CHAPTER XXIX.
CALLED TO THE SENATE
I have called this biography “From Farm-boy to Senator,” because it is as a senator that Daniel Webster especially distinguished himself. At different times he filled the position of Secretary of State, but it was in the Senate Chamber, where he was associated with other great leaders, in especial Clay, Calhoun and Hayne, that he became a great central object of attention and admiration.
Mr. Webster was not elected to the Senate till he had reached the age of forty-five. For him it was a late preferment, and when it came he accepted it reluctantly. Mr. Clay was not yet thirty when he entered the Senate, and Mr. Calhoun was Vice-President before he attained the age of forty-five. But there was this advantage in Mr. Webster’s case, that when he joined the highest legislative body in the United States he joined it as a giant, fully armed and equipped not only by nature but by long experience in the lower House of Congress, where he was a leader.
The preferment came to him unsought. Mr. Mills, one of the senators from Massachusetts, who had filled his position acceptably, was drawing near the close of his term, and his failing health rendered his re-election impolitic. Naturally Mr. Webster was thought of as his successor, but he felt that he could hardly be spared from the lower House, where he was the leading supporter of the administration of John Quincy Adams. Levi Lincoln was at that time Governor of Massachusetts, and he too had been urged to become a candidate. Mr. Webster wrote him an urgent letter, in the hope of persuading him to favor this step. From that letter I quote:
“I take it for granted that Mr. E. H. Mills will be no longer a candidate. The question then will be, Who is to succeed him? I need not say to you that you yourself will doubtless be a prominent object of consideration in relation to the vacant place, and the purpose of this communication requires me also to acknowledge that I deem it possible that my name also should be mentioned, more or less generally, as one who may be thought of, among others, for the same situation.... There are many strong personal reasons, and, as friends think, and as I think too, some public reasons why I should decline the offer of a seat in the Senate if it should be made to me. Without entering at present into a detail of those reasons, I will say that the latter class of them grow out of the public station which I at present fill, and out of the necessity of increasing rather than of diminishing, in both branches of the National Legislature, the strength that may be reckoned on as friendly to the present administration.... To come, therefore, to the main point, I beg to say that I see no way in which the public good can be so well promoted as by your consenting to go into the Senate.
“This is my own clear and decided opinion; it is the opinion, equally clear and decided, of intelligent and patriotic friends here, and I am able to add that it is also the decided opinion of all those friends elsewhere whose judgment in such matters we should naturally regard. I believe I may say, without violating confidence, that it is the wish, entertained with some earnestness, of our friends at Washington that you should consent to be Mr. Mills’s successor.”
No one certainly can doubt the absolute sincerity of these utterances. It was, and is, unusual for a representative to resist so earnestly what is considered a high promotion. Mr. Webster was an ambitious man, but he thought that the interests of the country required him to stay where he was, and hence his urgency.
But Gov. Lincoln was no less patriotic. In an elaborate reply to Mr. Webster’s letter, from which I have quoted above, he urges that “the deficiency of power in the Senate is the weak point in the citadel” of the administration party. “No individual should be placed there but who was now in armor for the conflict, who understood the proper mode of resistance, who personally knew and had measured strength with the opposition, who was familiar with the political interests and foreign relations of the country, with the course of policy of the administration, and who would be prepared at once to meet and decide upon the charter of measures which should be proposed. This, I undertake to say, no novice in the national council could do. At least I would not promise to attempt it. I feel deeply that I could not do it successfully. There is no affectation of humility in this, and under such impressions I cannot suffer myself to be thought of in a manner which may make me responsible for great mischief in defeating the chance of a better selection.”
I am sure my young readers will agree that this correspondence was highly honorable to both these eminent gentlemen. It is refreshing to turn from the self-sufficient and self-seeking politicians of our own day, most of whom are ready to undertake any responsibilities however large, without a doubt of their own fitness, to the modesty and backwardness of these really great men of fifty years since. In the light of Mr. Webster’s great career we must decide that Gov. Lincoln was right in deciding that he should be the next senator from Massachusetts.
