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ID)e ftfoerstoe literature Series 
 
 / / x t 
 
 THE GREAT DEBATE 
 lETWEEN HAYNE AND WEBSTER 
 
 / 
 
 THE SPEECH OF DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 IN REPLY TO 
 
 ROBERT YOUNG HAYNE 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 LINDSAY , SWIFT 
 
 i % 
 
 OF THE BOSTON PUBLIC LIBBABY 
 
 ^liugrgfftc^re^ 
 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
 
 Boston: 4 Park Street; New York: 11 East Seventeenth Street 
 Chicago : 378-388 Wabash Avenue 
 
 i3Efte iftifcftsitie jDrrs?, Cambridge 
 
11 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Fac-Simile of a page of the Webster Manuscript, now 
 
 in the Boston Public Library. 
 Stenographic Report of the corresponding portion of 
 
 the Speech, as actually delivered. 
 
 Sketch of Daniel Webster 103 ! 
 
 Speech of Mr. Webster in Reply to Hayne . . .111 1 
 
 [No 121 of the Riverside Literature Series contains the Speech of i 
 Mr. Hayne, an account of the Occasion of the Great Debate, and a 
 reproduction of G. P. A. Healy's painting in Faneuil HaU, known 
 as "Webster's Reply to Hayne," with a key to the portraits in the I 
 painting.] 
 
 
 Copyright, 1898, 
 By HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 /I 
 
 I 
 
 -/Off 
 
 The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A. 
 Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton and Company. 
 
 \ 
 
PKEFACE. 
 
 In the preparation of the speech of Mr. Hayne the 
 text of the Boston edition of 1830 (Carter & Hendee) 
 has been mainly followed. Mr. Webster's speech as 
 here printed is based on the edition of his Works 
 published in 1851 (Little & Brown). In cases of t 
 doubt consultation has been had with the manuscript 
 of the famous speech, which is now deposited in the 
 Boston Public Library. 
 
 The reproduction of Mr. Healy's painting is likely 
 to interest those who may never have the fortune to 
 see the original picture in Faneuil Hall, Boston ; and 
 even the list of names of the eminent men and women 
 who heard the Great Debate is a stimulus to recall so 
 memorable an event. 
 
 I wish hereby to express my thanks to the Trustees 
 and the Librarian of the Boston Public Library for 
 their courtesy in permitting the use of the Webster 
 manuscript. Mr. Calvin W. Lewis, of Boston, has 
 generously permitted me to use his unpublished notes, 
 which have grown out of many years' admiration and 
 study of Daniel Webster, and I am deeply obliged to 
 him for the courtesy. 
 
 L. o. 
 Boston, December, 1897. 
 
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 SKETCH OF DANIEL WEBSTER. 
 
 As in the case of Benjamin Franklin, two States may- 
 claim the honor of being the home of Daniel Webster. He 
 was born in New Hampshire ; but his name is more closely- 
 identified with Massachusetts, where he lived in his later 
 years, and where his body is buried. He was the son of 
 Ebenezer Webster, who married, as a second wife, Abigail 
 Eastman, and who lived in Salisbury, New Hampshire, 
 where Daniel was born on January 18, 1782, — the fifth in 
 lineal descent from Thomas Webster, the first-comer from 
 England of the family, which was supposed to be Scotch. 
 It is essential to an understanding of Daniel Webster to 
 remember that, though he was not of Puritan or Pilgrim 
 stock, he was wholly an American, in whose make-up was 
 no intermixture of alien blood. 
 
 The unusual abilities of Daniel and of his elder brother, 
 Ezekiel, were probably transmitted from his father's mo- 
 ther, Susannah Bachelder, herself a descendant of the Rev. 
 Stephen Bachelder, a man of unusual and eccentric parts. 
 The superb physique of Webster's manhood was not indi- 
 cated in his childhood, for he was so delicate as to be 
 plainly unfitted for a farmer's toil, and was driven to out- 
 door life rather for amusement than for occupation. When 
 fourteen years of age he went to the Phillips Exeter Acad- 
 emy, and in 1797 entered Dartmouth College, that veritable 
 nurse of heroes. Though poorly fitted to enter college, he 
 had studied the classics, after leaving Phillips Academy, 
 with the Rev. Samuel Wood, of Boscawen. Any mention 
 of Webster's early days should justly include an apprecia- 
 tion of the self-sacrifices made by his parents to secure an 
 education for him and his brother, both of whom felt and 
 
104 THE GREAT DEBATE. 
 
 showed a proper gratitude. Daniel's rank was high at 
 graduation ; but his career at college was that of a lad of 
 promise rather than that of a profound scholar. He found 
 time during his course to write for a weekly paper in Han- 
 over and to deliver a Fourth of July oration, in which are 
 to be found in embryo the great political principles of his 
 whole life, — devotion to country, loyalty to its Constitution, 
 and the sentiment of nationality. 
 
 After graduation he studied law in the office of Thomas 
 W. Thompson in Salisbury, but was soon obliged to teach 
 school at Fryeburg, Maine, in order to help pay his brother 
 Ezekiel's college expenses. In 1804 he was able to enter 
 the law office of Christopher Gore, in Boston, where, in 
 1805, he was admitted to the bar. From Boscawen, where 
 he began practice and" where he found an unwelcome 
 leisure, during which he wrote " An Appeal to the Old 
 Whigs of New Hampshire " (1805), and other political 
 contributions, he went in 1807 to Portsmouth. There he 
 soon enjoyed a stimulating competition and helpful friend- 
 ship with Jeremiah Mason, leader of the bar of Rockingham 
 County, justly celebrated for the ability of its members. 
 
 The agitation which preceded the War of 1812 found 
 Webster on the Federalist side, and he contributed with 
 voice and pen to the controversy. He inherited his political 
 preferences from his father ; but he was by nature deeply 
 though not narrowly conservative. He continued to hold a 
 sort of modified Federalism, though, at the disappearance of 
 the Federal party, he was forced to act with one of the 
 several factions of the Democratic party until the definite 
 formation of the Whig party. The " Rockingham Memo- 
 rial," prepared by Mr. Webster in 1812, was addressed to 
 the President, and is recognized as worthy ef t l ^° author's 
 abilities. In 1813 he first took his seat national 
 
 House of Representatives. During the ne years he 
 
 was building his legal reputation and becc nown in 
 
 cases before the Supreme Court. In 181 oved to 
 
SKETCH OF DANIEL WEBSTER. 105 
 
 Boston, and in 1818 argued the famous Dartmouth College 
 case x before the Supreme Court. 
 
 The year 1820 found him active in the State Constitu- 
 tional Convention of Massachusetts, where, with Judge 
 Joseph Story, he took a most conspicuous and important 
 part in all discussions. In December of the same year he 
 delivered the first and one of the most celebrated of his 
 great orations, — that on the two hundredth anniversary of 
 Ihe landing of the Pilgrims. He reentered Congress in 
 1823 ; and the year following, having been elected to the 
 Nineteenth Congress by a vote of four thousand nine hun- 
 dred and ninety out of five thousand votes thrown, he made 
 his speech in the House on the appointment of a commis- 
 sioner to Greece, then in the travail of her Revolution. In 
 the years 1825 and 1826 were delivered two of his famous 
 
 1 This famous case, before the Supreme Court, was virtually 
 a contest between John Wheelock, formerly President of the 
 College, and the Trustees, who had appointed the Rev. Francis 
 Brown in Wheelock's place. The contest had developed into a 
 party question in New Hampshire, the Democrats sustaining 
 Wheelock and the Federalists the Trustees. Governor Plumer 
 had appointed new trustees and overseers under a new law 
 authorizing the reorganization of the college. The suit was 
 brought by the original board against their former secretary, 
 Judo-e Woodward, to recover the college seal and other pro- 
 perty. Jeremiah Mason, Jeremiah Smith, and Daniel Webster 
 (who had previously accepted a professional fee from Wheelock) 
 appeared for the college before the Circuit Court. The case 
 went against the plaintiffs, and was then taken up on a writ of 
 error to the Supreme Court. Mr. Webster had against him 
 William Wirt and later William Pinkney, then leader of the 
 whole bar. The case was won largely by the wonderful force 
 of Webster' s^oratory, and by the skill with which a court, 
 a mfl.im.ltir of which was at first hostile to the college, was 
 brc assent to the decision of Chief Justice Marshall, — 
 
 tha jw Hampshire Legislature had impaired a contract, 
 
 as the charter of the college to be within the Consti- 
 
 tut John M. Shirley's Dartmouth College Causes (1879). 
 
106 THE GREAT DEBATE. 
 
 orations, — the first on the laying of the corner-stone of 
 Bunker Hill Monument, in the presence of Lafayette, and 
 the second in commemoration of John Adams and Thomas 
 Jefferson. From 1827 to 1841, Mr. Webster sat in the 
 Senate of the United States from Massachusetts, and the 
 speech which is the occasion of the present volume was 
 the first of his most considerable triumphs in that body. 
 He then came forward as the protagonist of the Constitution 
 in opposition to those attacks which were soon to take the 
 form of openly proclaimed nullification. His reply to Cal- 
 houn, three years later, forms a fit companion speech to the 
 reply to Hayne, though it is not so well remembered. This 
 was the most active period of Webster's career, as is testi- 
 fied by his speeches on the constitutionality of the United 
 States Bank, on the removal of the deposits, on the Sub- 
 treasury plan, and on the South Carolina Ordinance of 
 nullification. His renown as a lawyer was still further sus- 
 tained by his part in the prosecution of the Knapp brothers 
 in the White murder trial (1831). 
 
 Mr. Webster passed the larger part of 1839 in Europe, 
 spending the summer and autumn in France and Great 
 Britain, where he received gratifying evidence of the 
 extent of his reputation. President Harrison offered him 
 the choice of a place in his cabinet, and Webster selected 
 the Secretaryship of State. At that time (1841) certain 
 important matters called for the highest ability which the 
 country could command in the direction of foreign affairs, 
 particularly in regard to the New Brunswick and Maine 
 boundary, and the right of search as claimed by England, 
 — one of the questions left unsettled by the War of 1812. 
 To his efforts, aided by the wisdom of Judge Story, is 
 mainly due a successful issue to the tangled negotiations 
 which resulted in the Treaty of Washington. 
 
 After a month in office Harrison died, and Tyler, who 
 then became President, was so fortunate as to retain Web- 
 ster in the cabinet in 1843, in the face of the resignation of 
 
SKETCH OF DANIEL WEBSTER. 107 
 
 the other members. At no period of his life did "YYeJbster 
 act with more independence and courage. It was at this 
 time that he said : " I am, gentlemen, a little hard to 
 coax ; but as to being driven, that is out of the question." 
 
 Again elected to the Senate in 1844, his efforts were 
 against the approaching war with Mexico, although he did 
 not act in a sectional or contentious spirit. In 1846 (April 
 6 and 7) he made one of his strongest speeches in defense 
 of the Ashburton Treaty, in which appeared his denunciation 
 of Ingersoll of Pennsylvania. Close upon heavy personal 
 bereavement came the chagrin of General Taylor's nomi- 
 nation. Disgusted with this event, Mr. Webster seemed to 
 take an attitude toward slavery which made it wholly pos- 
 sible for him to part with the Whigs and to range him- 
 self as a leader of the Free Soilers, with whose declara- 
 tions his own were now apparently in accord. So matters 
 went up to the next great crisis in his career, and in 
 reality the decisive one. The contention — during which 
 he delivered his Seventh of March speech — was over the 
 admission of California and New Mexico. By supporting 
 the Compromise of 1850, he sought to avert a danger threat- 
 ening, as it no doubt appeared to him, the very existence 
 of the Union ; he advocated the admission of California, 
 anti-slavery constitution and all ; the organization of New 
 Mexico without the application of the Wilmot Proviso ; x and 
 a new Fugitive Slave Law, by which the slave might have 
 the right of trial by jury. The effect of this speech is well 
 known. The various causes which induced Mr. Webster 
 to take the ground which he did are too complex for dis- 
 cussion here. The speech added nothing to Mr. Webster's 
 strength, except in the South ; but, as Mr. Lodge has said, 
 the South was practical, and not in the least quixotic 
 concerning candidates for the presidency. The manhood 
 of the North mainly turned from Mr. Webster, concerning 
 
 1 By the Wilmot Proviso, slavery was to be excluded from all 
 territory thereafter acquired or annexed. 
 
108 THE GREAT DEBATE. 
 
 whose integrity there had long been uneasiness. Regard- 
 ing his later attitude toward slavery this much is certain : 
 there is no moral reconciliation between the Plymouth 
 oration in 1820 and the speech of March 7, 1850. Fur- 
 thermore, the period of his life best represented by the 
 reply to Hayne is the highest point of his career. From 
 that time there was a decline, sure if insensible, although 
 his course in Tyler's cabinet was beyond criticism. 
 
 President Fillmore appointed Webster to the Secretary- 
 ship of State, and this office he held until his death. ,His 
 last great address was at the laying of the corner-stone of 
 the extension of the Capitol on the Fourth of July, 1851 ; 
 and his last great legal contest was in January, 1852, over 
 the Goodyear patent case, in which he was successful. 
 
 This year Mr. Webster failed to get the nomination of 
 the Whig party, which was given to General Scott. He 
 had been a candidate for twelve years and in four succes- 
 sive Whig conventions, but had been balloted for in only 
 two, and his highest vote was only one ninth of the total 
 cast. Mr. Webster was never popular, in the usual sense. 
 In May, 1852, he was thrown from his carriage, and this 
 accident, added to an organic disease and to the chagrin of 
 losing what he felt to be his due, proved to be one cause of 
 his death, which came on October 24 at Marshfield, where 
 he had spent the summer in failing health. 
 
 In 1808 Mr. Webster had married Grace Fletcher, who 
 bore him five children. One son, Charles, died in the 
 Mexican War, and one, (David) Fletcher, was killed in 
 battle near Bull Run, August 3, 1862. His second wife 
 was Miss Caroline B. Leroy, whom he married in 1829, the 
 year in which he lost his beloved brother Ezekiel. 
 
 Much has been written of Mr. Webster's imposing per- 
 sonal presence, and there is no doubt that in his earlier 
 years this was impressive almost to the point of majesty. 
 But in later life the perception of his relation to the rest 
 of mankind became so distorted as to allow him at times 
 
SKETCH OF DANIEL WEBSTER. 
 
 to adopt a pomposity of manner that was, more than ai 
 thing else, pathetic. His sense of humor alone would havt 
 saved him from this as a younger man, but that saving 
 element seemed to become absorbed into the self-consider- 
 ation which marked his declining years. The Hon. Mellen 
 Chamberlain, in commenting upon certain phases of Web- 
 ster's character, says : — 
 
 " He was a rustic, yet with marks of gentle blood in his 
 shapely hands and feet, his well-proportioned limbs, and 
 his high-bred face of no known type, unlike even his own 
 brother, who was of Grecian form and face. We know 
 that soil and climate affect character ; but it is not easy to 
 accept, save as a poetic theory, the < pathetic fallacy ' with 
 which Wordsworth imbued his generation and our own, 
 that Nature has conscious relations with 
 
 ' Her foster-child, her inmate, Man,' 
 
 and forms his principles and regulates his methods of action 
 agreeably to her own. But Daniel Webster was very like 
 Nature. Like her, he was unethical ; like her, he was not 
 revolutionary ; and, like her, he applied his powers along 
 the lines of normal development." 
 
 Webster's voice never lost the mellow quality which so 
 stirred the audiences of his day; and yet it is hard to 
 believe that this was so large a factor as is generally sup- 
 posed in the making of his reputation as an orator, when 
 we consider the power which his words have possessed 
 since his voice became still, and since the issues which 
 called them forth have long been dead. Judge Chamber- 
 lain may well be quoted again as to the significance of 
 Webster's oratory : — 
 
 " The inspiration of great endeavor is its immortality ; 
 the potency of great achievement is its indestruetibleness. 
 The past assures the future. The discourses at Plymouth 
 Rock and at Bunker Hill were not for an hour ; nor was 
 the Great Reply. In the days of their utterance they were 
 
THE GREAT DEBATE. 
 
 endent, unprecedented eloquence ; but they spoke truest 
 
 n they became wisdom to Lincoln and valor to Grant ; 
 
 jy rang loudest when heard along the front of battle, 
 
 id inspired deeds of immortal heroism on a hundred 
 
 lelds." 
 
SPEECH OF MR. WEBSTER IN REPLY TO 
 
 MR. HAYNE, 
 
 IN THE SENATE, ON FOOTE'S RESOLUTION, 
 
 Tuesday and Wednesday, January 26 and 27, 1830. 
 
 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 farther on the 
 waves of this debate, refer to the point from which we 
 departed, that we may at least be able to conjecture 
 where we now are. I ask for the reading of the reso- 
 lution before the Senate. 
 
 The secretary read the resolution, as follows : — • 
 
 " Resolved, That the committee on public lands be 
 instructed to inquire and report the quantity of public 
 lands remaining unsold within each State and Terri- 
 tory, and whether it be expedient to limit for a cer- 
 tain period the sales of the public lands to such lands 
 only as have heretofore been offered for sale, and are 
 now subject to entry at the minimum price. And, 
 also, whether the office of surveyor-general, and some 
 of the land offices, may not be abolished without de- 
 triment to the public interest ; or whether it be expe- 
 dient to adopt measures to hasten the sales and extend 
 more rapidly the surveys of the public lands." 
 
112 THE GREAT DEBATE. 
 
 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 entertained by the gentleman 
 from South Carolina. Every topic in the wide range 
 of our public affairs, whether past or present, — every- 
 thing general or local, whether belonging to national 
 politics or party politics, — seems to have attracted 
 more or less of the honorable member's 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 Thurs- 
 day morning [January 21], it so happened that it would 
 have been convenient for me to be elsewhere. 1 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, sir, which he thus kindly informed us was com- 
 ing, that we might stand out of the way or prepare 
 ourselves to fall by it and die with decency, has now 
 been received. Under all advantages, and with ex- 
 pectation 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, 
 
 1 In the Supreme Court, in the case of Carver v. Jackson ex 
 dem. Astor (4 Peters, 1), better known as Carver's Lessees against 
 John Jacob Astor. Mr. Webster and Greene C. Bronson, the 
 Attorney-General for New York, were for the plaintiff, and 
 David B. Ogden and William Wirt for the defendant. The 
 defendant won. 
 
SPEECH OF MR. WEBSTER. 113 
 
 if nobody is found, after all, either killed or wounded, 
 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 mani- 
 festo. 
 
 The gentleman, sir, in declining to postpone the 
 debate, told the Senate, with the emphasis of his hand 
 upon his heart, that there was something rankling here 
 which he wished to relieve. [Mr. Hayne rose and 
 disclaimed having used the word rankling, but accord- 
 ing to Gales and Seaton's " Register of Debates " the 
 word was used.] It would not, Mr. President, be 
 safe for the honorable member to appeal to those 
 around him upon the question whether he did in fact 
 make use of that word. But he may have been uncon- 
 scious of it. At any rate, it is enough that he dis- 
 claims it. But still, with or without the use of that 
 particular word, he had yet something here, he said, 
 of which he wished to rid himself by an immediate 
 reply. 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. There is nothing, either origi- 
 nating here, or now received here by the gentleman's 
 shot. Nothing originating here, for I had not the 
 slightest feeling of unkindness towards the honorable 
 member. Some passages, it is true, had occurred since 
 our acquaintance in this body, which I could have 
 wished might have been otherwise ; but I had used 
 philosophy and forgotten them. 1 I paid the honora- 
 
 1 In the latter part of the preceding session, Webster had 
 called upon President Adams for the instructions to the minis- 
 
114 THE GREAT DEBATE. 
 
 ble member the attention of listening with respect to 
 his first speech ; and when he sat down, though sur- 
 prised, and I must even say astonished, at some of his 
 opinions, nothing was farther from my intention than 
 to commence any personal warfare. Through the 
 whole of the few remarks I made in answer, I avoided, 
 studiously and carefully, everything which I thought 
 possible to be construed into disrespect. And, sir, 
 while there is thus nothing originating here which I 
 wished at any time or now wish to discharge, 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 member of violating the 
 rules of civilized war ; I will not say that he poisoned 
 his arrows. But whether his shafts were or were 
 not dipped in that which would have caused rankling 
 if they had reached their destination, 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 those shafts, he must look for them elsewhere ; 
 they will not be found fixed and quivering in the 
 object at which they were aimed. 
 
 The honorable member complained that I had slept 
 on his speech. I must have slept on it, or not slept 
 at all. The moment the honorable member sat down, 
 his friend from Missouri [Mr. Benton] rose, and, 
 with much honeyed commendation of the speech, sug- 
 gested that the impressions which it had produced 
 were too charming and delightful to be disturbed by 
 other sentiments or other sounds, and proposed that 
 
 ters to the Congress of Panama. Though the resolution was 
 defeated, Adams before March 4 sent the documents to the 
 Senate. Hayne had somewhat strongly antagonized Webster 
 and the administration in this matter. 
 
SPEECH OF MR. WEBSTER. 115 
 
 the Senate should adjourn. Would it have been quite 
 amiable in me, sir, to interrupt this excellent good 
 feeling? Must I not have been absolutely malicious 
 if I could have thrust myself forward to destroy sen- 
 sations thus pleasing ? Was it not much better and 
 kinder both to sleep upon them myself and to allow 
 others also the pleasure of sleeping upon them ? But, 
 if it be meant by sleeping upon his speech that I took 
 time to prepare a reply to it, it is quite a mistake. 
 Owing to other engagements, I could not employ even 
 the interval between the adjournment of the Senate 
 and its meeting the next morning in attention to the 
 subject of this debate. Nevertheless, sir, the mere 
 matter of fact is undoubtedly true. I did sleep on 
 the gentleman's speech and slept soundly. And I 
 slept equally well on his speech of yesterday, to which 
 I am now replying. It is quite possible that in this 
 respect, also, I possess some advantage over the hon- 
 orable member, attributable, doubtless, to a cooler 
 temperament on my part ; for, in truth, I slept upon 
 his speeches remarkably well. 
 
 But the gentleman inquires why he was made the 
 object of such a reply. Why was he singled out ? If 
 an attack has been made on the East, he, he assures 
 us, did not begin it ; it was made by the gentleman 
 from Missouri [Mr. Benton]. Sir, I answered the 
 gentleman's speech because I happened to hear it; 
 and because, also, I chose to give an answer to that 
 speech which, if unanswered, I thought most likely 
 to produce injurious impressions. I did not stop to 
 inquire who was the original drawer of the bill. I 
 found a responsible indorser before me, and it was my 
 purpose to hold him liable, and to bring him to his 
 just responsibility without delay. But, sir, this inter- 
 
116 THE GREAT DEBATE. 
 
 rogatory of the honorable member was only introduc- 
 tory to another. He proceeded to ask me whether I 
 had turned upon him in this debate from the con- 
 sciousness that I should find an overmatch if I ven- 
 tured on a contest with his friend from Missouri. If, 
 sir, the honorable member, modestice gratia, had chosen 
 thus to defer to his friend and to pay him a compli- 
 ment without intentional disparagement to others, it 
 would have been quite according to the friendly cour- 
 tesies of debate, and not at all ungrateful to my own 
 feelings. I am not one of those, sir, who esteem any 
 tribute of regard, whether light and occasional or 
 more serious and deliberate, which may be bestowed 
 on others, as so much unjustly withholden from them- 
 selves. But the tone and manner of the gentleman's 
 question forbid me thus to interpret it. I am«not at 
 liberty to consider it as nothing more than a civility 
 to his friend. It had an air of taunt and disparage- 
 ment, something of the loftiness of asserted superior- 
 ity, which does not allow me to pass it over without 
 notice. It was put as a question for me to answer, 
 and so put as if it were difficult for me to answer, 
 whether I deemed the member from Missouri an over- 
 match for myself in debate here. It seems to me, sir, 
 that this is extraordinary language and an extraordi- 
 nary tone for the discussions of this body. 
 
