the 23d of March, after the ratification of the treaty of peace, which carried with it large cessions of territory, he delivered a long and elaborate speech on the “Objects of the Mexican War.” The weight of his speech was directed against the acquisition of territory, on account of its effect on the Constitution, and the increased inequality of representation which it involved. He referred to the plan of cutting up Texas so as to obtain ten senators, as “borough mongering” on a grand scale, a course which he proposed to resist to the last; and he concluded by denouncing the whole project as one calculated to turn the Constitution into a curse rather than a blessing. “I resist it to-day and always,” he said. “Whoever falters or whoever flies, I continue the contest.”
In June General Taylor was nominated, and soon after Mr. Webster left Washington, although Congress was still in session. He returned in August, in time to take part in the settlement of the Oregon question. The South, with customary shrewdness, was endeavoring to use the territorial organization of Oregon as a lever to help them in their struggle to gain control of the new conquests. A bill came up from the House with no provision in regard to slavery, and Mr. Douglas carried an amendment to it, declaring the Missouri Compromise to be in full force in Oregon. The House disagreed, and, on the question of receding, Mr. Webster took occasion to speak on the subject of slavery in the territories. He was disgusted with the nomination of Taylor and with the cowardly silence of the Whigs on the question of the extension of slavery. In this frame of mind he made one of the strongest and best speeches he ever delivered on this topic. He denied that slavery was an “institution;” he denied that the local right to hold slaves implied the right of the owner to carry them with him and keep them in slavery on free soil; he stated in the strongest possible manner the right of Congress to control slavery or to prohibit it in the territories; and he concluded with a sweeping declaration of his opposition to any extension of slavery or any increase of slave representation. The Oregon bill finally passed under the pressure of the “Free-Soil” nominations, with a clause inserted in the House, embodying substantially the principles of the Wilmot Proviso.
When Congress adjourned, Mr. Webster returned to Marshfield, where he made the speech on the nomination of General Taylor. It was a crisis in his life. At that moment he could have parted with the Whigs and put himself at the head of the constitutional anti-slavery party. The Free-Soilers had taken the very ground against the extension of slavery which he had so long occupied. He could have gone consistently, he could have separated from the Whigs on a great question of principle, and such a course would have been no stronger evidence of personal disappointment than was afforded by the declaration that the nomination of Taylor was one not fit to be made. Mr. Webster said that he fully concurred in the main object of the Buffalo Convention, that he was as good a Free-Soiler as any of them, but that the Free-Soil party presented nothing new or valuable, and he did not believe in Mr. Van Buren. He then said it was not true that General Taylor was nominated by the South, as charged by the Free-Soilers; but he did not confess, what was equally true, that Taylor was nominated through fear of the South, as was shown by his election by Southern votes. Mr. Webster’s conclusion was, that it was safer to trust a slave-holder, a man without known political opinions, and a party which had not the courage of its convictions, than to run the risk of the election of another Democrat. Mr. Webster’s place at that moment was at the head of a new party based on the principles which he had himself formulated against the extension of slavery. Such a change might have destroyed his chances for the presidency, if he had any, but it would have given him one of the greatest places in American history and made him the leader in the new period. He lost his opportunity. He did not change his party, but he soon after accepted the other alternative and changed his opinions.
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.
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.
The last point to be considered in connection with the 7th of March speech is the ground then taken by Mr. Webster with reference to the extension of slavery. To this question the speech was chiefly directed, and it is the portion which has aroused the most heated discussion. What Mr. Webster’s views had always been on the subject of slavery extension every one knew then and knows now. He had been the steady and uncompromising opponent of the Southern policy, and in season and out of season, sometimes vehemently sometimes gently, but always with firmness and clearness, he had declared against it. The only question is, whether he departed from these often-expressed opinions on the 7th of March. In the speech itself he declared that he had not abated one jot in his views in this respect, and he argued at great length to prove his consistency, which, if it were to be easily seen of men, certainly needed neither defence nor explanation. The crucial point was, whether, in organizing the new territories, the principle of the Wilmot Proviso should be adopted as part of the measure. This famous proviso Mr. Webster had declared in 1847 to represent exactly his own views. He had then denied that the idea was the invention of any one man, and scouted the notion that on this doctrine there could be any difference of opinion among Whigs. On March 7 he announced that he would not have the proviso attached to the territorial bills, and should oppose any effort in that direction. The reasons he gave for this apparent change were, that nature had forbidden slavery in the newly-conquered regions, and that the proviso, under such circumstances, would be a useless taunt and wanton insult to the South. The famous sentence in which he said that he “would not take pains uselessly to reaffirm an ordinance of nature, nor to reenact the will of God,” was nothing but specious and brilliant rhetoric. It was perfectly easy to employ slaves in California, if the people had not prohibited it, and in New Mexico as well, even if there were no cotton nor sugar nor rice plantations in either, and but little arable land in the latter. There was a classic form of slave-labor possible in those countries. Any school-boy could have reminded Mr. Webster of
“Seius whose eight hundred slaves
Sicken in Ilva’s mines.”
Mining was one of the oldest uses to which slave-labor had been applied, and it still flourished in Siberia as the occupation of serfs and criminals. Mr. Webster, of course, was not ignorant of this very obvious fact; and that nature, therefore, instead of forbidding slave-labor in the Mexican conquests, opened to it a new and almost unlimited field in a region which is to-day one of the greatest mining countries in the world. Still less could he have failed to know that this form of employment for slaves was eagerly desired by the South; that the slave-holders fully recognized their opportunity, announced their intention of taking advantage of it, and were particularly indignant at the action of California because it had closed to them this inviting field. Mr. Clingman of North Carolina, on January 22, when engaged in threatening war in order to bring the North to terms, had said, in the House of Representatives: “But for the anti-slavery agitation our Southern slave-holders would have carried their negroes into the mines of California in such numbers that I have no doubt but that the majority there would have made it a slave-holding State.”[1] At a later period Mr. Mason of Virginia declared, in the Senate, that he knew of no law of nature which excluded slavery from California. “On the contrary,” he said, “if California had been organized with a territorial form of government only, the people of the Southern States would have gone there freely, and have taken their slaves there in great numbers. They would have done so because the value of the labor of that class would have been augmented to them many hundred fold.”[2] These were the views of practical men and experienced slave-owners who represented the opinions of their constituents, and who believed that domestic slavery could be employed to advantage anywhere. Moreover, the Southern leaders openly avowed their opposition to securing any region to free labor exclusively, no matter what the ordinances of nature might be. In 1848, it must be remembered in this connection, Mr. Webster not only urged the limitation of slave area, and sustained the power of Congress to regulate this matter in the territories, but he did not resist the final embodiment of the principle of the Wilmot Proviso in the bill for the organization of Oregon, where the introduction of slavery was infinitely more unlikely than in New Mexico. Cotton, sugar, and rice were excluded, perhaps, by nature from the Mexican conquests, but slavery was not. It was worse than idle to allege that a law of nature forbade slaves in a country where mines gaped to receive them. The facts are all as plain as possible, and there is no escape from the conclusion that in opposing the Wilmot Proviso, in 1850, Mr. Webster abandoned his principles as to the extension of slavery. He practically stood forth as the champion of the Southern policy of letting the new territories alone, which could only result in placing them in the grasp of slavery. The consistency which he labored so hard to prove in his speech was hopelessly shattered, and no ingenuity, either then or since, can restore it.