At any rate such was the decision arrived at, and in June, 1827, Mr. Webster was elected senator for a period of six years. In due time he took his seat. He was no novice, but a man known throughout the country, and quite the equal in fame of any of his compeers. I suppose no new senator has ever taken his seat who was already a man of such wide fame and national importance as Daniel Webster in 1827. Had James A. Garfield, instead of assuming the Presidency, taken the seat in the Senate to which he had been elected on the fourth of March, 1881, his would have been a parallel case.
Of course there was some curiosity as to the opening speech of the already eminent senator. He soon found a fitting theme. A bill was introduced for the relief of the surviving officers of the Revolution. Such a bill was sure to win the active support of the orator who had delivered the address at Bunker Hill.
Alluding to some objections which had been made to the principle of pensioning them, Mr. Webster said: “There is, I know, something repulsive and opprobrious in the name of pension. But God forbid that I should taunt them with it. With grief, heartfelt grief, do I behold the necessity which leads these veterans to accept the bounty of their country in a manner not the most agreeable to their feelings. Worn out and decrepit, represented before us by those, their former brothers in arms, who totter along our lobbies or stand leaning on their crutches, I, for one, would most gladly support such a measure as should consult at once their services, their years, their necessities and the delicacy of their sentiments. I would gladly give with promptitude and grace, with gratitude and delicacy, that which merit has earned and necessity demands.
“It is objected that the militia have claims upon us; that they fought at the side of the regular soldiers, and ought to share in the country’s remembrance. But it is known to be impossible to carry the measure to such an extent as to embrace the militia, and it is plain, too, that the cases are different. The bill, as I have already said, confines itself to those who served, not occasionally, not temporarily, but permanently; who allowed themselves to be counted on as men who were to see the contest through, last as long as it might; and who have made the phrase ‘‘listing for the war’ a proverbial expression, signifying unalterable devotion to our cause, through good fortune and ill fortune, till it reached its close.
“This is a plain distinction; and although, perhaps, I might wish to do more, I see good ground to stop here for the present, if we must stop anywhere. The militia who fought at Concord, at Lexington and at Bunker Hill, have been alluded to in the course of this debate in terms of well-deserved praise. Be assured, sir, there could with difficulty be found a man, who drew his sword or carried his musket at Concord, at Lexington or at Bunker Hill, who would wish you to reject this bill. They might ask you to do more, but never to refrain from doing this. Would to God they were assembled here, and had the fate of this bill in their own hands! Would to God the question of its passage were to be put to them! They would affirm it with a unity of acclamation that would rend the roof of the Capitol!”
This is so much in Mr. Webster’s style that, had I quoted it without stating that it was his, I think many of my young readers would have been able to guess the authorship.
CHAPTER XXX.
THE BEGINNING OF A GREAT BATTLE
When Andrew Jackson became President Mr. Webster found himself an anti-administration leader. He was respected and feared, and a plan was formed to break him down and overwhelm him in debate. The champion who was supposed equal to this task was Col. Hayne, of South Carolina, a graceful and forcible speaker, backed by the party in power and by the silent influence of John C. Calhoun, who, as Vice-President, presided over the councils of the Senate.
On the 29th day of December, 1829, an apparently innocent resolution was offered by Mr. Foote, of Connecticut, in the following terms:
“Resolved, That the Committee on Public Lands be instructed to inquire into the expediency of limiting for a certain period the sales of the public lands to such lands only as have been heretofore offered for sale and are subject to entry at the minimum price; also, whether the office of Surveyor-General may not be abolished without detriment to the public interest.”
This resolution called forth the celebrated debate in which Mr. Webster demolished the eloquent champion of the South in a speech which will live as long as American history.
Mr. Benton, of Missouri, in an elaborate speech furnished the keynote of the campaign. On Monday, the 18th, he made a speech in which a violent attack was made upon New England, its institutions and its representatives. He was followed by Col. Hayne, who elaborated the comparison drawn between the so-called illiberal policy of New England and the generous policy of the South towards the growing West. He charged the East with a spirit of jealousy and an unwillingness that the West should be rapidly settled, taking the resolution of the senator of Connecticut as his text.