 Matches and overmatches ! Those terms are more 
 applicable elsewhere than here, and fitter for other 
 assemblies than this. Sir, the gentleman seems to 
 forget where and what we are. This is a senate, a 
 senate of equals, of men of individual honor and per- 
 sonal character and of absolute independence. We 
 know no masters, we acknowledge no dictators. This 
 is a hall for mutual consultation and discussion ; not 
 
SPEECH OF MR. WEBSTER. 117 
 
 an arena for the exhibitions of champions. I offer 
 myself, sir, as a match for no man ; I throw the chal- 
 lenge of debate at no man's feet. But then, sir, since 
 the honorable member has put the question in a man- 
 ner that calls for an answer, I will give him an answer ; 
 and I tell him that, holding myself to be the humblest 
 of the members here, I yet know nothing in the arm 
 of his friend from Missouri, either alone or when 
 aided by the arm of his friend from South Carolina, 
 that need deter even me from espousing whatever 
 opinions I may choose to espouse, from debating when- 
 ever I may choose to debate, or from speaking what- 
 ever I may see fit to say on the floor of the Senate. 
 Sir, when uttered as matter of commendation or com- 
 pliment, I should dissent from nothing which the hon- 
 orable member might say of his friend. Still less do 
 I put forth any pretensions of my own. But when 
 put to me as matter of taunt, I throw it back, and say 
 to the gentleman that he could possibly say nothing 
 less likely than such a comparison to wound my pride 
 of personal character. The anger of its tone rescued 
 the remark from intentional irony, which otherwise, 
 probably, would have been its general acceptation. 
 But, sir, if it be imagined that by this mutual quota- 
 tion and commendation ; if it be supposed that, by 
 casting the characters of the drama, assigning to each 
 his part, to one the attack, to another the cry of onset ; 
 or if it be thought that by a loud and empty vaunt of 
 anticipated victory, any laurels are to be won here ; 
 if it be imagined, especially, that any or all of these 
 things will shake any purpose of mine, — I can tell the 
 honorable member, once for all, that he is greatly 
 mistaken, and that he is dealing with one of whose 
 temper and character he has yet much to learn. Sir, 
 
118 THE GREAT DEBATE. 
 
 I shall not allow myself on this occasion, I hope on 
 no occasion, to be betrayed into any loss of temper ; 
 but if provoked, as I trust I never shall be, into crim- 
 ination and recrimination, the honorable member may 
 perhaps find that, in that contest, there will be blows 
 to take as well as blows to give ; that others can state 
 comparisons as significant, at least, as his own ; and 
 that his impunity may possibly demand of him what- 
 ever powers of taunt and sarcasm he may possess. I 
 commend him to a prudent husbandry of his resources. 
 But, sir, the Coalition ! 1 The Coalition ! Ay, " the 
 murdered Coalition ! ' The gentleman asks if I were 
 led or frighted into this debate by the spectre of 
 the Coalition. " Was it the ghost of the murdered 
 Coalition," he exclaims, " which haunted the member 
 from Massachusetts ; and which, like the ghost of 
 Banquo, would never down ? ' " The murdered Coali- 
 tion ! " Sir, this charge of a coalition, in reference 
 to the late administration, is not original with the hon- 
 orable member. It did not spring up in the Senate. 
 Whether as a fact, as an argument, or as an embel- 
 lishment, it is all borrowed. He adopts it, indeed, 
 from a very low origin, and a still lower present con- 
 dition. It is one of the thousand calumnies with 
 which the press teemed during an excited political 
 canvass. It was a charge of which there was not only 
 no proof or probability, but which was in itself wholly 
 impossible to be true. No man of common informa- 
 tion ever believed a syllable of it. Yet it was of that 
 class of falsehoods which, by continued repetition, 
 through all the organs of detraction and abuse, are 
 
 1 See the note on page 26 of Hayne's Speech regarding the 
 alleged bargain between the friends of John Quincy Adams and 
 Henry Clay. 
 
SPEECH OF MR. WEBSTER. 119 
 
 capable of misleading those who are already far mis- 
 led, and of further fanning passion already kindling 
 into flame. Doubtless it served in its day, and in 
 greater or less degree, the end designed by it. Hav- 
 ing clone that, it has sunk into the general mass of 
 stale and loathed calumnies. It is the very cast-off 
 slough of a polluted and shameless press. Incapable 
 of further mischief, it lies in the sewer, lifeless and 
 despised. It is not now, sir, in the power of the honor- 
 able member to give it dignity or decency by attempt- 
 ing to elevate it and to introduce it into the Senate. 
 He cannot change it from what it is, an object of gen- 
 eral disgust and scorn. On the contrary, the contact, 
 if he choose to touch it, is more likely to drag him 
 down, down to the place where it lies itself. 
 
 But, sir, the honorable member was not, for other 
 reasons, entirely happy in his allusion to the story of 
 Banquo's murder and Banquo's ghost. It was not, I 
 think, the friends, but the enemies of the murdered 
 Banquo, at whose bidding his spirit would not down. 
 The honorable gentleman is fresh in his reading of 
 the English classics, and can put me right if I am 
 wrong ; but, according to my poor recollection, it was 
 at those who had begun with caresses and ended with 
 foul and treacherous murder that the gory locks were 
 shaken. The ghost of Banquo, like that of Hamlet, 
 was an honest ghost. It disturbed no innocent man. 
 It knew where its appearance would strike terror, and 
 who would cry out, A ghost ! It made itself visible 
 in the right quarter, and compelled the guilty and the 
 conscience-smitten, and none others, to start, with 
 
 "Prithee! see there ! behold! — look! lo! ... 
 If I stand here, I saw him." x 
 
 1 See Shakespeare's Macbeth, act iii. scene 4 ; the allusions 
 
120 THE GREAT DEBATE. 
 
 Their eyeballs were seared (was it not so, sir ? ) who 
 had thought to shield themselves by concealing their 
 own hand, and laying the imputation of the crime on 
 a low and hireling agency in wickedness ; who had 
 vainly attempted to stifle the workings of their own 
 coward consciences by ejaculating through white lips 
 and chattering teeth, " Thou canst not say I did it ! ' 
 I have misread the great poet if those who had no way 
 partaken in the deed of the death either found that 
 they were, or feared that they should be, pushed from 
 their stools by the ghost of the slain, or exclaimed to 
 a spectre created by their own fears and their own 
 remorse, " Avaunt ! and quit our sight ! " 
 
 There is another particular, sir, in which the honor- 
 able member's quick perception of resemblances might, 
 I should think, have seen something in the story of 
 Banquo, making it not altogether a subject of the most 
 pleasant contemplation. Those who murdered Banquo, 
 — what did they win by it ? Substantial good ? Per- 
 manent power ? Or disappointment, rather, and sore 
 mortification ; dust and ashes, the common fate of 
 vaulting ambition overleaping itself ? Did not even- 
 handed justice erelong commend the poisoned chalice 
 to their own lips ? Did they not soon find that for 
 another they had " 'filed their mind " ? that their 
 ambition, though apparently for the moment success- 
 ful, had but put a barren sceptre in their grasp? 
 Ay, sir, 
 
 " a barren sceptre in their gripe, 
 Thence to be wrench' d with an unlineal hand, 
 No son of theirs succeeding.'''' 1 
 
 to Banquo refer to this scene. The allusion to Hamlet's ghost 
 is of course to Hamlet's father, whose name is mentioned in act 
 i. scene 2, line 1, of the play. 
 
 1 See Macbeth, act iii. scene 1. A most pointed allusion to 
 
SPEECH OF MR. WEBSTER. 121 
 
 Sir, I need pursue the allusion no farther. I leave 
 the honorable gentleman to run it out at his leisure, 
 and to derive from it all the gratification it is calcu- 
 lated to administer. If he finds himself pleased with 
 the associations, and prepared to be quite satisfied, 
 though the parallel should be entirely completed, I 
 had almost said I am satisfied also ; but that I shall 
 think of. Yes, sir, I will think of that. 
 
 In the course of my observations the other day, Mr. 
 President, I paid a passing tribute of respect to a very 
 worthy man, Mr. Dane of Massachusetts. It so hap- 
 pened that he drew the Ordinance of 1787, 1 for the 
 government of the Northwestern Territory. A man 
 of so much ability, and so little pretense ; of so great 
 a capacity to do good, and so unmixed a disposition 
 to do it for its own sake ; a gentleman who acted an 
 important part, forty years ago, in a measure the 
 influence of which is still deeply felt in the very mat- 
 Vice-President Calhoun's prospects for the presidency. It was 
 already evident that Van Bnren was Jackson's heir apparent, 
 and shortly came the open breach between the President and 
 the Vice-President. 
 
 1 Bancroft's opinion, if sententious, is worth recalling : 
 " Thomas Jefferson first summoned Congress to prohibit sla- 
 very in all the territory of the United States ; Rufus King lifted 
 up the measure when it lay almost lifeless on the ground, and 
 suggested the immediate instead of the prospective prohibition ; 
 a congress composed of five Southern States to one from New 
 England, and two from the- Middle States, headed by William 
 Grayson, supported by Richard Henry Lee, and using Nathan 
 Dane as scribe, carried the measure to the goal in the amended 
 form in which King: had caused it to be referred to a com- 
 mittee, and, as Jefferson had proposed, placed it under the 
 sanction of an irrevocable compact." History of the United 
 States (1885), vi. 290. See also the notes on page 28 of Hayne's 
 Speech. 
 
122 THE GREAT DEBATE. 
 
 ter which was the subject of debate, might, I thought, 
 receive from me a commendatory recognition. But 
 the honorable member was inclined to be facetious on 
 the subject. He was rather disposed to make it mat- 
 ter of ridicule that I had introduced into the debate 
 the name of one Nathan Dane, of whom he assures us 
 he had never before heard. Sir, if the honorable 
 member had never before heard of Mr. Dane, I am 
 sorry for it. It shows him less acquainted with the 
 public men of the country than I had supposed. Let 
 me tell him, however, that a sneer from him at the 
 mention of the name of Mr. Dane is in bad taste. It 
 may well be a high mark of ambition, sir, either with 
 the honorable gentleman or myself, to accomplish as 
 much to make our names known to advantage, and 
 remembered with gratitude, as Mr. Dane has accom- 
 plished. But the truth is, sir, I suspect that Mr. 
 Dane lives a little too far north. He is of Massachu- 
 setts, and too near the north star to be reached by the 
 honorable gentleman's telescope. If his sphere had 
 happened to range south of Mason and Dixon's line, 
 he might, probably, have come within the scope of his 
 vision. 
 
 I spoke, sir, of the Ordinance of 1787, which pro- 
 hibits slavery, in all future times, northwest of the 
 Ohio, as a measure of great wisdom and foresight, 
 and one which had been attended with highly benefi- 
 cial and permanent consequences. I supposed that, 
 on this point, no two gentlemen in the Senate could 
 entertain different opinions. But the simple expres- 
 sion of this sentiment has led the gentleman not only 
 into a labored defense of slavery, in the abstract and 
 on principle, but also into a warm accusation against 
 me, as having attacked the system of domestic slavery 
 
SPEECH OF MR. WEBSTER. 123 
 
 now existing in the Southern States. For all this 
 there was not the slightest foundation in anything 
 said or intimated by me. I did not utter a single 
 word which any ingenuity could torture into an attack 
 on the slavery of the South. I said only that it was 
 highly wise and useful, in legislating for the North- 
 western country while it was yet a wilderness, to 
 prohibit the introduction of slaves ; and added that I 
 presumed there was no reflecting and intelligent per- 
 son in the neighboring State of Kentucky who would 
 doubt that, if the same prohibition had been extended 
 at the same early period over that commonwealth, her 
 strength and population would at this day have been 
 far greater than they are. If these opinions be thought 
 doubtful, they are nevertheless, I trust, neither extraor- 
 dinary nor disrespectful. They attack nobody and 
 menace nobody. And yet, sir, the gentleman's optics 
 have discovered, even in the mere expression of this 
 sentiment, what he calls the very spirit of the Mis- 
 souri question ! He represents me as making an onset 
 on the whole South, and manifesting a spirit which 
 would interfere with and disturb their domestic condi- 
 tion ! 
 
 Sir, this injustice no otherwise surprises me than 
 as it is committed here, and committed without the 
 slightest pretense of ground for it. I say it only sur- 
 prises me as being done here ; for I know full well 
 that it is and has been the settled policy of some per- 
 sons in the South, for years, to represent the people 
 of the North as disposed to interfere with them in 
 their own exclusive and peculiar concerns. This is a 
 delicate and sensitive point in Southern feeling ; and 
 of late years it has always been touched, and gener- 
 ally with effect, whenever the object has been to unite 
 
124 THE GREAT DEBATE. 
 
 the whole South against Northern men or Northern 
 measures. This feeling, always carefully kept alive, 
 and maintained at too intense a heat to admit discrim- 
 ination or reflection, is a lever of great power in our 
 political machine. It moves vast bodies, and gives to 
 them one and the same direction. But it is with- 
 out adequate cause, and the suspicion which exists is 
 wholly groundless. 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 opin- 
 ion. 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. But whether 
 it be a malady, and whether it be curable, and, if so, 
 by what means ; or, on the other hand, whether it be 
 the vulnus immedicabile of the social system, I leave 
 it to those whose right and duty it is to inquire and to 
 decide. And this I believe, sir, is, and uniformly has 
 been, the sentiment of the North. Let us look a little 
 at the history of this matter. 
 
 When the present Constitution was submitted for 
 the ratification of the people, there were those who 
 imagined that the powers of the government which it 
 proposed to establish might, in some possible mode, be 
 exerted in measures tending to the abolition of sla- 
 very. This suggestion would of course attract much 
 
SPEECH OF MR. WEBSTER. 125 
 
 attention in the Southern conventions. In that of 
 Virginia, Governor Randolph 1 said : — 
 
 44 1 hope there is none here who, considering the 
 subject in the calm light of philosophy, will make an 
 objection dishonorable to Virginia ; that, at the mo- 
 ment they are securing the rights of their citizens, an 
 objection is started that there is a spark of hope that 
 those unfortunate men now held in bondage may, by 
 the operation of the general government, be made 
 
 free." 
 
 At the very first Congress, petitions on the sub- 
 ject were presented, if I mistake not, from different 
 States. The Pennsylvania Society for promoting the 
 abolition of slavery took a lead, and laid before Con- 
 gress a memorial praying Congress to promote the 
 abolition by such powers as it possessed. This me- 
 morial was referred, in the House of Representatives, 
 to a select committee consisting of Mr. Foster of New 
 Hampshire, Mr. Gerry of Massachusetts, Mr. Hunt- 
 ington of Connecticut, Mr. Lawrence of New York, 
 Mr. Sinnickson of New Jersey, Mr. Hartley of Penn- 
 sylvania, and Mr. Parker of Virginia ; all of them, 
 sir, as you will observe, Northern men but the last. 
 This committee made a report, which was referred to 
 a committee of the whole House, and there considered 
 and discussed for several days ; and being amended, 
 although without material alteration, it was made to 
 express three distinct propositions on the subject of 
 slavery and the slave-trade. First, in the words of 
 the Constitution, that Congress could not, prior to the 
 year 1808, prohibit the migration or importation of 
 such persons as any of the States then existing should 
 think proper to admit ; and, secondly, that Congress 
 
 1 Edmund Randolph. 
 
126 THE GREAT DEBATE. 
 
 had authority to restrain the citizens of the United 
 States from carrying on the African slave-trade for 
 the purpose of supplying foreign countries. On this 
 proposition our early laws against those who engage 
 in that traffic are founded. The third proposition, 
 and that which bears on the present question, was 
 expressed in the following terms : — 
 
 "Resolved, That Congress have no authority to 
 interfere in the emancipation of slaves, or in the 
 treatment of them in any of the States ; it remain- 
 ing with the several States alone to provide rules and 
 regulations therein, which humanity and true policy 
 may require." 
 
 This resolution received the sanction of the House 
 of Representatives so early as March, 1790. And 
 now, sir, the honorable member will allow me to 
 remind him that not only were the select committee 
 who reported the resolution, with a single exception, 
 all Northern men, but also that, of the members then 
 composing the House of Representatives, a large ma- 
 jority, I believe nearly two thirds, were Northern men 
 also. 
 
 The House agreed to insert these resolutions in its 
 journal ; and from that day to this it has never been 
 maintained or contended at the North that Congress 
 had any authority to regulate or interfere with the 
 condition of slaves in the several States. No North- 
 ern gentleman, to my knowledge, has moved any such 
 question in either house of Congress. 
 
 The fears of the South, whatever fears they might 
 have entertained, were allayed and quieted by this 
 early decision ; and so remained till they were excited 
 afresh, without cause, but for collateral and indirect 
 purposes. When it became necessary, or was thought 
 
SPEECH OF MR. WEBSTER. 127 
 
 so by some political persons, to find an unvarying 
 ground for the exclusion of Northern men from confi- 
 dence and from lead in the affairs of the republic, 
 then, and not till then, the cry was raised, and the 
 feeling industriously excited, that the influence of 
 Northern men in the public councils would endanger 
 the relation of master and slave. For myself, I claim 
 no other merit than that this gross and enormous 
 injustice towards the whole North has not wrought 
 upon me to change my opinions or my political con- 
 duct. I hope I am above violating my principles, 
 even under the smart of injury and false imputations. 
 Unjust suspicions and undeserved reproach, whatever 
 pain I may experience from them, will not induce 
 me, I trust, to overstep the limits of constitutional 
 duty, or to encroach on the rights of others. The 
 domestic slavery of the Southern States I leave where 
 I find it, — in the hands of their own governments. 
 It is their affair, not mine. Nor do I complain of the 
 peculiar effect which the magnitude of that popula- 
 tion has had in the distribution of power under this 
 federal government. We know, sir, that the repre- 
 sentation of the States in the other house is not equal. 
 We know that great advantage in that respect is en- 
 joyed by the slave-holding States ; and we know, too, 
 that the intended equivalent for that advantage, that 
 is to say, the imposition of direct taxes in the same 
 ratio, has become merely nominal, the habit of the 
 government being almost invariably to collect its reve- 
 nue from other sources and in other modes. Never- 
 theless, I do not complain ; nor would I countenance 
 any movement to alter this arrangement of represen- 
 tation. It is the original bargain, the compact ; let 
 it stand ; let the advantage of it be fully enjoyed. 
 
128 THE GREAT DEBATE. 
 
 The Union itself is too full of benefit to be hazarded 
 in propositions for changing its original basis. I go 
 for the Constitution as it is, and for the Union as it is. 
 But I am resolved not to submit in silence to accusa- 
 tions, either against myself individually or against 
 the North, wholly unfounded and unjust ; accusations 
 which impute to us a disposition to evade the con- 
 stitutional compact, and to extend the power of the 
 government over the internal laws and domestic con- 
 dition of the States. All such accusations, wherever 
 and whenever made, all insinuations of the existence 
 of any such purposes, I know and feel to be groundless 
 and injurious. And we must confide in Southern 
 gentlemen themselves ; we must trust to those whose 
 integrity of heart and magnanimity of feeling will lead 
 them to a desire to maintain and disseminate truth, 
 and who possess the means of its diffusion with the 
 Southern public ; we must leave it to them to disa- 
 buse that public of its prejudices. But in the mean 
 time, for my own part, I shall continue to act justly, 
 whether those towards whom justice is exercised re- 
 ceive it with candor or with contumely. 
 
 Having" had occasion to recur to the Ordinance of 
 1787, in order to defend myself against the inferences 
 which the honorable member has chosen to draw from 
 my former observations on that subject, I am not will- 
 ing now entirely to take leave of it without another 
 remark. It need hardly be said that that paper 
 expresses just sentiments on the great subject of civil 
 and religious liberty. Such sentiments were common, 
 and abound in all our state papers of that day. But 
 this Ordinance did that which was not so common, 
 and which is not, even now, universal ; that is, it set 
 forth and declared it to be a high and binding duty 
 
SPEECH OF MR. WEBSTER. 129 
 
 of government itself to encourage schools, and advance 
 the means of education, on the plain reason that reli- 
 gion, morality, and knowledge are necessary to good 
 government, and to the happiness of mankind. One 
 observation further. The important provision incor- 
 porated into the Constitution of the United States, 
 and into several of those of the States,, and recently, 
 as we have seen, adopted into the reformed Consti- 
 tution of Virginia, 1 restraining legislative power in 
 questions of private right, and from impairing the 
 obligation of contracts, is first introduced and estab- 
 lished, as far as I am informed, as matter of express 
 written constitutional law, in this Ordinance of 1787. 
 And I must add, also, in regard to the author of the 
 Ordinance, who has not had the happiness to attract 
 the gentleman's notice heretofore, nor to avoid his 
 sarcasm now, that he was chairman of that select 
 committee of the old Congress whose report first 
 expressed the strong sense of that body that the old 
 Confederation was not adequate to the exigencies of 
 the country, and recommended to the States to send 
 delegates to the convention which formed the present 
 Constitution. 
 
 An attempt has been made to transfer from the 
 North to the South the honor of this exclusion of 
 slavery from the Northwestern Territory. 2 The jour- 
 
 1 Adopted by convention on January 14, 1830, and ratified 
 by the people in April of the same year. 
 
 2 This refers to Mr. Benton, who again took up this portion 
 of Mr. Webster's speech on May 21, and once more in his 
 Thirty Years' View, vol. i. chap, xliv., wherein he convicts Web- 
 ster of important errors, in particular showing' that only six 
 States voted in the affirmative (the vote of New Jersey remain- 
 ing uncounted), and that only seven States were necessary to 
 pass the anti-slavery clause. 
 
130 THE GREAT DEBATE. 
 
 nal, without argument or comment, refutes such at- 
 tempt. The cession by Virginia 1 was made in March, 
 1784. On the 19th of April following, a committee, 
 consisting of Messrs. Jefferson, Chase, and Howell, 
 reported a plan for a temporary government of the 
 Territory, in which was this article : " That, after the 
 year 1800, there shall be neither slavery nor involun- 
 tary servitude in any of the said States, otherwise 
 than in punishment of crimes whereof the party shall 
 have been convicted." Mr. Spaight of North Carolina 
 moved to strike out this paragraph. The question was 
 put, according to the form then practiced : " Shall 
 these words stand as a part of the plan ? ' New Hamp- 
 shire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New 
 York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania — seven States 
 — voted in the affirmative ; Maryland, Virginia, and 
 South Carolina, in the negative. North Carolina was 
 divided. As the consent of nine States was necessary, 
 the words could not stand, and were struck out accord- 
 ingly. Mr. Jefferson voted for the clause, but was 
 overruled by his colleagues. 
 