[Footnote 1: _Congressional Globe_, 31st Congress, 1st Session, p. 203.]
[Footnote 2: Ibid., Appendix, p. 510.]
A dispassionate examination of Mr. Webster’s previous course on slavery, and a careful comparison of it with the ground taken in the 7th of March speech, shows that he softened his utterances in regard to slavery as a system, and that he changed radically on the policy of compromise and on the question of extending the area of slavery. There is a confused story that in the winter of 1847-48 he had given the anti-slavery leaders to understand that he proposed to come out on their ground in regard to Mexico, and to sustain Corwin in his attack on the Democratic policy, but that he failed to do so. The evidence on this point is entirely insufficient to make it of importance, but there can be no doubt that in the winter of 1850 Mr. Webster talked with Mr. Giddings, and led him, and the other Free-Soil leaders, to believe that he was meditating a strong anti-slavery speech. This fact was clearly shown in the recent newspaper controversy which grew out of the celebration of the centennial anniversary of Webster’s birth. It is a little difficult to understand why this incident should have roused such bitter resentment among Mr. Webster’s surviving partisans. To suppose that Mr. Webster made the 7th of March speech after long deliberation, without having a moment’s hesitation in the matter, is to credit him with a shameless disregard of principle and consistency, of which it is impossible to believe him guilty. He undoubtedly hesitated, and considered deeply whether he should assume the attitude of 1833, and stand out unrelentingly against the encroachments of slavery. He talked with Mr. Clay on one side. He talked with Mr. Giddings, and other Free-Soilers, on the other. With the latter the wish was no doubt father to the thought, and they may well have imagined that Mr. Webster had determined to go with them, when he was still in doubt and merely trying the various positions. There is no need, however, to linger over matters of this sort. The change made by Mr. Webster can be learned best by careful study of his own utterances, and of his whole career. Yet, at the same time, the greatest trouble lies not in the shifting and inconsistency revealed by an examination of the specific points which have just been discussed, but in the speech as a whole. In that speech Mr. Webster failed quite as much by omissions as by the opinions which he actually announced. He was silent when he should have spoken, and he spoke when he should have held his peace. The speech, if exactly defined, is, in reality, a powerful effort, not for compromise or for the Fugitive Slave Law, or any other one thing, but to arrest the whole anti-slavery movement, and in that way put an end to the dangers which threatened the Union and restore lasting harmony between the jarring sections. It was a mad project. Mr. Webster might as well have attempted to stay the incoming tide at Marshfield with a rampart of sand as to seek to check the anti-slavery movement by a speech. Nevertheless, he produced a great effect. His mind once made up, he spared nothing to win the cast. He gathered all his forces; his great intellect, his splendid eloquence, his fame which had become one of the treasured possessions of his country,–all were given to the work. The blow fell with terrible force, and here, at last, we come to the real mischief which was wrought. The 7th of March speech demoralized New England and the whole North. The abolitionists showed by bitter anger the pain, disappointment, and dismay which this speech brought. The Free-Soil party quivered and sank for the moment beneath the shock. The whole anti-slavery movement recoiled. The conservative reaction which Mr. Webster endeavored to produce came and triumphed. Chiefly by his exertions the compromise policy was accepted and sustained by the country. The conservative elements everywhere rallied to his support, and by his ability and eloquence it seemed as if he had prevailed and brought the people over to his opinions. It was a wonderful tribute to his power and influence, but the triumph was hollow and short-lived. He had attempted to compass an impossibility. Nothing could kill the principles of human liberty, not even a speech by Daniel Webster, backed by all his intellect and knowledge, his eloquence and his renown. The anti-slavery movement was checked for the time, and pro-slavery democracy, the only other positive political force, reigned supreme. But amid the falling ruins of the Whig party, and the evanescent success of the Native Americans, the party of human rights revived; and when it rose again, taught by the trials and misfortunes of 1850, it rose with a strength which Mr. Webster had never dreamed of, and, in 1856, polled nearly a million and a half of votes for Fremont. The rise and final triumph of the Republican party was the condemnation of the 7th of March speech and of the policy which put the government of the country in the hands of Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan. When the war came, inspiration was not found in the 7th of March speech. In that dark hour, men remembered the Daniel Webster who replied to Hayne, and turned away from the man who had sought for peace by advocating the great compromise of Henry Clay.
The disapprobation and disappointment which were manifested in the North after the 7th of March speech could not be overlooked. Men thought and said that Mr. Webster had spoken in behalf of the South and of slavery. Whatever his intentions may have been, this was what the speech seemed to mean and this was its effect, and the North saw it more and more clearly as time went on. Mr. Webster never indulged in personal attacks, but at the same time he was too haughty a man ever to engage in an exchange of compliments in debate. He never was in the habit of saying pleasant things to his opponents in the Senate merely as a matter of agreeable courtesy. In this direction, as in its opposite, he usually maintained a cold silence. But on the 7th of March he elaborately complimented Calhoun, and went out of his way to flatter Virginia and Mr. Mason personally. This struck close observers with surprise, but it was the real purpose of the speech which went home to the people of the North. He had advocated measures which with slight exceptions were altogether what the South wanted, and the South so understood it. On the 30th of March Mr. Morehead wrote to Mr. Crittenden that Mr. Webster’s appointment as Secretary of State would now be very acceptable to the South. No more bitter commentary could have been made. The people were blinded and dazzled at first, but they gradually awoke and perceived the error that had been committed.
Mr. Webster, however, needed nothing from outside to inform him as to his conduct and its results. At the bottom of his heart and in the depths of his conscience he knew that he had made a dreadful mistake. He did not flinch. He went on in his new path without apparent faltering. His speech on the compromise measures went farther than that of the 7th of March. But if we study his speeches and letters between 1850 and the day of his death, we can detect changes in them, which show plainly enough that the writer was not at ease, that he was not master of that real conscience of which he boasted.
His friends, after the first shock of surprise, rallied to his support, and he spoke frequently at union meetings, and undertook, by making immense efforts, to convince the country that the compromise measures were right and necessary, and that the doctrines of the 7th of March speech ought to be sustained. In pursuance of this object, during the winter of 1850 and the summer of the following year, he wrote several public letters on the compromise measures, and he addressed great meetings on various occasions, in New England, New York, and as far south as Virginia. We are at once struck by a marked change in the character and tone of these speeches, which produced a great effect in establishing the compromise policy. It had never been Mr. Webster’s habit to misrepresent or abuse his opponents. Now he confounded the extreme separatism of the abolitionists and the constitutional opposition of the Free-Soil party, and involved all opponents of slavery in a common condemnation. It was wilful misrepresentation to talk of the Free-Soilers as if they were identical with the abolitionists, and no one knew better than Mr. Webster the distinction between the two, one being ready to secede to get rid of slavery, the other offering only a constitutional resistance to its extension. His tone toward his opponents was correspondingly bitter. When he first arrived in Boston, after his speech, and spoke to the great crowd in front of the Revere House, he said, “I shall support no agitations having their foundations in unreal, ghostly abstractions.” Slavery had now become “an unreal, ghostly abstraction,” although it must still have appeared to the negroes something very like a hard fact. There were men in that crowd, too, who had not forgotten the noble words with which Mr. Webster in 1837 had defended the character of the opponents of slavery, and the sound of this new gospel from his lips fell strangely on their ears. So he goes on from one union meeting to another, and in speech after speech there is the same bitter tone which had been so foreign to him in all his previous utterances. The supporters of the anti-slavery movement he denounces as insane. He reiterates his opposition to slave extension, and in the same breath argues that the Union must be preserved by giving way to the South. The feeling is upon him that the old parties are breaking down under the pressure of this “ghostly abstraction,” this agitation which he tries to prove to the young men of the country and to his fellow-citizens everywhere is “wholly factitious.” The Fugitive Slave Law is not in the form which he wants, but still he defends it and supports it. The first fruits of his policy of peace are seen in riots in Boston, and he personally advises with a Boston lawyer who has undertaken the cases against the fugitive slaves. It was undoubtedly his duty, as Mr. Curtis says, to enforce and support the law as the President’s adviser, but his personal attention and interest were not required in slave cases, nor would they have been given a year before. The Wilmot Proviso, that doctrine which he claimed as his own in 1847, when it was a sentiment on which Whigs could not differ, he now calls “a mere abstraction.” He struggles to put slavery aside for the tariff, but it will not down at his bidding, and he himself cannot leave it alone. Finally he concludes this compromise campaign with a great speech on laying the foundation of the capitol extension, and makes a pathetic appeal to the South to maintain the Union. They are not pleasant to read, these speeches in the Senate and before the people in behalf of the compromise policy. They are harsh and bitter; they do not ring true. Daniel Webster knew when he was delivering them that that was not the way to save the Union, or that, at all events, it was not the right way for him to do it.