This attack excited surprise, not only by its violence and injustice, but by its suddenness. Mr. Webster shared in the general surprise. It was not long before he was led to suspect that he was aimed at as a well-known defender of New England. At any rate, he rose to reply, but a motion for adjournment cut him off, and he was obliged to wait for the next day before he could have the opportunity. The speech he then made, though not his great speech, was able and deserves notice. He disproved in the clearest manner the charges which had been made against New England, and showed that her policy had been the direct reverse. He dwelt especially upon the part which the Eastern States had in settling the great State of Ohio, which even then contained a population of a million. Upon this point he spoke as follows:
“And here, sir, at the epoch of 1794, let us pause and survey the scene. It is now thirty-five years since that scene actually existed. Let us, sir, look back and behold it. Over all that is now Ohio there then stretched one vast wilderness, unbroken, except by two small spots of civilized culture, the one at Marietta, the other at Cincinnati. At these little openings, hardly a pin’s point upon the map, the arm of the frontiersman had leveled the forest and let in the sun. These little patches of earth, themselves almost shadowed by the overhanging boughs of the wilderness, which had stood and perpetuated itself from century to century ever since the Creation, were all that had been rendered verdant by the hand of man. In an extent of hundreds and thousands of square miles no other surface of smiling green attested the presence of civilization. The hunter’s path crossed mighty rivers flowing in solitary grandeur, whose sources lay in remote and unknown regions of the wilderness. It struck, upon the north, on a vast inland sea, over which the wintry tempest raged as upon the ocean; all around was bare creation.
“It was a fresh, untouched, unbounded, magnificent wilderness. And, sir, what is it now? Is it imagination only, or can it possibly be fact, that presents such a change as surprises and astonishes us when we turn our eyes to what Ohio now is? Is it reality or a dream that in so short a period as even thirty-five years there has sprung up on the same surface an independent State, with a million of people? A million of inhabitants! An amount of population greater than all the cantons of Switzerland; equal to one third of all the people of the United States when they undertook to accomplish their independence! If, sir, we may judge of measures by their results, what lessons do these facts read us on the policy of the government? What inferences do they not authorize upon the general question of kindness or unkindness? What convictions do they enforce as to the wisdom and ability, on the one hand, or the folly and incapacity on the other, of our general management of Western affairs? For my own part, while I am struck with wonder at the success, I also look with admiration at the wisdom and foresight which originally arranged and prescribed the system for the settlement of the public domain.”
Mr. Webster said in conclusion: “The Senate will bear me witness that I am not accustomed to allude to local opinions, nor to compare, nor to contrast, different portions of the country. I have often suffered things to pass, which I might properly enough have considered as deserving a remark, without any observation. But I have felt it my duty on this occasion to vindicate the State which I represent from charges and imputations on her public character and conduct which I know to be undeserved and unfounded. If advanced elsewhere, they might be passed, perhaps, without notice. But whatever is said here is supposed to be entitled to public regard and to deserve public attention; it derives importance and dignity from the place where it is uttered. As a true representative of the State which has sent me here it is my duty, and a duty which I shall fulfill, to place her history and her conduct, her honor and her character, in their just and proper light.
“While I stand here as representative of Massachusetts, I will be her true representative, and, by the blessing of God, I will vindicate her character, motives and history from every imputation coming from a respectable source.”
This was the first reply of Webster to Hayne, and it was able and convincing. But Col. Hayne and his friends had no intention of leaving the matter there. The next day the consideration of the bill was renewed. Mr. Webster’s friends wished to have the discussion postponed as he had an important case pending in the Supreme Court. Mr. Hayne objected, saying in a theatrical tone, “that he saw the senator from Massachusetts in his seat, and presumed he could make an arrangement that would enable him to be present during the discussion. He was unwilling that the subject should be postponed until he had an opportunity of replying to some of the observations which had fallen from the gentleman yesterday. He would not deny that some things had fallen from the gentleman which rankled here [touching his breast], from which he would desire at once to relieve himself. The gentleman had discharged his fire in the face of the Senate. He hoped he would now afford him the opportunity of returning the shot.”