 In March of the next year (1785), Mr. King of 
 Massachusetts, seconded by Mr. Ellery of Rhode 
 Island, proposed the formerly rejected article, with 
 this addition : " And that this regulation shall be an 
 article of compact, and remain a fundamental prin- 
 ciple of the Constitutions between the thirteen ori- 
 ginal States and each of the States described in the 
 resolve." On this clause, which provided the adequate 
 and thorough security, the eight Northern States at 
 that time voted affirmatively, and the four Southern 
 
 1 In regard to the various cessions, see Hinsdale's Old North- 
 west, chaps, xii., xiii., particularly pp. 227-245 as regards Vir- 
 ginia. 
 
SPEECH OF MR. WEBSTER. 131 
 
 States negatively. The votes of nine States were not 
 yet obtained, and thus the provision was again rejected 
 by the Southern States. The perseverance of the 
 North held out, and two years afterwards the object 
 was attained. It is no derogation from the credit, 
 whatever that may be, of drawing the Ordinance, that 
 its principles had before been prepared and discussed 
 in the form of resolutions. If one should reason in 
 that way, what would become of the distinguished 
 honor of the author of the Declaration of Independ- 
 ence ? There is not a sentiment in that paper which 
 had not been voted and resolved in the assemblies and 
 other popular bodies in the country over and over 
 again. 
 
 But the honorable member has now found out that 
 this gentleman, Mr. Dane, was a member of the Hart- 
 ford Convention. However uninformed the honorable 
 member may be of characters and occurrences at 
 the North, it would seem that he has at his elbow on 
 this occasion some high-minded and lofty spirit, some 
 magnanimous and true-hearted monitor, possessing the 
 means of local knowledge, and ready to supply the 
 honorable member with everything, down even to for- 
 gotten and moth-eaten twopenny pamphlets, which 
 may be used to the disadvantage of his own country. 
 But as to the Hartford Convention, sir, allow me to 
 say that the proceedings of that body seem now to be 
 less read and studied in New England than farther 
 South. They appear to be looked to, not in New 
 England, but elsewhere, for the purpose of seeing how 
 far they may serve as a precedent. But they will not 
 answer the purpose ; they are quite too tame. The 
 latitude in which they originated was too cold. Other 
 conventions, of more recent existence, have gone a 
 
132 THE GREAT DEBATE. 
 
 whole bar's length beyond it. The learned doctors of 
 Colleton and Abbeville 1 have pushed their commen- 
 taries on the Hartford collect so far that the original 
 text-writers are thrown entirely into the shade. I 
 have nothing to do, sir, with the Hartford Conven- 
 tion. Its journal, which the gentleman has quoted, I 
 never read. So far as the honorable member may 
 discover in its proceedings a spirit in any degree re- 
 sembling that which was avowed and justified in those 
 other conventions to which I have alluded, or so far 
 as those proceedings can be shown to be disloyal to 
 the Constitution, or tending to disunion, so far I shall 
 be as ready as any one to bestow on them reprehen- 
 sion and censure. 
 
 Having dwelt long on this convention, and other 
 occurrences of that day, in the hope, probably (which 
 will not be gratified), that I should leave the course 
 of this debate to follow him at length in those excur- 
 sions, the honorable member returned, and attempted 
 another object. He referred to a speech of mine in 
 the other house, the same which I had occasion to 
 allude to myself the other day ; and has quoted a 
 passage or two from it, with a bold though uneasy 
 and laboring air of confidence, as if he had detected in 
 me an inconsistency. Judging from the gentleman's 
 manner, a stranger to the course of the debate and to 
 the point in discussion would have imagined, from so 
 triumphant a tone, that the honorable member was 
 
 1 Hayne was born in Colleton District, and Calhoun in Abbe- 
 ville District, South Carolina. The allusion, however, is prob- 
 ably to the anti-tariff meetings in South Carolina, particularly 
 one at Walterborough, the capital of Colleton District, on June 
 12, 1828, and one at Abbeville Court House, the capital of 
 Abbeville District, on September 25, 1828. 
 
SPEECH OF MR. WEBSTER. 133 
 
 about to overwhelm me with a manifest contradiction. 
 Any one who heard him, and who had not heard what 
 I had in fact previously said, must have thought me 
 routed and discomfited, as the gentleman had pro- 
 mised. Sir, a breath blows all this triumph away. 
 There is not the slightest difference in the purport of 
 my remarks on the two occasions. What I said here 
 on Wednesday is in exact accordance with the opinion 
 expressed by me in the other house in 1825. Though 
 the gentleman had the metaphysics of Hudibras, 
 though he were able 
 
 " to sever and divide 
 A hair 'twixt north and northwest side," 1 
 
 he yet could not insert his metaphysical scissors be- 
 tween the fair reading of my remarks in 1825 and 
 what I said here last week. There is not only no 
 contradiction, no difference, but, in truth, too exact 
 a similarity, both in thought and language, to be 
 entirely in just taste. I had myself quoted the same 
 speech ; had recurred to it, and spoke with it open 
 before me ; and much of what I said was little more 
 than a repetition from it. In order to make finish- 
 ing work with this alleged contradiction, permit me 
 to recur to the origin of this debate, and review its 
 course. This seems expedient, and may be done as 
 well now as at any time. 
 
 Well, then, its historv is this : The honorable mem- 
 ber from Connecticut moved a resolution which con- 
 stitutes the first branch of that which is now before 
 us ; that is to say, a resolution instructing the com- 
 mittee on public lands to inquire into the expediency 
 
 1 " He could distinguish and divide 
 
 A hair 'twixt south and southwest side." 
 
 Butler's Hudibras, pt. i. canto 1, lines 67, 68. 
 
134 THE GREAT DEBATE. 
 
 of limiting for a certain period the sales of the public 
 lands to such as have heretofore been offered for sale ; 
 and whether sundry offices connected with the sales of 
 the lands might not be abolished without detriment to 
 the public service. In the progress of the discussion 
 which arose on this resolution, an honorable member 
 from New Hampshire 1 moved to amend the resolu- 
 tion so as entirely to reverse its object ; that is, to 
 strike it all out, and insert a direction to the commit- 
 tee to inquire into the expediency of adopting mea- 
 sures to hasten the sales, and extend more rapidly the 
 surveys of the lands. 
 
 The honorable member from Maine 2 suggested that 
 both those propositions might well enough go for con- 
 sideration to the committee ; and in this state of the 
 question the member from South Carolina addressed 
 the Senate in his first speech. He rose, he said, to 
 give us his own free thoughts on the public lands. I 
 saw him rise with pleasure, and listened with expec- 
 tation, though before he concluded I was filled with 
 surprise. Certainly I was never more surprised than 
 to find him following up, to the extent he did, the 
 sentiments and opinions which the gentleman from 
 Missouri had put forth, and which it is known he 
 has long entertained. 
 
 I need not repeat at large the general topics of the 
 honorable gentleman's speech. When he said yester- 
 day that he did not attack the Eastern States, he 
 certainly must have forgotten, not only particular 
 remarks, but the whole drift and tenor of his speech ; 
 unless he means, by not attacking, that he did not 
 commence hostilities, but that another had preceded 
 him in the attack. He in the first place disapproved 
 
 1 Levi Woodbury. 2 Pcleg- Sprague. 
 
SPEECH OF MR. WEBSTER. 135 
 
 of the whole course of the government for forty years 
 in regard to its disposition of the public lands ; and 
 then, turning northward and eastward, and fancying 
 he had found a cause for alleged narrowness and nig- 
 gardliness in the " accursed policy " of the tariff, to 
 which he represented the people of New England as 
 wedded, he went on for a full hour witli remarks the 
 whole scope of which was to exhibit the results of this 
 policy in feelings and in measures unfavorable to the 
 West. I thought his opinions unfounded and errone- 
 ous as to the general course of the government, and 
 ventured to reply to them. 
 
 The gentleman had remarked on the analogy of 
 other cases, and quoted the conduct of European gov- 
 ernments towards their own subjects settling on this 
 continent as in point, to show that we had been harsh, 
 and rigid in selling, when we should have given the 
 public lands to settlers without price. I thought the 
 honorable member had suffered his judgment to be 
 betrayed by a false analogy ; that he was struck with, 
 an appearance of resemblance where there was no 
 real similitude. I think so still. The first settlers of 
 North America were enterprising spirits, engaged in 
 private adventure, or fleeing from tyranny at home. 
 When arrived here, they were forgotten by the mother 
 country, or remembered only to be oppressed. Car- 
 ried away again by the appearance of analogy, or 
 struck with the eloquence of the passage, the honora- 
 ble member yesterday observed that the conduct of 
 government toward the Western emigrants, or my re- 
 presentation of it, brought to his mind a celebrated 
 speech in the British Parliament. It was, sir, the 
 speech of Colonel Barre. On the question of the 
 
136 THE GREAT DEBATE. 
 
 Stamp Act, 1 or tea tax, I forget which, Colonel Barre 
 had heard a member on the Treasury bench argue 
 that the people of the United States, being British 
 colonists, planted by the maternal care, nourished by 
 the indulgence and protected by the arms of England, 
 would not grudge their mite to relieve the mother 
 country from the heavy burden under which she 
 groaned. The language of Colonel Barre in reply 
 to this was : " They planted by your care ? Your op- 
 pression planted them in America. They fled from 
 your tyranny, and grew by your neglect of them. So 
 soon as you began to care for them, you showed your 
 care by sending persons to spy out their liberties, mis- 
 represent their character, prey upon them, and eat out 
 their substance." 
 
 And how does the honorable gentleman mean to 
 maintain that language like this is applicable to the 
 conduct of the government of the United States 
 toward the Western emigrants, or to any represen- 
 tation given by me of that conduct ? Were the set- 
 tlers in the West driven thither by our oppression ? 
 Have they flourished only by our neglect of them ? 
 Has the government done nothing but prey upon 
 them and eat out their substance? Sir, this fervid 
 eloquence of the British speaker, just when and where 
 it was uttered, and fit to remain an exercise for the 
 schools, is not a little out of place when it is brought 
 thence to be applied here to the conduct of our own 
 
 1 This was the speech of Colonel Isaac Barre" in reply to Gren- 
 ville during the passage of the Stamp Act {Parliamentary His- 
 tory of England, xvi. 38). In this speech occurred the expression 
 "sons of liberty," which was speedily adopted by the famous 
 society of that name. Barrd was in speech as potent for invec- 
 tive as was Junius with his pen. See also Hayne's Speech (pp. 
 27 n., 28 n.). 
 
SPEECH OF MR. WEBSTER. 137 
 
 country toward her own citizens. From America to 
 England, it may be true; from Americans to their 
 own government, it would be strange language. Let 
 us leave it to be recited and declaimed by our boys 
 against a foreign nation; not introduce it here, to 
 recite and declaim ourselves against our own. 
 
 But I come to the point of the alleged contradic- 
 tion. In my remarks on Wednesday I contended that 
 we could not give away gratuitously all the public 
 lands ; that we held them in trust ; that the govern- 
 ment had solemnly pledged itself to dispose of them 
 as a common fund for the common benefit, and to sell 
 and settle them as its discretion should dictate. Now, 
 sir, what contradiction does the gentleman find to this 
 sentiment in the speech of 1825 ? He quotes me as 
 having then said that we ought not to hug these lands 
 as a very great treasure. Very well, sir, supposing 
 me to be accurately reported in that expression, what 
 is the contradiction ? I have not now said that we 
 should hug these lands as a favorite source of pecu- 
 niary income. No such thing. It is not my view. 
 What I have said, and what I do say, is, that they are 
 a common fund, to be disposed of for the common 
 benefit, to be sold at low prices for the accommoda- 
 tion of settlers, keeping the object of settling the lands 
 as much in view as that of raising money from them. 
 This I say now, and this I have always said. Is this 
 hugging them as a favorite treasure? Is there no 
 difference between hugging and hoarding this fund, 
 on the one hand, as a great treasure, and on the other 
 of disposing of it at low prices, placing the proceeds 
 in the general treasury of the Union ? My opinion 
 is that as much is to be made of the land as fairly and 
 reasonably may be, selling it all the while at such 
 
138 THE GREAT DEBATE. 
 
 rates as to give the fullest effect to settlement. 1 This 
 is not giving it all away to the States, as the gentle- 
 man would propose ; nor is it hugging the fund closely 
 and tenaciously, as a favorite treasure ; but it is, in 
 my judgment, a just and wise policy, perfectly accord- 
 ing with all the various duties which rest on govern- 
 ment. So much for my contradiction. And what is 
 it? Where is the ground of the gentleman's triumph ? 
 What inconsistency in word or doctrine has he been 
 able to detect? Sir, if this be a sample of that dis- 
 comfiture with which the honorable gentleman threat- 
 ened me, commend me to the word " discomfiture ' 
 for the rest of my life. 
 
 But, after all, this is not the point of the debate, 
 and I must now bring the gentleman back to that 
 which is the point. 
 
 The real question between me and him is, Has the 
 doctrine been advanced at the South or at the East 
 that the population of the West should be retarded, 
 or at least need not be hastened, on account of its 
 effect to drain off the people from the Atlantic States ? 
 Is this doctrine, as has been alleged, of Eastern origin ? 
 That is the question. Has the gentleman found any- 
 thing by which he can make good his accusation ? I 
 submit to the Senate that he has entirely failed ; and, 
 as far as this debate has shown, the only person who 
 has advanced such sentiments is a gentleman from 
 South Carolina, and a friend to the honorable member 
 
 1 The whole subject of the public lauds is admirably covered 
 by Worthington C. Ford in Lalor's Cyclopcedia of Political Sci- 
 ence, iii. 460 et seq. See, as well, Benton's Abridgment of Debates, 
 the Reports of the General Land Office and of the Public Land 
 Commission; and particularly the latter's comprehensive work, 
 The Public Domain, prepared by Thomas Donaldson (1884), and 
 American State Papers (volumes relating to public lands). 
 
SPEECH OF MR. WEBSTER. 141 
 
 himself. The honorable gentleman has given no answer 
 to this ; there is none which can be given. This sim- 
 ple fact, while it requires no comment to enforce it, 
 defies all argument to refute it. I could refer to the 
 speeches of another Southern gentleman 1 in years 
 before, of the same general character and to the same 
 effect as that which has been quoted ; but I will not 
 consume the time of the Senate by the reading of 
 them. 
 
 So, then, sir, New England is guiltless of the policy 
 of retarding Western population, and of all envy and 
 jealousy of the growth of the new States. Whatever 
 there be of that policy in the country, no part of it 
 is hers. If it has a local habitation, the honorable 
 member has probably seen by this time where to look 
 for it ; and if it now has received a name, he has 
 himself christened it. 
 
 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 a mere 
 matter of gratuity, I am asked by the honorable gen- 
 tleman on what ground it is that I consent to vote 
 them away in particular instances. How, he inquires, 
 do I reconcile with these professed sentiments my 
 support of measures appropriating portions of the 
 lands to particular roads, particular canals, particu- 
 lar rivers, and particular institutions of education 
 in the West ? This leads, sir, to the real and wide 
 difference in political opinion between the honorable 
 
 1 Probably a reference to George McDuffie, afterward gov- 
 ernor of South Carolina and eulogist of Mr. Hayne. In 1825 
 he made a speech from which Webster quotes in his first speech 
 (of January 20). 
 
138 THE GREAT DEBATE. 
 
 gentleman and myself. On my part, I look upon all 
 these objects as connected with the common good, 
 fairly embraced in its object and its terms ; he, on 
 the contrary, deems them all, if good at all, only local 
 good. This is our difference. The interrogatory, 
 which he proceeded to put, at once explains this dif- 
 ference. " What interest," asks he, " has South Car- 
 olina in a canal in Ohio ? ' Sir, this very question is 
 full of significance. It develops the gentleman's whole 
 political system, and its answer expounds mine. Here 
 we differ. I look upon a road over the Alleghanies, 
 a canal round the falls of the Ohio, or a canal or 
 railway from the Atlantic to the western waters, as 
 being an object large and extensive enough to be 
 fairly said to be for the common benefit. The gentle- 
 man thinks otherwise, and this is the key to his con- 
 struction of the powers of the government. He may 
 well ask what interest has South Carolina in a canal 
 in Ohio. On his system, it is true, she has no inter- 
 est. On that system, Ohio and Carolina are differ- 
 ent Governments and different countries, connected 
 here, it is true, by some slight and ill-defined bond of 
 union, but in all main respects separate and diverse. 
 On that system, Carolina has no more interest in a 
 canal in Ohio than in Mexico. The gentleman, there- 
 fore, only follows out his own principles ; he does no 
 more than arrive at the natural conclusions of his own 
 doctrines ; he only announces the true results of that 
 creed which he has adopted himself, and would per- 
 suade others to adopt, when he thus declares that 
 South Carolina has no interest in a public work in 
 
 Ohio. 
 
 Sir, we narrow-minded people of New England do 
 not reason thus. Our notion of things is entirely 
 
SPEECH OF MR. WEBSTER. 141 
 
 different. We look upon the States, not as separated, 
 but as united. We love to dwell on that union, and 
 on the mutual happiness which it has so much pro- 
 moted, and the common renown which it has so greatly 
 contributed to acquire. In our contemplation, Caro- 
 lina and Ohio are parts of the same country ; States 
 united under the same general government, having 
 interests common, associated, intermingled. In what- 
 ever is within the proper sphere of the constitutional 
 power of this government, we look upon the States 
 as one. We do not impose geographical limits to our 
 patriotic feeling or regard ; we do not follow rivers 
 and mountains and lines of latitude to find boundaries 
 be}^ond which public improvements do not benefit 
 us. We, who come here as agents and representatives 
 of these narrow-minded and selfish men of New Eng- 
 land, consider ourselves as bound to regard with an 
 equal eye the good of the whole, in whatever is within 
 our power of legislation. Sir, if a railroad or canal, 
 beginning in South Carolina and ending in South 
 Carolina, appeared to me to be of national importance 
 and national magnitude, believing, as I do, that the 
 power of government extends to the encouragement of 
 works of that description, if I were to stand up here 
 and ask, What interest has Massachusetts in a rail- 
 road in South Carolina? I should not be willing to 
 face my constituents. These same narrow-minded men 
 would tell me that they had sent me to act for the 
 whole country, and that one who possessed too little 
 comprehension, either of intellect or feeling, one who 
 was not large enough, both in mind and in heart, to 
 embrace the whole, was not fit to be intrusted with 
 the interest of any part. 
 
 Sir, I do not desire to enlarge the powers of the 
 
142 THE GREAT DEBATE. 
 
 government by unjustifiable construction, nor to exer- 
 cise any not within a fair interpretation. But when 
 it is believed that a power does exist, then it is, in 
 my judgment, to be exercised for the general benefit 
 of the whole. So far as respects the exercise of such 
 a power, the States are one. It was the very object 
 of the Constitution to create unity of interests to the 
 extent of the powers of the general government. In 
 war and peace we are one ; in commerce one ; be- 
 cause the authority of the general government reaches 
 to war and peace, and to the regulation of commerce. 
 I have never seen any more difficulty in erecting 
 lighthouses on the lakes than on the ocean ; in im- 
 proving the harbors of inland seas than if they were 
 within the ebb and flow of the tide ; or in removing 
 obstructions in the vast streams of the West, more 
 than in any work to facilitate commerce on the At- 
 lantic coast. If there be any power for one, there is 
 power also for the other ; and they are all and equally 
 for the common good of the country. 
 
 There are other objects apparently more local, or 
 the benefit of which is less general, towards which, 
 nevertheless, I have concurred with others to give aid 
 by donations of land. It is proposed to construct a 
 road in or through one of the new States in which 
 this government possesses large quantities of land. 
 Have the United States no right, or, as a great and 
 untaxed proprietor, are they under no obligation to 
 contribute to an object thus calculated to promote the 
 common good of all the proprietors, themselves in- 
 cluded ? And even with respect to education, which 
 is the extreme case, let the question be considered. 
 In the first place, as we have seen, it was made matter 
 of compact with these States that they should do 
 
SPEECH OF MR. WEBSTER. 143 
 
 their part to promote education. In the next place, 
 our whole system of land laws proceeds on the idea 
 that education is for the common good ; 1 because, in 
 every division, a certain portion is uniformly reserved 
 and appropriated for the use of schools. And, finally, 
 have not these new States singularly strong claims, 
 founded on the ground already stated, that the gov- 
 ernment is a great untaxed j)roprietor in the own- 
 ership of the soil ? It is a consideration of great 
 importance that probably there is in no part of the 
 country or of the world so great a call for the means of 
 education as in those new States, owing to the vast 
 number of persons within those ages in which education 
 and instruction are usually received, if received at all. 
 This is the natural consequence of recency of settle- 
 ment and rapid increase. The census of these States 
 shows how great a proportion of the whole population 
 occupies the classes between infancy and manhood. 
 These are the wide fields, and here is the deep and 
 quick soil for the seeds of knowledge and virtue ; and 
 this is the favored season, the springtime for sowing 
 them. Let them be disseminated without stint. Let 
 them be scattered with a bountiful hand broadcast. 
 Whatever the government can fairly do towards these 
 objects, in my opinion, ought to be done. 
 
 These, sir, are the grounds, succinctly stated, on 
 which my votes for grants of lands for particular 
 objects rest ; while I maintain at the same time that 
 it is all a common fund, for the common benefit. And 
 reasons like these, I presume, have influenced the 
 votes of other gentlemen from New England. Those 
 
 1 See G. W. Knight's " History and Management of Land 
 granted for Education " (American Historical Association Papers, 
 vol. i. no. 3, 1884), which contains a full list of books on this topic. 
 
144 THE GREAT DEBATE. 
 
 who have a different view of the powers of the gov- 
 ernment, of course, come to different conclusions on 
 these as on other questions. I observed, when speak- 
 ing on this subject before, that if we looked to any 
 measure, whether for a road, a canal, or anything else' 
 intended for the improvement of the West, it would 
 be found that, if the New England ayes were struck 
 out of the list of votes, the Southern noes would al- 
 ways have rejected the measure. The truth of this 
 has not been denied and cannot be denied. In stat- 
 ing this I thought it just to ascribe it to the constitu- 
 tional scruples of the South, rather than to any other 
 less favorable or less charitable cause. But no sooner 
 had I done this than the honorable gentleman asks if 
 I reproach him and his friends with their constitu- 
 tional scruples? Sir, I reproach nobody. I stated 
 a fact, and gave the most respectful reason for it that 
 occurred to me. The gentleman cannot deny the fact ; 
 he may, if he choose, disclaim the reason. It is not 
 long since I had occasion, in presenting a petition 
 from his own State, 1 to account for its being intrusted 
 to my hands, by saying that the constitutional opin- 
 ions of the gentleman and his worthy colleague pre- 
 vented them from supporting it. Sir, did I state this 
 as a matter of reproach? Far from it. Did I at- 
 tempt to find any other cause than an honest one for 
 these scruples? Sir, I did not. It did not become 
 me to doubt or to insinuate that the gentleman had 
 either changed his sentiments, or that he had made 
 up a set of constitutional opinions accommodated to 
 
 1 From the South Carolina Canal and Railroad Company, pre- 
 sented January 18, 1830, and asking- Congress to authorize a 
 subscription on the part of government of 25,000 shares of the 
 capital stock. 
 
