Daniel Webster

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 reënact 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."5 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."6 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.

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.