THE WEBSTER-HAYNE DEBATE
The United States came out of her second war with Great Britain a proud
and fearless nation, though her record was not, on its face, glorious.
She went to war shockingly unprepared; the people were of divided
opinion, and one great section was in open revolt; the military leaders
were without distinction; the soldiery was poorly trained and equipped;
finances were disordered; the operations on land were mostly failures;
and the privateers, which achieved wonders in the early stages of the
contest, were driven to cover long before the close; for the
restoration of peace the nation had to thank England's war weariness
far more than her own successes; and the Treaty of Ghent did not so
much as mention impressment, captures, or any of the other matters
mainly at issue when the war was begun. Peace, however, brought
gratitude, enthusiasm, optimism. Defeats were quickly forgotten; and
Jackson's victory at New Orleans atoned for the humiliations of years.
After all, the contest had been victorious in its larger outcome, for
the new world conditions were such as to insure that the claims and
practices which had troubled the relations of the United States and
Great Britain would never be revived. The carpings of critics were
drowned in the public rejoicings. The Hartford Convention dissolved
unwept and unsung. Flushed with pride and confidence, the country
entered upon a new and richer epoch.
The dominant tone of this dawning period was nationalism. The nation
was to be made great and rich and free; sectional interests and
ambitions were to be merged in the greater national purpose. Congress
voiced the sentiment of the day by freely laying tariffs to protect
newly risen manufactures, by appropriating money for "internal
improvements," by establishing a second United States Bank, and by
giving full support to the annexation of territory for the adjustment
of border difficulties and the extension of the country to its natural
frontiers.
Under the leadership of John Marshall, the Supreme Court handed down an
imposing series of decisions restricting the powers of the States and
throwing open the floodgates for the expansion of national functions
and activities. Statesmen of all sections put the nation first in their
plans and policies as they had not always done in earlier days. John C.
Calhoun was destined shortly to take rank as the greatest of
sectionalists. Nevertheless, between 1815 and 1820 he voted for
protective tariffs, brought in a great bill for internal improvements,
and won from John Quincy Adams praise for being "above all sectional .
. . prejudices more than any other statesman of this union" with whom
he "had ever acted."
The differences between the nationalist and state rights schools were,
however, deep-rooted--altogether too fundamental to be obliterated by
even the nationalizing swing of the war period; and in a brief time the
old controversy of Hamilton and Jefferson was renewed on the former
lines. The pull of political tradition and of sectional interest was
too strong to be resisted. In the commercial and industrial East
tradition and interest supported, in general, the doctrine of broad
national powers; and the same was true of the West and Northwest. The
South, however, inclined to limited national powers, large functions
for the States, and such a construction of the Constitution as would
give the benefit of the doubt in all cases to the States.
The political theory current south of the Potomac and the Ohio made of
state rights a fetish. Yet the powerful sectional reaction which set in
after 1820 against the nationalizing tendency had as its main impetus
the injustice which the Southern people felt had been done to them
through the use of the nation's larger powers. They objected to the
protective tariff as a device which not only brought the South no
benefit but interfered with its markets and raised the cost of certain
of its staple supplies. They opposed internal improvements at national
expense because of their consolidating tendency, and because few of the
projects carried out were of large advantage to the Southern people.
They regarded the National Bank as at best useless; and they resisted
federal legislation imposing restrictions on slavery as prejudicial to
vested rights in the "peculiar institution."
After 1820 the pendulum swung rapidly back toward particularism. State
rights sentiment was freely expressed by men, both Southern and
Northern, whose views commanded respect; and in more than one
State--notably in Ohio and Georgia--bold actions proclaimed this
sentiment to be no mere matter of academic opinion. Ohio in 1819
forcibly collected a tax on the United States Bank in defiance of the
Supreme Court's decision in the case of M'Culloch vs. Maryland; and in
1821 her Legislature reaffirmed the doctrines of the Virginia and
Kentucky resolutions and persisted in resistance, even after the
Supreme Court had rendered a decision π specifically against the
position which the State had taken. Judge Roane of Virginia, in a
series of articles in the Richmond Enquirer, argued that the Federal
Union was a compact among the States and that the nationalistic
reasoning of his fellow Virginian, Marshall, in the foregoing decisions
was false; and Jefferson heartily endorsed his views. In Cohens vs.