SPEECH OF MR. WEBSTER. 145 
 
 any particular combination of political occurrences. 
 Had I done so, I should have felt that, while I was 
 entitled to little credit in thus questioning other peo- 
 ple's motives, I justified the whole world in suspecting 
 my own. But how has the gentleman returned this 
 respect for others' opinions? His own candor and 
 justice, — how have they been exhibited towards the 
 motives of others while he has been at so much pains 
 to maintain what nobody has disputed, — the purity 
 of his own? Why, sir, he has asked ivhen, and how, 
 and why New England votes were found going for 
 measures favorable to the West ; he has demanded 
 to be informed whether all this did not begin in 1825, 
 and while the election of President was still pending. 
 Sir, to these questions retort would be justified ; 
 and it is both cogent and at hand. Nevertheless, I 
 will answer the inquiry, not by retort, but by facts. 
 I will tell the gentleman when, and how, and why 
 New England has supported measures favorable to 
 the West. I have already referred to the early his- 
 tory of the government, to the first acquisition of the 
 lands, to the original laws for disposing of them, and 
 for governing the territories where they lie ; and have 
 shown the influence of New England men and New 
 England principles in all these leading measures. I 
 should not be pardoned were I to go over that ground 
 a,o;ain. Coming to more recent times, and to mea- 
 sures of a less general character, I have endeavored 
 to prove that everything of this kind, designed for 
 Western improvement, has depended on the votes of 
 New England ; all this is true beyond the power of 
 contradiction. And now, sir, there are two measures 
 to which I will refer, not so ancient as to belong to 
 the early history of the public lands, and not so recent 
 
146 THE GREAT DEBATE. 
 
 as to be on this side of the period when the gentleman 
 charitably imagines a new direction may have been 
 given to New England feeling and New England 
 votes. These measures, and the New England votes 
 in support of them, may be taken as samples and 
 specimens of all the rest. 
 
 In 1820 (observe, Mr. President, in 1820), the 
 people of the West besought Congress for a reduction 
 in the price of lands. In favor of that reduction, 
 New England, with a delegation of forty members in 
 the other house, gave thirty-three votes, and one only 
 against it. The four Southern States, with more than 
 fifty members, gave thirty-two votes for it and seven 
 against it. Again, in 1821 (observe again, sir, the 
 time), the law passed for the relief of the purchasers of 
 the public lands. This was a measure of vital impor- 
 tance to the West, and more especially to the South- 
 west. It authorized the relinquishment of contracts 
 for lands which had been entered into at high prices, 
 and a reduction in other cases of not less than thirty- 
 seven and a half per cent, on the purchase-money. 
 Many millions of dollars — six or seven, I believe, 
 probably much more — were relinquished by this law. 
 On this bill, New England, with her forty members, 
 gave more affirmative votes than the four Southern 
 States, with their fifty-two or fifty-three members. 
 These two are far the most important general mea- 
 sures respecting the public lands which have been 
 adopted within the last twenty years. They took 
 place in 1820 and 1821. That is the time when. 1 
 
 1 In 1821 memorials were presented for the relief of settlers. 
 At a minimum, set in 1800, of two dollars an acre, of which the 
 whole sum was to be paid within four years, there was to be a 
 forfeiture of all payments in case of delinquency. Owing to 
 
SPEECH OF MR. WEBSTER. 147 
 
 As to the manner how, the gentleman already sees 
 that it was by voting in solid column for the required 
 relief. And, lastly, as to the cause why, I tell the 
 gentleman it was because the members from New 
 England thought the measures just and salutary ; 
 because they entertained towards the West neither 
 envy, hatred, nor malice ; because they deemed it 
 becoming them, as just and enlightened men, to meet 
 the exigency which had arisen in the West with the 
 appropriate measure of relief ; because they felt it 
 due to their own characters, and the characters of 
 their New England predecessors in this government, 
 to act towards the new States in the spirit of a liberal, 
 patronizing, magnanimous policy. So much, sir, for 
 the cause why ; and I hope that by this time, sir, the 
 honorable gentleman is satisfied ; if not, I do not 
 know when, or how, or why he ever will be. 
 
 Having recurred to these two important measures 
 in answer to the gentleman's inquiries, I must now beg 
 permission to go back to a period somewhat earlier, 
 for the purpose of still further showing how much, or 
 rather how little, reason there is for the gentleman's 
 insinuation that political hopes or fears, or party asso- 
 ciations, were the grounds of these New England votes. 
 And after what has been said, I hope it may be for- 
 given me if I allude to some political opinions and 
 votes of my own, of very little public importance cer- 
 tainly, but which, from the time at which they were 
 
 speculations, in which small payments only had been made, 
 depression and then failures ensued. More than twenty-three 
 millions of dollars were owed the government. On this debt 
 extensions had been made, and in 1820 the minimum price was 
 reduced to $1.25 an acre, and the credit changed to a cash sys- 
 tem. Settlers were encouraged to buy of government at this 
 reduced price. 
 
148 THE GREAT DEBATE. 
 
 given and expressed, may pass for good witnesses on 
 this occasion. 
 
 This government, Mr. President, from its origin to 
 the peace of 1815, had been too much engrossed with 
 various other important concerns to be able to turn its 
 thoughts inward, and look to the development of its 
 vast internal resources. In the early part of Presi- 
 dent Washington's administration, it was fully occu- 
 pied with completing its own organization, providing 
 for the public debt, defending the frontiers, and main- 
 taining domestic peace. Before the termination of 
 that administration, the fires of the French Revolu- 
 tion blazed forth, as from a new-opened volcano, and 
 the whole breadth of the ocean did not secure us from 
 its effects. The smoke and the cinders reached us, 
 though not the burning lava. Difficult and agitating 
 questions, embarrassing to government and dividing 
 public opinion, sprung out of the new state of our 
 foreign relations, and were succeeded by others, and 
 yet again by others, equally embarrassing and equally 
 exciting division and discord, through the long series 
 of twenty years, till they finally issued in the war 
 with England. Down to the close of that war, no 
 distinct, marked, and deliberate attention had been 
 given, or could have been given, to the internal condi- 
 tion of the country, its capacities of improvement, or 
 the constitutional power of the government in regard 
 to objects connected with such improvement. 
 
 The peace, Mr. President, brought about an entirely 
 new and a most interesting state of things ; it opened 
 to us other prospects and suggested other duties. We 
 ourselves were changed, and the whole world was 
 changed. The pacification of Europe, after June, 
 1815, assumed a firm and permanent aspect. The 
 
SPEECH OF MR. WEBSTER. 149 
 
 nations evidently manifested that they were disposed 
 for peace. Some agitation of the waves might be ex- 
 pected even after the storm had subsided, but the tend- 
 ency was, strongly and rapidly, toward settled repose. 
 
 It so happened, sir, that I was at that time a mem- 
 ber of Congress, and, like others, naturally turned my 
 thoughts to the contemplation of the recently altered 
 condition of the country and of the world. It ap- 
 peared plainly enough to me, as well as to wiser and 
 more experienced men, that the policy of the govern- 
 ment would naturally take a start in a new direction ; 
 because new directions would necessarily be given to 
 the pursuits and occupations of the people. We had 
 pushed our commerce far and fast, under the advan- 
 tage of a neutral flag. But there were now no longer 
 flags, either neutral or belligerent. The harvest of 
 neutrality had been great, but we had gathered it all. 
 With the peace of Europe, it was obvious there would 
 spring up in her circle of nations a revived and invig- 
 orated spirit of trade, and a new activity in all the 
 business and objects of civilized life. Hereafter, our 
 commercial gains were to be earned only by success 
 in a close and intense competition. Other nations 
 would produce for themselves, and carry for them- 
 selves, and manufacture for themselves, to the full 
 extent of their abilities. The crops of our plains 
 would no longer sustain European armies, nor our 
 ships longer supply those whom war had rendered 
 unable to supply themselves. It was obvious that, 
 under these circumstances, the country would begin 
 to survey itself, and to estimate its own capacity of 
 improvement. 
 
 And this improvement, — how was it to be accom- 
 plished, and who was to accomplish it ? We were ten 
 
150 THE GREAT DEBATE. 
 
 or twelve millions of people, spread over almost half 
 a world. We were more than twenty States, some 
 stretching along the same seaboard, some along the 
 same line of inland frontier, and others on opposite 
 banks of the same vast rivers. Two considerations at 
 once presented themselves with great force in look- 
 ing at this state of things. One was, that that great 
 branch of improvement which consisted in furnishing 
 new facilities of intercourse necessarily ran into dif- 
 ferent States in every leading instance, and would 
 benefit the citizens of all such States. No one State, 
 therefore, in such cases, would assume the whole ex- 
 pense, nor was the cooperation of several States to be 
 expected. Take the instance of the Delaware break- 
 water. 1 It will cost several millions of money. Would 
 Pennsylvania alone ever have constructed it? Cer- 
 tainly never, w r hile this Union lasts, because it is 
 not for her sole benefit. Would Pennsylvania, New 
 Jersey, and Delaware have united to accomplish it at 
 their joint expense ? Certainly not, for the same rea- 
 son. It could not be done, therefore, but by the gen- 
 eral government. The same may be said of the large 
 inland undertakings, except that, in them, government, 
 instead of bearing the whole expense, cooperates with 
 others who bear a part. The other consideration is 
 that the United States have the means. They enjoy 
 the revenues derived from commerce, and the States 
 have no abundant and easy sources of public income. 
 The custom-houses fill the general treasury, while the 
 
 1 In the first report on plans for a harbor near the mouth of 
 Delaware Bay, made on February 2, 1829, by a commission 
 appointed by Congress, Cape Henlopen was selected as the site 
 of a breakwater. Work was begun in 1829, under the direction 
 of William Strickland. On November 4, 1869, the work was 
 finished according to the original project. 
 
SPEECH OF MR. WEBSTER. 151 
 
 States have scanty resources, except by resort to heavy 
 
 direct taxes. 
 
 Under this view of things, I thought it necessary to 
 settle, at least for myself, some definite notions with 
 respect to the powers of the government in regard to 
 internal affairs. It may not savor too much of self- 
 commendation to remark that, with this object, I con- 
 sidered the Constitution, its judicial construction, its 
 contemporaneous exposition, and the whole history of 
 the legislation of Congress under it ; and I arrived at 
 the conclusion that government had power to accom- 
 plish sundry objects, or aid in their accomplishment, 
 which are now commonly spoken of as internal 
 improvements. That conclusion, sir, may have been 
 right, or it may have been wrong. I am not about 
 to argue the grounds of it at large. I say only that it 
 was adopted and acted on even so early as in 181b. 
 Yes, Mr. President, I made up my opinion, and deter- 
 mined on my intended course of political conduction 
 these subjects, in the Fourteenth Congress, in 1816 
 And now, Mr. President, I have further to say that 1 
 made up these opinions, and entered on this course of 
 political conduct, Teucro duce. 1 Yes, sir, I pursued 
 i " Nil desperandum Teucro duce et auspice Teucro " (no- 
 thing is to be despaired of under the leadership and auspices ol 
 Teucer) is from Horace's Odes, book i. carmen vn. hue 27. 
 Gales's transcript from the shorthand report reads as follows: 
 « I made up my mind on that subject, te duce. Mrs Jared 
 Sparks, daughter of Senator Silsbee, Mr. Webster s colleague, 
 in a communication to the Boston Transcript of June 5, 188. 
 says that Mr. Calhoun challenged the expression te duce and 
 that Mr. Webster denied any intentional allusion to the chair, 
 and affirmed that his expression was Teucro duce. To whom he 
 did allude is uncertain. Teucer, a famous archer, was the son ot 
 Telamon and step-brother of A jax. Regarding Mr. Calhoun s 
 interruption see the note on p. 159. 
 
152 THE GREAT DEBATE. 
 
 in all this a South Carolina track on the doctrines of 
 internal improvement. South Carolina, as she was 
 then represented in the other house, set forth in 1816 
 under a fresh and leading breeze, and I was among 
 the followers. But if my leader sees new lights and 
 turns a sharp corner, unless I see new lights also, I 
 keep straight on in the same path. I repeat that 
 leading gentlemen from South Carolina were first 
 and foremost in behalf of the doctrines of internal 
 improvements, when those doctrines came first to be 
 considered and acted upon in Congress. The debate 
 on the bank question, on the tariff of 1816, and on 
 the direct tax will show who was who, and what was 
 what, at that time. 
 
 The tariff of 1816 (one of the plain cases of oppres- 
 sion and usurpation, from which, if the government 
 does not recede, individual States may justly secede 
 from the government) is, sir, in truth, a South Caro- 
 lina tariff, supported by South Carolina votes. But 
 for those votes it could not have passed in the form 
 in which it did pass ; whereas, if it had depended on 
 Massachusetts votes, it would have been lost. Does 
 not the honorable gentleman well know all this? 
 There are certainly those who do, full well, know it 
 all. I do not say this to reproach South Carolina. I 
 only state the fact ; and I think it will appear to be 
 true that, among the earliest and boldest advocates 
 of the tariff, as a measure of protection, and on the 
 express ground of protection, were leading gentlemen 
 of South Carolina in Congress. I did not then, and 
 cannot now, understand their language in any other 
 sense. While this tariff of 1816 was under discussion 
 in the House of Representatives, an honorable gen- 
 tleman from Georgia, 1 now of this house, moved to 
 
 1 John Forsyth. 
 
* SPEECH OF MR. WEBSTER. 153 
 
 reduce the proposed duty on cotton. He failed by 
 four votes, South Carolina giving three votes (enough 
 to have turned the scale) against his motion. The 
 act, sir, then passed, and received on its passage the 
 support of a majority of the Eepresentatives of South 
 Carolina present and voting. This act is the first in 
 the order of those now denounced as plain usurpations. 
 We see it daily in the list, by the side of those of 1824 
 and 1828, as a case of manifest oppression, justifying 
 disunion. I put it home to the honorable member 
 from South Carolina, that his own State was not only 
 " art and part" in this measure, but the causa cau- 
 sans. 1 Without her aid, this seminal principle of mis- 
 chief, this root of Upas, could not have been planted. 
 I have already said, and it is true, that this act pro- 
 ceeded on the ground of protection. It interfered 
 directly with existing interests of great value and 
 amount. It cut up the Calcutta cotton trade by the 
 roots, but it passed nevertheless, and it passed on the 
 principle of protecting manufactures, on the principle 
 against free trade, on the principle opposed to that 
 which lets us alone? 
 
 Such, Mr. President, were the opinions of impor- 
 tant and leading gentlemen from South Carolina on 
 the subject of internal improvement in 1816. I went 
 out of Congress the next year, and, returning again 
 in 1823, thought I found South Carolina where I had 
 left her. I really supposed that all things remained 
 as they were, and that the South Carolina doctrine 
 
 i The real effective cause. (Stroud's Judicial Dictionary.) 
 And so the cause of the thing causing is the cause of the effect. 
 See Massachusetts "Reports, 4 Gray, 398. 
 
 2 This allusion to the laissez-faire theory could not have been 
 so obvious then as now. 
 
154 THE GREAT DEBATE. * 
 
 of internal improvements would be defended by the 
 same eloquent voices, and the same strong arms, as 
 formerly. In the lapse of these six years, it is true, 
 political associations had assumed a new aspect and 
 new divisions. A strong party had arisen in the 
 South hostile to the doctrine of internal improve- 
 ments. Anti-consolidation was the flag under which 
 tli is party fought ; and its supporters inveighed against 
 internal improvements, much after the manner in 
 which the honorable gentleman has now inveighed 
 against them, as part and parcel of the system of 
 consolidation. Whether this party arose in South 
 Carolina itself, or in the neighborhood, is more than 
 I know. I think the latter. However that may have 
 been, there were those found in South Carolina ready 
 to make war upon it, and who did make intrepid war 
 upon it. Names being regarded as things in such 
 controversies, they bestowed on the anti-improvement 
 gentlemen the appellation of Radicals. Yes, sir, the 
 appellation of Radicals, as a term of distinction ap- 
 plicable and applied to those who denied the liberal 
 doctrines of internal improvement, originated, accord- 
 ing to the best of my recollection, somewhere between 
 North Carolina and Georgia. Well, sir, these mis- 
 chievous Radicals were to be put down, and the strong 
 arm of South Carolina was stretched out to put them 
 down. About this time I returned to Congress. The 
 battle with the Radicals had been fought, and our 
 South Carolina champions of the doctrines of internal 
 improvement had nobly maintained their ground, and 
 were understood to have achieved a victory. We 
 looked upon them as conquerors. They had driven 
 back the enemy with discomfiture, — a thing, by the 
 way, sir, which is not always performed when it is 
 promised. 
 
SPEECH OF MR. WEBSTER. 155 
 
 A gentleman to whom I have already referred in 
 this debate had come into Congress, during my ab- 
 sence from it, from South Carolina, and had brought 
 with him a high reputation for ability. He came 
 from a school with which we had been acquainted, 
 et noscitur a sociis. 1 I hold in my hand, sir, a 
 printed speech of this distinguished gentleman 2 on 
 " Internal Improvements," delivered about the period 
 to which I now refer, and printed with a few introduc- 
 tory remarks upon consolidation, in which, sir, I think 
 he quite consolidated the arguments of his opponents, 
 the Radicals, if to crush be to consolidate. I give 
 you a short but significant quotation from these re- 
 marks. He is speaking of a pamphlet then recently 
 published, entitled " Consolidation ; " and, having al- 
 luded to the question of renewing the charter of the 
 former Bank of the United States, he says : " More- 
 over, in the early history of parties, and when Mr. 
 Crawford advocated a renewal of the old charter, it 
 was considered a Federal measure ; which internal 
 improvements never was, as this author erroneously 
 states. This latter measure originated, in the admin- 
 istration of Mr. Jefferson, with the appropriation for 
 the Cumberland Road, and was first proposed, as a 
 system, by Mr. Calhoun, and carried through the 
 House of Representatives by a large majority of the 
 Republicans, including almost every one of the lead- 
 ing men who carried us through the late war." 
 
 So, then, internal improvement 3 is not one of the 
 Federal heresies. One paragraph more, sir : — 
 
 i Colloquially, " And he is known by the company he keeps." 
 
 2 Mr. McDuffie. See page 139. 
 
 3 The policy of internal improvements, the espousal of which 
 contributed largely to the overturn of the administration of the 
 
156 THE GREAT DEBATE. 
 
 " The author in question, not content with denoun- 
 cing as Federalists General Jackson, Mr. Adams, Mr. 
 Calhoun, and the majority of the South Carolina dele- 
 gation in Congress, modestly extends the denuncia- 
 tion to Mr. Monroe and the v/hole Republican party. 
 Here are his words : ' During the administration of 
 Mr. Monroe, much had passed which the Republican 
 party would be glad to approve if they could ! ! But 
 the principal feature, and that which has chiefly eli- 
 cited these observations, is the renewal of the system 
 of internal improvements.' Now this measure 
 was adopted by a vote of 115 to 86 of a Republican 
 Congress, and sanctioned by a Republican President. 
 Who, then, is this author who assumes the high pre- 
 rogative of denouncing, in the name of the Republican 
 party, the Republican administration of the country? 
 A denunciation including within its sweep Calhoun, 
 Lowndes, and Cheves, — men who will be regarded 
 as the brightest ornaments of South Carolina, and the 
 strongest pillars of the Rejmblican party, as long as 
 the late war shall be remembered, and talents and 
 patriotism shall be regarded as the proper objects of 
 the admiration and gratitude of a free people ! ! ' 
 
 Such are the opinions, sir, which were maintained 
 by South Carolina gentlemen in the House of Repre- 
 sentatives, on the subject of internal improvements, 
 when I took my seat there as a member from Mas- 
 sachusetts in 1823. But this is not all. We had a 
 bill before us, and passed it in that House, entitled 
 " An act to procure the necessary surveys, plans, and 
 estimates upon the subject of roads and canals." It 
 authorized the President to cause surveys and esti- 
 
 second Adams, is concisely treated by Alexander Johnston in an 
 article in Lalor's Cyclopedia of Political Science, ii. 568. 
 
SPEECH OF MR. WEBSTER. 157 
 
 mates to be made of the routes of such roads and 
 canals as he might deem of national importance in a 
 commercial or military point of view, or for the trans- 
 portation of the mail, and appropriated thirty thou- 
 sand dollars out of the treasury to defray the expense 
 This act, though preliminary in its nature, covered 
 the whole ground. It took for granted the complete 
 power of internal improvement, as far as any ot its 
 advocates had ever contended for it. Having passed 
 the other house, the bill came up to the Senate, 
 and was here considered and debated in April, 1S24. 
 The honorable member from South Carolina was a 
 member of the Senate at that time. While the lull 
 was under consideration here, a motion was made to 
 add the following proviso: "Provided, That nothing 
 herein contained shall be construed to affirm or admit 
 a power in Congress, on their own authority, to make 
 roads or canals within any of the States of the Union. 
 The yeas and nays were taken on this proviso, and 
 the honorable member voted in the negative! ine 
 
 proviso failed. 
 
 A motion was then made to add this proviso, viz.: 
 « Provided, That the faith of the United States is 
 hereby pledged that no money shall ever be expended 
 for roads or canals, except it shall be among the 
 several States, and in the same proportion as direct 
 taxes are laid and assessed by the provisions of the 
 Constitution." The honorable member voted against 
 this proviso also, and it failed. The bill was then 
 put on its passage, and the honorable member voted 
 for it, and it passed and became a law. _ _ _ 
 
 Now, it strikes me, sir, that there is no maintaining 
 these votes but upon the power of internal improve- 
 ment, in its broadest sense. In truth, these bills for 
 
158 THE GREAT DEBATE. 
 
 surveys and estimates have always been considered as 
 test questions ; they show who is for and who against 
 internal improvement. This law itself went the whole 
 length, and assumed the full and complete power. 
 The gentleman's votes sustained that power in every 
 form in which the various propositions to amend pre- 
 sented it. He went for the entire and unrestrained 
 authority, without consulting the States, and without 
 agreeing to any proportionate distribution. And now 
 suffer me to remind you, Mr. President, that it is this 
 very same power, thus sanctioned in every form by 
 the gentleman's own opinion, which is so plain and 
 manifest a usurpation that the State of South Caro- 
 lina is supposed to be justified in refusing submission 
 to any laws carrying the power into effect. Truly, 
 sir, is not this a little too hard? May we not crave 
 some mercy, under favor and protection of the gentle- 
 man's own authority? Admitting that a road or a 
 canal must be written down flat usurpation as was 
 ever committed, may we find no mitigation in our 
 respect for his place, and his vote, as one that knows 
 the law ? 
 
 The tariff, which South Carolina had an efficient 
 hand in establishing in 1816, and this asserted power 
 of internal improvement advanced by her in the same 
 year, and, as we have seen, approved and sanctioned 
 by her representatives in 1824, — these two measures 
 are the great grounds on which she is now thought to 
 be justified in breaking up the Union, if she sees fit 
 to break it up ! t 
 
 I may now safely say, I think, that we have had 
 the authority of leading and distinguished gentlemen 
 from South Carolina in support of the doctrine of 
 internal improvement. I repeat that, up to 1824, I, 
 
SPEECH OE MR. WEBSTER. 159 
 
 for one, f allowed South Carolina ; but when that star 
 in its ascension veered off in an unexpected direction, 
 I relied on its light no longer. [Here the Vice-Presi- 
 dent said : " Does the chair understand the gentle- 
 man from Massachusetts to say that the person now 
 occupying the chair of the Senate has changed his 
 opinions on the subject of internal improvements?"] l 
 From nothing ever said to me, sir, have I had rea- 
 son to know of any change in the opinions of the per- 
 son filling the chair of the Senate. If such change 
 has taken place, I regret it. I speak generally of the 
 State of South Carolina. Individuals we know there 
 are who hold opinions favorable to the power. An 
 application for its exercise in behalf of a public work 
 in South Carolina itself is now pending, I believe, in 
 the other house, presented by members from that 
 State. 
 