The same peculiarity can be discerned in his letters. The fun and humor which had hitherto run through his correspondence seems now to fade away as if blighted. On September 10, 1850, he writes to Mr. Harvey that since March 7 there has not been an hour in which he has not felt a “crushing sense of anxiety and responsibility.” He couples this with the declaration that his own part is acted and he is satisfied; but if his anxiety was solely of a public nature, why did it date from March 7, when, prior to that time, there was much greater cause for alarm than afterwards. In everything he said or wrote he continually recurs to the slavery question and always in a defensive tone, usually with a sneer or a fling at the abolitionists and anti-slavery party. The spirit of unrest had seized him. He was disturbed and ill at ease. He never admitted it, even to himself, but his mind was not at peace, and he could not conceal the fact. Posterity can see the evidences of it plainly enough, and a man of his intellect and fame knew that with posterity the final reckoning must be made. No man can say that Mr. Webster anticipated the unfavorable judgment which his countrymen have passed upon his conduct, but that in his heart he feared such a judgment cannot be doubted.
It is impossible to determine with perfect accuracy any man’s motives in what he says or does. They are so complex, they are so often undefined, even in the mind of the man himself, that no one can pretend to make an absolutely correct analysis. There have been many theories as to the motives which led Mr. Webster to make the 7th of March speech. In the heat of contemporary strife his enemies set it down as a mere bid to secure Southern support for the presidency, but this is a harsh and narrow view. The longing for the presidency weakened Mr. Webster as a public man from the time when it first took possession of him after the reply to Hayne. It undoubtedly had a weakening effect upon him in the winter of 1850, and had some influence upon the speech of the 7th of March. But it is unjust to say that it did more. It certainly was far removed from being a controlling motive. His friends, on the other hand, declare that he was governed solely by the highest and most disinterested patriotism, by the truest wisdom. This explanation, like that of his foes, fails by going too far and being too simple. His motives were mixed. His chief desire was to preserve and maintain the Union. He wished to stand forth as the great saviour and pacificator. On the one side was the South, compact, aggressive, bound together by slavery, the greatest political force in the country. On the other was a weak Free-Soil party, and a widely diffused and earnest moral sentiment without organization or tangible political power. Mr. Webster concluded that the way to save the Union and the Constitution, and to achieve the success which he desired, was to go with the heaviest battalions. He therefore espoused the Southern side, for the compromise was in the Southern interest, and smote the anti-slavery movement with all his strength. He reasoned correctly that peace could come only by administering a severe check to one of the two contending parties. He erred in attempting to arrest the one which all modern history showed was irresistible. It is no doubt true, as appears by his cabinet opinion recently printed, that he stood ready to meet the first overt act on the part of the South with force. Mr. Webster would not have hesitated to have struck hard at any body of men or any State which ventured to assail the Union. But he also believed that the true way to prevent any overt act on the part of the South was by concession, and that was precisely the object which the Southern leaders sought to obtain. We may grant all the patriotism and all the sincere devotion to the cause of the Constitution which is claimed for him, but nothing can acquit Mr. Webster of error in the methods which he chose to adopt for the maintenance of peace and the preservation of the Union. If the 7th of March speech was right, then all that had gone before was false and wrong. In that speech he broke from his past, from his own principles and from the principles of New England, and closed his splendid public career with a terrible mistake.
CHAPTER X.
THE LAST YEARS.
The story of the remainder of Mr. Webster’s public life, outside of and apart from the slavery question, can be quickly told. General Taylor died suddenly on July 9, 1850, and this event led to an immediate and complete reorganization of the cabinet. Mr. Fillmore at once offered the post of Secretary of State to Mr. Webster, who accepted it, resigned his seat in the Senate, and, on July 23, assumed his new position. No great negotiation like that with Lord Ashburton marked this second term of office in the Department of State, but there were a number of important and some very complicated affairs, which Mr. Webster managed with the wisdom, tact, and dignity which made him so admirably fit for this high position.
The best-known incident of this period was that which gave rise to the famous “Huelsemann letter.” President Taylor had sent an agent to Hungary to report upon the condition of the revolutionary government, with the intention of recognizing it if there were sufficient grounds for doing so. When the agent arrived, the revolution was crushed, and he reported to the President against recognition. These papers were transmitted to the Senate in March, 1850. Mr. Huelsemann, the Austrian _charge_, thereupon complained of the action of our administration, and Mr. Clayton, then Secretary of State, replied that the mission of the agent had been simply to gather information. On receiving further instructions from his government, Mr. Huelsemann rejoined to Mr. Clayton, and it fell to Mr. Webster to reply, which he did on December 21, 1850. The note of the Austrian _charge_ was in a hectoring and highly offensive tone, and Mr. Webster felt the necessity of administering a sharp rebuke. “The Huelsemann letter,” as it was called, was accordingly dispatched. It set forth strongly the right of the United States and their intention to recognize any _de facto_ revolutionary government, and to seek information in all proper ways in order to guide their action. The argument on this point was admirably and forcibly stated, and it was accompanied by a bold vindication of the American policy, and by some severe and wholesome reproof. Mr. Webster had two objects. One was to awaken the people of Europe to a sense of the greatness of this country, the other to touch the national pride at home. He did both. The foreign representatives learned a lesson which they never forgot, and which opened their eyes to the fact that we were no longer colonies, and the national pride was also aroused. Mr. Webster admitted that the letter was, in some respects, boastful and rough. This was a fair criticism, and it may be justly said that such a tone was hardly worthy of the author. But, on the other hand, Huelsemann’s impertinence fully justified such a reply, and a little rough domineering was, perhaps, the very thing needed. It is certain that the letter fully answered Mr. Webster’s purpose, and excited a great deal of popular enthusiasm. The affair did not, however, end here. Mr. Huelsemann became very mild, but he soon lost his temper again. Kossuth and the refugees in Turkey were brought to this country in a United States frigate. The Hungarian hero was received with a burst of enthusiasm that induced him to hope for substantial aid, which was, of course, wholly visionary. The popular excitement made it difficult for Mr. Webster to steer a proper course, but he succeeded, by great tact, in showing his own sympathy, and, so far as possible, that of the government, for the cause of Hungarian independence and for its leader, without going too far or committing any indiscretion which could justify a breach of international relations with Austria. Mr. Webster’s course, including a speech at a dinner in Boston, in which he made an eloquent allusion to Hungary and Kossuth, although carefully guarded, aroused the ire of Mr. Huelsemann, who left the country, after writing a letter of indignant farewell to the Secretary of State. Mr. Webster replied, through Mr. Hunter, with extreme coolness, confining himself to an approval of the gentleman selected by Mr. Huelsemann to represent Austria after the latter’s departure.