Virginia, in 1821, the Supreme Court held that it had appellate
jurisdiction in a case decided by a state court where the Constitution
and laws of the United States were involved, even though a State was a
party; whereupon the Virginia House of Delegates declared that the
State's lawyers had been right in their contention that final
construction of the Constitution lay with the courts of the States.
Jefferson, also, gave this assertion his support, and denounced the
centralizing tendencies of the Judiciary, "which, working like gravity
without any intermission, is to press us at last into one consolidated
mass."
π Osborn vs. Bank of the United States.
In 1825 Jefferson actually proposed that the Virginia Legislature
should pass a set of resolutions pronouncing null and void the whole
body of federal laws on the subject of internal improvements. The
Georgia Legislature, aroused by growing antislavery activities in the
North, declared in 1827 that the remedy lay in "a firm and determined
union of the people and the States of the South" against interference
with the institutions of that section of the country. Already Georgia
had placed herself in an attitude of resistance to the Federal
Government upon the rights of the Indians within her borders, and
within the next decade she repeatedly nullified decisions of the
federal courts on this subject. In 1828 the South Carolina Legislature
adopted a series of eight resolutions denouncing the lately enacted
"tariff of abominations," and a report, originally drafted by Calhoun
and commonly known as The South Carolina Exposition, in which were to
be found all of the essentials of the constitutional argument
underlying the nullification movement of 1832.
When Jackson went into the White House, the country was therefore
fairly buzzing with discussions of constitutional questions. What was
the true character of the Constitution and of the Union established
under it? Were the States sovereign? Who should determine the limits of
state and federal powers? What remedy had a State against
unconstitutional measures of the National Government? Who should say
when an act was unconstitutional?
The South, in particular, was in an irritable frame of mind.
Agriculture was in a state of depression; manufacturing was not
developing as had been expected; the steadily mounting tariffs were
working economic disadvantage; the triumph of members of Congress and
of the Supreme Court who favored a loose construction of the
Constitution indicated that there would be no end of acts and decisions
contrary to what the South regarded as her own interests. Some
apprehensive people looked to Jackson for reassurance. But his first
message to Congress assumed that the tariff would continue as it was,
and, indeed, gave no promise of relief in any direction.
It was at this juncture that the whole controversy flared up
unexpectedly in one of the greatest debates ever heard on the floor of
our Congress or in the legislative halls of any country. On December
29, 1829, Senator Samuel A. Foote of Connecticut offered an
innocent-looking resolution proposing a temporary restriction of the
sale of public lands to such lands as had already been placed on the
market. The suggestion was immediately resented by western members, who
professed to see in it a desire to check the drain of eastern
population to the West; and upon the reconvening of Congress following
the Christmas recess Senator Benton of Missouri voiced in no uncertain
terms the indignation of his State and section. The discussion might
easily have led to nothing more than the laying of the resolution on
the table; and in that event we should never have heard of it. But it
happened that one of the senators from South Carolina, Robert Y. Hayne,
saw in the situation what he took to be a chance to deliver a telling
blow for his own discontented section. On the 19th of January he got
the floor, and at the fag-end of a long day he held his colleagues'
attention for an hour.
The thing that Hayne had in mind to do primarily was to draw the West
to the side of the South, in common opposition to the East. He
therefore vigorously attacked the Foote resolution, agreeing with
Benton that it was an expression of Eastern jealousy and that its
adoption would greatly retard the development of the West. He laid much
stress upon the common interests of the Western and Southern people and
openly invited the one to an alliance with the other. He deprecated the
tendencies of the Federal Government to consolidation and declared
himself "opposed, in any shape, to all unnecessary extension of the
powers or the influence of the Legislature or Executive of the Union
over the States, or the people of the States." Throughout the speech
ran side by side the twin ideas of strict construction and state
rights; in every sentence breathed the protest of South Carolina
against the protective tariff.