 I have thus, sir, perhaps not without some tedious- 
 ness of detail, shown, if I am in error on the subjects 
 of internal improvement, how and in what company 
 I fell into that error. If I am wrong, it is apparent 
 who misled me. 
 
 I go to other remarks of the honorable member ; 
 and I have to complain of an entire misapprehension 
 of what I said on the subject of the national debt, 
 though I can hardly perceive how any one could mis- 
 
 1 This interruption on the part of Mr. Calhoun was unparlia- 
 mentary. The Vice-President's functions are to enforce rules 
 and preserve order, and to vote in case of a tie, but he may not 
 join in debate. Senator Forsyth, who was interrupted by the 
 chair on January 25, 1832, when the confirmation of Van Buren 
 as minister to England was under consideration, rebuked Mr. 
 Calhoun. Since that occurrence, there has been no interference 
 with the discussions of the Senate on the part of the presiding 
 officer. See also note on page 151. 
 
160 THE GREAT DEBATE. 
 
 understand me. What I said was, not that I wished 
 to put off the payment of the debt, but, on the con- 
 trary, that I had always voted for every measure for 
 its reduction as uniformly as the gentleman himself. 
 He seems to claim the exclusive merit of a disposi- 
 tion to reduce the public charge. I do not allow it 
 to him. As a debt, I was — I am for paying it, be- 
 cause it is a charge on our finances, and on the indus- 
 try of the country. But I observed that I thought I 
 perceived a morbid fervor on that subject, an exces- 
 sive anxiety to pay off the debt, not so much because 
 it is a debt simply, as because, while it lasts, it fur- 
 nishes one objection to disunion. It is, while it con- 
 tinues, a tie of common interest. I did not impute 
 such motives to the honorable member himself, but 
 that there is such a feeling in existence I have not a 
 particle of doubt. The most I said was that, if one 
 effect of the debt was to strengthen our Union, that 
 effect itself was not regretted by me, however much 
 others might regret it. The gentleman has not seen 
 how to reply to this otherwise than by supposing me 
 to have advanced the doctrine that a national debt is 
 a national blessing. Others, I must hope, will find 
 much less difficulty in understanding me. I distinctly 
 and pointedly cautioned the honorable member not to 
 understand me as expressing an opinion favorable to 
 the continuance of the debt. I repeated this caution, 
 and repeated it more than once ; but it was thrown 
 away. 
 
 On yet another point I was still more unaccount- 
 ably misunderstood. The gentleman had harangued 
 against "consolidation." I told him, in .reply, that 
 there was one kind of consolidation to which I was 
 attached, and that was the consolidation of our Union ; 
 
SPEECH OF MR. WEBSTER. 161 
 
 that this was precisely that consolidation to which I 
 feared others were not attached, and that such con- 
 solidation was the very end of the Constitution, the 
 leading object, as they had informed us themselves, 
 which its framers had kept in view. I turned to 
 their communication 1 and read their very words, "the 
 consolidation of the Union," and expressed my devo- 
 tion to this sort of consolidation. I said, in terms, 
 that I wished not in the slightest degree to augment 
 the powers of this government ; that my object was to 
 preserve, not to enlarge ; and that by consolidating 
 the Union I understood no more than the strengthen- 
 ing of the Union and perpetuating it. Having been 
 thus explicit, having thus read from the printed book 
 the precise words which I adopted as expressing my 
 own sentiments, it passes comprehension how any man 
 could understand me as contending for an extension 
 of the powers of the government, or for consolidation 
 in that odious sense in which it means an accumula- 
 tion in the federal government of the powers properly 
 belonging to the States. 
 
 I repeat, sir, that, in adopting the sentiment of the 
 framers of the Constitution, I read their language 
 audibly and word for word ; and I pointed out the 
 distinction, just as fully as I have now done, between 
 the consolidation of the Union and that other obnox- 
 ious consolidation which I disclaimed. And yet the 
 honorable member misunderstood me. The gentle- 
 man had said that he wished for no fixed revenue, — 
 not a shilling. If by a word he could convert the 
 Capitol into gold, he would not do it. Why all this 
 fear of revenue ? Why, sir, because, as the gentle- 
 
 1 The letter of the Federal Convention to the Congress of 
 the Confederation, transmitting the plan of the Constitution. 
 
162 THE GREAT DEBATE. 
 
 man told us, it tends to consolidation. Now this can 
 mean neither more nor less than that a common reve- 
 nue is a common interest, and that all common inter- 
 ests tend to preserve the union of the States. I 
 confess I like that tendency; if the gentleman dis- 
 likes it, he is right in deprecating a shilling of fixed 
 revenue. So much, sir, for consolidation. 
 
 As well as I recollect the course of his remarks, the 
 honorable gentleman next recurred to the subject of 
 the tariff. He did not doubt the word must be of un- 
 pleasant sound to me, and proceeded, with an effort 
 neither new nor attended with new success, to involve 
 me and my votes in inconsistenc}^ and contradiction. 
 I am happy the honorable gentleman has furnished 
 me an opportunity of a timely remark or two on that 
 subject. I was glad he approached it, for it is a 
 question I enter upon without fear from anybody. 
 The strenuous toil of the gentleman lias been to raise 
 an inconsistency between my dissent to the tariff in 
 1824 and my vote in 1828. It is labor lost. He 
 pays undeserved compliment to my speech in 1824 ; 
 but this is to raise me high, that my fall, as he would 
 have it, in 1828, may be more signal. Sir, there was 
 no fall. Between the ground I stood on in 1824 and 
 that I took in 1828, there was not only no precipice, 
 but no declivity. It was a change of position to meet 
 new chxuimstances, but on the same level. A plain 
 tale explains the whole matter. In 1816 I had not 
 acquiesced in the tariff, then supported by South 
 Carolina. To some parts of it, especially, I felt and 
 expressed great repugnance. I held the same opin- 
 ions in 1820 at the meeting in Faneuil Hall, to which 
 the gentleman has alluded. I said then, and say 
 now, that, as an original question, the authority of 
 
SPEECH OF MR. WEBSTER. 163 
 
 Congress to exercise the revenue power, with direct 
 reference to the protection of manufactures, is a 
 questionable authority, far more questionable, in my 
 judgment, than the power of internal improvements. 
 I must confess, sir, that in one respect some impres- 
 sion has been made on my opinions lately. Mr. Madi- 
 son's publication has put the power in a very strong 
 light. He has placed it, I must acknowledge, upon 
 grounds of construction and argument which seem 
 impregnable. But, even if the power were doubtful 
 on the face of the Constitution itself, it had been 
 assumed and asserted in the first revenue law ever 
 passed under that same Constitution ; and on this 
 ground, as a matter settled by contemporaneous prac- 
 tice, I had refrained from expressing the opinion that 
 the tariff laws transcended constitutional limits, as the 
 gentleman supposes. What I did say at Faneuil Hall, 
 as far as I now remember, was that this was origi- 
 nally matter of doubtful construction. The gentleman 
 himself, I suppose, thinks there is no doubt about it, 
 and that the laws are plainly against the Constitution. 
 Mr. Madison's letters already referred to contain, in 
 my judgment, by far the most able exposition extant 
 of this part of the Constitution. He has satisfied me, 
 so far as the practice of the government had left it an 
 open question. 
 
 With a great majority of the Representatives of 
 Massachusetts, I voted against the tariff of 1824. 
 My reasons were then given, and I will not now 
 repeat them. But, notwithstanding our dissent, the 
 great States of New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and 
 Kentucky went for the bill, in almost unbroken col- 
 umn, and it passed. Congress and the President sanc- 
 tioned it, and it became the law of the land. What, 
 
164 THE GREAT DEBATE. 
 
 then, were we to do? Our only option was either to 
 fall in with this settled course of public policy, and 
 accommodate ourselves to it as well as we could, or to 
 embrace the South Carolina doctrine, and talk of nul- 
 lifying the statute by state interference. 
 
 This last alternative did not suit our principles, and 
 of course we adopted the former. In 1827 the sub- 
 ject came again before Congress, on a proposition to 
 afford some relief to the branch of wool and woolens. 
 We looked upon the system of protection as being 
 fixed and settled. The law of 1824 remained. It 
 had gone into full operation, and, in regard to some 
 objects intended by it, perhaps most of them had 
 produced all its expected effects. No man proposed 
 to repeal it, no man attempted to renew the general 
 contest on its principle. But, owing to subsequent 
 and unforeseen occurrences, the benefit intended by 
 it to wool and woolen fabrics had not been realized. 
 Events not known here when the law passed had 
 taken place which defeated its object in that partic- 
 ular respect. A measure was accordingly, brought 
 forward to meet this precise deficiency, to remedy 
 this particular defect. It was limited to wool and 
 woolens. Was ever anything more reasonable ? If 
 the policy of the tariff laws had become established 
 in principle as the permanent policy of the govern- 
 ment, should they not be revised and amended, and 
 made equal, like other laws, as exigencies should arise 
 or justice require ? Because we had doubted about 
 adopting the system, were we to refuse to cure its 
 manifest defects after it had been adopted, and when 
 no one attempted its repeal? And this, sir, is the 
 inconsistency so much bruited. I had voted against 
 the tariff of 1824, but it passed ; and in 1827 and 
 
SPEECH OF MR. WEBSTER. 165 
 
 1828 I voted to amend it in a point essential to the 
 interest of my constituents. Where is the incon- 
 sistency ? Could I do otherwise ? Sir, does political 
 consistency consist in always giving negative votes? 
 Does it require of a public man to refuse to concur in 
 amending laws because they passed against his con- 
 sent? Having voted against the tariff originally, does 
 consistency demand that I should do all in my power 
 to maintain an unequal tariff, burdensome to my own 
 constituents in many respects, favorable in none ? To 
 consistency of that sort I lay no claim. And there 
 is another sort to which I lay as little, and that is, a 
 kind of consistency by which persons feel themselves 
 as much bound to oppose a proposition after it has 
 become a law of the land as before. 
 
 The bill of 1827, limited, as I have said, to the 
 single object in which the tariff of 1824 had mani- 
 festly failed in its effect, passed the House of Repre- 
 sentatives, but was lost here. We had then the act 
 of 1828. I need not recur to the history of a mea- 
 sure so recent. Its enemies spiced it with whatsoever 
 they thought would render it distasteful ; its friends 
 took it, drugged as it was. Vast amounts of property, 
 many millions, had been invested in manufactures, 
 under the inducements of the act of 1824. Events 
 called loudly, as I thought, for further regulation to 
 secure the degree of protection intended by that act. 
 I was disposed to vote for such regulation, and desired 
 nothing more ; but certainly was not to be bantered 
 out of my purpose by a threatened augmentation of 
 duty on molasses, put into the bill for the avowed 
 purpose of making it obnoxious. The vote may have 
 been risrht or wron£, wise or unwise ; but it is little 
 less than absurd to allege against it an inconsistency 
 with opposition to the former law. 
 
166 THE GREAT DEBATE. 
 
 Sir, as to the general subject of the tariff I have 
 little now to say. Another opportunity may be pre- 
 sented. I remarked the other day that this policy did 
 not begin with us in New England ; and yet, sir, New 
 England is charged with vehemence as being favor- 
 able, or charged with equal vehemence as being unfa- 
 vorable, to the tariff policy, just as best suits the time, 
 place, and occasion for making some charge against 
 her. The credulity of the public has been put to its 
 extreme capacity of false impression relative to her 
 conduct in this particular. Through all the South, 
 during the late contest, it was New England policy 
 and a New England administration that were afflict- 
 ing the country with a tariff beyond all endurance ; 
 while, on the other side of the Alleghanies, even the 
 act of 1828 itself, the very sublimated essence of op- 
 pression according to Southern opinions, was pro- 
 nounced to be one of those blessings for which the 
 West was indebted to the " generous South." 
 
 With large investments in manufacturing establish- 
 ments, and many and various interests connected with 
 and dependent on them, it is not to be expected that 
 New England, any more than other portions of the 
 country, will now consent to any measure destructive 
 or highly dangerous. The duty of the government, 
 at the present moment, would seem to be to preserve, 
 not to destroy ; to maintain the position which it has 
 assumed ; and, for one, I shall feel it an indispensable 
 obligation to hold it steady, as far as in my power, to 
 that degree of protection which it has undertaken to 
 bestow. No more of the tariff. 1 
 
 1 " When the speech of Mr. Webster of 1824, in which he 
 assigned his reasons for voting against the tariff law of that 
 year, is carefully compared with his speech of 1828, it will he 
 
SPEECH OF MR. WEBSTER. 167 
 
 Professing to be provoked by what lie chose to 
 consider a charge made by me against South Carolina, 
 the honorable member, Mr. President, has taken up 
 a new crusade against New England. Leaving alto- 
 gether the subject of the public lands, in which his 
 success, perhaps, had been neither distinguished nor 
 satisfactory, and letting go, also, of the topic of the 
 tariff, he sallied forth in a general assault on the opin- 
 ions, politics, and parties of New England as they 
 have been exhibited in the last thirty years. This is 
 natural. The "narrow policy" of the public lands 
 had proved a legal settlement in South Carolina, and 
 was not to be removed. The "accursed policy'' of 
 the tariff, also, had established the fact of its birth 
 and parentage in the same State. No wonder, there- 
 fore, the gentleman wished to carry the war, as he 
 expressed it, into the enemy's country. Prudently 
 willing to quit these subjects, he was doubtless desir- 
 ous of fastening on others which could not be trans- 
 ferred south of Mason and Dixon's line. The politics 
 of New England became his theme ; and it was in this 
 part of his speech, I think, that he menaced me with 
 such sore discomfiture. Discomfiture! Why, sir, when 
 he attacks anything which I maintain, and overthrows 
 it, when he turns the right or left of any position 
 which I take up, when he drives me from any ground 
 I choose to occupy, he may then talk of discomfiture, 
 
 found that there is no other diversity than that which was induced 
 by the change in the state of the country itself in reference to 
 its manufacturing interests, and by the course pursued in refer- 
 ence to the details of the bill by those opposed to protection in 
 toto. It is the best proof of this that, in the former editions of 
 Mr. Webster's works, the two speeches were, for more easy 
 comparison, placed side by side." Everett's Biographical Me- 
 moir in Webster's Works, vol. i. lxxxv. 
 
168 THE GREAT DEBATE. 
 
 but not till that distant day. What has he done? 
 Has he maintained his own charges ? Has he proved 
 what he alleged ? Has he sustained himself in his 
 attack on the government, and on the history of the 
 North, in the matter of the public lands ? Has he 
 disproved a fact, refuted a proposition, weakened an 
 argument, maintained by me ? Has he come within 
 beat of drum of any position of mine ? Oh, no ; but 
 he has " carried the war into the enemy's country " ! 
 Carried the war into the enemy's country ! Yes, sir, 
 and what sort of a war has he made of it ? Why, sir, 
 he has stretched a drag-net over the whole surface of 
 perished pamphlets, indiscreet sermons, frothy para- 
 graphs, and fuming popular addresses ; over whatever 
 the pulpit in its moments of alarm, the press in its 
 heats, and parties in their extravagances, have sever- 
 ally thrown off in times of general excitement and 
 violence. He has thus swept together a mass of such 
 things as, but that they are now old and cold, the 
 public health would have required him rather to leave 
 in their state of dispersion. For a good long hour or 
 two, we had the unbroken pleasure of listening to the 
 honorable member while he recited, with his usual 
 grace and spirit and with evident high gusto, speeches, 
 pamphlets, addresses, and all the et ceteras of the polit- 
 ical press, such as warm heads produce in warm times, 
 and such as it would be " discomfiture " indeed for any 
 one whose taste did not delight in that sort of reading: 
 to be obliged to peruse. This is his war. This it is 
 to carry the war into the enemy's country. It is in 
 an invasion of this sort that he flatters himself with 
 the expectation of gaining laurels fit to adorn a Sena- 
 tor's brow. 
 
 Mr. President, I shall not — it will not, I trust, be 
 
SPEECH OF MR. WEBSTER. 169 
 
 expected that I should — either now or at any time 
 separate this farrago into parts, and answer and exam- 
 ine its components. I shall barely bestow upon it all 
 a general remark or two. In the run of forty years, 
 sir, under this Constitution, we have experienced sun- 
 dry successive violent party contests. Party arose, 
 indeed, with the Constitution itself, and, in some form 
 or other, has attended it through the greater part of 
 its history. Whether any other Constitution than the 
 old Articles of Confederation was desirable, was itself 
 a question on which parties divided ; if a new Consti- 
 tution were framed, what powers should be given to it 
 was another question ; and when it had been formed, 
 what was, in fact, the just extent of the powers actu- 
 allv conferred was a third. Parties, as we know, 
 existed under the first administration as distinctly 
 marked as those which have manifested themselves at 
 any subsequent period. The contest immediately pre- 
 ceding the political change in 1801, and that, again, 
 which existed at the commencement of the late war, 
 are other instances of party excitement of something 
 more than usual strength and intensity. In all these 
 conflicts there was, no doubt, much of violence on 
 both and all sides. It would be impossible, if one had 
 a fancy for such employment, to adjust the relative 
 quantum of violence between these contending par- 
 ties. There was enough in each, as must always be 
 expected in popular governments. With a great deal 
 of popular and decorous discussion, there was min- 
 gled a great deal, also, of declamation, virulence, crimi- 
 nation, and abuse. In regard to any party, probably, 
 at one of the leading epochs in the history of parties, 
 enough may be found to make out another inflamed 
 exhibition not unlike that with which the honorable 
 
170 THE GREAT DEBATE. 
 
 member has edified us. For myself, sir, I shall not 
 rake among the rubbish of bygone times to see what 
 I can find, or whether I cannot find something by 
 which I can fix a blot on the escutcheon of any State, 
 any party, or any part of the country. General 
 Washington's administration was steadily and zeal- 
 ously maintained, as we all know, by New England. 
 It was violently opposed elsewhere. We know in 
 what quarter he had the most earnest, constant, and 
 persevering support in all his great and leading mea- 
 sures. We know where his private and personal char- 
 acter was held in the highest degree of attachment 
 and veneration; and we know, too, where his mea- 
 sures were opposed, his services slighted, and his char- 
 acter vilified. We know, or we might know if we 
 turned to the journals, who expressed respect, grati- 
 tude, and regret when he retired from the chief ma- 
 gistracy, and who refused to express either respect, 
 gratitude, or regret. I shall not open those journals. 
 Publications more abusive or scurrilous never saw the 
 light than were sent forth against Washington, and 
 all his leading measures, from presses south of New 
 England. But I shall not look them up. I employ 
 no scavengers ; no one is in attendance on me, fur- 
 nishing such means of retaliation : and if there were, 
 with an ass's load of them, with a bulk as huge as 
 that which the gentleman himself has produced, I 
 would not touch one of them. I see enough of the 
 violence of our own times to be no way anxious to 
 rescue from forgetfulness the extravagances of times 
 past. 
 
 Besides, what is all this to the present purpose ? It 
 has nothing to do with the public lands, in regard to 
 which the attack was begun ; and it has nothing to 
 
SPEECH OF MR. WEBSTER. 171 
 
 do with those sentiments and opinions which, I have 
 thought, tend to disunion, and all of which the hon- 
 orable member seems to have adopted himself, and 
 undertaken to defend. New England has at times — 
 so argues the gentleman — held opinions as dangerous 
 as those which he now holds. Suppose this were so ; 
 why should he therefore abuse New England? If he 
 finds himself countenanced by acts of hers, how is it 
 that, while he relies on these acts, he covers, or seeks 
 to cover, their authors with reproach ? But, sir, if in 
 the course of forty years there have been undue effer- 
 vescences of party in New England, has the same 
 thing happened nowhere else ? Party animosity and 
 party outrage, not in New England, but elsewhere, 
 denounced President Washington, not only as a Fed- 
 eralist, but as a Tory, a British agent, a man who in 
 his high office sanctioned corruption. But does the 
 honorable member suppose, if I had a tender here 
 who should put such an effusion of wickedness and 
 folly into my hand, that I would stand up and read it 
 against the South ? Parties ran into great heats again 
 in 1799 and 1800. What was said, sir, or rather what 
 was not said, in those years, against John Adams, 
 one of the committee that drafted the Declaration of 
 Independence, and its admitted ablest defender on 
 the floor of Congress? If the gentleman wishes to 
 increase his stores of party abuse and frothy violence, 
 if he has a determined proclivity to such pursuits, there 
 are treasures of that sort south of the Potomac, much 
 to his taste, yet untouched. I shall not touch them. 
 
 The parties which divided the country at the com- 
 mencement of the late war were violent. But then 
 there was violence on both sides, and violence in every 
 State. Minorities and majorities were equally violent. 
 
172 THE GREAT DEBATE. 
 
 There was no more violence against the war in New 
 England than in other States ; nor any more appear- 
 ance of violence, except that, owing to a dense popu- 
 lation, greater facility of assembling, and more presses, 
 there may have been more in quantity spoken and 
 printed there than in some other places. In the arti- 
 cle of sermons, too, New England is somewhat more 
 abundant than South Carolina ; and for that reason 
 the chance of finding here and there an exceptionable 
 one may be greater. I hope, too, there are more good 
 ones. Opposition may have been more formidable in 
 New England, as it embraced a larger portion of the 
 whole population ; but it was no more unrestrained in 
 principle or violent in manner. The minorities dealt 
 quite as harshly with their own State governments as 
 the majorities dealt with the administration here. 
 There were presses on both sides, popular meetings on 
 both sides, ay, and pulpits on both sides also. The 
 gentleman's purveyors have only catered for him 
 among the productions of one side. I certainly shall 
 not supply the deficiency by furnishing samples of the 
 other. I leave to him and to them the whole concern. 
 It is enough for me to say that if, in any part of 
 this their grateful occupation, if, in all their re- 
 searches they find anything in the history of Massa- 
 chusetts or New England, or in the proceedings of 
 any legislative or other public body, disloyal to the 
 Union, speaking slightingly of its value, proposing to 
 break it up, or recommending non-intercourse with 
 neighboring States, on account of difference of po- 
 litical opinion, then, sir, I give them all up to the hon- 
 orable gentleman's unrestrained rebuke ; expecting, 
 however, that he will extend his bufferings in like 
 manner to all similar proceedings wherever else found. 
 