The other affairs which occupied Mr. Webster’s official attention at this time made less noise than that with Austria, but they were more complicated and some of them far more perilous to the peace of the country. The most important was that growing out of the Clayton-Bulwer treaty in regard to the neutrality of the contemplated canal in Nicaragua. This led to a prolonged correspondence about the protectorate of Great Britain in Nicaragua, and to a withdrawal of her claim to exact port-charges. It is interesting to observe the influence which Mr. Webster at once obtained with Sir Henry Bulwer and the respect in which he was held by that experienced diplomatist. Besides this discussion with England, there was a sharp dispute with Mexico about the right of way over the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, and the troubles on the Texan boundary before Congress had acted upon the subject. Then came the Lopez invasion of Cuba, supported by bodies of volunteers enlisted in the United States, which, by its failure and its results, involved our government in a number of difficult questions. The most serious was the riot at New Orleans, where the Spanish consulate was sacked by a mob. To render due reparation for this outrage without wounding the national pride by apparent humiliation was no easy task. Mr. Webster settled everything, however, with a judgment, tact, and dignity which prevented war with Spain and yet excited no resentment at home. At a later period, when the Kossuth affair was drawing to an end, the perennial difficulty about the fisheries revived and was added to our Central American troubles with Great Britain, and this, together with the affair of the Lobos Islands, occupied Mr. Webster’s attention, and drew forth some able and important dispatches during the summer of 1852, in the last months of his life.
While the struggle was in progress to convince the country of the value and justice of the compromise measures and to compel their acceptance, another presidential election drew on. It was the signal for the last desperate attempt to obtain the Whig nomination for Mr. Webster, and it seemed at first sight as if the party must finally take up the New England leader. Mr. Clay was wholly out of the race, and his last hour was near. There was absolutely no one who, in fame, ability, public services, and experience could be compared for one moment with Mr. Webster. The opportunity was obvious enough; it awakened all Mr. Webster’s hopes, and excited the ardor of his friends. A formal and organized movement, such as had never before been made, was set on foot to promote his candidacy, and a vigorous and earnest address to the people was issued by his friends in Massachusetts. The result demonstrated, if demonstration were needed, that Mr. Webster had not, even under the most favorable circumstances, the remotest chance for the presidency. His friends saw this plainly enough before the convention met, but he himself regarded the great prize as at last surely within his grasp. Mr. Choate, who was to lead the Webster delegates, went to Washington the day before the convention assembled. He called on Mr. Webster and found him so filled with the belief that he should be nominated that it seemed cruel to undeceive him. Mr. Choate, at all events, had not the heart for the task, and went back to Baltimore to lead the forlorn hope with gallant fidelity and with an eloquence as brilliant if not so grand as that of Mr. Webster himself. A majority[1] of the convention divided their votes very unequally between Mr. Fillmore and Mr. Webster, the former receiving 133, the latter 29, on the first ballot, while General Scott had 131. Forty-five ballots were taken, without any substantial change, and then General Scott began to increase his strength, and was nominated on the fifty-third ballot, receiving 159 votes. Most of General Scott’s supporters were opposed to resolutions sustaining the compromise measures, while those who voted for Mr. Fillmore and Mr. Webster favored that policy. General Scott owed his nomination to a compromise, which consisted in inserting in the platform a clause strongly approving Mr. Clay’s measures. Mr. Webster expected the Fillmore delegates to come to him, an unlikely event when they were so much more numerous than his friends, and, moreover, they never showed the slightest inclination to do so. They were chiefly from the South, and as they chose to consider Mr. Fillmore and not his secretary the representative of compromise, they reasonably enough expected the latter to give way. The desperate stubbornness of Mr. Webster’s adherents resulted in the nomination of Scott. It seemed hard that the Southern Whigs should have done so little for Mr. Webster after he had done and sacrificed so much to advance and defend their interests. But the South was practical. In the 7th of March speech they had got from Mr. Webster all they could expect or desire. It was quite possible, in fact it was highly probable, that, once in the presidency, he could not be controlled or guided by the slave-power or by any other sectional influence. Mr. Fillmore, inferior in every way to Mr. Webster in intellect, in force, in reputation, would give them a mild, safe administration and be easily influenced by the South. Mr. Webster had served his turn, and the men whose cause he had advocated and whose interests he had protected cast him aside.
[Footnote 1: Mr. Curtis says a “great majority continued to divide their votes between Mr. Fillmore and Mr. Webster.” The highest number reached by the combined Webster and Fillmore votes, on any one ballot, was 162, three more than was received on the last ballot by General Scott, who, Mr. Curtis correctly says, obtained only a “few votes more than the necessary majority.”]
The loss of the nomination was a bitter disappointment to Mr. Webster. It was the fashion in certain quarters to declare that it killed him, but this was manifestly absurd. The most that can be said in this respect was, that the excitement and depression caused by his defeat preyed upon his mind and thereby facilitated the inroads of disease, while it added to the clouds which darkened round him in those last days. But his course of action after the convention cannot be passed over without comment. He refused to give his adhesion to General Scott’s nomination, and he advised his friends to vote for Mr. Pierce, because the Whigs were divided, while the Democrats were unanimously determined to resist all attempts to renew the slavery agitation. This course was absolutely indefensible. If the Whig party was so divided on the slavery question that Mr. Webster could not support their nominee, then he had no business to seek a nomination at their hands, for they were as much divided before the convention as afterwards. He chose to come before that convention, knowing perfectly well the divisions of the party, and that the nomination might fall to General Scott. He saw fit to play the game, and was in honor bound to abide by the rules. He had no right to say “it is heads I win, and tails you lose.” If he had been nominated he would have indignantly and justly denounced a refusal on the part of General Scott and his friends to support him. It is the merest sophistry to say that Mr. Webster was too great a man to be bound by party usages, and that he owed it to himself to rise above them, and refuse his support to a poor nomination and to a wrangling party. If Mr. Webster could no longer act with the Whigs, then his name had no business in that convention at Baltimore, for the conditions were the same before its meeting as afterward. Great man as he was, he was not too great to behave honorably; and his refusal to support Scott, after having been his rival for a nomination at the hands of their common party, was neither honorable nor just. If Mr. Webster had decided to leave the Whigs and act independently, he was in honor bound to do so before the Baltimore convention assembled, or to have warned the delegates that such was his intention in the event of General Scott’s nomination. He had no right to stand the hazard of the die, and then refuse to abide by the result. The Whig party, in its best estate, was not calculated to excite a very warm enthusiasm in the breast of a dispassionate posterity, and it is perfectly true that it was on the eve of ruin in 1852. But it appeared better then, in the point of self-respect, than four years before. In 1848 the Whigs nominated a successful soldier conspicuous only for his availability and without knowing to what party he belonged. They maintained absolute silence on the great question of the extension of slavery, and carried on their campaign on the personal popularity of their candidate. Mr. Webster was righteously disgusted at their candidate and their negative attitude. He could justly and properly have left them on a question of principle; but he swallowed the nomination, “not fit to be made,” and gave to his party a decided and public support. In 1852 the Whigs nominated another successful soldier, who was known to be a Whig, and who had been a candidate for their nomination before. In their platform they formally adopted the essential principle demanded by Mr. Webster, and declared their adhesion to the compromise measures. If there was disaffection in regard to this declaration of 1852, there was disaffection also about the silence of 1848. In the former case, Mr. Webster adhered to the nomination; in the latter, he rejected it. In 1848 he might still hope to be President through a Whig nomination. In 1852 he knew that, even if he lived, there would never be another chance. He gave vent to his disappointment, put no constraint upon himself, prophesied the downfall of his party, and advised his friends to vote for Franklin Pierce. It was perfectly logical, after advocating the compromise measures, to advise giving the government into the hands of a party controlled by the South. Mr. Webster would have been entirely reasonable in taking such a course before the Baltimore convention. He had no right to do so after he had sought a nomination from the Whigs, and it was a breach of faith to act as he did, to advise his friends to desert a falling party and vote for the Democratic candidate.