Just as the South Carolinian began speaking, a shadow darkened the
doorway of the Senate chamber, and Daniel Webster stepped casually
inside. The Massachusetts member was at the time absorbed in the
preparation of certain cases that were coming up before the Supreme
Court, and he had given little attention either to Foote's resolution
or to the debate upon it. What he now heard, however, quickly drove
Carver's Lessee vs. John Jacob Astor quite out of his mind. Aspersions
were being cast upon his beloved New England; the Constitution was
under attack; the Union itself was being called in question. Webster's
decision was instantaneous: Hayne must be answered--and answered while
his arguments were still hot.
"Seeing the true grounds of the Constitution thus attacked," the New
Englander subsequently explained at a public dinner in New York, "I
raised my voice in its favor, I must confess, with no preparation or
previous intention. I can hardly say that I embarked in the contest
from a sense of duty. It was an instantaneous impulse of inclination,
not acting against duty, I trust, but hardly waiting for its
suggestions. I felt it to be a contest for the integrity of the
Constitution, and I was ready to enter into it, not thinking, or
caring, personally, how I came out." In a speech characterized by Henry
Cabot Lodge as "one of the most effective retorts, one of the strongest
pieces of destructive criticism, ever uttered in the Senate," Webster
now defended his section against the charges of selfishness, jealousy,
and snobbishness that had been brought against it, and urged that the
Senate and the people be made to hear no more utterances, such as those
of Hayne, tending "to bring the Union into discussion, as a mere
question of present and temporary expediency."
The debate was now fairly started, and the word quickly went round that
a battle of the giants was impending. Each foeman was worthy of the
other's steel. Hayne was representative of all that was proudest and
best in the South Carolina of his day. "Nature had lavished on him,"
says Benton, "all the gifts which lead to eminence in public, and to
happiness in private, life." He was tall, well-proportioned, graceful;
his features were clean-cut and expressive of both intelligence and
amiability; his manner was cordial and unaffected; his mind was
vigorous and his industry unremitting. Furthermore, he was an able
lawyer, a fluent orator, a persuasive debater, an adroit
parliamentarian. Upon entering the Senate at the early age of
thirty-two, he had won prompt recognition by a powerful speech in
opposition to the tariff of 1824; and by 1828, when he was reÎlected,
he was known as the South's ablest and boldest spokesman in the upper
chamber.
Webster was an equally fitting representative of rugged New England.
Born nine years earlier than Hayne, he struggled up from a boyhood of
physical frailty and poverty to an honored place at the Boston bar, and
in 1812, at the age of thirty, was elected to Congress. To the Senate
he brought, in 1827, qualities that gave him at once a preeminent
position. His massive head, beetling brow, flashing eye, and stately
carriage attracted instant attention wherever he went. His physical
impressiveness was matched by lofty traits of character and by
extraordinary powers of intellect; and by 1830 he had acquired a
reputation for forensic ability and legal acumen which were second to
none.
When, therefore, on the 21st of January, Hayne rose to deliver his
First Reply, and Webster five days later took the floor to begin his
Second Reply--probably the greatest effort in the history of American
legislative oratory--the little chamber then used by the Senate, but
nowadays given over to the Supreme Court, presented a spectacle fairly
to be described as historic. Every senator who could possibly be
present answered at roll call. Here were Webster's more notable fellow
New Englanders--John Holmes of Maine, Levi Woodbury of New Hampshire,
Horatio Seymour of Vermont. There were Mahlon Dickerson and Theodore
Frelinghuysen of New Jersey, and John M. Clayton of Delaware. Here,
John Tyler of Virginia, John Forsyth of Georgia, William R. King of
Alabama; there, Hugh L. White and Felix Grundy of Tennessee, and Thomas
H. Benton of Missouri. From the President's chair Hayne's distinguished
fellow South Carolinian, Calhoun, looked down upon the assemblage with
emotions which he vainly strove to conceal.