SPEECH OF MR. WEBSTER. 173 
 
 The gentleman, sir, has spoken at large of former 
 parties, now no longer in being, by their received ap- 
 pellations, and has undertaken to instruct us not only 
 in the knowledge of their principles, but of their 
 respective pedigrees also. He has ascended to their 
 origin, and run out their genealogies. With most ex- 
 emplary modesty he speaks of the party to which he 
 professes to have himself belonged as the true Pure, 
 the only honest, patriotic party, derived, by regular 
 descent from father to son, from the time of the vir- 
 tuous Romans ! Spreading before us the family tree 
 of political parties, he takes especial care to show 
 himself snugly perched on a popular bough ! He is 
 wakeful to the expediency of adopting such rules of 
 descent as shall bring him in, to the exclusion of 
 others, as an heir to the inheritance of all public virtue 
 and all true political principle. His party and his 
 opinions are sure to be orthodox ; heterodoxy is con- 
 fined to his opponents. He spoke, sir, of the Federal- 
 ists, and I thought I saw some eyes begin to open and 
 stare a little when he ventured on that ground. I 
 expected he would draw his sketches rather lightly 
 when he looked on the circle round him, and espe- 
 cially if he should cast his thoughts to the high places 
 out of the Senate. Nevertheless, he went back to 
 Rome, ad annum urbis conditce, 1 and found the fathers 
 of the Federalists in the primeval aristocrats of that 
 renowned city. He traced the flow of Federal blood 
 down through successive ages and centuries till he 
 brought it into the veins of the American Tories, of 
 whom, by the way, there were twenty in the Carolinas 
 for one in Massachusetts. From the Tories he fol- 
 
 1 In the year of the city's foundation ; "In the year one," in 
 colloquial speech. 
 
174 THE GREAT DEBATE. 
 
 lowed it to the Federalists ; and, as the Federal party 
 was broken up, and there was no possibility of trans- 
 mitting it further on this side the Atlantic, he seems 
 to have discovered that it has gone off collaterally, 
 though against all canons of descent, into the Ultras 
 of France, and finally become extinguished, like ex- 
 ploded gas, among the adherents of Dom Miguel ! x 
 This, sir, is an abstract of the gentleman's history of 
 Federalism. I am not about to controvert it. It is 
 not at present worth the pains of refutation ; because, 
 sir, if at this day any one feels the sin of Federalism 
 lying heavily on his conscience, he can easily procure 
 remission. He may even obtain an indulgence, if he 
 be desirous of repeating the same transgression. It is 
 an affair of no difficulty to get into this same right line 
 of patriotic descent. A man nowadays is at liberty to 
 choose his political parentage. He may elect his own 
 father. Federalist or not, he ma} r , if he choose, claim 
 to belong to the favored stock, and his claim will be 
 allowed. He may carry back his pretensions just as 
 far as the honorable gentleman himself ; nay, he may 
 make himself out the honorable gentleman's cousin, 
 and prove satisfactorily that he is descended from the 
 same political great-grandfather. All this is allow- 
 able. We all know a process, sir, by which the whole 
 Essex Junto 2 could in one hour be all washed white 
 
 1 Dom Miguel, the head of the Absolutists, had in 1828 
 usurped the throne of Portugal. His niece, Maria da Gloria, 
 was restored in 1833. 
 
 2 The name is as old as 1781, when John Hancock applied it 
 to a group of public men of Essex County, Massachusetts. The 
 name was moribund when John Adams revived it. In its widest 
 sense, it applied to the extreme Federalism displayed during the 
 War of 1812 and in the Hartford Convention. Fisher Ames, 
 George Cabot, and Timothy Pickering were prominent members. 
 
SPEECH OF MR. WEBSTER. 175 
 
 from their ancient Federalism, and come out, every 
 one of them, original democrats dyed in the wool I 
 Some of them have actually undergone the operation, 
 and they say it is quite easy. 1 The only inconven- 
 ience it occasions, as they tell us, is a slight tendency 
 of the blood to the face, a soft suffusion, which, how- 
 ever, is very transient, since nothing is said by those 
 whom they join calculated to deepen the red on the 
 cheek, but a prudent silence is observed in regard 
 to all the past. Indeed, sir, some smiles of approba- 
 tion have been bestowed, and some crumbs of comfort 
 have fallen, not a thousand miles from the door of 
 the Hartford Convention. And if the author of the 
 Ordinance of 1787 possessed the other requisite quali- 
 fications, there is no knowing, notwithstanding his 
 Federalism, to what heights of favor he might not yet 
 attain. 
 
 Mr. President, in carrying his warfare, such as it is, 
 into New England, the honorable gentleman, all along, 
 professes to be acting on the defensive. He chooses to* 
 consider me as having assailed South Carolina, and 
 insists that he comes forth only as her champion and 
 in her defense. Sir, I do not admit that I made any 
 attack whatever on South Carolina. Nothing like it. 
 The honorable member, in his first speech, expressed 
 opinions in regard to revenue and some other topics- 
 
 Henry Cabot Lodge's Life of George Cabot has softened some of 
 the legends which had attached themselves to this black beast 
 of New England politics. 
 
 1 This may refer to Harrison Gray Otis r who became a candi- 
 date for the office of first Mayor of Boston in 1822. On account 
 of his record during 1 the War of 1812 and as a member of the 
 Hartford Convention, his name was withdrawn ; but he was. 
 elected mayor in 1829,. when he made an explanation of his polit- 
 ical course. 
 
176 THE GREAT DEBATE. 
 
 which I heard both with pain and with surprise. I told 
 the gentleman I was aware that such sentiments were 
 entertained out of the government, but had not ex- 
 pected to find them advanced in it ; that I knew there 
 were persons in the South who speak of our Union 
 with indifference or doubt, taking pains to magnify 
 its evils and to say nothing of its benefits ; that the 
 honorable member himself, I was sure, could never be 
 one of these; and I regretted the expression of such 
 opinions as he had avowed, because I thought their 
 obvious tendency was to encourage feelings of disre- 
 spect to the Union, and to impair its strength. This, 
 sir, is the sum and substance of all I said on the sub- 
 ject. And this constitutes the attack which called on 
 the chivalry of the gentleman, in his own opinion, to 
 harry us with such a foray among the party pamphlets 
 and party proceedings of Massachusetts ! If he means 
 that I spoke with dissatisfaction or disrespect of the 
 ebullitions of individuals in South Carolina, it is true. 
 But if he means that I assailed the character of the 
 State, her honor or patriotism, that I reflected on her 
 history or her conduct, he has not the slightest ground 
 for any such assumption. I did not even refer, I 
 think, in my observations, to any collection of indi- 
 viduals. I said nothing of the recent conventions. 
 I spoke in the most guarded and careful manner, and 
 only expressed my regret for the publication of opin- 
 ions which I presumed the honorable member disap- 
 proved as much as myself. In this, it seems, I was 
 mistaken. I do not remember that the gentleman has 
 disclaimed any sentiment or any opinion of a supposed 
 anti-Union tendency which on all or any of the recent 
 occasions has been expressed. The whole drift of his 
 speech has been rather to prove that, in divers times 
 
SPEECH OF MR. WEBSTER. 177 
 
 and manners, sentiments equally liable to my objec- 
 tion have been avowed in New England. And one 
 would suppose that his object, in this reference to 
 Massachusetts, was to find a precedent to justify pro- 
 ceedings in the South, were it not for the reproach 
 and contumely with which he labors, all along, to load 
 these his own chosen precedents. By way of defend- 
 ing South Carolina from what he chooses to think an 
 attack on her, he first quotes the example of Massa- 
 chusetts, and then denounces that example in good set 
 terms. This twofold purpose, not very consistent, one 
 would think, with itself, was exhibited more than once 
 in the course of his speech. He referred, for instance, 
 to the Hartford Convention. Did he do this for 
 authority, or for a topic of reproach ? Apparently for 
 both ; for he told us that he should find no fault with 
 the mere fact of holding such a convention, and con- 
 sidering and discussing such questions as he supposes 
 were then and there discussed ; but what rendered it 
 obnoxious was its being held at the time, and the cir- 
 cumstances of the country then existing. We were in 
 a war, he said, and the country needed all our aid ; 
 the hand of government required to be strengthened, 
 not weakened ; and patriotism should have postponed 
 such proceedings to another day. The thing itself, 
 then, is a precedent ; the time and manner of it only, 
 a subject of censure. 
 
 Now, sir, I go much further on this point than the 
 honorable member. Supposing, as the gentleman 
 seems to do, that the Hartford Convention assembled 
 for any such purpose as breaking up the Union be- 
 cause they thought unconstitutional laws had been 
 passed, or to consult on that subject, or to calculate 
 the value of the Union, — supposing this to be their 
 
178 THE GREAT DEBATE. 
 
 purpose, or any part of it, then, I say, the meeting 
 itself was disloyal, and was obnoxious to censure, 
 whether held in time of peace or time of war, or under 
 whatever circumstances. The material question is the 
 object. Is dissolution the object? If it be, external 
 circumstances may make it a more or less aggravated 
 case, but cannot affect the principle. I do not hold, 
 therefore, sir, that the Hartford Convention was par- 
 donable, even to the extent of the gentleman's admis- 
 sion, if its objects were really such as have been im- 
 puted to it. Sir, there never was a time, under any 
 degree of excitement, in which the Hartford Conven- 
 tion, or any other convention, could have maintained 
 itself one moment in New England, if assembled for 
 any such purpose as the gentleman says would have 
 been an allowable purpose. To hold conventions to 
 decide constitutional law ! To try the binding valid- 
 ity of statutes by votes in a convention ! Sir, the 
 Hartford Convention, I presume, would not desire 
 that the honorable gentleman should be their defender 
 or advocate if he puts their case upon such untenable 
 and extravagant grounds. 
 
 Then, sir, the gentleman has no fault to find with 
 these recently promulgated South Carolina opinions. 
 And certainly he need have none ; for his own senti- 
 ments, as now advanced and advanced on reflection, 
 as far as I have been able to comprehend them, go the 
 full length of all these opinions. I propose, sir, to 
 say something on these, and to consider how far they 
 are just and constitutional. Before doing that, how- 
 ever, let me observe that the eulogium pronounced by 
 the honorable gentleman on the character of the State 
 of South Carolina for her Revolutionary and other 
 merits meets my hearty concurrence. I shall not 
 
SPEECH OF MR. WEBSTER. 179 
 
 acknowledge that the honorable member goes before 
 me in regard for whatever of distinguished talent, or 
 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, 1 the Rutledges, the Pinck- 
 neys, 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 cir- 
 cumscribed within the same narrow limits. In their 
 day and generation they served and honored the coun- 
 try, and the whole country ; and their renown is of the 
 treasures of the whole country. Him whose honored 
 name the gentleman himself bears, 2 — 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 
 
 1 John. Laurens was an aide to Washington, and was called 
 the " Bayard of the Revolution." Governor John and Edward 
 Rutledge both served in the Revolution, as did Charles Cotes- 
 worth and Thomas Pinckney, who also were brothers. Sir Ban- 
 astre Tarleton referred to General Thomas Sumter as the 
 "gamecock," and Francis Marion as the "swamp-fox." See 
 note on page 63 of Hayne's Speech. 
 
 2 Isaac Hayne, great- uncle of Robert Y. Hayne, was hanged 
 by the joint order of Colonel Balfour and Lord Rawdon, both of 
 whom afterward denied responsibility for the act. Hayne, for 
 honorable reasons, had taken the British oath of allegiance, on 
 condition that he should not be obliged to bear arms ; he was, 
 however, coerced into service. He therefore broke his parole, 
 became an American officer, was captured by the British, and 
 met an unjust fate. In the Southern Review for 1828 (vol. i.) 
 is an article by Robert Y. Hayne on the execution of Colonel 
 Hayne, largely in answer to Lord Rawdou's attempted justifi- 
 cation. 
 
180 THE GREAT DEBATE. 
 
 envy in my bosom ? No, sir, increased gratification 
 and delight, 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 else- 
 where, 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 preju- 
 dice 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 ! 
 
 Sir, let me recur to pleasing recollections ; let me 
 indulge in refreshing remembrance of the past; let 
 me remind you that, in early times, no States cher- 
 ished greater harmony, both of principle and feeling, 
 than Massachusetts and South Carolina. Would to 
 God that harmony might again return ! Shoulder to 
 shoulder they went through the Ke volution ; hand in 
 hand they stood round the administration of Wash- 
 ington, and felt his own great arm lean on them for 
 support. Unkind feeling, if it exist, alienation and 
 distrust, are the growth, unnatural to such soils, of 
 false principles since sown. They are weeds, the seeds 
 of which that same great arm never scattered. 
 
 Mr. President, I shall enter on no encomium upon 
 Massachusetts ; she needs none. There she is. Be- 
 hold her, and judge for yourselves. There is her 
 
SPEECH OF MR. WEBSTER. 181 
 
 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 uneasi- 
 ness under salutary and necessary restraint, shall suc- 
 ceed 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. 
 
 There yet remains to be performed, Mr. President, 
 by far the most grave and important duty which I 
 feel to be devolved on me by this occasion. It is to 
 state and to defend what I conceive to be the true 
 principles of the Constitution under which we are here 
 assembled. I might well have desired that so weighty 
 a task should have fallen into other and abler hands. 
 I could have wished that it should have been executed 
 by those whose character and experience give weight 
 and influence to their opinions, such as cannot possibly 
 belong to mine. But, sir, I have met the occasion, 
 not sought it ; and I shall proceed to state my own 
 
182 THE GREAT DEBATE. 
 
 sentiments, without challenging for them any particu- 
 lar regard, with studied plainness, and as much preci- 
 sion as possible. 
 
 I understand the honorable gentlemen from South 
 Carolina to maintain that it is a right of the State 
 legislatures to interfere whenever, in their judgment, 
 this government transcends its constitutional limits, 
 and to arrest the operation of its laws. 
 
 I understand him to maintain this right as a right 
 existing under the Constitution, not as a right to over- 
 throw it on the ground of extreme necessity, such as 
 would justify violent revolution. 
 
 I understand him to maintain an authority, on the 
 part of the States, thus to interfere for the purpose of 
 correcting the exercise of power by the general govern- 
 ment, of checking it, and of compelling it to conform 
 to their opinion of the extent of its powers. 
 
 I understand him to maintain that the ultimate 
 power of judging of the constitutional extent of its 
 own authority is not lodged exclusively in the general 
 government or any branch of it ; but that, on the 
 contrary, the States may lawfully decide for them- 
 selves, and each State for itself, whether, in a given 
 case, the act of the general government transcends its 
 
 power. 
 
 I understand him to insist that, if the exigency of 
 the case, in the opinion of any State government, 
 require it, such State government may, by its own 
 sovereign authority, annul an act of the general gov- 
 ernment which it deems plainly and palpably uncon- 
 stitutional. 
 
 This is the sum of what I understand from him to 
 be the South Carolina doctrine, and the doctrine which 
 fee maintains. I propose to consider it, and compare 
 
SPEECH OF MR. WEBSTER. 183 
 
 it with the Constitution. Allow me to say, as a pre- 
 liminary remark, that I call this the South Carolina 
 doctrine only because the gentleman himself has so de- 
 nominated it. I do not feel at liberty to say that South 
 Carolina, as a State, has ever advanced these senti- 
 ments. I hope she has not, and never may. That a 
 great majority of her people are opposed to the tariff 
 laws is doubtless true. That a majority, somewhat 
 less than that just mentioned, conscientiously believe 
 these laws unconstitutional, may probably also be true. 
 But that any majority holds to the right of direct State 
 interference at State discretion, the right of nullifying 
 acts of Congress by acts of State legislation, is more 
 than I know and what I shall be slow to believe. 
 
 That there are individuals besides the honorable 
 gentleman who do maintain these opinions, is quite 
 certain. I recollect the recent expression of a senti- 
 ment which circumstances attending its utterance and 
 publication justify us in supposing was not unpremedi- 
 tated : " The sovereignty of the State, — never to be 
 controlled, construed, or decided on but by her own 
 feelings of honorable justice." 
 
 [Mr. Hayne here rose and said that, for the pur- 
 pose of being clearly understood, he would state that 
 his proposition was in the words of the Virginia Reso- 
 lution, as follows : — 
 
 "That this Assembly doth explicitly and peremp- 
 torily declare, that it views the powers of the federal 
 government, as resulting from the compact to which 
 the States are parties, as limited by the plain sense 
 and intention of the instrument constituting that com- 
 pact, as no farther valid than they are authorized by 
 the grants enumerated in that compact ; and that, in 
 case of a deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise 
 
184 THE GREAT DEBATE. 
 
 of other powers not granted by the said compact, the 
 States who are parties thereto have the right, and are 
 in duty bound, to interpose for arresting the progress 
 of the evil, and for maintaining, within their respec- 
 tive limits, the authorities, rights, and liberties apper- 
 taining to them."] 
 
 Mr. Webster resumed : — 
 
 I am quite aware, Mr. President, of the existence 
 of the resolution which the gentleman read, and has 
 now repeated, and that he relies on it as his authority. 
 I know the source, too, from which it is understood 
 to have proceeded. I need not say that I have much 
 respect for the constitutional opinions of Mr. Madi- 
 son ; they wonld weigh greatly with me always. But, 
 before the authority of his opinion be vouched for the 
 gentleman's proposition, it will be proper to consider 
 what is the fair interpretation of that resolution to 
 which Mr. Madison is understood to have given his 
 sanction. As the gentleman construes it, it is an 
 authority for him. Possibly he may not have adopted 
 the right construction. That resolution declares that, 
 in the case of the dangerous exercise of powers not 
 granted by the general government, the States may 
 interpose to arrest the progress of the evil. But how 
 interpose, and what does this declaration purport? 
 Does it mean no more than that there may be extreme 
 cases in which the people, in any mode of assembling, 
 may resist usurpation and relieve themselves from a 
 tyrannical government ? No one will deny this. Such 
 resistance is not only acknowledged to be just in Amer- 
 ica, but in England also. Blackstone admits as much 
 in the theory, and practice too, of the English consti- 
 tution. We, sir, who oppose the Carolina doctrine do 
 not deny that the people may, if they choose, throw 
 
SPEECH OF MR. WEBSTER. 185 
 
 off any government when it becomes oppressive and 
 intolerable, and erect a better in its stead. We all 
 know that civil institutions are established for the 
 public benefit, and that, when they cease to answer the 
 ends of their existence, they may be changed. But 
 I do not understand the doctrine now contended for 
 to be that which, for the sake of distinctness, we may 
 call the right of revolution. I understand the gentle- 
 man to maintain that without revolution, without civil 
 commotion, without rebellion, a remedy for supposed 
 abuse and transgression of the powers of the general 
 government lies in a direct appeal to the interference 
 of the State governments. 
 
 [Mr. Hayne here rose and said : He did not con- 
 tend for the mere right of revolution, but for the right 
 of constitutional resistance. What he maintained was 
 that, in case of a plain, palpable violation of the Con- 
 stitution by the general government, a State may inter- 
 pose, and that this interposition is constitutional.] 
 
 Mr. Webster resumed : — 
 
 So, sir, I understood the gentleman, and am happy 
 to find that I did not misunderstand him. What he 
 contends for is, that it is constitutional to interrupt the 
 administration of the Constitution itself, in the hands 
 of those who are chosen and sworn to administer it, 
 by the direct interference, in form of law, of the States, 
 in virtue of their sovereign capacity. 
 
 The inherent right in the people to reform their 
 government I do not deny ; and they have another 
 right, and that is, to resist unconstitutional laws with- 
 out overturning the government. It is no doctrine of 
 mine that unconstitutional laws bind the people. The 
 great question is, Whose prerogative is it to decide 
 on the constitutionality or unconstitutionality of the 
 laws ? On that, the main debate hinges. 
 
186 THE GREAT DEBATE. 
 
 The proposition that, in case of a supposed viola- 
 tion of the Constitution by Congress, the States have 
 a constitutional right to interfere and annul the law 
 of Congress, is the proposition of the gentleman. I 
 do not admit it. If the gentleman had intended no 
 more than to assert the right of revolution for jus- 
 tifiable cause, he would have said only what all agree 
 to. But I cannot conceive that there can be a middle 
 course between submission to the laws, when regularly 
 pronounced constitutional, on the one hand, and open 
 resistance, which is revolution or rebellion, on the 
 other. I say the right of a State to annul a law of 
 Congress cannot be maintained but on the ground of 
 the inalienable right of man to resist oppression ; that 
 is to say, upon the ground of revolution. I admit that 
 there is an ultimate violent remedy, above the Con- 
 stitution and in defiance of the Constitution, which 
 may be resorted to when a revolution is to be justified. 
 But I do not admit that, under the Constitution and 
 in conformity with it, there is any mode in which a 
 State government, as a member of the Union, can 
 interfere and stop the progress of the general govern- 
 ment by force of her own laws, under any circum- 
 stances whatever. 
 
 This leads us to inquire into the origin of this gov- 
 ernment and the source of its power. Whose agent 
 is it? Is it the creature of the State legislatures, or 
 the creature of the people ? If the government of the 
 United States be the agent of the State governments, 
 then they may control it, provided they can agree in 
 the manner of controlling it ; if it be the agent of the 
 people, then the people alone can control it, restrain 
 it, modify or reform it. It is observable enough that 
 the doctrine for which the honorable gentleman con- 
 
SPEECH OF MR. WEBSTER. 187 
 
 tends leads him to the necessity of maintaining not 
 only that this general government is the creature of 
 the States, but that it is the creature of each of the 
 States severally, so that each may assert the power 
 for itself of determining whether it acts witbin the 
 limits of its authority. It is the servant of four-and- 
 twenty masters, of different wills and different pur- 
 poses, and yet bound to obey all. This absurdity (for 
 it seems no less) arises from a misconception as to 
 the origin of this government and its true character. 
 It is, sir, the people's Constitution, the people's gov- 
 ernment, made for the people, made by the people, 
 and answerable to the people. 1 The people of the 
 United States have declared that this Constitution 
 shall be the supreme law. We must either admit the 
 proposition or dispute their authority. The States are 
 unquestionably sovereign, so far as their sovereignty 
 is not affected by this supreme law. But the State 
 legislatures, as political bodies, however sovereign, are 
 yet not sovereign over the people. So far as the peo- 
 ple have given power to the general government, so 
 far the grant is unquestionably good, and the govern- 
 ment holds of the people, and not of the .State gov- 
 ernments. We are all agents of the same supreme 
 power, the people. The general government and the 
 State governments derive their authority from the 
 same source. Neither can, in relation to the other, be 
 called primary, though one is definite and restricted, 
 
 1 Compare with Theodore Parker's " A government of all the 
 people, by all the people, for all the people " (Speech, May 29, 
 1850) and Abraham Lincoln's still simpler " government of the 
 people, by the people, for the people " (Gettysburg address, 
 November 19, 18(33). See an interesting statement iu Herndon 
 and Weik's Lincoln, ii. 396. 
 
188 THE GREAT DEBATE. 
 
 and the other general and residuary. The national 
 government possesses those powers which it can be 
 shown the people have conferred on it, and no more. 
 All the rest belongs to the State governments, or to 
 the people themselves. So far as the people have 
 restrained State sovereignty, by the expression of their 
 will, in the Constitution of the United States, so far, 
 it must be admitted, State sovereignty is effectually 
 controlled. I do not contend that it is, or ought to 
 be, controlled farther. The sentiment to which I have 
 referred propounds that State sovereignty is only to 
 be controlled by its own " feeling of justice ; ? that is 
 to say, it is not to be controlled at all, for one who is 
 to follow his own feelings is under no legal control. 
 Now, however men may think this ought to be, the 
 fact is that the people of the United States have chosen 
 to impose control on State sovereignties. There are 
 those, doubtless, who wish they had been left without 
 restraint ; but the Constitution has ordered the matter 
 differently. To make war, for instance, is an exercise 
 of sovereignty ; but the Constitution declares that no 
 State shall make war. To coin money is another exer- 
 cise of sovereign power; but no State is at liberty 
 to coin money. Again, the Constitution says that 
 no sovereign State shall be so sovereign as to make a 
 treaty. These prohibitions, it must be confessed, are 
 a control on the State sovereignty of South Carolina, 
 as well as of the other States, which does not arise 
 "from her own feelings of honorable justice." The 
 opinion referred to, therefore, is in defiance of the 
 plainest provisions of the Constitution. 
 