After the acceptance of the Department of State, Mr. Webster’s health became seriously impaired. His exertions in advocating the compromise measures, his official labors, and the increased severity of his annual hay-fever,–all contributed to debilitate him. His iron constitution weakened in various ways, and especially by frequent periods of intense mental exertion, to which were superadded the excitement and nervous strain inseparable from his career, was beginning to give way. Slowly but surely he lost ground. His spirits began to lose their elasticity, and he rarely spoke without a tinge of deep sadness being apparent in all he said. In May, 1852, while driving near Marshfield, he was thrown from his carriage with much violence, injuring his wrists, and receiving other severe contusions. The shock was very great, and undoubtedly accelerated the progress of the fatal organic disease which was sapping his life. This physical injury was followed by the keen disappointment of his defeat at Baltimore, which preyed upon his heart and mind. During the summer of 1852 his health gave way more rapidly. He longed to resign, but Mr. Fillmore insisted on his retaining his office. In July he came to Boston, where he was welcomed by a great public meeting, and hailed with enthusiastic acclamations, which did much to soothe his wounded feelings. He still continued to transact the business of his department, and in August went to Washington, where he remained until the 8th of September, when he returned to Marshfield. On the 20th he went to Boston, for the last time, to consult his physician. He appeared at a friend’s house, one evening, for a few moments, and all who then saw him were shocked at the look of illness and suffering in his face. It was his last visit. He went back to Marshfield the next day, never to return. He now failed rapidly. His nights were sleepless, and there were scarcely any intervals of ease or improvement. The decline was steady and sure, and as October wore away the end drew near. Mr. Webster faced it with courage, cheerfulness, and dignity, in a religious and trusting spirit, with a touch of the personal pride which was part of his nature. He remained perfectly conscious and clear in his mind almost to the very last moment, bearing his sufferings with perfect fortitude, and exhibiting the tenderest affection toward the wife and son and friends who watched over him. On the evening of October 23 it became apparent that he was sinking, but his one wish seemed to be that he might be conscious when he was actually dying. After midnight he roused from an uneasy sleep, struggled for consciousness, and ejaculated, “I still live.” These were his last words. Shortly after three o’clock the labored breathing ceased, and all was over.
A hush fell upon the country as the news of his death sped over the land. A great gap seemed to have been made in the existence of every one. Men remembered the grandeur of his form and the splendor of his intellect, and felt as if one of the pillars of the state had fallen. The profound grief and deep sense of loss produced by his death were the highest tributes and the most convincing proofs of his greatness.
In accordance with his wishes, all public forms and ceremonies were dispensed with. The funeral took place at his home on Friday, October 29. Thousands flocked to Marshfield to do honor to his memory, and to look for the last time at that noble form. It was one of those beautiful days of the New England autumn, when the sun is slightly veiled, and a delicate haze hangs over the sea, shining with a tender silvery light. There is a sense of infinite rest and peace on such a day which seems to shut out the noise of the busy world and breathe the spirit of unbroken calm. As the crowds poured in through the gates of the farm, they saw before them on the lawn, resting upon a low mound of flowers, the majestic form, as impressive in the repose of death as it had been in the fullness of life and strength. There was a wonderful fitness in it all. The vault of heaven and the spacious earth seemed in their large simplicity the true place for such a man to lie in state. There was a brief and simple service at the house, and then the body was borne on the shoulders of Marshfield farmers, and laid in the little graveyard which already held the wife and children who had gone before, and where could be heard the eternal murmur of the sea.
* * * * *
In May, 1852, Mr. Webster said to Professor Silliman: “I have given my life to law and politics. Law is uncertain and politics are utterly vain.” It is a sad commentary for such a man to have made on such a career, but it fitly represents Mr. Webster’s feelings as the end of life approached. His last years were not his most fortunate, and still less his best years. Domestic sorrows had been the prelude to a change of policy, which had aroused a bitter opposition, and to the pangs of disappointed ambition. A sense of mistake and failure hung heavily upon his spirits, and the cry of “vanity, vanity, all is vanity,” came readily to his lips. There is an infinite pathos in those melancholy words which have just been quoted. The sun of life, which had shone so splendidly at its meridian, was setting amid clouds. The darkness which overspread him came from the action of the 7th of March, and the conflict which it had caused. If there were failure and mistake they were there. The presidency could add nothing, its loss could take away nothing from the fame of Daniel Webster. He longed for it eagerly; he had sacrificed much to his desire for it; his disappointment was keen and bitter at not receiving what seemed to him the fit crown of his great public career. But this grief was purely personal, and will not be shared by posterity, who feel only the errors of those last years coming after so much glory, and who care very little for the defeat of the ambition which went with them.
Those last two years awakened such fierce disputes, and had such an absorbing interest, that they have tended to overshadow the half century of distinction and achievement which preceded them. Failure and disappointment on the part of such a man as Webster seem so great, that they too easily dwarf everything else, and hide from us a just and well proportioned view of the whole career. Mr. Webster’s success had, in truth, been brilliant, hardly equalled in measure or duration by that of any other eminent man in our history. For thirty years he had stood at the head of the bar and of the Senate, the first lawyer and the first statesman of the United States. This is a long tenure of power for one man in two distinct departments. It would be remarkable anywhere. It is especially so in a democracy. This great success Mr. Webster owed solely to his intellectual power supplemented by great physical gifts. No man ever was born into the world better formed by nature for the career of an orator and statesman. He had everything to compel the admiration and submission of his fellow-men:–
“The front of Jove himself;
An eye like Mars to threaten and command; A station like the herald Mercury
New-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill; A combination and a form indeed,
Where every god did seem to set his seal, To give the world assurance of a man.”
Hamlet’s words are a perfect picture of Mr. Webster’s outer man, and we have but to add to the description a voice of singular beauty and power with the tone and compass of an organ. The look of his face and the sound of his voice were in themselves as eloquent as anything Mr. Webster ever uttered.