“Then it was,” as a Southern member of Congress afterwards expressed it, “that Mr. Webster’s person seemed to become taller and larger. His chest expanded and his eyeballs dilated. Folding his arms in a composed, firm and most expressive manner, he exclaimed: ‘Let the discussion proceed. I am ready. I am ready now to receive the gentleman’s fire.’”
Col. Hayne’s speech was the great effort of his life. He was a ready, accomplished and forcible speaker, and he vainly thought himself a match for the great senator from Massachusetts whose power he was yet to understand. He spoke as one who was confident of victory, with a self-confidence, a swagger, a violence of invective, which increased as he went on. He was encouraged by the evident delight of his friends, including the Vice-President. He did not finish his speech the first day, but closed with a hint of what he intended to do.
“Sir,” he said, “the gentleman from Massachusetts has thought proper, for purposes best known to himself, to strike the South through me, the most unworthy of her servants. He has crossed the border, he has invaded the State of South Carolina, is making war upon her citizens, and endeavoring to overthrow her principles and institutions. Sir, when the gentleman provokes me to such a conflict, I meet him at the threshold, I will struggle while I have life for our altars and our firesides, and if God gives me strength I will drive back the invader discomfited. Nor shall I stop there. If the gentleman provokes war he shall have war. Sir, I will not stop at the border; I will carry the war into the enemy’s territory, and not consent to lay down my arms until I shall have obtained ‘indemnity for the past and security for the future.’ It is with unfeigned reluctance that I enter upon the performance of this part of my duty. I shrink, almost instinctively, from a course, however necessary, which may have a tendency to excite sectional feelings and sectional jealousies. But, sir, the task has been forced upon me, and I proceed right onward to the performance of my duty, be the consequences what they may; the responsibility is with those who have imposed upon me the necessity. The senator from Massachusetts has thought proper to cast the first stone, and, if he shall find, according to a homely adage, that ‘he lives in a glass house,’ on his head be the consequences.”
Brave words these! But brave words do not necessarily win the victory, and Col. Hayne little knew what a foe he was challenging to combat.
CHAPTER XXXI.
THE REPLY TO HAYNE
Before going farther I must speak of a pestilent doctrine then held in South Carolina, which underlay the whole controversy, and was the animating cause of the antagonism of the Southern leaders to the patriotic representatives of the North. This was known as nullification, and Mr. Calhoun was its sponsor. To explain: South Carolina claimed the right to overrule any law of the general government which did not please her, or which her courts might judge to be unconstitutional. If she did not see fit to pay customs, she claimed that the government could not coerce her. All power was reposed in her own executive, her own legislature, and her own judiciary, and the national power was subordinate to them.
It will be easily seen that this was a most dangerous doctrine to hold, one which if allowed would everywhere subject the national authority to contempt. The United States never had an external foe half so insidious or half so dangerous as this assumption which had grown up within its own borders.
To return to the great debate. When Col. Hayne took his seat at the close of his second speech his friends gathered round him in warm congratulation. Mr. Webster’s friends were sober. Much as they admired him, they did not see how he was going to answer that speech. They knew that he would have little or no time for preparation, and it would not do for him to make an ordinary or commonplace reply to such a dashing harangue. So on the evening of Monday the friends of Mr. Webster walked about the streets gloomy and preoccupied. They feared for their champion.
But how was it with him? During Col. Hayne’s speech he calmly took notes. Occasionally there was a flash from the depths of his dark eyes as a hint or a suggestion occurred to him, but he seemed otherwise indifferent and unmoved, He spent the evening as usual, and enjoyed a refreshing night’s sleep.