 There are other proceedings of public bodies which 
 have already been alluded to, and to which I refer 
 again for the purpose of ascertaining more fully what 
 
SPEECH OF MR. WEBSTER. 189 
 
 is the length and breadth of that doctrine denominated 
 the Carolina doctrine, which the honorable member 
 has now stood up on this floor to maintain. In one 
 of them I find it resolved that " the tariff of 1828, 
 and every other tariff designed to promote one branch 
 of industry at the expense of others, is contrary to 
 the meaning and intention of the Federal compact ; 
 and such a dangerous, palpable, and deliberate usur- 
 pation of power, by a determined majority wielding 
 the general government beyond the limits of its dele- 
 gated powers, as calls upon the States which compose 
 the suffering minority, in their sovereign capacity, to 
 exercise the powers which, as sovereigns, necessarily 
 devolve upon them when their compact is violated." 
 
 Observe, sir, that this resolution holds the tariff of 
 1828, and every other tariff designed to promote one 
 branch of industry at the expense of another, to be 
 such a dangerous, palpable, and deliberate usurpation 
 of power as calls upon the States, in their sovereign 
 capacity, to interfere by their own authority. This 
 denunciation, Mr. President, you will please to ob- 
 serve, includes our old tariff of 1816 as well as all 
 others ; because that was established to promote the 
 interest of the manufacturers of cotton to the mani- 
 fest and admitted injury of the Calcutta cotton trade. 
 Observe, again, that all the qualifications are here 
 rehearsed and charged upon the tariff which are neces- 
 sary to bring the case within the gentleman's propo- 
 sition. The tariff is a usurpation ; it is a dangerous 
 usurpation ; it is a palpable usurpation ; it is a delib- 
 erate usurpation. It is such a usurpation, therefore, 
 as calls upon the States to exercise their right of inter- 
 ference. Here is a case, then, within the gentleman's 
 principles, and all his qualifications of his principles. 
 
190 THE GREAT DEBATE. 
 
 It is a case for action. The Constitution is plainly, 
 dangerously, palpably, and deliberately violated; and 
 the States must interpose their own authority to arrest 
 the law. Let us suppose the State of South Carolina 
 to express this same opinion by the voice of her le- 
 gislature. That would be very imposing ; but what 
 then? Is the voice of one State conclusive? It so 
 happens that, at the very moment when South Caro- 
 lina resolves that the tariff laws are unconstitutional, 
 Pennsylvania and Kentucky resolve exactly the re- 
 verse. They hold those laws to be both highly proper 
 and strictly constitutional. And now, sir, how does 
 the honorable member propose to deal with this case ? 
 How does he relieve us from this difficulty upon any 
 principle of his ? His construction gets us into it ; 
 how does he propose to get us out ? 
 
 In Carolina the tariff is a palpable, deliberate 
 usurpation; Carolina, therefore, may nullify it and 
 refuse to pay the duties. In Pennsylvania it is both 
 clearly constitutional and highly expedient, and there 
 the duties are to be paid. And yet we live under a 
 government of uniform laws, and under a Constitu- 
 tion, too, which contains an express provision, as it 
 happens, that all duties shall be equal in all the States. 
 Does not this approach absurdity ? 
 
 If there be no power to settle such questions, inde- 
 pendent of either of the States, is not the whole Union 
 a rope of sand? Are we not thrown back again, pre- 
 cisely, upon the old Confederation ? 
 
 It is too plain to be argued. Four-and-twenty inter- 
 preters of constitutional law, each with a power to 
 decide for itself, and none with authority to bind any- 
 body else, and this constitutional law the only bond 
 of their union ! What is such a state of things but a 
 
SPEECH OF MR. WEBSTER. 191 
 
 mere connection during pleasure, or, to use the phrase- 
 ology of the times, during feeling f And that feel- 
 in o-, too, not the feeling of the people who established 
 the Constitution, but the feeling of the State govern- 
 ments. 
 
 In another of the South Carolina addresses, having 
 premised that the crisis requires " all the concentrated 
 energy of passion," an attitude of open resistance to 
 the laws of the Union is advised. Open resistance to 
 the laws, then, is the constitutional remedy, the con- 
 servative power of the State, which the South Carolina 
 doctrines teach for the redress of political evils, real 
 or imaginary. And its authors further say that, ap- 
 pealing with confidence to the Constitution itself to 
 justify their opinions, they cannot consent to try their 
 accuracy by the courts of justice. In one sense, indeed, 
 sir, this is assuming an attitude of open resistance in 
 favor of liberty. But what sort of liberty ? The lib- 
 erty of establishing their own opinions in defiance of 
 the opinions of all others ; the liberty of judging and 
 of deciding exclusively themselves in a matter in which 
 others have as much right to judge and decide as they; 
 the liberty of placing their own opinions above the 
 judgment of all others, above the laws, and above the 
 Constitution. This is their liberty, and this is the fair 
 result of the proposition contended for by the honor- 
 able gentleman. Or, it may be more properly said, it 
 is identical with it, rather than a result from it. 
 
 In the same publication, we find the following : 
 " Previously to our Revolution, when the arm of op- 
 pression was stretched over New England, where did 
 our Northern brethren meet with a braver sympathy 
 than that which sprung from the bosoms of Carolin- 
 ians? We had no extortion, no oppression, no colli- 
 
192 THE GREAT DEBATE. 
 
 sion with the King's ministers, no navigation interests 
 springing up, in envious rivalry of England." 
 
 This seems extraordinary language. South Caro- 
 lina no collision with the King's ministers in 1775 ! 
 No extortion! No oppression! But, sir, it is also 
 most significant language. Does any man doubt the 
 purpose for which it was penned? Can any one fail 
 fco see that it was designed to raise in the reader's 
 mind the question whether, at this time, — that is to 
 say in 1828, — South Carolina has any collision with 
 the King's ministers, any oppression or extortion to 
 fear from England? Whether, in short, England is 
 not as naturally the friend of South Carolina as New 
 England, with her navigation interests springing up 
 in envious rivalry of England? 
 
 Is it not strange, sir, that an intelligent man in 
 South Carolina, in 1828, should thus labor to prove 
 that in 1775 there was no hostility, no cause of war, 
 between South Carolina and England? That she had 
 no occasion, in reference to her own interest or from 
 a regard to her own welfare, to take up arms in the 
 Revolutionary contest? Can any one account for the 
 expression of such strange sentiments and their circu- 
 lation through the State, otherwise than by supposing 
 tin; object to be what I have already intimated, to 
 raise the question, if they had no "collision" (mark 
 the expression) with the ministers of King George 
 the Third in 1775, what collision have they in 1828 
 with the ministers of King George the Fourth? What 
 is there now, in the existing state of things, to sepa- 
 rate Carolina from Old, more or rather than from 
 New England? 
 
 Resolutions, sir, have been recently passed by the 
 legislature of South Carolina. I need not refer to 
 
SPEECH OF MR. WEBSTER. 193 
 
 them ; they go no farther than the honorable gentle- 
 man himself has gone, and I hope not so far. I con- 
 tent myself, therefore, with debating the matter with 
 him. , 
 
 And now, sir, what I have first to say on this sub- 
 ject is, that at no time and under no circumstances 
 has New England, or any State in New England, or 
 any respectable body of persons in New England, or 
 any public man of standing in New England, put 
 forth such a doctrine as this Carolina doctrine. 
 
 The gentleman has found no case, he can find none, 
 to support his own opinions by New England author- 
 ity. New England has studied the Constitution in 
 other schools and under other teachers. She looks 
 upon it with other regards, and deems more highly 
 and reverently both of its just authority and its util- 
 ity and excellence. The history of her legislative 
 proceedings may be traced. The ephemeral effusions 
 of temporary bodies, called together by the excite- 
 ment of the occasion, may be hunted up ; they have 
 been hunted up. The opinions and votes of her pub- 
 lic men, in and out of Congress, may be explored. It 
 will all be in vain. The Carolina doctrine can derive 
 from her neither countenance nor support. She re- 
 jects it now ; she always did reject it ; and till she 
 loses her senses she always will reject it. The honor- 
 able member has referred to expressions on the sub- 
 ject of the Embargo law made in this place by an 
 honorable and venerable gentleman, 1 now favoring 
 us with his presence. He quotes that distinguished 
 Senator as saying that, in his judgment, the Embargo 
 law was unconstitutional, and that therefore, in his 
 
 1 Mr. Hillhouse of Connecticut. See note on page 99 of 
 Hayne's Speech. 
 
194 THE GREAT DEBATE. 
 
 opinion, the people were not bound to obey it. That, 
 sir, is perfectly constitutional language. An uncon- 
 stitutional law is not binding; but then it does not 
 rest loith a resolution or a law of a State legislature 
 to decide whether an act of Congress be or be ?iot 
 constitutional. An unconstitutional act of Congress 
 would not bind the people of this District, although 
 they have no legislature to interfere in their behalf ; 
 and, on the other hand, a constitutional law of Con- 
 gress does bind the citizens of every State, although 
 all their legislatures should undertake to annul it by 
 act or resolution. The venerable Connecticut Senator 
 is a constitutional law} r er of sound principles and 
 enlarged knowledge ; a statesman practiced and expe- 
 rienced, bred in the company of Washington, and hold- 
 ing just views upon the nature of our governments. 
 He believed the Embargo unconstitutional, and so did 
 others ; but what then ? Who did he suppose was to 
 decide that question ? The State legislatures ? Cer- 
 tainly not. No such sentiment ever escaped his lips. 
 Let us follow up, sir, this New England opposition 
 to the Embargo laws ; let us trace it till we discern 
 the principle which controlled and governed New 
 England throughout the whole course of that oppo- 
 sition. We shall then see what similarity there is 
 between the New England school of constitutional 
 opinions and this modern Carolina school. The gen- 
 tleman, I think, read a petition from some single 
 individual, addressed to the legislature of Massachu- 
 setts, asserting the Carolina doctrine ; that is, the 
 right of State interference to arrest the laws of the 
 Union. The fate of that petition shows the sentiment 
 of the legislature. It met no favor. The opinions of 
 Massachusetts were very different. They had been 
 
SPEECH OF MR. WEBSTER. 195 
 
 expressed in 1798, in answer to the resolutions of 
 Virginia, and she did not depart from them nor bend 
 them to the times. Misgoverned, wronged, oppressed, 
 as she felt herself to be, she still held fast her integ- 
 rity to the Union. The gentleman may find in her 
 proceedings much evidence of dissatisfaction with the 
 measures of government, and great and deep dislike 
 to the Embargo : all this makes the case so much the 
 stronger for her ; for, notwithstanding all this dis- 
 satisfaction and dislike, she still claimed no right to 
 sever the bonds of the Union. There was heat and 
 there was anger in her political feeling. Be it so ; 
 but neither her heat nor her anger betrayed her into 
 infidelity to the government. The gentleman labors 
 to prove that she disliked the Embargo as much as 
 South Carolina dislikes the tariff, and expressed her 
 dislike as strongly. Be it so; but did she propose 
 the Carolina remedy ? Did she threaten to interfere, 
 by State authority, to annul the laws of the Union ? 
 That is the question for the gentleman's consideration. 
 No doubt, sir, a great majority of the people of 
 New England conscientiouslv believed the Embargo 
 law of 1807 unconstitutional ; as conscientiously, cer- 
 tainly, as the people of South Carolina hold that 
 opinion of the tariff. They reasoned thus : Congress 
 has power to regulate commerce ; but here is a law, 
 they said, stopping all commerce and stopping it 
 indefinitely. The law is perpetual ; that is, it is not 
 limited in point of time, and must of course continue 
 until it shall be repealed by some other law. It is 
 as perpetual, therefore, as the law against treason or 
 murder. Now is this regulating commerce or destroy- 
 ing it ? Is it guiding, controlling, giving the rule to 
 commerce as a subsisting thing, or is it putting an 
 
196 THE GREAT DEBATE. 
 
 end to it altogether ? Nothing is more certain than 
 that a majority in New England deemed this law a 
 violation of the Constitution. The very case required 
 by the gentleman to justify State interference had 
 then arisen. Massachusetts believed this law to be 
 " a deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of a 
 power not granted by the Constitution." Deliber- 
 ate it was, for it was long continued ; palpable she 
 thought it, as no words in the Constitution gave the 
 power, and only a construction, in her opinion most 
 violent, raised it : dangerous it was, since it threat- 
 ened utter ruin to her most important interests. 
 Here, then, was a Carolina case. How did Massa- 
 chusetts deal with it? It was, as she thought, a 
 plain, manifest, palpable violation of the Constitution, 
 and it brought ruin to her doors. Thousands of 
 families, and hundreds of thousands of individuals, 
 were beggared by it. While she saw and felt all 
 this, she saw and felt also that, as a measure of na- 
 tional policy, it was perfectly futile ; that the country 
 was no way benefited by that which caused so much 
 individual distress ; that it was efficient only for the 
 production of evil, and all that evil inflicted on our- 
 selves. In such a case, under such circumstances, how 
 did Massachusetts demean herself? Sir, she remon- 
 strated, she memorialized, she addressed herself to 
 the general government, not exactly " with the con- 
 centrated energy of passion," but with her own strong 
 sense and the energy of sober conviction. But she 
 did not interpose the arm of her own power to arrest 
 the law and break the Embargo. Far from it. Her 
 principles bound her to two things ; and she followed 
 her principles, lead where they might, — First, to 
 submit to every constitutional law of Congress ; and, 
 
SPEECH OF MR. WEBSTER. 197 
 
 second, if the constitutional validity of the law be 
 doubted, to refer that question to the decision of the 
 proper tribunals. The first principle is vain and. 
 ineffectual without the second. A majority of us in 
 New England believed the Embargo law unconstitu- 
 tional ; but the great question was, and always will 
 be in such cases, Who is to decide this ? Who is to 
 judge between the people and the government? And, 
 sir, it is quite plain that the Constitution of the 
 United States confers on the government itself, to be 
 exercised by its appropriate department and under 
 its own responsibility to the people, this power of de- 
 ciding ultimately and conclusively upon the just extent 
 of its own authority. If this had not been done, we 
 should not have advanced a single step beyond the 
 old Confederation. 
 
 Being fully of opinion that the Embargo law was 
 unconstitutional, the people of New England were yet 
 equally clear in the opinion (it was a matter they did 
 not doubt upon) that the question, after all, must be 
 decided by the judicial tribunals of the United States. 
 Before those tribunals, therefore, they brought the 
 question. Under the provisions of the law they had 
 oiven bonds to millions in amount, and which were 
 alleged to be forfeited. They suffered the bonds to 
 be sued, and thus raised the question. In the old- 
 fashioned way of settling disputes, they went to law. 
 The case came to hearing and solemn argument ; and 
 he who espoused their cause, and stood up for them 
 against the validity of the Embargo Act, was none 
 other than that great man, of whom the gentleman 
 has made honorable mention, Samuel Dexter. 1 He 
 was then, sir, in the fullness of his knowledge and 
 1 See note on page 80 of Hayne's Speech. 
 
198 THE GREAT DEBATE. 
 
 the maturity of his strength. He had retired from 
 long and distinguished public service here to the 
 renewed pursuit* of professional duties, carrying with 
 him all that enlargement and expansion, all the new 
 strength and force, which an acquaintance with the 
 more general subjects discussed in the national coun- 
 cils is capable of adding to professional attainment, 
 in a mind of true greatness and comprehension. He 
 was a lawyer and he was also a statesman. He had 
 studied the Constitution, when he filled public station, 
 that he might defend it. He had examined its prin- 
 ciples that he might maintain them. More than all 
 men, or at least as much as any man, he was attached 
 to the general government and to the union of the 
 States. His feelings and opinions all ran in that 
 direction. A question of constitutional law, too, was, 
 of all subjects, that one which was best suited to his 
 talents and learning. Aloof from technicality, and 
 unfettered by artificial rule, such a question gave 
 opportunity for that deep and clear analysis, that 
 mighty grasp of principle, which so much distinguished 
 his higher efforts. His very statement was argument ; 
 his inference seemed demonstration. The earnestness 
 of his own conviction wrought conviction in others. 
 One was convinced, and believed, and assented be- 
 cause it was gratifying, delightful, to think, and feel, 
 and believe in unison with an intellect of such evident 
 superiority. 
 
 Mr. Dexter, sir, such as I have described him, 
 argued the New England cause. He put into his 
 effort his whole heart as well as all the powers of his 
 understanding ; for he had avowed, 'in the most public 
 manner, his entire concurrence with his neighbors on 
 the point in dispute. He argued the cause : it was 
 
SPEECH OF MR. WEBSTER. 199 
 
 lost, and New England submitted. The established 
 tribunals pronounced the law constitutional, and New 
 England acquiesced. Now, sir, is not this the exact 
 opposite of the doctrine of the gentleman from South 
 Carolina? According to him, instead of referring to 
 the judicial tribunals, we should have broken up the 
 Embargo by laws of our own ; we should have repealed 
 it, quoad New England ; for we had a strong, pal- 
 pable, and oppressive case. Sir, we believed the Em- 
 bargo unconstitutional ; but still that was matter of 
 opinion, and who was to decide it ? We thought it a 
 clear case ; but, nevertheless, we did not take the law 
 into our own hands, because we did not wish to bring 
 about a revolution, nor to break up the Union ; for I 
 maintain that between submission to the decision of 
 the constituted tribunals, and revolution or disunion, 
 there is no middle ground ; there is no ambiguous 
 condition, half allegiance and half rebellion. And, 
 sir, how futile, how very futile it is to admit the 
 right of State interference, and then attempt to save 
 it from the character of unlawful resistance by adding 
 terms of qualification to the causes and occasions, 
 leaving all these qualifications, like the case itself, in 
 the discretion of the State governments ! It must be 
 a clear case, it is said, a deliberate case, a palpable 
 case, a dangerous case. But then the State is still left 
 at liberty to decide for herself what is clear, what is 
 deliberate, what is palpable, what is dangerous. Do 
 adjectives and epithets avail anything ? 
 
 Sir, the human mind is so constituted that the 
 merits of both sides of a controversy appear very clear 
 and very palpable to those who respectively espouse 
 them ; and both sides usually grow clearer as the con- 
 troversy advances. South Carolina sees unconstitu- 
 
200 THE GREAT DEBATE. 
 
 tionality in the tariff ; she sees oppression there, also, 
 and she sees danger. Pennsylvania, with a vision not 
 less sharp, looks at the same tariff, and sees no such 
 thing in it ; she sees it all constitutional, all useful, 
 all safe. The faith of South Carolina is strengthened 
 by opposition, and she now not only sees, but resolves 
 that the tariff is palpably unconstitutional, oppressive, 
 and dangerous ; but Pennsylvania, not to be behind 
 her neighbors, and equally willing to strengthen her 
 own faith by a confident asseveration, resolves, also, 
 and gives to every warm affirmative of South Carolina 
 a plain, downright, Pennsylvania negative. South 
 Carolina, to show the strength and unity of her 
 opinion, brings her assembly to a unanimity, within 
 seven voices ; Pennsylvania, not to be outdone in 
 this respect any more than in others, reduces her 
 dissentient fraction to a single vote. Now, sir, again, 
 I ask the gentleman, What is to be done ? Are these 
 States both right ? Is he bound to consider them 
 both right ? If not, which is in the wrong ? or 
 rather, which has the best right to decide? And if 
 he, and if I, are not to know what the Constitution 
 means, and what it is, till those two State legislatures, 
 and the twenty-two others, shall agree in its construc- 
 tion, what have we sworn to when we have sworn to 
 maintain it? I was forcibly struck, sir, with one 
 reflection, as the gentleman went on in his speech. 
 He quoted Mr. Madison's resolutions to prove that a 
 State may interfere in a case of deliberate, palpable, 
 and dangerous exercise of a power not granted. 
 The honorable member supposes the tariff law to be 
 such an exercise of power ; and that consequently a 
 case has arisen in which the State may, if it see fit, 
 interfere by its own law. Now it so happens, never- 
 
SPEECH OF MR. WEBSTER. 201 
 
 theless, that Mr. Madison deems this same tariff 
 law quite constitutional. Instead of a clear and pal- 
 pable violation, it is, in his judgment, no violation 
 at all. So that, while they use his authority for a 
 hypothetical case, they reject it in the very case be- 
 fore them. All this, sir, shows the inherent futility — 
 I had almost used a stronger word — of conceding this 
 power of interference to the State, and then attempt- 
 ing to secure it from abuse by imposing qualifications 
 of which the States themselves are to judge. One 
 of two things is true, — either the laws of the Union 
 are beyond the discretion and beyond the control of 
 the States ; or else we have no Constitution of general 
 government, and are thrust back again to the days of 
 the Confederation. 
 
 Let me here say, sir, that if the gentleman's doc- 
 trine had been received and acted upon in New Eng- 
 land in the times of the Embargo and non-intercourse, 
 we should probably not now have been here. The gov- 
 ernment would very likely have gone to pieces and 
 crumbled into dust. No stronger case can ever arise 
 than existed under those laws ; no States can ever 
 entertain a clearer conviction than the New England 
 States then entertained ; and if they had been under 
 the influence of that heresy of opinion, as I must call 
 it, which the honorable member espouses, this Union 
 would, in all probability, have been scattered to the 
 four winds. I ask the gentleman, therefore, to apply 
 his principles to that case ; I ask him to come forth 
 and declare whether, in his opinion, the New Eng- 
 land States would have been justified in interfer- 
 ing to break up the Embargo system under the con- 
 scientious opinions which they held upon it? Plad 
 they aright to annul that law? Does he admit or 
 
202 THE GREAT DEBATE. 
 
 deny? If what is thought palpably unconstitutional 
 in South Carolina justifies that State in arresting the 
 progress of the law, tell me whether that which was 
 thought palpably unconstitutional also in Massachu- 
 setts would have justified her in doing the same thing. 
 Sir, I deny the whole doctrine. It has not a foot of 
 ground in the Constitution to stand on. No public 
 man of reputation ever advanced it in Massachusetts 
 in the warmest times, or could maintain himself upon 
 it there at any time. 
 
 I wish now, sir, to make a remark upon the Vir- 
 ginia Resolutions of 1798. I cannot undertake to say 
 how these resolutions were understood by those who 
 passed them. Their language is not a little indefinite. 
 In the case of the exercise by Congress of a danger- 
 ous power not granted to them, the resolutions assert 
 the right, on the part of the State, to interfere and 
 arrest the progress of the evil. This is susceptible of 
 more than one interpretation. It may mean no more 
 than that the States may interfere by complaint and 
 remonstrance, or by proposing to the people an altera- 
 tion of the Federal Constitution. This would all be 
 quite unobjectionable, or it may be that no more is 
 meant than to assert the general right of revolution, 
 as against all governments, in cases of intolerable 
 oppression. This no one doubts ; and this, in my 
 opinion, is all that he who framed the resolutions 
 could have meant by it ; for I shall not readily be- 
 lieve that he was ever of opinion that a State, under 
 the Constitution and in conformity with it, could, 
 upon the ground of her own opinion of its unconstitu- 
 tionality, however clear and palpable she might think 
 the case, annul a law of Congress, so far as it should 
 operate on herself, by her own legislative power. 
 