But the imposing presence was only the outward sign of the man. Within was a massive and powerful intellect, not creative or ingenious, but with a wonderful vigor of grasp, capacious, penetrating, far-reaching. Mr. Webster’s strongest and most characteristic mental qualities were weight and force. He was peculiarly fitted to deal with large subjects in a large way. He was by temperament extremely conservative. There was nothing of the reformer or the zealot about him. He could maintain or construct where other men had built; he could not lay new foundations or invent. We see this curiously exemplified in his feeling toward Hamilton and Madison. He admired them both, and to the former he paid a compliment which has become a familiar quotation. But Hamilton’s bold, aggressive genius, his audacity, fertility, and resource, did not appeal to Mr. Webster as did the prudence, the constructive wisdom, and the safe conservatism of the gentle Madison, whom he never wearied of praising. The same description may be given of his imagination, which was warm, vigorous, and keen, but not poetic. He used it well, it never led him astray, and was the secret of his most conspicuous oratorical triumphs.
He had great natural pride and a strong sense of personal dignity, which made him always impressive, but apparently cold, and sometimes solemn in public. In his later years this solemnity degenerated occasionally into pomposity, to which it is always perilously near. At no time in his life was he quick or excitable. He was indolent and dreamy, working always under pressure, and then at a high rate of speed. This indolence increased as he grew older; he would then postpone longer and labor more intensely to make up the lost time than in his earlier days. When he was quiescent, he seemed stern, cold, and latterly rather heavy, and some outer incentive was needed to rouse his intellect or touch his heart. Once stirred, he blazed forth, and, when fairly engaged, with his intellect in full play, he was as grand and effective in his eloquence as it is given to human nature to be. In the less exciting occupations of public life, as, for instance, in foreign negotiations, he showed the same grip upon his subject, the same capacity and judgment as in his speeches, and a mingling of tact and dignity which proved the greatest fitness for the conduct of the gravest public affairs. As a statesman Mr. Webster was not an “opportunist,” as it is the fashion to call those who live politically from day to day, dealing with each question as it arises, and exhibiting often the greatest skill and talent. Still less was he a statesman of the type of Charles Fox, who preached to the deaf ears of one generation great principles which became accepted truisms in the next. Mr. Webster stands between the two classes. He viewed the present with a strong perception of the future, and shaped his policy not merely for the daily exigency, but with a keen eye to subsequent effects. At the same time he never put forward and defended single-handed a great principle or idea which, neglected then, was gradually to win its way and reign supreme among a succeeding generation.
His speeches have a heat and glow which we can still feel, and a depth and reality of thought which have secured them a place in literature. He had not a fiery nature, although there is often so much warmth in what he said. He was neither high tempered nor quick to anger, but he could be fierce, and, when adulation had warped him in those later years, he was capable of striking ugly blows which sometimes wounded friends as well as enemies.
There remains one marked quality to be noticed in Mr. Webster, which was of immense negative service to him. This was his sense of humor. Mr. Nichol, in his recent history of American literature, speaks of Mr. Webster as deficient in this respect. Either the critic himself is deficient in humor or he has studied only Webster’s collected works, which give no indication of the real humor in the man. That Mr. Webster was not a humorist is unquestionably true, and although he used a sarcasm which made his opponents seem absurd and even ridiculous at times, and in his more unstudied efforts would provoke mirth by some happy and playful allusion, some felicitous quotation or ingenious antithesis, he was too stately in every essential respect ever to seek to make mere fun or to excite the laughter of his hearers by deliberate exertions and with malice aforethought. He had, nevertheless, a real and genuine sense of humor. We can see it in his letters, and it comes out in a thousand ways in the details and incidents of his private life. When he had thrown aside the cares of professional or public business, he revelled in hearty, boisterous fun, and he had that sanest of qualities, an honest, boyish love of pure nonsense. He delighted in a good story and dearly loved a joke, although no jester himself. This sense of humor and appreciation of the ridiculous, although they give no color to his published works, where, indeed, they would have been out of place, improved his judgment, smoothed his path through the world, and saved him from those blunders in taste and those follies in action which are ever the pitfalls for men with the fervid, oratorical temperament.
This sense of humor gave, also, a great charm to his conversation and to all social intercourse with him. He was a good, but never, so far as can be judged from tradition, an overbearing talker. He never appears to have crushed opposition in conversation, nor to have indulged in monologue, which is so apt to be the foible of famous and successful men who have a solemn sense of their own dignity and importance. What Lord Melbourne said of the great Whig historian, “that he wished he was as sure of anything as Tom Macaulay was of everything,” could not be applied to Mr. Webster. He owed his freedom from such a weakness partly, no doubt, to his natural indolence, but still more to the fact that he was not only no pedant, but not even a very learned man. He knew no Greek, but was familiar with Latin. His quotations and allusions were chiefly drawn from Shakespeare, Milton, Homer, and the Bible, where he found what most appealed to him–simplicity and grandeur of thought and diction. At the same time, he was a great reader, and possessed wide information on a vast variety of subjects, which a clear and retentive memory put always at his command. The result of all this was that he was a most charming and entertaining companion.
These attractions were heightened by his large nature and strong animal spirits. He loved outdoor life. He was a keen sportsman and skilful fisherman. In all these ways he was healthy and manly, without any tinge of the mere student or public official. He loved everything that was large. His soul expanded in the free air and beneath the blue sky. All natural scenery appealed to him,–Niagara, the mountains, the rolling prairie, the great rivers,–but he found most contentment beside the limitless sea, amid brown marshes and sand-dunes, where the sense of infinite space is strongest. It was the same in regard to animals. He cared but little for horses or dogs, but he rejoiced in great herds of cattle, and especially in fine oxen, the embodiment of slow and massive strength. In England the things which chiefly appealed to him were the Tower of London, Westminster Abbey, Smithfield cattle market, and English agriculture. So it was always and everywhere. He loved mountains and great trees, wide horizons, the ocean, the western plains, and the giant monuments of literature and art. He rejoiced in his strength and the overflowing animal vigor that was in him. He was so big and so strong, so large in every way, that people sank into repose in his presence, and felt rest and confidence in the mere fact of his existence. He came to be regarded as an institution, and when he died men paused with a sense of helplessness, and wondered how the country would get on without him. To have filled so large a space in a country so vast, and in a great, hurrying, and pushing democracy, implies a personality of a most uncommon kind.
He was, too, something more than a charming companion in private life. He was generous, liberal, hospitable, and deeply affectionate. He was adored in his home, and deeply loved his children, who were torn from him, one after another. His sorrow, like his joy, was intense and full of force. He had many devoted friends, and a still greater body of unhesitating followers. To the former he showed, through nearly all his life, the warm affection which was natural to him. It was not until adulation and flattery had deeply injured him, and the frustrated ambition for the presidency had poisoned both heart and mind, that he became dictatorial and overbearing. Not till then did he quarrel with those who had served and followed him, as when he slighted Mr. Lawrence for expressing independent opinions, and refused to do justice to the memory of Story because it might impair his own glories. They do not present a pleasant picture, these quarrels with friends, but they were part of the deterioration of the last years, and they furnish in a certain way the key to his failure to attain the presidency. The country was proud of Mr. Webster; proud of his intellect, his eloquence, his fame. He was the idol of the capitalists, the merchants, the lawyers, the clergy, the educated men of all classes in the East. The politicians dreaded and feared him because he was so great, and so little in sympathy with them, but his real weakness was with the masses of the people. He was not popular in the true sense of the word. For years the Whig party and Henry Clay were almost synonymous terms, but this could never be said of Mr. Webster. His following was strong in quality, but weak numerically. Clay touched the popular heart. Webster never did. The people were proud of him, wondered at him, were awed by him, but they did not love him, and that was the reason he was never President, for he was too great to succeed to the high office, as many men have, by happy or unhappy accident. There was also another feeling which is suggested by the differences with some of his closest friends. There was a lurking distrust of Mr. Webster’s sincerity. We can see it plainly in the correspondence of the Western Whigs, who were not, perhaps, wholly impartial. But it existed, nevertheless. There was a vague, ill-defined feeling of doubt in the public mind; a suspicion that the spirit of the advocate was the ruling spirit in Mr. Webster, and that he did not believe with absolute and fervent faith in one side of any question. There was just enough correctness, just a sufficient grain of truth in this idea, when united with the coldness and dignity of his manner and with his greatness itself, to render impossible that popularity which, to be real and lasting in a democracy, must come from the heart and not from the head of the people, which must be instinctive and emotional, and not the offspring of reason.