In the morning of the eventful day three hours before the hour of meeting crowds set their faces towards the Capitol. At twelve o’clock the Senate Chamber—its galleries, floors and even lobbies—was filled to overflowing. The Speaker retained his place unwillingly in the House, but hardly enough members were present to transact business.
When the fitting time came Mr. Webster rose. He was in the full vigor of a magnificent manhood, the embodiment of conscious strength. He gazed around him, never more self-possessed than at that moment. He saw his adversaries with their complacent faces already rejoicing in his anticipated discomfiture; he looked in the faces of his friends, and he noted their looks of anxious solicitude; but he had full confidence in his own strength, and his deep cavernous eyes glowed with “that stern joy which warriors feel in foemen worthy of their steel.”
There was a hush of expectation and a breathless silence as those present waited for his first words.
He began thus: “Mr. President, when the mariner has been tossed for many days, in thick weather, and on an unknown sea, he naturally avails himself of the first pause in the storm, the earliest glance of the sun, to take his latitude, and ascertain how far the elements have driven him from his true course. Let us imitate this prudence, and before we float further on the waves of this debate, refer to the point from which we departed, that we may at least be able to form some conjecture where we now are. I ask for the reading of the resolution.”
This was felt to be a happy exordium, and was sufficient to rivet the attention of the vast audience.
After the resolution was read Mr. Webster continued: “We have thus heard, sir, what the resolution is which is actually before us for consideration; and it will readily occur to every one that it is almost the only subject about which something has not been said in the speech, running through two days, by which the Senate has been now entertained by the gentleman from South Carolina. Every topic in the wide range of our public affairs, whether past or present, everything, general or local, whether belonging to national politics or party politics, seems to have attracted more or less of the honorable members attention, save only the resolution before the Senate. He has spoken of everything but the public lands; they have escaped his notice. To that subject in all his excursions he has not paid even the cold respect of a passing glance.
“When this debate, sir, was to be resumed on Thursday morning, it so happened that it would have been convenient for me to be elsewhere. The honorable member, however, did not incline to put off the discussion to another day. He had a shot, he said, to return, and he wished to discharge it. That shot, which it was kind thus to inform us was coming, that we might stand out of the way, or prepare ourselves to fall before it and die with decency, has now been received. Under all advantages, and with expectation awakened by the tone which preceded it, it has been discharged and has spent its force. It may become me to say no more of its effect than that, if nobody is found, after all, either killed or wounded by it, it is not the first time in the history of human affairs that the vigor and success of the war have not quite come up to the lofty and sounding phrase of the manifesto.”
Referring to Col. Hayne’s statement that there was something rankling here (indicating his heart) which he wished to relieve, Mr. Webster said: “In this respect, sir, I have a great advantage over the honorable gentleman. There is nothing here, sir, which gives me the slightest uneasiness; neither fear nor anger, nor that which is sometimes more troublesome than either, the consciousness of having been in the wrong.... I must repeat, also, that nothing has been received here which rankles or in any way gives me annoyance. I will not accuse the honorable gentleman of violating the rules of civilized war; I will not say he poisoned his arrows. But whether his shafts were, or were not, dipped in that which would have caused rankling if they had reached, there was not, as it happened, quite strength enough in the bow to bring them to their mark. If he wishes now to gather up these shafts he must look for them elsewhere; they will not be found fixed and quivering in the object at which they were aimed.”
Col. Hayne and his friends, as they listened to these words, breathing a calm consciousness of power not unmixed with a grand disdain, must have realized that they had exulted too soon. Indeed Hayne’s friends had not all looked forward with confidence to his victory. Senator Iredell, of North Carolina, to a friend of Hayne’s who was praising his speech, had said the evening previous, “He has started the lion—but wait till we hear his roar, or feel his claws.”
While I do not propose to give an abstract of this famous oration, I shall quote some of the most brilliant and effective passages, well known and familiar though they are, because they will be re-read with fresh and added interest in this connection. There was not a son of Massachusetts, nay, there was not a New Englander, whose heart was not thrilled by the splendid tribute to Massachusetts.