SPEECH OF MR. WEBSTER. 203 
 
 I must now beg to ask, sir, Whence is this supposed 
 right of the States derived? Where do they find the 
 power to interfere with the laws of the Union ? Sir, 
 the opinion which the honorable gentleman maintains 
 is a notion founded in a total misapprehension, in 
 my judgment, of the origin of this government, and 
 of the foundation on which it stands. I hold it to be 
 a popular government, erected by the people ; those 
 who administer it responsible to the people ; and itself 
 capable of being amended and modified, just as the 
 people may choose it should be. It is as popular, just 
 as truly emanating from the people, as the State gov- 
 ernments. It is created for one purpose ; the State 
 governments for another. It has its own powers ; 
 they have theirs. There is no more authority with 
 them to arrest the operation of a law of Congress 
 than with Congress to arrest the operation of their 
 laws. We are here to administer a Constitution ema- 
 nating immediately from the people, and trusted by 
 them to our administration. It is not the creature of 
 the State governments. It is of no moment to the 
 argument that certain acts of the State legislatures are 
 necessary to fill our seats in this body. That is not 
 one of their original State powers, a part of the sov- 
 ereignty of the State. It is a duty which the people, 
 by the Constitution itself, have imposed on the State 
 legislatures, and which they might have left to be per- 
 formed elsewhere, if they had seen fit. So they have 
 left the choice of President with electors ; but all this 
 does not affect the proposition that this whole gov- 
 ernment — President, Senate, and House of Eepre- 
 sentatives — is a popular government. It leaves it 
 still all its popular character. The governor of a State 
 (in some of the States) is chosen, not directly by the 
 
204 THE GREAT DEBATE. 
 
 people, but by those who are chosen by the people for 
 the purpose of performing, among other duties, that 
 of electing a governor. Is the government of the 
 State, on that account, not a popular government? 
 This government, sir, is the independent offspring of 
 the popular will. It is not the creature of State legis- 
 latures ; nay, more, if the whole truth must be told, 
 the people brought it into existence, established it, 
 and have hitherto supported it for the very purpose, 
 amongst others, of imposing certain salutary restraints 
 on State sovereignties. The States cannot now make 
 war ; they cannot contract alliances ; they cannot 
 make, each for itself, separate regulations of com- 
 merce ; they cannot lay imposts ; they cannot coin 
 money. If this Constitution, sir, be the creature of 
 State legislatures, it must be admitted that it has 
 obtained a strange control over the volitions of its 
 creators. 
 
 The people, then, sir, erected this government. 
 They gave it a Constitution, and in that Constitution 
 they have enumerated the powers which they bestow 
 on it. They have made it a limited government. 
 They have defined its authority. They have restrained 
 it to the exercise of such powers as are granted ; and 
 all others, they declare, are reserved to the States or 
 the people. But, sir, they have not stopped here. If 
 they had, they would have accomplished but half their 
 work. No definition can be so clear as to avoid possi- 
 bility of doubt ; no limitation so precise as to exclude 
 all uncertainty. Who, then, shall construe this grant 
 of the people ? Who shall interpret their will, where 
 it may be supposed they have left it doubtful ? With 
 whom do they repose this ultimate right of deciding 
 on the powers of the government? Sir, they have 
 
SPEECH OF MR. WEBSTER. 205 
 
 settled all this in the fullest manner. They have left 
 it with the government itself, in its appropriate 
 branches. Sir, the very chief end, the main design 
 for which the whole Constitution was framed and 
 adopted was to establish a government that should not 
 be obliged to act through State agency, or depend on 
 State opinion and State discretion. The people had 
 had quite enough of that kind of government under 
 the Confederation. Under that system, the legal 
 action, the application of law to individuals, belonged 
 exclusively to the States. Congress could only recom- 
 mend ; their acts were not of binding force till the 
 States had adopted and sanctioned them. Are we 
 in that condition still? Are we yet at the mercy of 
 State discretion and State construction? Sir, if we 
 are, then vain will be oar attempt to maintain the 
 Constitution under which we sit. 
 
 But, sir, the people have wisely provided, in the 
 Constitution itself, a proper, suitable mode and tri- 
 bunal for settling questions of constitutional law. 
 There are in the Constitution grants of powers to 
 Congress, and restrictions on these powers. There 
 are, also, prohibitions on the States. Some authority 
 must, therefore, necessarily exist, having the ultimate 
 jurisdiction to fix and ascertain the interpretation of 
 these grants, restrictions, and prohibitions. The Con- 
 stitution has itself pointed out, ordained, and estab- 
 lished that authority. How has it accomplished this 
 great and essential end ? By declaring, sir, that " the 
 
 Constitution, and the lavis of the United States 
 made in pursuance thereof, shall be the supreme law 
 of the land, anything in the Constitution or laws of 
 
 any State to the contrary notwithstanding." 
 
 This, sir, was the first great step. By this the 
 
206 THE GREAT DEBATE. 
 
 supremacy of the Constitution and laws of the United 
 States is declared. The people so will it. No State 
 law is to be valid which comes in conflict with the 
 Constitution, or any law of the United States passed 
 in pursuance of it. But who shall decide this ques- 
 tion of interference ? To whom lies the last appeal ? 
 This, sir, the Constitution itself decides also, by de- 
 claring " that the judicial power shall extend to all 
 cases arising under the Constitution and laws of the 
 United States." These two provisions cover the 
 whole ground. They are, in truth, the keystone of 
 the arch ! With these it is a government ; without 
 them it is a confederation. In pursuance of these 
 clear and express provisions, Congress established, at 
 its very first session, in the judicial act, a mode for 
 carrying them into full effect, and for bringing all 
 questions of constitutional power to the final decision 
 of the Supreme Court. It then, sir, became a gov- 
 ernment. It then had the means of self -protection ; 
 and but for this, it would, in all probability, have 
 been now among things which are past. Having con- 
 stituted the government and declared its powers, the 
 people have further said that, since somebody must 
 decide on the extent of these powers, the government 
 shall itself decide ; subject always, like other popular 
 governments, to its responsibility to the people. And 
 now, sir, I repeat, how is it that a State legislature 
 acquires any power to interfere ? Who or what gives 
 them the right to say to the people, " We, who are 
 your agents and servants for one purpose, will under- 
 take to decide that your other agents and servants, 
 appointed by you for another purpose, have tran- 
 scended the authority you gave them ! ' The reply 
 would be, I think, not impertinent, — " Who made 
 
SPEECH OF MR. WEBSTER. 207 
 
 you a judge over another's servants ? To their own 
 masters they stand or fall." 
 
 Sir, I deny this power of State legislatures alto- 
 gether. It cannot stand the test of examination. 
 Gentlemen may say that, in an extreme case, a State 
 government might protect the people from intolerable 
 oppression. Sir, in such a case the people might pro- 
 tect themselves without the aid of the State govern- 
 ments. Such a case warrants revolution. It must 
 make, when it comes, a law for itself. A nullifying 
 act of a State legislature cannot alter the case, nor 
 make resistance any more lawful. In maintaining 
 these sentiments, sir, I am but asserting the rights 
 of the people. I state what they have declared, and 
 insist on their right to declare it. They have chosen 
 to repose this power in the general government, and 
 I think it my duty to support it, like other constitu- 
 tional powers. 
 
 For myself, sir, I do not admit the competency of 
 South Carolina, or any other State, to prescribe my 
 constitutional duty, or to settle, between me and the 
 people, the validity of laws of Congress for which I 
 have voted. I decline her umpirage. I have not 
 sworn to support the Constitution according to her 
 construction of its clauses. I have not stipulated, by 
 my oath of office or otherwise, to come under any 
 responsibility, except to the people, and those whom 
 they have appointed to pass upon the question whether 
 laws supported by my votes conform to the Constitu- 
 tion of the country. And, sir, if we look to the gen- 
 eral nature of the case, could anything have been more 
 preposterous than to make a government for the whole 
 Union, and yet leave its powers subject, not to one 
 interpretation, but to thirteen or twenty-four interpre- 
 
208 THE GREAT DEBATE. 
 
 tations? Instead of one tribunal, established by all, 
 responsible to all, with power to decide for all, shall 
 constitutional questions be left to four-and-tvventy 
 popular bodies, each at liberty to decide for itself, 
 and none bound to respect the decisions of others ; 
 and each at liberty, too, to give a new construction on 
 every new election of its own members ? Would any- 
 thing with such a principle in it, or rather with such 
 a destitution of all principle, be fit to be called a gov- 
 ernment ? No, sir. It should not be denominated a 
 Constitution. It should be called, rather, a collection 
 of topics for everlasting controversy ; heads of debate 
 for a disputatious people. It would not be a govern- 
 ment. It would not be adequate to any practical good, 
 or fit for any country to live under. 
 
 To avoid all possibility of being misunderstood, 
 allow me to repeat again, in the fullest manner, that 
 I claim no powers for the government by forced or 
 unfair construction. I admit that it is a government 
 of strictly limited powers; of enumerated, specified, 
 and particularized powers ; and that whatsoever is not 
 granted is withheld. But notwithstanding all this, 
 and however the grant of powers may be expressed, 
 its limit and extent may yet, in some cases, admit of 
 doubt ; and the general government would be good 
 for nothing, it would be incapable of long existing, 
 if some mode had not been provided in which those 
 doubts, as they should arise, might be peaceably but 
 authoritatively solved. 
 
 And now, Mr. President, let me run the honorable 
 gentleman's doctrine a little into its practical ajDplica- 
 tion. Let us look at his probable modus operandi. 
 If a thing can be done, an ingenious man can tell how 
 it is to be done, and I wish to be informed how this 
 
SPEECH OF MR. WEBSTER. 209 
 
 State interference is to be put in practice without 
 violence, bloodshed, and rebellion. We will take the 
 existing case of the tariff law. South Carolina is said 
 to have made up her opinion upon it. If we do not 
 repeal it (as we probably shall not), she will then 
 apply to the case the remedy of her doctrine. She 
 will, we must suppose, pass a law of her legislature 
 declaring the several acts of Congress, usually called 
 the tariff laws, null and void, so far as they respect 
 South Carolina or the citizens thereof. So far, all is 
 a paper transaction, and easy enough. But the col- 
 lector at Charleston is collecting the duties imposed 
 by these tariff laws. He, therefore, must be stopped. 
 The collector will seize the goods if the tariff duties 
 are not paid. The State authorities will undertake 
 their rescue, the marshal, with his posse, will come to 
 the collector's aid, and here the contest begins. The 
 militia of the State will be called out to sustain the 
 nullifying act. They will march, sir, under a very 
 gallant leader ; for I believe the honorable member 
 himself commands the militia of that part of the State. 
 He will raise the nullifying act on his standard 
 and spread it out as his banner ! It will have a pre- 
 amble, setting forth that the tariff laws are palpable, 
 deliberate, and dangerous violations of the Constitu- 
 tion ! He will proceed, v/ith this banner flying, to 
 the custom-house in Charleston, 
 
 " All the while, 
 Sonorous metal blowing martial sounds." 1 
 
 Arrived at the custom-house, he will tell the collector 
 that he must collect no more duties under any of the 
 tariff laws. This he will be somewhat puzzled to say, 
 by the way, with a grave countenance, considering 
 1 See Milton's Paradise Lost, book i. lines 539, 540. 
 
210 THE GREAT DEBATE. 
 
 what hand South Carolina herself had in that of 
 1816. But, sir, the collector would not, probably, 
 desist at his bidding. He would show him the law of 
 Congress, the treasury instruction, and his own oath 
 of office. He would say he should perform his duty, 
 come what might. 
 
 Here would ensue a pause ; for they say that a 
 certain stillness precedes the tempest. The trum- 
 peter would hold his breath awhile, and before all this 
 military array should fall on the custom-house, col- 
 lector, clerks, and all, it is very probable some of 
 those composing it would request of their gallant 
 commander-in-chief to be informed a little upon the 
 point of law ; for they have, doubtless, a just respect 
 for his opinions as a lawyer, as well as for his bravery 
 as a soldier. They know he has read Blackstone and 
 the Constitution, as well as Turenne and Vauban. 1 
 They would ask him, therefore, something concerning 
 their rights in this matter. They would inquire 
 whether it was not somewhat dangerous to resist a 
 law of the United States. What would be the na- 
 ture of their offense, they would wish to learn, if they, 
 by military force and array, resisted the execution in 
 Carolina of a law of the United States, and it should 
 turn out, after all, that the law was constitutional f 
 He would answer, of course, Treason. No lawyer 
 could give any other answer. John Fries, 2 he would 
 
 1 Turenne was a famous general, and Vauban a great mili- 
 tary engineer, both of whom added to the renown of France in 
 the seventeenth century. 
 
 2 Fries's Rebellion, in eastern Pennsylvania, early in 1799, 
 was occasioned by the direct government tax laid July, 1798, 
 and begun to be assessed January, 1799. This tax fell in Penn- 
 sylvania mainly on houses and lands. John Fries, an itiner- 
 ant vendue-crier, the leader of the revolt, was sentenced to be 
 
SPEECH OF MR. WEBSTER. 211 
 
 tell them, had learned that some years ago. How, 
 then, they would ask, do you propose to defend us? 
 We are not afraid of bullets, but treason has a way 
 of taking people off that we do not much relish. How 
 do you propose to defend us? " Look at my floating 
 banner," he would reply ; " see there the nullifying 
 law ! " Is it your opinion, gallant commander, they 
 would then say, that if we should be indicted for trea- 
 son, that same floating banner of yours would make 
 a good plea in bar ? " South Carolina is a sovereign 
 State," he would reply. That is true ; but would the 
 judge admit our plea? " These tariff laws," he would 
 repeat, " are unconstitutional, palpably, deliberately, 
 dangerously." That may all be so ; but if the tri- 
 bunal should not happen to be of that opinion, shall 
 we swing for it? We are ready to die for our coun- 
 try, but it is rather an awkward business, this dying 
 without touching the around ! After all, that is a 
 sort of hemp tax worse than any part of the tariff. 
 
 Mr. President, the honorable gentleman would be 
 in a dilemma like that of another great general. He 
 would have a knot before him which he could net 
 untie. He must cut it with his sword. He must say 
 to his followers, " Defend yourselves with your bay- 
 onets ; " and this is war, — civil war. 
 
 Direct collision, therefore, between force and force, 
 is the unavoidable result of that remedy for the re- 
 vision of unconstitutional laws which the gentleman 
 contends for. It must happen in the very first case 
 to which it is applied. Is not this the plain result? 
 To resist by force the execution of a law, generally, 
 is treason. Can the courts of the United States take 
 
 hanged, but was pardoned by President Adams. McMaster's 
 History, ii. 434 ; Schouler's History, i. 447. 
 
212 THE GREAT DEBATE. 
 
 notice of the indulgence of a State to commit treason ? 
 The common saying, that a State cannot commit trea- 
 son herself, is nothing to the purpose. Can she au- 
 thorize others to do it ? If John Fries had produced 
 an act of Pennsylvania annulling the law of Congress, 
 would it have helped his case ? Talk about it as 
 we will, these doctrines go the length of revolution. 
 They are incompatible with any peaceable administra- 
 tion of the government. They lead directly to dis- 
 union and civil commotion ; and therefore it is that 
 at their commencement, when they are first found to 
 be maintained by respectable men and in a tangible 
 form, I enter my public protest against them all. 
 
 The honorable gentleman argues that if this gov- 
 ernment be the sole judge of the extent of its own 
 powers, whether that right of judging be in Congress 
 or the Supreme Court, it equally subverts State sov- 
 ereignty. This the gentleman sees, or thinks he sees, 
 although he cannot perceive how the right of judging 
 in this matter, if left to the exercise of State legisla- 
 tures, has _ any tendency to subvert the government of 
 the Union. The gentleman's opinion may be that the 
 right ought not to have been lodged with the general 
 government ; he may like better such a Constitution 
 as we should have under the right of State interfer- 
 ence ; but I ask him to meet me on the plain matter 
 of fact. I ask him to meet me on the Constitution 
 itself. I ask him if the power is not found there, 
 clearly and visibly found there ? 
 
 But, sir, what is this danger, and what are the 
 grounds of it ? Let it be remembered that the Con- 
 stitution of the United States is not unalterable. It 
 is to continue in its present form no longer than the 
 people who established it shall choose to continue it. 
 
SPEECH OF MR. WEBSTER. 213 
 
 If they shall become convinced that they have made 
 an injudicious or inexpedient partition and distribu- 
 tion of power between the State governments and the 
 general government, they can alter that distribution 
 at will. 
 
 If anything be found in the national Constitution, 
 either by original provision or subsequent interpreta- 
 tion, which ought not to be in it, the people know how 
 to get rid of it. If any construction unacceptable to 
 them be established so as to become practically a part 
 of the Constitution, they will amend it at their own 
 sovereign pleasure. But while the people choose to 
 maintain it as it is, while they are satisfied with it and 
 refuse to change it, who has given, or who can give, 
 to the State legislatures a right to alter it, either by 
 interference, construction, or otherwise? Gentlemen 
 do not seem to recollect that the people have any 
 power to do anything for themselves. They imagine 
 there is no safety for them any longer than they are 
 under the close guardianship of the State legislatures. 
 Sir, the people have not trusted their safety in regard 
 to the general Constitution to these hands. They have 
 required other security, and taken other bonds. They 
 have chosen to trust themselves, first, to the plain 
 words of the instrument and to such construction as 
 the government themselves, in doubtful cases, should 
 put on their own powers, under their oaths of office, 
 and subject to their responsibility to them ; just as the 
 people of a State trust their own State governments 
 with a similar power. Secondly, they have reposed 
 their trust in the efficacy of frequent elections, and in 
 their own power to remove their own servants and 
 agents whenever they see cause. Thirdly, they have 
 reposed trust in the judicial power which, in order that 
 
214 THE GREAT DEBATE. 
 
 it might be trustworthy, they have made as respecta- 
 ble, as disinterested, and as independent as was prac- 
 ticable. Fourthly, they have seen fit to rely, in case 
 of necessity or high expediency, on their known and 
 admitted power to alter or amend the Constitution, 
 peaceably and quietly, whenever experience shall point 
 out defects or imperfections. And, finally, the peo- 
 ple of the United States have at no time, in no way, 
 directly or indirectly, authorized any State legislature 
 to construe or interpret their high instrument of gov- 
 ernment ; much less, to interfere, by their own power, 
 to arrest its course and operation. 
 
 If, sir, the people in these respects had done other- 
 wise than they have done, their Constitution could 
 neither have been preserved, nor would it have been 
 worth preserving. And if its plain provisions shall 
 now be disregarded, and these new doctrines interpo- 
 lated in it, it will become as feeble and helpless a 
 being as its enemies, whether early or more recent, 
 could possibly desire. It will exist in every State, 
 but as a poor dependent on State permission. It must 
 borrow leave to be, and will be no longer than State 
 pleasure or State discretion sees fit to grant the indul- 
 gence and to prolong its poor existence. 
 
 But, sir, although there are fears, there are hopes 
 also. The people have preserved this, their own 
 chosen Constitution, for forty years, and have seen 
 their happiness, prosperity, and renown grow with 
 its growth and strengthen with its strength. They 
 are now, generally, strongly attached to it. Over- 
 thrown by direct assault it cannot be ; evaded, under- 
 mined, nullified, it will not be, if we and those who 
 shall succeed us here as agents and representatives 
 of the people shall conscientiously and vigilantly dis- 
 
SPEECH OF MR. WEBSTER. 215 
 
 charge the two great branches of our public trust, — 
 faithfully to preserve and wisely to administer it. 
 
 Mr. President, I have thus stated the reasons of my 
 dissent to the doctrines which have been advanced and 
 maintained. I am conscious of having detained you 
 and the Senate much too long. I was drawn into the 
 debate with no previous deliberation, such as is suited 
 to the discussion of so grave and important a subject. 
 But it is a subject of which my heart is full, and I 
 have not been willing to suppress the utterance of its 
 spontaneous sentiments. I cannot, even now, persuade 
 myself to relinquish it without expressing once more 
 my deep conviction that, since it respects nothing less 
 than the Union of the States, it is of most vital and 
 essential importance to the public happiness. I pro- 
 fess, sir, in my career hitherto, to have kept steadily 
 in view the prosperity and honor of the whole coun- 
 try, and the preservation of our Federal Union. It is 
 to that Union we owe our safety at home and our con- 
 sideration and dignity abroad. It is to that Union 
 that we are chiefly indebted for whatever makes us 
 most proud of our country. That Union we reached 
 only by the discipline of our virtues in the severe 
 school of adversity. It had its origin in the neces- 
 sities of disordered finance, prostrate commerce, and 
 ruined credit. Under its benign influences these 
 great interests immediately awoke as from the dead, 
 and sprang forth with newness of life. Every year 
 of its duration has teemed with fresh proofs of its 
 utility and its blessings; and although our territory 
 has stretched out wider and wider, and our population 
 spread farther and farther, they have not outrun its 
 protection or its benefits. It has been to us all a copi- 
 ous fountain of national, social, and personal happiness. 
 
216 THE GREAT DEBATE. 
 
 I liave not allowed myself, sir, to look beyond the 
 Union, to see what might lie hidden in the dark recess 
 behind. I have not coolly weighed the chances of pre- 
 serving liberty when the bonds that unite us together 
 shall be broken asunder. I have not accustomed my- 
 self to hang over the precipice of disunion, to see 
 whether, with my short sight, I can fathom the depth 
 of the abyss below ; nor could I regard him as a safe 
 counselor in the affairs of this government whose 
 thoughts should be mainly bent on considering, not 
 how the Union may be best preserved, but how toler- 
 able might be the condition of the people when it shall 
 be broken up and destroyed. While the Union lasts, 
 we have high, exciting, gratifying prospects spread 
 out before us for us and our children. Beyond that 
 I seek not to penetrate the veil. God grant that in 
 my day, at least, that curtain may not rise! God 
 grant that on my vision never may be opened what 
 lies behind ! When my eyes shall be turned to behold 
 for the last time the sun in heaven, may I not see him 
 shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a 
 once glorious Union ; on States dissevered, discord- 
 ant, belligerent ; on a land rent with civil feuds, or 
 drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood ! Let their 
 last feeble and lingering glance rather behold the gor- 
 geous ensign of the republic, now known and honored 
 throughout the earth, still full high advanced, 1 its arms 
 and trophies streaming in their original lustre, not a 
 stripe erased or polluted nor a single star obscured, 
 bearing for its motto no such miserable interrogatory 
 as " What is all this worth ? ' nor those other words 
 of delusion and folly, " Liberty first and Union after- 
 
 1 " Th' imperial ensign, which, full high advanc'd." 
 
 Milton's Paradise Lost, book i. line 653. 
 
SPEECH OF MR. WEBSTER. 217 
 
 irds; " but everywhere, spread all over in characters 
 living light, blazing on all its ample folds, as they 
 at over the sea and over the land, and in every 
 nd under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, 
 ar to every true American heart, — Liberty and 
 aion, now and forever, one and inseparable ! ' 
 
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