There is no occasion to discuss, or hold up to reprobation, Mr. Webster’s failings. He was a splendid animal as well as a great man, and he had strong passions and appetites, which he indulged at times to the detriment of his health and reputation. These errors may be mostly fitly consigned to silence. But there was one failing which cannot be passed over in this way. This was in regard to money. His indifference to debt was perceptible in his youth, and for many years showed no sign of growth. But in his later years it increased with terrible rapidity. He earned twenty thousand a year when he first came to Boston,–a very great income for those days. His public career interfered, of course, with his law practice, but there never was a period when he could not, with reasonable economy, have laid up something at the end of every year, and gradually amassed a fortune. But he not only never saved, he lived habitually beyond his means. He did not become poor by his devotion to the public service, but by his own extravagance. He loved to spend money and to live well. He had a fine library and handsome plate; he bought fancy cattle; he kept open house, and indulged in that most expensive of all luxuries, “gentleman-farming.” He never stinted himself in any way, and he gave away money with reckless generosity and heedless profusion, often not stopping to inquire who the recipient of his bounty might be. The result was debt; then subscriptions among his friends to pay his debts; then a fresh start and more debts, and more subscriptions and funds for his benefit, and gifts of money for his table, and checks or notes for several thousand dollars in token of admiration of the 7th of March speech.[1] This was, of course, utterly wrong and demoralizing, but Mr. Webster came, after a time, to look upon such transactions as natural and proper. In the Ingersoll debate, Mr. Yancey accused him of being in the pay of the New England manufacturers, and his biographer has replied to the charge at length. That Mr. Webster was in the pay of the manufacturers in the sense that they hired him, and bade him do certain things, is absurd. That he was maintained and supported in a large degree by New England manufacturers and capitalists cannot be questioned; but his attitude toward them was not that of servant and dependent. He seems to have regarded the merchants and bankers of State Street very much as a feudal baron regarded his peasantry. It was their privilege and duty to support him, and he repaid them with an occasional magnificent compliment. The result was that he lived in debt and died insolvent, and this was not the position which such a man as Daniel Webster should have occupied.
[Footnote 1: The story of the gift of ten thousand dollars in token of admiration of the 7th of March speech, referred to by Dr. Von Holst (_Const. Hist. of the United States_) may be found in a volume entitled, _In Memoriam, B. Ogle Tayloe_, p. 109, and is as follows: “My opulent and munificent friend and neighbor Mr. William W. Corcoran,” says Mr. Tayloe, “after the perusal of Webster’s celebrated March speech in defence of the Constitution and of Southern rights, inclosed to Mrs. Webster her husband’s note for ten thousand dollars given him for a loan to that amount. Mr. Webster met Mr. Corcoran the same evening, at the President’s, and thanked him for the ‘princely favor.’ Next day he addressed to Mr. Corcoran a letter of thanks which I read at Mr. Corcoran’s request.” This version is substantially correct. The morning of March 8 Mr. Corcoran inclosed with a letter of congratulation some notes of Mr. Webster’s amounting to some six thousand dollars. Reflecting that this was not a very solid tribute, he opened his letter and put in a check for a thousand dollars, and sent the notes and the check to Mr. Webster, who wrote him a letter expressing his gratitude, which Mr. Tayloe doubtless saw, and which is still in existence. I give the facts in this way because Mr. George T. Curtis, in a newspaper interview, referring to an article of mine in the _Atlantic Monthly_, said, “With regard to the story of the ten thousand dollar check, which story Mr. Lodge gives us to understand he found in the pages of that very credulous writer Dr. Von Holst, although I have not looked into his volumes to see whether he makes the charge, I have only to say that I never heard of such an occurrence before, and that it would require the oath of a very credible witness to the fact to make me believe it.” I may add that I have taken the trouble not only to look into Dr. Von Holst’s volumes but to examine the whole matter thoroughly. The proof is absolute and indeed it is not necessary to go beyond Mr. Webster’s own letter of acknowledgment in search of evidence, were there the slightest reason to doubt the substantial correctness of Mr. Tayloe’s statement. The point is a small one, but a statement of fact, if questioned, ought always to be sustained or withdrawn.]
He showed the same indifference to the source of supplies of money in other ways. He took a fee from Wheelock, and then deserted him. He came down to Salem to prosecute a murderer, and the opposing counsel objected that he was brought there to hurry the jury beyond the law and the evidence, and it was even murmured audibly in the court-room that he had a fee from the relatives of the murdered man in his pocket. A fee of that sort he certainly received either then or afterwards. Every ugly public attack that was made upon him related to money, and it is painful that the biographer of such a man as Webster should be compelled to give many pages to show that his hero was not in the pay of manufacturers, and did not receive a bribe in carrying out the provisions of the treaty of Guadaloupe-Hidalgo. The refutation may be perfectly successful, but there ought to have been no need of it. The reputation of a man like Mr. Webster in money matters should have been so far above suspicion that no one would have dreamed of attacking it. Debts and subscriptions bred the idea that there might be worse behind, and although there is no reason to believe that such was the case, these things are of themselves deplorable enough.
When Mr. Webster failed it was a moral failure. His moral character was not equal to his intellectual force. All the errors he ever committed, whether in public or in private life, in political action or in regard to money obligations, came from moral weakness. He was deficient in that intensity of conviction which carries men beyond and above all triumphs of statesmanship, and makes them the embodiment of the great moral forces which move the world. If Mr. Webster’s moral power had equalled his intellectual greatness, he would have had no rival in our history. But this combination and balance are so rare that they are hardly to be found in perfection among the sons of men. The very fact of his greatness made his failings all the more dangerous and unfortunate. To be blinded by the splendor of his fame and the lustre of his achievements and prate about the sin of belittling a great man is the falsest philosophy and the meanest cant. The only thing worth having, in history as in life, is truth; and we do wrong to our past, to ourselves, and to our posterity if we do not strive to render simple justice always. We can forgive the errors and sorrow for the faults of our great ones gone; we cannot afford to hide or forget their shortcomings.