“Mr. President, I shall enter upon no encomium on Massachusetts; she needs none. There she is. Behold her and judge for yourselves. There is her history; the world knows it by heart. The past, at least, is secure. There is Boston, and Concord, and Lexington, and Bunker Hill; and there they will remain forever. The bones of her sons, falling in the great struggle for independence, now lie mingled with the soil of every State from New England to Georgia, and there they will lie forever. And, sir, where American liberty raised its first voice, and where its youth was nurtured and sustained, there it still lives, in the strength of its manhood and full of its original spirit. If discord and disunion shall wound it, if party strife and blind ambition shall hawk at and tear it, if folly and madness, if uneasiness under salutary and necessary restraint, shall succeed in separating it from that union by which alone its existence is made sure, it will stand, in the end, by the side of that cradle in which its infancy was rocked; it will stretch forth its arm with whatever of vigor it may still retain over the friends who gather round it; and it will fall at last, if fall it must, amidst the proudest monuments of its own glory, and on the very spot of its origin.”
Mr. Webster shows his magnanimity by pronouncing, in like manner, an eulogium upon his opponent’s native State, which is in bright contrast with the mean and unjust attacks of Col. Hayne upon Massachusetts. This is what he says:
“Let me observe that the eulogium pronounced on the character of South Carolina by the honorable gentleman for her Revolutionary and other merits meets my hearty concurrence. I shall not acknowledge that the honorable member goes before me in regard for whatever of distinguished talent, of distinguished character, South Carolina has produced. I claim part of the honor. I partake in the pride of her great names. I claim them for countrymen, one and all, the Laurenses, the Rutledges, the Pinkneys, the Sumters, the Marions, Americans all, whose fame is no more to be hemmed in by State lines than their talents and patriotism were capable of being circumscribed within the same narrow limits. In their day and generation they served and honored the country, and the whole country; and their renown is one of the treasures of the whole country. Him whose honored name the gentleman himself bears—does he esteem me less capable of gratitude for his patriotism, or sympathy for his sufferings, than if his eyes had first opened upon the light of Massachusetts instead of South Carolina? Sir, does he suppose it in his power to exhibit a Carolina name so bright as to produce envy in my bosom? No, sir; increased gratification rather. I thank God that, if I am gifted with little of the spirit which is able to raise mortals to the skies, I have yet none, as I trust, of that other spirit which would drag angels down. When I shall be found, sir, in my place here in the Senate, or elsewhere, to sneer at public merit because it happens to spring up beyond the little limits of my own State or neighborhood; when I refuse, for any such cause, or for any cause, the homage due to American talent, to elevated patriotism, to sincere devotion to liberty and the country; or, if I see an uncommon endowment of Heaven, if I see extraordinary capacity and virtue in any son of the South, and if, moved by local prejudice or gangrened by State jealousy, I get up here to abate the tithe of a hair from his just character and just fame, may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!”
It must not be supposed that Mr. Webster’s speech was merely of a personal character. In a sound and logical manner he discussed the limits of constitutional authority, and combated the pernicious doctrine of State supremacy, which thirty years later was to kindle a civil war of vast proportions, the starting-point being South Carolina. At the risk of quoting paragraphs which my young readers may skip, I proceed to introduce an extract which may give an idea of this part of the oration.
“We approach at length, sir, to a more important part of the honorable gentleman’s observations. Since it does not accord with my views of justice and policy to give away the public lands altogether, as mere matter of gratuity, I am asked by the honorable gentleman on what ground it is that I consent to vote them away in particular instances. How, he inquires, do I reconcile with these profound sentiments my support of measures appropriating portions of the land to particular roads, particular canals, particular rivers, and particular institutions of education in the West? This leads, sir, to the real and wide difference in political opinion between the honorable gentleman and myself. On my part, I look upon all these objects as connected with the common good, fairly embraced in its object and terms; he, on the contrary, deems them all, if good at all, only local good.