During the later stages of the discussion people of prominence from
adjoining States filled the hotels of the city and bombarded the
senators with requests for tickets of admission to the senate
galleries. Lines were formed, and when the doors were thrown open in
the morning every available inch of space was instantly filled with
interested and excited spectators. So great was the pressure that all
rules governing the admission of the public were waived. On the day of
Webster's greatest effort ladies were admitted to the seats of the
members, and the throng overflowed through the lobbies and down the
long stairways, quite beyond hearing distance. In the House of
Representatives the Speaker remained at his post, but the attendance
was so scant that no business could be transacted.
Hayne's speech--begun on the 21st and continued on the 25th of
January--was the fullest and most forceful exposition of the doctrines
of strict construction, state rights, and nullification that had ever
fallen upon the ear of Congress. It was no mere piece of abstract
argumentation. Hayne was not the man to shrink from personalities, and
he boldly accused the New England Federalists of disloyalty and Webster
himself of complicity in "bargain and corruption." Thrusting and
parrying, he stirred his supporters to wild enthusiasm and moved even
the solemn-visaged Vice President to smiles of approval. The
nationalists winced and wondered whether their champion would be able
to measure up with so keen an antagonist. Webster sat staring into
space, breaking his reverie only now and then to make a few notes.
The debate reached a climax in Webster's powerful Second Reply, on the
26th and 27th of January. Everything was favorable for a magnificent
effort: the hearing was brilliant, the theme was vital, the speaker was
in the prime of his matchless powers. On the desk before the New
Englander as he arose were only five small letter-paper pages of notes.
He spoke with such immediate preparation merely as the labors of a
single evening made possible. But it may be doubted whether any
forensic effort in our history was ever more thoroughly prepared for,
because Webster lived his speech before he spoke it. The origins of the
Federal Union, the theories and applications of the Constitution, the
history and bearings of nullification--these were matters with which
years of study, observation, professional activity, and association
with men had made him absolutely familiar. If any living American could
answer Hayne and his fellow partizans, Webster was the man to do it.
Forty-eight in the total of seventy-three pages of print filled by this
speech are taken up with a defense of New England against the Southern
charges of sectionalism and disloyalty. Few utterances of the time are
more familiar than the sentences bringing this part of the oration to a
close: "Mr. President, I shall enter on no encomium of Massachusetts;
she needs none. There she is. Behold her, and judge for yourselves.
There is her history; the world knows it by heart. . . . There is
Boston, and Concord, and Lexington, and Bunker Hill; and there they
will remain forever." If this had been all, the speech would have been
only a spirited defense of the good name of a section and would hardly
have gained immortality. It was the Union, however, that most needed
defense; and for that service the orator reserved his grandest efforts.
From the opening of the discussion Webster's object had been to "force
from Hayne or his supporters a full, frank, clear-cut statement of what
nullification meant; and then, by opposing to this doctrine the
Constitution as he understood it, to show its utter inadequacy and
fallaciousness either as constitutional law or as a practical working
scheme." π In the Southerner's First Reply Webster found the statement
that he wanted; he now proceeded to demolish it. Many pages of print
would be required to reproduce, even in substance, the arguments which
he employed. Yet the fundamentals are so simple that they can be stated
in a dozen lines. Sovereignty, under our form of government, resides in
the people of the United States. The exercise of the powers of
sovereignty is entrusted by the people partly to the National
Government and partly to the state Governments. This division of
functions is made in the federal Constitution. If differences arise, as
they must, as to the precise nature of the division, the decision
rests--not with the state legislatures, as Hayne had said--but with the
federal courts, which were established in part for that very purpose.