But after all has been said, the question of most interest is, what Mr. Webster represented, what he effected, and what he means in our history. The answer is simple. He stands to-day as the preeminent champion and exponent of nationality. He said once, “there are no Alleghanies in my politics,” and he spoke the exact truth. Mr. Webster was thoroughly national. There is no taint of sectionalism or narrow local prejudice about him. He towers up as an American, a citizen of the United States in the fullest sense of the word. He did not invent the Union, or discover the doctrine of nationality. But he found the great fact and the great principle ready to his hand, and he lifted them up, and preached the gospel of nationality throughout the length and breadth of the land. In his fidelity to this cause he never wavered nor faltered. From the first burst of boyish oratory to the sleepless nights at Marshfield, when, waiting for death, he looked through the window at the light which showed him the national flag fluttering from its staff, his first thought was of a united country. To his large nature the Union appealed powerfully by the mere sense of magnitude which it conveyed. The vision of future empire, the dream of the destiny of an unbroken union touched and kindled his imagination. He could hardly speak in public without an allusion to the grandeur of American nationality, and a fervent appeal to keep it sacred and intact. For fifty years, with reiteration ever more frequent, sometimes with rich elaboration, sometimes with brief and simple allusion, he poured this message into the ears of a listening people. His words passed into text-books, and became the first declamations of school-boys. They were in every one’s mouth. They sank into the hearts of the people, and became unconsciously a part of their life and daily thoughts. When the hour came, it was love for the Union and the sentiment of nationality which nerved the arm of the North, and sustained her courage. That love had been fostered, and that sentiment had been strengthened and vivified by the life and words of Webster. No one had done so much, or had so large a share in this momentous task. Here lies the debt which the American people owe to Webster, and here is his meaning and importance in his own time and to us to-day. His career, his intellect, and his achievements are inseparably connected with the maintenance of a great empire, and the fortunes of a great people. So long as English oratory is read or studied, so long will his speeches stand high in literature. So long as the Union of these States endures, or holds a place in history, will the name of Daniel Webster be honored and remembered, and his stately eloquence find an echo in the hearts of his countrymen.
INDEX.
Aberdeen, Lord, succeeds Lord Palmerston as Secretary for Foreign Affairs, 252;
offers forty-ninth parallel, in accordance with Mr. Webster’s suggestion, 266.
Adams, John, in Massachusetts Convention, 111; letter to Webster on Plymouth oration, 123; eulogy on, 125;
supposed speech of, 126.
Adams, John Quincy, most conspicuous man in New England, 129; opposed to Greek mission, 135;
opinion of Webster’s speech against tariff of 1824, 136; elected President, 137, 149;
anxious for success of Panama mission, 140; message on Georgia and Creek Indians, 142; Webster’s opposition to, 145;
bitter tone toward Webster in Edwards’s affair, 147; interview with Webster, 148, 149;
conciliates Webster, 149;
real hostility to Webster, 150;
defeated for presidency, 151;
comment on eulogy on Adams and Jefferson, 153; compared with Webster as an orator, 201; opinion of reply to Hayne, 206;
opinion of Mr. Webster’s attitude toward the South in 1838, 285.
Ames, Fisher, compared with Webster as an orator, 201.
Appleton, Julia Webster, daughter of Mr. Webster, death of, 271.
Ashburton, Lord, appointed special commissioner, 251; arrives in Washington, 253;
negotiation with Mr. Webster, 255 ff.; attacked by Lord Palmerston, 259.
Ashmun, George, defends Mr. Webster, 269.
Atkinson, Edward, summary of Mr. Webster’s tariff speech of 1824, 163-165.
Bacourt, M. de, French Minister, description of Harrison’s reception of diplomatic corps, 245.
Baltimore, Whig Convention at, 338.
Bank of the United States, debate on establishment, and defeat of, in 1814-15, 62;
established, 66;
beginning of attack on, 208.
Bartlett, Ichabod, counsel for State against College, 79; attack on Mr. Webster, 80.
Bell, Samuel, remarks to Webster before reply to Hayne, 178.
Bellamy, Dr., early opponent of Eleazer Wheelock, 75.
Benton, Thomas H., account of Mr. Webster in 1833, 219, 220; error in view of Webster, 221;
fails in first attempt to carry expunging resolution, 232; carries second expunging resolution, 234; attacks Ashburton treaty, 257;
supports Taylor’s policy in 1850, 312.
Bocanegra, M. de, Webster’s correspondence with, 260.
“Boston Memorial,” 275.
Bosworth, Mr., junior counsel in Rhode Island case, 105.
Brown, Rev. Francis, elected president of Dartmouth College, 78; refuses to obey new board of trustees, 79; writes to Webster as to state of public opinion, 94.
Buchanan, James, taunts Mr. Clay, 251; attacks Ashburton treaty, 257.
Bulwer, Sir Henry, respect for Mr. Webster, 336.
Burke, Edmund, Webster compared with as an orator, 199, 202, 203.
Calhoun, John C., speech in favor of repealing embargo, 53; sustains double duties, 55, 157;
asks Webster’s assistance to establish a bank, 63; introduces bill to compel revenue to be collected in specie, 66; internal improvement bill of, 68;
visit to Webster, who regards him as his choice for President, 130-145; misleads Webster as to Greek mission, 135; author of exposition and protest, 171;
presides over debate on Foote’s resolution, 172; compared with Webster as an orator, 201; resigns vice-presidency and returns as Senator to support nullification, 212;
alarmed at Jackson’s attitude and at Force Bill, 214; consults Clay, 215;
nullification speech on Force Bill, 215; merits of speech, 216;
supports compromise, 219;
alliance with Clay, 222;
and Webster, 226;
attitude in regard to France, 230; change on bank question, 236;
accepts secretaryship of state to bring about annexation of Texas, 263; moves that anti-slavery petitions be not received, 1836, 281; bill to control United States mails, 282; tries to stifle petitions, 284;
resolutions on Enterprise affair, 286; approves Webster’s treatment of Creole case, 287; pronounces anti-slavery petition of New Mexico “insolent,” 298; argument as to Constitution in territories, 298; Webster’s compliments to on 7th of March, 326.
California, desires admission as a state, 299; slavery possible in, 319.
Carlyle, Thomas, description of Webster, 194.
Caroline, affair of steamboat, 247.
Cass, Lewis, attack upon Ashburton treaty, 259; Democratic candidate for presidency and defeated, 274.
Chamberlain, Mellen, comparison of Webster with other orators, 203, note.
Chatham, Earl of, compared with Webster as an orator, 201.
Choate, Rufus, compared with Webster as an orator, 202; resigns senatorship, 262;
leads Webster delegates at Baltimore, 338.
Clay, Henry, makes Mr. Webster chairman of Judiciary Committee, 131; active support of Greek resolutions, 134; author of American system and tariff of 1824, 136, 163; desires Panama mission, 140;
Webster’s opposition to, 145;
candidate for presidency in 1832, 207; bill for reduction of tariff, 1831-32, 211; consults with Calhoun, 215;
introduces Compromise bill, 215;
carries Compromise bill, 218, 219; alliance with Calhoun, 222;
opinion of Webster’s course in 1833, 222, 223; alliance with Webster, 226;
introduces resolutions of censure on Jackson, 228; attitude in regard to France, 230;
declines to enter Harrison’s cabinet, 240; attacks President Tyler, 250, 251;
movement in favor of, in Massachusetts, 258; nominated for presidency and defeated, 262; movement to nominate in 1848, 273;
resolutions as to slavery in the District, 284; plan for compromise in 1850, 300;
introduces Compromise bill in Senate, 301; policy of compromise, 309, 310;
consistent supporter of compromise policy, 315; not a candidate for presidency in 1852, 337; popularity of, 355.
Clingman, Thomas L., advocates slavery in California, 320.
Congregational Church, power and politics of, in New Hampshire, 76.
Congress, leaders in thirteenth, 49;
leaders in fourteenth, 64.
Cooper, James Fenimore, Webster’s speech, at memorial meeting, 195.