No State has a right to "nullify" a federal law; if one State has this
right, all must have it, and the result can only be conflicts that
would plunge the Government into chaos and the people ultimately into
war. If the Constitution is not what the people want, they can amend
it; but as long as it stands, the Constitution and all lawful
government under it must be obeyed.
π MacDonald, Jacksonian Democracy, p. 98.
The incomparably eloquent peroration penetrated to the heart of the
whole matter. The logic of nullification was disunion. Fine theories
might be spun and dazzling phrases made to convince men otherwise, but
the hard fact would remain. Hayne, Calhoun, and their like were playing
with fire. Already they were boldly weighing "the chances of preserving
liberty when the bonds that unite us together shall be broken asunder";
already they were hanging over the precipice of disunion, to see
whether they could "fathom the depth of the abyss below." The last
powerful words of the speech were, therefore, a glorification of the
Union:
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. . . . 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,
discordant, 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 gorgeous ensign of the Republic, now known
and honored throughout the earth, still full high advanced, 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 afterward"; but
everywhere, spread all over in characters of living light, blazing on
all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, and
in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to
every American heart--"Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and
inseparable!"
Undaunted by the flood of eloquence that for four hours held the Senate
spellbound, Hayne replied in a long speech that touched the zenith of
his own masterful powers of argumentation. He conceded nothing. Each
State, he still maintained, is "an independent sovereignty"; the Union
is based upon a compact; and every party to the compact has a right to
interpret for itself the terms of the agreement by which all are bound
together. In a short, crisp speech, traversing the main ground which he
had already gone over, Webster exposed the inconsistencies and dangers
involved in this argument; and the debate was over. The Foote
resolution, long since forgotten, remained on the Senate calendar four
months and was then tabled. Webster went back to his cases; the
politicians turned again to their immediate concerns; the humdrum of
congressional business was resumed; and popular interest drifted to
other things.
Both sides were well satisfied with the presentation of their views.
Certainly neither was converted to the position of the other. The
debate served, however, to set before the country with greater
clearness than ever before the two great systems of constitutional
interpretation that were struggling for mastery, and large numbers of
men whose ideas had been hazy were now led to adopt thoughtfully either
the one body of opinions or the other. The country was not yet ready to
follow the controversy to the end which Webster clearly foresaw--civil
war. But each side treasured its vitalized and enriched arguments for
use in a more strenuous day.
Advantage in the great discussion lay partly with Hayne and partly with
his brilliant antagonist. On the whole, the facts of history were on
the side of Hayne. Webster attempted to argue from the intent of the
framers of the Constitution and from early opinion concerning the
nature of the Union; but a careful appraisal of the evidence hardly
bears out his contentions. On economic matters also, notably the
operation of the protective tariff, he trod uncertain ground. He
realized this fact and as far as possible kept clear of economic
discussion. The South had real grievances, and Webster was well enough
aware that they could not be argued out of existence.
On the other hand, the Northerner was vastly superior to his opponent
in his handling of the theoretical issues of constitutional law; and in
his exposition of the practical difficulties that would attend the
operation of the principle of nullification he employed a fund of
argument that was simply unanswerable. The logic of the larger phases
of the situation lay, too, with him. If the Union for which he pleaded
was not the Union which the Fathers intended to establish or even that
which actually existed in the days of Washington and the elder Adams,
it was at all events the Union in which, by the close of the fourth
decade under the Constitution, a majority of the people of the United
States had come to believe. It was the Union of Henry Clay, of Andrew
Jackson, of Abraham Lincoln. And the largest significance of Webster's
arguments in 1830 arises from the definiteness and force which they put
into popular convictions that until then were vague and
inarticulate--convictions which, as has been well said, "went on
broadening and deepening until, thirty years afterward, they had a
force sufficient to sustain the North and enable her to triumph in the
terrible struggle which resulted in the preservation of national life."
It was the Second Reply to Hayne which, more than any other single
event or utterance between 1789 and 1860, "compacted the States into a
nation."